Oh yeah, something else I finally got around to: adding support for hold-to-interact mechanic!

So far I'm using it for the following:

• flipping switches
• swapping weapons
• resetting consoles (below)
• using rope to exit a level

Basically, anything that requires confirmation, or anywhere it creates a bit more tension. (for example: previously it was a bit too easy to dash to the exit and instantly end the level--this new mechanic requires a bit more gusto)



P.S. also added some flashing lights to the console, kind of a must

Nothing really exciting to report lately, I've mostly just been focused on reducing build time as it was going far beyond "coffee break" time and well into "lunch break" territory. (I'm talking 40+ minutes in some cases!)

The biggest culprit seems to be shader compilation (and/or compression) time. Specifically, the number of uber-shader variants that are getting included... like 360mb (uncompressed) worth!

The first thing I did is set up a build script so I can at least continue working while building. The build script basically calls Unity via command line against a separate working directory. Nothing fancy, I'm just using Unity's standard BuildPipeline, but I've also built in support for doing standalone vs. Steam builds.

I'm now doing a bit of clean-up trying to strip out any WIP-ish stuff that's causing unused materials, and therefore shaders/variants, to be included (i.e. inactive game objects in prefabs and the like).

Last but not least I plan to install an SSD dedicated to the project, and perhaps upgrade my CPU as well. Currently, I'm running an AMD FX-6100 (3.3ghz 6-core), but I'm seeing an FX-8350 (4ghz 8-core) on sale at NewEgg... 

Oh and I finally got around to refreshing images on Steam and the website! I think I can capture some even better shots, but it's certainly an improvement over what was there. I'm still working on capturing some video--the build time issue is making it especially annoying to make small edits/revisions--but will hopefully wrap that up soon esp as I get the issue under control.

My only (rather minor) critique is that--especially for "light" blood emission--is that the blood appears to be firing out from the enemies at a rather high speed. I might suggest slowing down the movement of the particles a little. However, I may well be off on that, and even if not, your intended aesthetic may direct otherwise.

Fair point. I do like things to be a little bit over the top but this may be a tad much

Totally overhauled the toxic blood particles for enemies. There's now support for both light and heavy bleeding, depending on which weapon they're hit with. As well, blood particles now emit from slightly within the mesh, where previously they would emit from the bounds of the hitbox, often looking like they were emitting from thin air.

Here's the "light" blood emission:

Wow, long time no post! I've largely been focused on my next game, Undermine, but Operation Hardcore lives on. I've been working with Greenlight Games on a port for the Switch which is just going through certification now.

Here's a little promo image I put together for that:



As part of the process I had to upgrade Unity--twice--which meant quite a bit of regression testing, and quite a few bugs to deal with, but it seems pretty stable now. I haven't released a PC or macOS build on the new Unity version yet but it's in the plans.

I've also been contemplating adding some features that didn't make it in for the original release, such as a map screen.

Here's a prototype I put together over the course of a day or so.



As much as I don't want to lose focus on Undermine, it would be nice to be able to offer some new content shortly after the Switch release.

In other news, I'm pleased to announce a new addition to the team: Dan Hunter! Dan worked as a VFX artist on Bioshock 2 and Halo 4, among other things. I'm really excited to have him on board, I just know he'll help bring the visuals to the next level and beyond!

You check out Dan's impressive demo reel here:




Welcome Dan!

Is it feasible to mix module sizes? It might be interesting to occasionally have a small area in an otherwise expansive level, or a cramped level that suddenly opens up, for example.

Not the way it's setup now, however, the 32x32 levels do have a mix of small and big rooms, so what you're describing still happens. The difference being that the small modules have longer hallways connecting them.

Having a ton of fun playing around with Substance Painter, such a great tool!



Overall I'm still working on getting everything presentable for capturing some new marketing/promo shots which will be used to refresh Steam and the website--they've kind of been neglected in comparison to the devlog and social media.

I think I'm going to park creating a new trailer for now, though, and instead just capture a bit of recent gameplay. I don't think it's worth the investment of time right now, especially as I'll probably need to create another one for Early Access. (my experiments with trying to automate trailer creation didn't really pan out, they just ended up being a time suck)

Once I've got a new batch of shots and video posted I hope to (officially) announce an open beta. I'll be running the next one 100% through Discord, mainly in an effort to drive more traffic to it/build up a bit of a community, something I've not been able to focus on as much as I'd like.

(As you can probably tell, it's becoming a bit of a balancing act trying to decide where to spend my time, and it's especially getting stretched thin as I'm pretty much working solo now. Not helping matters is the fact that I've taken on some paid clients to raise capital/cover expenses. This is in addition to working a 40 hour/week day job... )

Some other recent changes of note:

• created a new flashlight cookie with scratches/wear
• added a second point light to the flashlight to simulate indirect light, since I can't use real-time indirect light due to the way the generation currently works
• added depth of field for the MonPro
• added support for multiple module sizes: the first few levels use 16x16 modules, the latter use 32x32. This creates more sprawling levels in the second half of the game, which I plan to use to create some parkour segments. As well, it enables me to remove some hacky logic I had added to support large rooms @ 16x16 resolution.
• mutant miners now follow a path instead of wandering randomly. This makes stealth play a bit easier and prevents some weirdness, like them walking right up against walls. I'm also spawning ghouls in hallways now, which create more challenging gameplay in places.
• added root motion for mutant minters (well, simulated via script--the animations I'm using don't have root motion data, unfortunately). This results in a more natural movement with less "skating".
• enemies now apply "instant" damage, where previously this was calculated as damage per/second on contact. I believe this makes enemy damage feel more predictable and fair.

Here's the new flashlight cookie and indirect light:



Here's a shot of a longer hallway generated @ 32x32 module resolution (you can also spot some more Substance Painter work: the rust on the leaking barrels):



Here you can see the depth of field for the MonPro:



And I just realized a took a similar shot last January, let's so how it compares, heh:

Hey folks, I'm looking for somebody to sketch two distinct logo concepts for me. Just sketches to begin with, although I'll be looking to eventually take one of the concepts through to completion.

I've pinned a few logos that are along the lines of what I'm envisioning, both in terms of style and level of detail/complexity:
https://www.pinterest.com/snugsound/game-studio-logos/

Please DM with your portfolio and rate for sketches, as well as your rate for taking the selected sketch through to completion (vector design).

Looking again, I seem to see two sets of sparks: bright, yellow-orange ones, and diffuse, green ones. Are both part of that bug? I was taking the green sparks for "blood", and it was these that I was referring to, I believe.

Nah, the green is supposed to be toxic blood type stuff. Feedback noted

My one critique is that the blood-spurts look more like sparks or energy emissions of some sort, to me. Perhaps a different particle-image, something less diffuse and more liquid-seeming, might look a bit better? (For the sake of clarity, I don't mean the decals--those look fine to me, as far as the gif shows!)

The sparks are separate from the blood. That's a bug of sorts... they currently trigger for dead enemies, but they're only supposed to trigger for rock and metal surfaces

Working on combat and game feel stuff a bit. While I'm trying to downplay combat overall in favour of stealth and evasion/parkour, I do want it to feel like a viable option. To that end:

• made the drill bit much bigger (in retrospect, it was puny before)
• added screen-shake, slow time on successful hit
• added toxic blood decals to the drill (it starts off clean, of course)
• made the radius for blood particles wider, increased speed
• added blood decals on particle collision
• added impact decals for the pickaxe (not pictured)
• moved the post-processing stack to the weapon camera so that it can benefit from bloom, motion blur, etc. (also not pictured)

Consider me interested, when is it out?

No official release date yet but hoping to do an open beta within a month or so, and Early Access within a couple of that.

Finally got around to doing something I've been meaning to for a while: now when you throw an overcharged beacon at a mutant miner they run around madly while burning 



Previously, this would trigger their attack state, which looked a bit silly as often they stand still while attacking.

In other news, I recently (and somewhat impulsively) decided to rip out Unity-based sounds and replace them with FMOD. 40+ hours later and I'm just about done. A fairly massive undertaking this late in the game but I'm quite happy with the results. Some things that now become trivial and no longer require custom code, all of which I took immediate advantage of:

• distance-based filtering
• blending between multiple audio clips
• triggering multiple audio clips in succession: for example, certain items now have an initial "grab" foley sound followed by an item specific sound
• triggering random clips, randomizing pitch: for example, the background ambience now has random rockslide/debris sounds via a scatterer instrument, where this was previously baked into the track
• triggering sounds based on a parameter (i.e. footsteps based on surface type)
• reverb zones: tunnels now have their own reverb, and I plan to do the same for large rooms
• side-chain compression: loud SFX now duck background ambience, drawing your attention to them (this is something that Dark Souls 3 does which I quite dig--I recently found out DS3 used FMOD as well!)
• applying a master limiter: finally, no more clipping!

It's also a much better workflow: I can create, test and mix sounds quickly in FMOD Studio rather than having to create (and code) test scenes in Unity.

I also took the opportunity to purchase a new sound library and have subsequently replaced or revamped many of the sounds, as well as added some additional ones.

I hope to post a video in the days to come so stay tuned for that.

If I may, how are you specifying the footstep sounds to be played for each surface? That is, where is that data stored?

Currently, this lives with the character controller via assigning an array of clips for each surface types. It's a primitive approach but works fine for now since I've only implemented two types of surfaces (dirt, water).

Once we add more surface types I plan to move this into a separate component, to be used by both the player and enemies. The job of the component would be to raycast down, grab the physics material, and play a clip from an array indexed by physics material.

Some things I have yet to work out 100%:

• detecting variations in the splat-map: I'd prefer not to read mesh data at runtime so I'll probably try to find a workaround, like using triggers, or splitting up the meshes by their surface.
• detecting decal-based surfaces (i.e. toxic puddles, blood, etc.): I'll probably use triggers for this

Here's a quick video of some of the recent updates, most notably:

• flooded junctions: similar to gates, these serve to break up the levels a bit and create more visual points of reference
• more decals: mold along waterlines, wooden planks in hallways. For those who are curious, we're using DynamicDecals for most of our decals.
  
• room-specfic particles

Well, still plugging away at the new trailer/marketing assets. After a bit of fighting with Unity's static batching (or more specifically, my understanding of it), we're back on track. Most recently, we spent some time revamping the enemy materials and textures:

• the mutant miner was using a custom third-party shader, I've swapped it for the standard shader (realizing now that I should have done this long, long ago!)
• added stains and a microsurface to the miner overalls
• added microsurface to the mutant miner (veins)
• boosted the emission for the toxic mutant
• redid the textures for the skin blisters, added additional veins
• softended the hair on the mutant rat

Here are before/afters shots. Both are under the same lighting conditions, which should give you an idea of how dramatic the shader change was! (right-click -> View Image for higher res)

Experimenting with adding "choke" points between modules via broken gates (passages that are too small for mutant miners to fit through). These should help reduce the likelihood of being tailed by a mutant halfway across the level while trying to find a place to hide. As an added benefit, they also create some neat silhouettes and shadows, and some rather tense moments when you end up in a completely gated room filled with multiple mutant miners.








I've also moved away from global dust/haze particles in favour of module-specific. I find this helps to create a better environmental contrast when moving between rooms. I've taken advantage of this new approach by differentiating the particles based on the type of room (i.e. flooded room gets misty looking particles, as seen below)




Last but not least, I've started creating prefabs to add a bit more weirdness to the later levels. In this case, toxic sludge dripping down the wall and pooling on the ground.

Hmm, well I'm not doing too well at these so-called "regular" updates! But anyway, we're still plugging away at getting ready for the creation of a new trailer.

As I alluded to last time, in an effort to "automate" some parts of the trailer creation we've been experimenting with using Cinemachine to create fly-throughs, but after several days of work I'm still not 100% happy with the results. I think a fly-through of the wide-open "industrial chasm" area may be good, but it feels a bit weird/out-of-context otherwise.

On the plus side, the work that we've done on the fly-throughs has resulted in the creation of a "staged" (non-procedural) scene that we can use to showcase specific prefabs, items, types of gameplay, etc. My hope is that we can lay it out in such a way that we're able to capture really good footage in as few takes as possible, and repeat the process for future trailers.

We've also done a few extra detail passes to add more visual (and atmospheric) variation to the mine environment, including:

• dead end hallways
• recessed room walls
• replacing simple mesh webs with cloth renderers
• chains hanging from support beams (thanks to DS3's "Irithyll Dungeon" for the inspiration, heh)
• more spikey stalactite/stalagmite things (including some that are purely decorative)
• make-shift "cells" with mutant miners rocking back and forth
• more gore (torsos and skulls on spikes, puddles of gore, etc.)
• flies that buzz around piles of gore

Here are a few shots showcasing most of the above:









As for what's next: we really need to get back to our 50/50 marketing/dev split, as we've kind of strayed from this and are starting to feel it (drop in wishlisting, Discord activity, etc.).

I like the new area (and the table-flipping error screen)! ^_^

Thanks It's just a placeholder for now (random Google image) but we'll probably make something original that's similar... I love that kinda goofy stuff to break the tension