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[Canned Turkey]

Soon is not soon enough... 

[libertango]

The bots look great.

[Netsu]

As a fan of Quake 2 and roguelike elements in action games this is a game I must play.
Those weapons and bots are AMAZING.

[Gluntronics]

Just had to share this poster from the secret minigame in the alpha.

[Gluntronics]

It was important to us that the player have an authored experience. We are deeply inspired by early id games and love the level of detail and love that they put into the their maps but we wanted to create a fun fast gameplay experience that you could return to after beating the game and not get sick of static levels. But at the same time completely procedural levels are often not fun to traverse or balanced, they work well in Minecraft but not in a game that would play like Quake so we are approaching it in an interesting way.

We started by creating a large collection of rooms that fit together like a puzzle and randomize every play. I build each room to have multiple entrances that the game will choose to plug or open depending on the generation.

To do this Steve created two door nodes that I can build into our levels. The pieces I have named simply the “door plug” and the “tile plug”. The door plug is a 4x4m node that will connect to other 4x4m nodes and disappear after connecting two rooms. It can also have geometry childed to it. This helps me gate off areas if the door is inactive to help keep the room feeling good. For example If a door is at the bottom of a set of stairs I can place a wall to block off those stairs if the door is inactive during that spawn.

The “tile plug”  is really cool, I like it a lot. It’s a 8x10m tile that will connect two spaces and the purpose of this connection is to help change the feel of rooms and not just connect them at the doors. This can connect two smaller rooms making a larger one or it can add a smaller room onto different areas of a larger one. 

After the map is created all of the content that the player will interact with is randomized within the environment. This includes: enemy placement, food dispensers, ammo, power ups, etc. Each of the assets are coded to follow a specific set of rules so that they will behave appropriately.

I really love secrets in games, and not lazy ones. I don’t think that an extra clip of ammo behind a staircase is a rewarding secret. I adore developers who spend time on content that will not be seen by a substantial amount of their players but will truly reward the people who dig in and dedicate their time. To me that shows passion because any company focused on their bottom line won’t waste their teams time on such content.

One of the staples of STRAFE is secret rooms (that is not our only form of secret) and monster closets. Much like the entrances  there are secret doors littered throughout each room and the game decides a percentage that will be monster closets, secrets or inactive and then randomizes them throughout the level. This should keep the player on their toes even if they play the game enough to memorize all of the door placements.

There’s still a long way to go before I’m in a place where I feel good showing things off but I wanted to share our process with you. Thanks for reading about our development process, we’ll be sharing more soon. You can keep an eye on our project via the links below if you aren’t already!

-Thom

[Echelon5]

Wow, this looks fantastic already! Absolutely looking forward to this. Looks like story will mostly be in the background, I can definitely appreciate that. Looking for a lore writer?

[Gluntronics]

Wow, this looks fantastic already! Absolutely looking forward to this. Looks like story will mostly be in the background, I can definitely appreciate that. Looking for a lore writer?

Thanks Echelon5 but our story and lore has already been figured out. We're keeping it really simple and intentionally focusing on gameplay instead.   

I hope you still follow our dev and contribute your thoughts as we release new info.

[Canned Turkey]

REAALLLYY looking forward to this game, but after seeing that last screenshot, I don't see any shadows? Is this just temporary, or do you not have shadows in the game?

[Gluntronics]

REAALLLYY looking forward to this game, but after seeing that last screenshot, I don't see any shadows? Is this just temporary, or do you not have shadows in the game?

Thanks! That room in the screenshot is unfinished. It has yet to receive decal work, lighting and spawns for items / enemys.

I'm in the process of texturing about 30 rooms so I'm excited to show everything in progress since this is a devblog. The game will have shadows and some dynamic lighting. I'll be posting my process on how I build these rooms soon. I started a new room so I can show the progression from scratch.

[libertango]

The monster closets sound great.  Your level building blocks look very interesting. 

[Gluntronics]

We just got up out official site! Here's a link dump in case you are interested! I think we'll be cutting together a video soon to show what we've got in place so far.

We've gotten in all of the weapons and have started balancing along with adding the proper effects. Really excited to share!





Official Site - www.strafe1996.com
Twitter - www.twitter.com/strafegame
Facebook - www.facebook.com/strafegame

[Echelon5]

Wowow this looks CRAZY good and exactly the type of game I've been wanting for ages.

[martian_automaton]

Wow, this is definitely a winning idea! Looks awesome.
Also, those models are fantastic.

[libertango]

Love the website.  Should add some Geocities pop-up ads. 

Really looking forward to seeing a video.

[Gluntronics]

Today was a hard day. Most of us were working hard on the game but for the last 2 weeks a crucial member of the team went dark. There was a bit of warning so we thought nothing of it. Today we found out they may have a terminal illness and have to step away from the game. This is truly heartbreaking to us.

We are hopeful that they may be misdiagnosed or treated but even at best this is a rough thing for them to go through, especially such a kind and talented person.

Our team is going to remain positive and continue moving forward but things have slowed down and our moral has dropped.   

[BarchKing]

thats a shame : ( I hope you guys are ok

[jctwood]

I cannot imagine how upsetting that is for everyone close to them. I hope you are still able to complete what looks like a truly wonderful concept for a game!

[Gluntronics]

Listen to: Icarus by ToyTree http://toytree.bandcamp.com/track/icarus

When I started brainstorming musical ideas for STRAFE, the initial hope, and also the excitement, was to create music that reflects the various influences that are shaping the game. STRAFE is a roguelike - a genre of games which have been around for the bulk of gaming's history - yet it's being generated by very modern technology. It's also a throwback to classic FPSs of the 90s, but yet again, the game is using modern techniques for procedural generation and physics. So what does a sci fi roguelike fps like this sound like?

I immediately went back to the old id games for reference. Those identifiable chunky synths - not quite chiptune is nature but heavily compressed and monophonic – they had to be in there, or at the very least, sonically referenced. They represent an era of technology that couldn't really do more than what they did. Their sound inherently reflects a restriction rather than a choice, though over time that initial restriction has come to be iconic. I knew I wanted to incorporate these sounds, yet make them modern. I also knew I wanted the music to sound intense, a little over the top, and beat driven enough to match the gameplay. You've been thrown into the action and here you are sort to speak, well, in a sci fi, videogame, id games kind of way.

My immediate thought was of old acid house, an invent of the mid 1980s dj scene that was born from a synth/sequencer called the Roland TB-303 (I don't have one myself sadly, look it up on ebay, yikes it's expensive). It was a good first guess, because the grimy sound of a good acid synth fits quite well into STRAFEs modern yet retro universe. I started tinkering with a hard acid bass; adjusting for faster attack, less resonance, a bit of decay that would hit hard when thrown through a side chain compressor, a degree of bitcrushing for retro feel, some plate reverb to betray said retro feel. I turned knobs until things sounded right.

And this is often how music is made, at least for me and at least at inception. I start out with a thought or vibe that feels like it might work, then experiment until the proverbial compass blade reveals itself and then momentum hopefully catches it's footing. Of course there's the tools and skills that I've acquired over time which help shape the process and the result, but more often than not, I taste as I go and let one new idea lead to the next. This is especially true of writing music for multimedia projects. Since the music for STRAFE is not written in a vacuum, but rather reflects and supports onscreen action, the inception point is already laid out to an extent. The music has to perform a function, and my task is to funnel my musical style and instincts through what I interpret that function to be. That first question of what should STRAFE's music sound like starts to shift and develop until music takes shape and bit by bit decides for itself. More specifics on how I'm handling particular tracks to come, but for now, check out the included work in progress for the Icarus level!

-ToyTree

[Gluntronics]

Hey People!
This being a devblog and all I would like to share info about our production, useful information. Not only the art and process of the game building but also some of the drama and work that it takes to keep everything together. So with that here's where we currently are in production and some of the events that got us here. We all know building a game is hard but sometimes it starts to fall apart quickly and out of nowhere but during those times you have to keep your head up and preserver.

STRAFE is the first game that we're making so this means 2 things.

1: We're green.
2: We're broke.

Headed up by Steve (the programmer) and myself (director, level design, marketing) we started small and pushed forward building the game we wanted to play. Along the way we were lucky enough to find others willing to join us on but this last month has seen half of them leave the project for all different reasons. There was no event that kicked this off but instead it felt like an odd time in which everyone approached a crossroads, some decided they wanted to stay and some leave (which is fine).

As of now we are a collection of unpaid hobbyists with agreements of payment on release. OUr intent was to create a verticle slice of the game and then hold a Kickstarter to pay the team to the completion of the game. With game development some people lose interest and some stick around but we don't have the leverage to keep our talented people on board and sadly sometimes they have to leave due to health reasons.

Here's the damage:

We lost our amazingly talented and kind lead artist to Leukemia. Once diagnosed he has stepped away to focus on what matters to him. Our team wishes him the best and hope that he can beat this.

The same week our second artist who was focused on our secret levels stopped talking to us. There was no fight or anger that we know of but over the last month we've reached out countless times to get a confirmation from him if he had quit or if something had happened to him (call us paranoid after the other news) but no response other than. "thanks for your patience, I'll send you an email tonight!" and then 3 weeks of silence. Although he's still tweeting 3-4 times a day. Why is it so hard for people to communicate?

Our animator is also working on "A Hat in Time" and needed to focus his efforts on that game. He was spreading himself too thin and didn't want to hurt the quality of AHiT. Understandable.

All of these blows hurt our team and have slowed down dev a bit but we don't see giving up as an option. We may have not had as much new art as we would have wanted in the last month but we've made great progress in other places.

I have finished modeling and texturing all of the levels for the vertical slice. (first "zone" of the game) I have shot a commercial for the game in the styles of a 90's video game commercial along with a fill page magazine ad that we will use as our press release when the time is right.

Steve has programmed the enemy systems and gotten them ready to implement, He has also started on the complex gibs system in the game as well as writing new occluding / optimization code that has significantly raised performance!

ToyTree is still writing amazing music we all love.

Bryan is working on our weapon sounds.

And the most exciting part of the last few weeks was having the amazing Oliver Janoschek design the Hud for our game!

We'll be looking for a new artist to take over where Thibault left off and another animator but this process may take a while due to our lack of funds and demand for high quality work. We won the lottery with our team so far, I'm amazed people this talented are willing to work on a project they believe in during their spare time.

There are a few strategies I found that help keep people invested and all of them focus on keeping moral high.
!. Praise good work
2. Be understanding that these people are donating their time and may need time off to focus on "real life:
3. Share great work from other team members with the rest of the team.
4. Share builds when a new / exciting feature is added.
5. Don't take advantage of anyone. 

There's really no simple answer on how to keep a team together other than a steady paycheck and if you are like us and can't offer that atm then the best you can do as a team leader is to have a clear vision, be open to input, let each member put their stamp on the project and help them feel a sense of ownership. But at the end of the day strive for quality because that's what we all want, no one wants to sink a portion of their life into something they don't love.

If anyone actually reads this I'd love to know if you've hit walls like this before and what advice you may have too.

-Thom

[RecidivistSW]

Great write up of your music process.  Music is oft overlooked in these devlogs.

I don't have any advice on how to overcome the troubles that have befallen your project.  I've had an artist go silent on me before, but it was a temporary thing.  I'm pretty sure this artist had just stretched himself too thin.  In my opinion it did effect the final outcome of the art he produced for me.  I would write very detailed descriptions of the art I needed and the when he submitted the art it was clear that he hadn't read carefully.  This of course lead to frustration and wasted effort on his part having to redo things.  When you find an artist that is good and RELIABLE, man, you hold onto that one because he or she is gold!

Keep at it though.  This is a sexy project and hopefully you can attract other artists.