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[robgacu]

PLAN YOUR ROUTE. PREPARE YOUR SHIP. SURVIVE.
Tunnelshock is an open world survival horror game set after a cataclysm where the remnants of mankind have retreated to the underground, you take control of one of the remaining ships that has to venture in the abandoned tunnels to provide and defend what is left of mankind.

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Hi everyone, I´ve been learning/working in this game for a few years, but i had to stop a few times due school, and now i want to take it more seriously.



System Underworld is just a working title and this is the kind of feeling i want to get:



You control something like a spaceship inside underground tunnels where you have a few main objectives that you have to reach avoiding or fighting enemies and then return to the starting point to exit the level. Once you exit the level you can repair your ship, recharge fuel, get ammo, and choose another level or return to the same level to find items. (Something like This War of Mine or Sunless Sea without the open world).

The layout of the levels is fixed but the distribution of items, enemies and traps is random, as far you advance is supose to be harder.

A few GIFs:





At this point i´ve done a little of everything, i think the game can look decent if i play more with the lights and the materials without having to add textures, right now i have to finish the enemies behavior.

If something looks badly written or something please let me know, i use to read a lot in english but not write.

 

 

[Greipur]

Welcome. I agree that you can create something really interesting with materials and lighting alone, will probably just enhance the cold feeling you might be going for (?).

[Christian]

This looks great so far! Keep it up!

[sidbarnhoorn]

Looks interesting! Good luck with your game. :-)

[Christian]

Been a long time since I've seen the Matrix, but I have to say, that tone would definitely make for a cool game. Going dark to avoid detection, perhaps using gadgets to distract/lure/disable enemies, different weapons.

[Pixel Noise]

Cool idea! I think you'd have to come up with some really interesting map designs - straight line tunnels will get boring pretty quickly. (You've probably thought of this, just wanted to mention it). Adding curves, larger connection rooms, etc.

[robgacu]

Thanks for the comments!

Been a long time since I've seen the Matrix, but I have to say, that tone would definitely make for a cool game. Going dark to avoid detection, perhaps using gadgets to distract/lure/disable enemies, different weapons.

Thanks, i want to make exploration and let combat as last resort the main core of the gameplay.

Cool idea! I think you'd have to come up with some really interesting map designs - straight line tunnels will get boring pretty quickly. (You've probably thought of this, just wanted to mention it). Adding curves, larger connection rooms, etc.

I actually at first implemented procedural layouts, but its hard to make an algorithm that creates interesting levels, now i´m more looking into dungeons designs http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?168563-Dungeon-layout-map-flow-and-old-school-game-design and yeah straight tunnels get boring, i have a few models of rooms tha i´m going to place randomly in the level.

[robgacu]

More than 120 days without posting, sorry about that but the project was basically dead for a while, I've changed a lot of things in the game in general.

This image is about a level in the sewers:

The tone of the colors it's supposed to be green instead of the blue of the tunnels levels

The game is supposed to have three kind of envioroments:
The tunnels - done
The sewers - done
The outside - pending

And this is the aircraft shooting a few alien drones:

Looking now I think i'm going to change the design of these, their model it's very simple but from this perspective they look very similar to the sentinels in Matrix and I prefer avoid posbible problems.

I also added a timer in the form of fuel, if you move faster the fuel is consumed more quickly, I think a timer can lead to interesting levels, like a recue mission, where you have to prioritize the places to search because you can't explore everything.

But I had to remove the loot and basically everything that interferes between the player and his objective in the level, if the mission tells you that you have to hurry before the time is over but the level design encourages you to explore everything to collect all the goodies, that's really annoying.

[robgacu]

Implemented new enemies design, they're supposed to be something like evil robotic aliens, this one is the main enemy, they're usually always in groups, exploring, guarding or waiting for ambushes, this is not the final color but I think it's going to be something similar.

Render:


This was the old model without textures, from a top down perspective they look very similar anyway, but I wanted to changed its design anyway


In game:


This other one, is supposed to be invincible unless you attack him with certain ammo, it's basically a moving obstacle and they wander randomly certain areas of the map, when you see a big single dot in your radar you know you have to hide or escape.

Render:


In game:

[robgacu]

Hi there, a short video with the stun mechanic implemented:




To restart your aircraft and have the control again you have to press the ctrl button to recharge the energy manually, a toy sound indicates that it's not enough energy and you have to press the button again until you hear a "cuack", meaning that you now have enough energy and you can start the engine by pressing shift instead of ctrl.

The amount of times the player has to press the ctrl button can go from 2 to 5, and if the player smash the ctrl button and press ctrl instead of shift the process restart.

Obviously these sounds are placeholder but I want this game mechanic to feel like turning on an old car so I want to rely only in sound as indicator instead of the GUI.




 

[robgacu]

By this day I was supposed to show the rest of the weapons working but I had to set up the webpage, twitter account and all those PR things that I don't like or at least I'm not use to.

But I have new gifs:







I think I still have to find a middle ground between quality and a slow post with the gifs.

[robgacu]

Here are some pictures of the work in progress of the hangar level, here the player is teleported after a successful or failed mission, depending of the results of the previous mission you may get extra ammo and a new weapon.

The first picture it's basically a menu where the player chooses the amount of ammo, fuel and new weapons to install.



And this one shows some info about the mission, so the player has some clues about best kind of ammo and weapons for the next mission.



In previous versions the game had a currency system in the form of scrap where you basically had to pay for reparations, ammo, weapons and upgrades for your aircraft, every roguelite has this, but in this case it was like make the crew of the ship pay for the resources the need to perform their job, and it was just more work for me so I happily cut the currency system.

[robgacu]

Hi, long time without posting, but mostly I have been fixing bugs and coding the save system of the game.

I think the last pictures of the game were too colorful, the environment is supposed to be cold and without life, after messing around with filters and lighting I got this:

The filter still needs a few adjusments and details in the envioroment needs more color, but I think is the right direction.

I also tried using textures but I still don't like the results:

It's barely noticeable and is only applied on the walls but I like more the texturesless materials of the first image, if I start applying textures to everything it may look that I want the game to look realistic and just look bad, maybe a few subtle noise textures may look good just to make the environment look less clean.

[robgacu]

New title and logo, the last one was a bit hard to pronounce, I haven't updated this devlog properly but thats because the development of this game has been very messy, I work alone, so every stupid idea that came to my mind I thought it was the best at the moment and just implemented, and end up with a mess of half done features which now I'm cutting.

The game is like a combination of Thief and Sunless Sea, is going to consist in a sequence of missions, each one with multiple paths and objectives, before each mission the player has to manage ammo, fuel and upgrades.
Each objective has a consequence that may impact consequent missions, the player can fail every objective and still reach the end of the game.

No roguelite, the levels have randomly placed elements and few variations with each playthrough but they're going to have some kind of story, something simple like find this, rescue that, sabotage this, but promoting this like a roguelite would only confuse people that may expect something more arcade

An image of what the game look like now:




 

[robgacu]

When the player detects a group of enemies coming in his way, the player is supposed to fight/avoid or find a place to hide and turn off his ship, this is going to disable the HUD, so I think is going to be necesary for the enemies to emit some sort of sound, so when the player doesn't hear anything it means is safe to turn on the ship and continue.

[robgacu]

Hi, I want to share how currently the missions are created, the game was first conceived as a roguelite with procedurally generated levels, the idea was tossed away in favor of more structured levels with random elements and story, but a lot of the random mechanics are still in the game.

The red lines represent main routes and the blue crosses represent random secondary routes, here I can define types of modules to instantiate and the amount of enemies, traps, objectives, and so on.

Each one of the squares if going to instantiate a module, each module has its own pathfinding nodes and connectors, each one of these red spheres instantiate an instance, in this case is going to be instantiated a lot of fog, walls, pipes, etc.

After each instance of the module is instantiated, the level generator checks if each instance of the module has itself something to instante, in this case are the air vents and the pipes need to be instantiated, but the generator has a list of things that are compatible, for example the pipes can be exchanged for a model of a broken pipe and it's going to fit, and the air vents can be swapped by windows, cables, etc. this is to avoid the art fatigue.

It is a little more intricate but  in general this is the process, the important part is to make enough content to keep the levels interesting, the whole point of having random elements is to avoid having a strategy for each level that is always going to work.

[robgacu]

Now I'm working in the elements that are going to populate the levels, this one is an electrical tower, if somebody have played Cryptark there is a mechanic where if you destroy a system a huge explosion that takes a good chunk of the map appears and you have to avoid it, well, this one is similar, the player fires to this thing to activate it and destroy the enemies in the surroundings, and then has to avoid get caught in the explosion.

It doesn't explode yet because I haven't finished the explosion effect.

[robgacu]

Working in the hangar level, I took inspiration from zion in The matrix and the D6 level from Metro 2033 and made like four diferent iterations of the area that when finished may look more impresive but it was going to be very time consuming to produce, I ended up with this one that is still in development but I think is good enough, nothing impresive but I really need to learn to be efficient.

Somethings that I plan to do to with the level:

• Add a warm illumination to make contrast with the cold tunnels
• Add a train travelling in the rails
• Cover that black hole with something
• Add human size objects to denote the size of the place
• More lights

[Pixel Noise]

I remember seeing this a while ago, good to see you back to posting! I think the concept is cool, and it's come a long way with graphics, etc - the mechanics and general gameplay you are aiming for now (with story, etc) seems like a better approach for this kind of game.

[robgacu]

Thanks!, I've been thinking and searching about how to approach level design in this game and found a few videos:








This channel is gold for anyone searching about game design.

I know a few posts before I said the game is going to consist of a sequence of missions, but it could be compelling to a have big interconected map and let the player take the path he believes is the best to approach the objetive and let him learn where are the shorcuts, hazards, etc., and as he improves his ship he can go to objectives that are farther in the map without getting killed.

Open world is a big no no for me, but in this case I think it would be more like an old school resident evil map, having enough interesting places in the least space possible (travelling through empty tunnels is kind of boring).