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[DavidAndreev]

Hello everyone, my name is David Andreev I'm an indie developer and I would like to present you my game : Particles



Particles is Online Multiplayer First Person Shooter game with abstract visuals and surreal concepts.



Expected full release on Steam: first half of 2019
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

In quantum world of subatomic particles there is a constant fight between three forces that form the universe.
Join this battle to keep universe in balance and harmony.

An unique Online Multiplayer First Person Shooter ,there are no people or other real objects in the game. Whole game is set in abstract environment where you shoot abstract gas-like looking spheres called Particles. Graphics is not only unique aspect of the game, so called " Gravity jump" allow players to teleport and change the gravity for the player, this ability combined with fast paced gameplay results in very interesting and unusual experience one would not expect to get from online first person shooter.

BETA version trailer




Links:

• Official Website: http://particles-the-game.com
• Download FREE BETA version on itch.io: https://davidandreev.itch.io/particles-beta
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/particlesthegame/
• Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636617650

Features:


"Gravity jump"


Randomly Generated levels


Surreal weapons


Different classes with special skills

BETA version was released in 2016 and since then the development has advanced significantly.

BETA version contains :

• 8 weapons
• 2 game modes
• 1 map

Current version features:

• points system
• randomly generated maps
• weapon upgrades
• soundtrack
• in game chat
• tutorial level
• better controls
• new shooting system

Planned / in development features:

• more game modes
• new weapons
• boss fights
• improved UI

I will keep you guys posted with news during development and possible versions available for testing and feedback!

Let me know what you think and stay tuned!

[Geoff Moore]

You weren't kidding with the 'like no other' tagline in the video. Intrigued to say the least! Can't wait to play this.

[Devilkay]

the glow effect is very interesting. I like the idea. the project is still to young to write a complete post about it! I wait to see a good version to left a good feedback

[DavidAndreev]

Guys thank you very much for the nice comments I really appreciate it and Im happy that you like the game.

This week has been very productive, I've been playing with adding new movement features like Jetpack or ability to sprint for a short amount of time.
I've also tried to let player build some simple objects during the game, although not very common in FPS shooter games but could be a nice addition to make the overall gameplay more interesting.

Currently I'm implementing additional game modes to try and see how it works out, planned so far are following modes: Capture the flag, King of the hill, Defend area, Destroy enemy base. All these modes would be available for both team vs team multiplayer games and co-op multiplayer.

Let me know what you think! What are your favorite game modes in FPS games? What do you enjoy the most and what do you rather find boring or annoying ? I'm happy to hear any opinion

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 6.12.2018

Last week I've working on multiple things like prototyping new game modes. Experimenting with new visual effects for weapons but mostly enancing the visual quality. Thanks to Unity's "post processing stack" I was able to use antialiasing to soften sharp edges on the screen and use ambient occlusion to render more realistic shadows.
As you can see on the pictures.




The change looks subtle but overall it creates much better game feel. Although the game is very abstract, it starts to feel more "real". However this changes still need to be tweaked since they have a big effect on performance. However I really recommend using Unity post processing stack for anyone making their game in Unity.

Let me guys know what you think, more screenshots and updates coming up later, stay tuned!

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 11.12.2018

Optimizing the post processing changes for performance on higher resolutions is giving me nightmares, but slowly getting somewhere.
In the meantime I tried to enhance the look of the "enemy particle". The result so far doesn't look to bad, what do you think?

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 19.12.2018

I left the look of particle objects aside for a bit and went back to optimization.

Thanks to one clever script I was able to combine meshes of objects that are generated on runtime. It means that if you have many objects that have the same material, you tell Unity to treat it as one big object instead of many small ones. Rendering and calculating mesh for one big object is much cheaper then many small ones. This saves the GPU a lot of work and enhances the performance. Although still looking the same, thanks to a different code behind, the game runs much smoother now.

The script was applied on the objects generated inside the level but also the background objects that you can see on the screenshot.
These changes manage to increase the fps count significantly.



But still a lot of work to be done regarding optimization, mostly regarding all the particle systems, and as you can imagine there is lots a of them.

[DavidAndreev]

Development update - 8.1.2019

Happy new year everyone!

It's been some time since I posted anything but here's a small update.
I added some effects to improve game feel. For example this distortion effect which appears when player is sprinting or using gravity jump.



Let me also remind you that project is still open to new people with Unity skills. You can find more info here
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=66425.msg1396393#msg1396393

[Julien]

I love the title, I love your art

[DavidAndreev]

Thank you Julien! Thats great to hear

[DavidAndreev]

Game fact #1

Most of the objects generated in the game have a fractal-like nature, meaning that that whole object consist of the smaller versions of the same object which can be slightly altered in each iteration. Depending how much the smaller objects differ from the main one defines how much recognizable the fractal is. As you can see its easier to tell on the first picture than on the second.





Inspiration came from nature since many shapes that we find in nature have fractal characteristics.

You can find some nice pictures of fractals in nature here:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/incredible-photographs-of-fractals-found-in-the-natural-480626285

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 21.1.2018

For the past weeks I've been working on the networking side of the game. New game modes added to the game needed to be implemented in a way so that everyone online in the current room sees the changes correctly and everything is properly updated. It's very time consuming process mostly because the testing is rather tedious, every time I have to run at least 2 instances of the game and if an error occurs its usually random on which instance and therefore the wrong logic is more difficult to discover.

By the way for networking I'm using Photon Unity Networking (PUN) https://www.photonengine.com/en/pun, it's a module with many features implemented that makes the whole development easier, they also host the game server for you so you don't need to worry about that, it's free until you reach some player limit therefore for development and testing it's ideal. I highly recommend it also mostly because of the large community using it, this helps a lot when you run into a problem and look for some help.

During the same time the freshly joined member of the team: Collin, implemented a method to indicate nearest Health Refill Spot when player is low on health and now he's working on the Camera Shake effect.

Since all the work done has been "behind the scenes" there's nothing new visually in the game, but here's a random screenshot for you.

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 29.1.2019

Recently I'm mostly fixing gameplay issues and networking bugs since I would like to test new features in actual multiplayer gameplay with my friends and see how this changes turn out.

Among other things I've added an effect that will make the screen more blurry when the player has only few amount of health left.
You can see the result on the screenshot bellow.

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 4.2.2019

One of the recent features added to the game are 3 different classes of characters a player can choose from.
Each of the classes has a special weapon, special movement skill and different amount of health and traveling speed. Exact details are still yet to be tweaked and will be announced later. So far there are 3 classes:

-Fast
-Explosive
-Heavy

Different look for each class will be added later. So far I focused on the gameplay part of the classes feature.
Screenshot :
"Heavy class shooting a Jellyfish Gun" - Andreev 2019, color pixel on electronic canvas

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 12.2.2019

Recent updates are mostly fixing bugs regarding gameplay and tweaking different values to provide a proper gaming experience.
Generating levels have so far been done in a complete random manner, this however results sometimes in a confusion mostly for new players. especially when gravity can be changed its hard to say what is up or down and where exactly is player right now.

To make this easier I decided to generate types of levels in certain order, starting with the more simple ones and slowly moving to more complicated ones. Like this the player can get used to the way levels look more easily and not get too confused.

[DavidAndreev]

Looking for testers

An alpha version including new graphics and features is slowly being wrapped up and therefore I look for some people willing to playtest Particles and provide some feedback.

If you are interested in testing comment here or drop me an email: [email protected]

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 1.3.2019


Among other things I added a new "splash particle" effect when hitting an enemy.



Otherwise just dealing with marketing and fixing bugs ...yeah ..booring ..

[DavidAndreev]

Game fact #2

Particles started as a 2D top-down view shooter for 2 players. It was my first "serious" game, which didn't contain nudity or toilet humor, unlike all my previous games.

Developed in 2014 in less then a month if I recall correctly. It was made in Java using "Lightweight Java Game Library" and Slick 2D framework.
It was fun to play, altough when many keys were pressed at once, you couldn't shoot anymore haha.

I still have a version laying around so if you're interested just let me know.

Menu



Gameplay

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 14.03.2019

There is a point system which rewards you for killing enemies and lets you upgrade your skills and weapons, its still work in progress but big chunk of it is already done. Bellow is upgraded "fast gun", now shooting 3 projectiles at the time.

[DavidAndreev]

Development update- 19.3.2019

Changing the way how health and energy bar looks.
Previous version wasn't too bad esthetically but players didn't realize what it means and barely even noticed it.
Therefore I made bit more traditional version of the health and energy bar so it's easier for players to notice.

Let me know what you think.

Before



Now