So I always do stuff backwards.. Devlogs are supposed to be started early on in development. I get so focused on designing and building that I never have time for anything else.
My mind is a mess, I have spent the last 12 months trying to finish (or get to Beta) my first online game. I have made many standalone games, more than I can remember.
But online is different. Not only do I have to manage the game builds but also coordinate server builds and get that to all work with my custom API for user management, analytics and other stuff. The game is currently using 3 servers with built in capability to scale up from there. Needless to say a lot of planning has gone into this and the systems have become very complex! But so so awesome!
Okay so I am a huge World of Tanks Blitz fan, been playing it for years. I just think it works really well for mobile (my preferred platform for game dev).
Then came along World of Warships Blitz and having played the full fledged PC version I thought great this is going to be awesome! I think I played it for about 5 mins then never started it up again. For me it just didnt feel right. Too arcade like where I prefer more a realistic simulation type of thing. Personal preference.
So stuff it.. I'll just make my own but better.. how hard can it be???
Now I cant compete with the resources that Wargaming have.. obviously. So my approach is always to focus on what I can do, and do it well.
I decided on a low-poly visual style but with a few textures mixed in. I personally like this style and it works well on mobile where the hardware is varied and not always great.
Now I used to be an Industrial Designer.. so I used my old CAD system to design all the ship models, not something that many devs would be using
Over the months the style evolved into what I think is something pretty decent. Or about as good as I can get it given I actually want to release this game before I die!
I cant take credit for the low poly style-ocean and islands, they were sourced from the Asset Store. The ocean is a bit of a GPU killer but I think its worth it.
From a tech standpoint the game is fully server authoritative. Users send their input to the server, the simulation is played out on that server and then the clients are synced with the help of some predictive algorithms to help smooth things out. Given ships are generally slow this works pretty well. Although massive effort has gone into getting it to its current state. Truly massive effort! On occasion there can be a slight difference in the physics simulation between the server and client but the server always overrides the clients to keep it fair.
One of the things that I really disliked with World of Warship Blitz (although the PC version is great) was the targeting system. Having to manually aim on a tiny screen was not doing it for me. Instead and in keeping with mobile game input I decided to have the user select the target and the ships turrets track and fire at that target automatically. This may sound too easy and many people wont agree with me on this Im sure. But what it does is make the game more about commanding the ship and positioning it strategically in order to destroy the enemy rather than micro managing the weapon systems. Torpedo's, depth charges, hedgehogs and mines are an exception thought and are fully under the users control.
As for game play I played around with having team game play, capture the flag and all the usual game modes. But this wasn't really what I wanted, which was basically a free for all. Anything goes, no rules. Its like a never ending death match.. However there is no way I can stop people working together, so I embraced it and allowed users to friend each other so they can identify themselves on the radar and work together. The game has cargo and passenger missions that take place on the servers too, these cargo and passenger ships are easy targets so having friends escort you between ports works well. I have even created a system to send "gold" to your friends to reward them for their help.
Another issue I had to overcome is how to deal with lack of players as I would have initially when releasing the game. So I have a system that spawns AI when there is less than a certain number of players on the servers. As the player count increases the AI's dont re-spawn when destroyed allowing for a controlled amount of chaos at all times!
At the moment there are 13 ships with more planned, ranging for tiny patrol boats to huge battleships. Each ship has its advantages and weaknesses. Turret positions, turret rotation range, turret rotation speed, weapon reload time, weapon range, weapon firepower, ship speed, ship armour and repair speed all come into play and define how a particular ship can be effective in battle. These attributes can also be upgraded using "gold" scored in battle.
Anyway I am treating this post a bit like a debrief.. this game has been constantly on my mind for a year. Every day there were new problems to be solved, new game play mechanics to test and evaluate, hideous bugs that sometimes took weeks to solve. Now.. I feel I can relax a bit. I dont really care if nobody like its. I just need to rest.
I have just published a Beta on the Play Store and plan to do the same on iOS next week.
Have a look if you want, give me some feedback if you can. And hopefully enjoy
Thanks for your time in reading this, much appreciated!
Store Link:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.topsecretdevelopments.sog
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