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[LunarWater]

What Is This Game?

Software.exe is a 2D, Open World, Hacking Game where you can hack just about anything you want.

What is the Gameplay going to be like?

The gameplay consists of you hacking into different computer, phones, and machines throughout the game world to get money, information on/or about someone.



Combat?

When you're not hacking, you can shoot guns, but only have 3 weapons on you at once there is melee combat but only with baseball bat and crowbars.



Enemies?

There are different levels of enemies in the game. The lowest level enemies you can encounter are basic security guys, they only have pepper spray, and nightsticks. The next type of enemies is advanced security these guys have guns. Next is police they range from having just a pistol to having machine guns, and shoguns. After that it's the army these are tough as nails and is best if you try not to fight these guys.



What Will the Open World be like?

There will be a variety of shops and places to go and eat food, drink, watch entertainment, and stories to buy upgrades for yourself.

There is internet in the game where you can go to different website to learn more about things or see what people are doing in the world some the major websites you can visit are called

FaceSpace



Talker



History Of...



Pixel Search Engine



Pixel Video



American Union News Network



There will be other sites, but that's what's in the game right now.

There are people in the street you can talk to so you can learn more information about the current world, what peoples lives are like, what they think of the government or other governments, or comments on what happening in the news.

You can look up the news on a computer or phone to see what your actions have done in the world
Your mode of transportation is your own two feet or the subway or a taxi cab.

What is the setting of the game?

The game takes place on an island city called Ocean City the year 2082 technology development has stagnated or just stopped altogether because of the Second American Civil War. The only technology that is developed now is for The Union government a Brave New World style government that keeps people in line with lots of cheap drugs, sex, and propaganda.

The game is still a long ways off from being finished but it's coming together.

What Still needs to be done... (PROGRAMMING)

AI Pedestrians
AI Vehicles
Levels (Code)
Refine Current Code
In-Game Clock
Day/Night Cycle (Code)
Police Drones (Code)
Enemy Movement (Code)
Taxi Service
Subway Transportation
Upgrades - Phone, and Weapons
(This is not everything, just what I can think of right now)

What Still needs to be done... (ART)

Story Elements/Characters
Animations
Buildings
Vehicles (Sprites)
Pedestrians (Sprites)
Nature Elements
Day/Night Cycle
Water
Lighting
Police Drone
(Again, this is not everything, just what I can think of right now)

Thank You
Hope you enjoyed this post.
Have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Over the last few weeks I've been working on make the gameplay more challenging by adding in viruses that you can get during gameplay. One of which (Below) called REAPER is about 85%-90% done.

I redid the hacking screen before you could only get the answering numbers in the console in Unity now they are visible still random so you don't know what numbers go were.



REAPER: Stops what you are doing. If you open your phone it will be locked you must pay to unlock it. This can be gotten rid of with upgrades or you will forced to deal with REAPER a lot.

What are the other Viruses called and what do they do?


CREEPER: Start off as just GIF's playing every so often in the background but will then begin to so you ads for random stuff from the in-game internet obscuring your view of what your doing. You will need to get anti-virus software to get rid of it. About 50%-60% finished.

ZOMBIE: Starts as just random messages/emails sent to your computer/phone but click on them and it will take you a ride though the internet to random websites. Shuts your phone/computer down, if you try to get back into your computer/phone there will be a screen you can't pass until you pay money to unlock you stuff. About 10%-20% finished.

TROJAN HORSE: Like Zombie it starts off with random stuff coming into your email or messages. unlike Zombie this just takes your money this you really need to get rid of because it will just keep taking your money until you get rid of it. About 10% finished.

WORM: Only runs when your trying to hack into stuff. It changes the numbers at random. If your number was 6 it will then change to something like 3 or a 9 doing that to every number until you solve it. Buy upgrades to get rid of WORM. About 10% finished.

That all for now.

I hope you enjoyed reading.

Thank You and have a great day 

[LunarWater]

There isn't much to talk about this time because I was stuck trying to move a mouse cursor with an Xbox joystick and spent over a week trying to figure it out . Thankfully now you can click UI buttons with the A Button 

It's not done though it still needs 2 more UI elements that I have to try to register Toggle Elements (check boxes), and Inputfeild (Search Bar).

So with that said, here are some GIFs that are showing off the new internet cursor and some of the websites you can visit in game.

1) Wow you can move.


2) Twitter knock off


3) Video & Email


Thank You and have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

The 3rd level is about 80%-85% finished all there is left to do is make the level has a fail stat and introducing the player with new challenges in form of Stealth gameplay. 

You overhear two people talking in the above ground parking (Right now they're not important to the level, but they will be when the level is finished).

Over Hearing What People are Talking About.


As for the rest of the level I spent most of the this week building the insides and while there not perfect almost all of the inside parts of the building are made.

Above Ground Parking


Office interior: First Floor.


The Yellow arrow is to let you know there are doors on the side of buildings. This perspective will not let me make doors on the side of buildings so this is next best thing. Arrow inspired by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Office interior: Top Floor.


That's all for now.

Thank You and have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello
Over the last 2 weeks things felt like they slowed down mainly because I spent the last week working on level 3. It's still not done, but I want to move on and work on the last 2 levels then come back to it.

Level 4 Area


I found more bugs in the hacking gameplay were all the help numbers would be zero I fixed that and now works right as range, but there is no randomization in the help numbers anymore. What needs to happen is when your trying to figure out the numbers for the object you're currently hacking you see the numbers but have no idea what ones they are. This is where the challenge comes from. The hacking gameplay is taking much longer than even I would like, but it's a main part of the game and all the bugs are due to me not being a great programmer or because I don't find everything wrong with it at once so it takes time. 

Hack Screen


Let's talk about the transportation/Fast Travel
Like most games this will have fast travel, but it can only be done by two ways, either by taxi cab or be a subway and this is what I want to talk about today and what are the plans for it.

This is where it is going to go.


What I want is to be something like Grand Theft Auto 4 or Grand Theft Auto 3's subway, but have it be more useful than to just be there.

Examples from Grand Theft Auto 4: Balled of Gay Tony, and Grand Theft Auto 3




These are references I'll be using including real world ones like Chicago, and New York.

On the first Island there are 3 stops you can make the first being the main station (In-game photo above) the second is in the downtown area were all the office building are located, and the 3rd and last one on the Island is in the south part where people live.

People Live here



Anyway thanks you for reading.
I hope you have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

The first part of the transportation is done. You can now take the above ground subway to different locations in the city. Making this was a long process, but it's 90% done. I will come back to it though, because some of the sprites are a little off and I still need to make the other stations.

Dover Park Station



Southwood Station



Here you see how it works.



I also remade a building that I wanted to fix for a while now. I made it look more like something from the Bronx, New York

Ocean Dinner



Q: Why start working on the subway when you have not finished work on the levels?

Well, it's because it's part of the level. You start the level off by meeting someone on one of the subway trains that texted you. They tell you in person what to do, where to go, and what to get. After that then the level continues.

Next time I will show more of level 4 and talk a little bit about level 5.

That's all for now.

Thank You.

Have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Over the last few weeks it's been slow but things have been getting done. More, and more of Level 4 has been finished there still needs to be some tweaks to a few things like sprites but nothing major.

Server Farm Image 1


Server Farm Image 2


Level 4 and Level 5 are connected. The best way to explain it is "Cause and Effect" Level 4 you cause a problem and in level 5 the effect happens and changes the world a bit. Not a huge amount, but enough to notice.

Level 5 is manly a story level, there is no real challenge to it. That's something the game is going to have levels where you get story elements and no challenge. This idea comes from playing some of the Missions in Grand Theft Auto V where Micheal dose yoga, and later on in the game reunites his family. I've liked the idea, but don't like playing those Levels/Missions in the game. Something similar happens in Grand Theft Auto IV where you have to move to Bohan, after the effects of the last Level/Mission.

Here is some other sprites and a small description about them.

Drone


Drones are used by both police and the military. This a police model drone, they use these to find people of interest. A blue search light comes out of the bottom when searching. When it finds something of interest it turns yellow, and when alerted it turns red.

Upgrade Store Outside


Upgrade Store Inside


This is where you buy Upgrades for your phone like hint "Chips" these are what you can use to help make hacking easier on harder difficulties. Anti-Virus software this will protect you against some viruses not all of them. You will need to go to the black market to get more powerful stuff.

Hint


Here you see the hints while not finished it will at least give to the right number to the according location.

That's all for now

Thank You

And have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

These last few days haven't been great bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Trying to finish Level 4 but every time I try it out I find more bugs or something that needs to be fixed. The Level is not really where I would like it to be but I can make it about 60%-70% way through then bugs out or it just hasn't been finished yet. This is caused by both procrastination, and me not feeling great.
 
The fading in and out is not hard to do it's just not fun to make. Animating in Unity is OK, but when you have to programme the timing of it, that's when it's start to drive me crazy. 

Fade In


This took about a day to make. This is just a small shot of the larger image I imported into Unity (Below)

A Small Conversation on a Subway Train




Had to add code to the Player so it can stay at 0 on the Z axis or it will be placed behind all objects and it will look like nothings there.

You Have Now Arrived At Your Destination


This wasn't fun to work on but this part of the level is done. 

I will have the Upgrade shop up and going next time (I hope) 

Oh, and that mini map you see I will talk a little more about that next time.


Thank You for reading.

I hope you have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Happy Holiday's to everyone. Level 4 is almost finished many bugs, and unfinished areas are fixed. The Upgrade shop is also looking fine too with icons and buttons. Something I wanted to do for some time, but just haven't done until now is make Xbox Control buttons for the UI. I also spent time working on a small random generated level in another project earlier this week. I wanted to have it be one the upgrade you buy and use later in the game.

I watch a tutorial series online about this. I'm just going to configure it to more of a top down maze sort of like Atari's Berzerk. Working on this I start to feel as if feature creep is becoming in issue. 





The Xbox Control UI, I wanted to make, and it will be a better visualization of what button to press.





This I was slightly inspired by Apple, and the newer Mac's UI for this white background and the small red Close button at the top. Though I think I will change it to make it easier to look at.



The next thing I would like to do is the MiniMap in the game if you've noticed the map is just a dark color with some colored squares the character walks in to start the level.



what I would like to have in the end something like this...



or this...



What I like about the map in Grand Theft Auto 4 is that you have the health bar on the side of the map and you can see it. The map icons and nice and have a watercolor look to them or at least some do.

Grand Theft Auto 5's minimap is square, but the health bar is small including the blue armor bar and the orange bar for speacil abilities. The fade out of the map I'm indifferent to. Icons on the map for main missions are nicely colored but are only green, orange, and blue for the corresponding characters.
 
I'm not 100% on anything just yet about the minimap. What I know I need to do is make the map show something that's not a black image or the colored boxes. That wont be tricky the part I'm concerned about is trying to make the icons be at the edge of the map like in most other open world games with on screen maps.

Well beyond that there isn't much else to talk about. This is the last Devlog for 2019 and I'll be posting again in the new year.

Thank You
 
I hope you have a great day, and Happy Holiday's 

[LunarWater]

Hello

There are a few things I'm going to talk about in today's devlog post. Including the Mini Map and what I've done, fixed sprites, adding new ones, and player clothing.

Mini Map

This is what it looks like now


 

 







 
I used the color, form the GTA 4 map to help me choose what I would need for grass areas, walkable areas, buildings, and subway tracks. There are a few things I still haven't done yet, but will do over the next few days, and weeks.

- Mini Map screen with Map Button in Pause Menu.

- Level icons don't stay on edge of map.

Fixed Up Sprites and Areas

Some of the fixed sprites I worked on where mainly around the homes in the south end of the map. Even then it was mainly just adding to them finished the area up and filling in the blank spaces.





Clothing Shop

Something I'm implementing is changing clothing. Like in all open world games you can change your clothing I have a store all made up where you can buy cloths in the game.





Levels

Small update on level 5 many items I need to create are finished (I Think) but the inside of the main government building has yet to be finished but not until more of the level is completed.



Drone

This is the drone scanner light. When it's looking for something or someone then it's blue, yellow when it's alerted, and red for when it's locked on target like the player for example.



This devlog update feels like I did almost nothing, but if I look at the game where it is now where it was before the holiday's then there was a lot of smaller changes.

Anyway that's all I got for today.

Thank You.

I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Just a small devlog this week as I don't have much to talk about. Everything is coming along, but needs more time. I will talk about the Wanted System and some of the challenges about creating something like this.

Mini Map

I got the icons to stay at the edge of the map.

The Home Icon on the Mini Map.




Wanted System

This is a system like in many other open world games where you get into trouble for doing bad things like hurting people for example. In this game, it's no exception. This has been one of the more difficult things to programmer because I've never done something like this before, so I try to get an idea from other people to see how they would do it. Well, there's almost nothing on the subject but a Reddit post were it give an idea on how to do it so I ran with it and got this.

Here is the Reddit Page that help me get the idea of what was needed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/79qs7y/a_wanted_system_like_gta/

Wanted Icons


Detection Ring
This is the detection ring. If you are in the ring when the police show up then you become Wanted if not it will go away.



This is nowhere near done. You shoot someone and nothing happens. I'm not the best programmer on earth, so this will take time.
Like during the early level 4 construction I made the transportation system and I'm doing something like that here because in level 5 you get into trouble and police chase you.     

Other Stuff

Wrote a "History Of" page about what happened in America to get from where it was to where it is in the games universe. Alone with backstory for some of the in game Leaders.

More spots fixed/finished
Waterfront Area


This is not all the Waterfront Area it continues for sometime.

Remade the health bar for the Player


I didn't like the round edges of the health bar so I made one that was much better.

Anyway that's all I got for today.

Thank You
 
I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

There's not much to talk about again this week because many of the things I'm working on are still not finished. There are still things that need to be implemented like the lighting, and A* Pathfinding more on that later.

Game Clock
There is a game clock in the game that is acts like a normal clock.

-- That's not very interesting. 

Well, no I agree it's not interesting, but it will make lighting a little bit easier when I start working on the light. Think Day/Night cycle in the game.
 
You can sleep and the game will advance time by a few hours. Go to bed and wake up at a chosen time.



Lighting

I've spent few days looking at how the new lighting system in Unity works and to say I'm excited is an understatement. There really wasn't anything like this in Unity it was manly just 3D lighting.

This video by Unity themselves should help give context.





A* Pathfinding

What is this? you may ask well basically it make NPC's move around the world.  I have tried it out and works really good.

What I have to do is make the NPC's fallow paths to different points in the game world. My only thought is that it will make the game run slow or start up will take for ever.

Video By Aron G




This and the lighting are not implemented yet, but (hopefully) they will be by the next devlog update.

Anyway, that's all I got for today. I know it's not much, but there are lots of little tweaks and fixes that I've done but are just too small to even mention.

Thank You.

I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

A* and Lighting are in the game. I have a global light source in the scene that change color this is what the Day/Night cycle will be based on. A* Pathfinding is working as well, I just need to make more people walking around. One thing I had to do for this to upgrade to Unity 2019.3 which is still in Beta (I think).

Lighting

Using Unity's Universal Pipeline Render is fun, but also challenging because there is almost no help for it at all so I had to look at the Light Weight Render Pipeline for a lot of help and what I was surpised about was that there was a lot of crossover between them. Lots of stuff that Light Weight Render could do the Universal Render could do too.
 
One thing I didn't know would happen and took about 2-3 day to fix was the Mini Map. The Mini Map is rendered only with a different camera with a Texture2D on top of it. With that all object materials on the roads and sidewalks in the mini map were changed to light up like the everything else. I fixed this by removing all the roads, and grass/dirt sprites and added them back in to the game.
 
I did this because in Unity a prefab can be changed and it will change everything else about the other identical prefabs. Only this time I changed the Mini Map lighting material and clicked apply and nothing happened. So I deleted all the old stuff and remade a large portion of the game map.
   
If that sounded confusing it's because it is. 
 
Here's some lighting on the waterfront.



A* Pathfinding

This is in the game, but not to the level it needs to be. Right now I got one NPC moving around from 7 different target locations. The goal is to have NPC's walk around the city like in other open world games. Have different levels of NPC's at different times of the day like lots in the daytime, not much around sunset, and almost nothing at night.



(I know it's hard to see)

Water

After the lighting I wanted to make water so I looked around to see what was the best solution for 2D water and it lead me to Unity Shader Graph a very powerful tool that makes anything look better.



Anyway, that's all I got for today. Next time I (hopefully) will have more NPC's moving around in the game, and lighting to be more like a real Day/Night Cycle. Also have more lighting around the city like from buildings and signs at night.

Thank You

I hope you have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

This is just a small update. Not too much to say this time only that the lighting has been tweaked a bit. As for A* Pathfinding I've run into an issue that (I think) I can clear up.

Lighting

Just more colors to cycle through I watch a time laps video of a sunrise, and sunset to get the idea of how many colors there needs to be.



I have some of the colors linked to games clock though I have not tested it fully. The main challenge with this was to slow down the time it took to change the color before it was like something from a cartoon. I fixed it and now it's more subtle and flows nicer, but I think some of the color transitions need a smoother flow between them. 





A* Pathfinding

This is driving me up a wall. Trying to figure out why no more than one AI can move at a time. 
I'm looking into this and I hope to find a solution to this massive issue.

World

I gave up for a bit with Pathfinding and focused on replacing the Union Government Office Building. This I wanted something that sort of gave off a vibe of monolithic power and I looked around New York City and thought of the NY Stock Exchange Building. I know it's not imposing like many other buildings around NYC, but it's what gose on inside that make it's so imposing.



This is not finished like everything else I still have to make the inside of the building.
 
That's all for today. I know it's not much, but I'm trying to get stuff to work and stuff done.

Thank You
I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Another small update.

A* Pathfinding

I have the AI figured out and I got multiple AI's moving at once to random locations and they have different looks.



They can move around like normal pedestrians on a sidewalk or crossing the street, but they are right now a little fast, they overlap each other, and don't look the right way when moving about.

The Issue
It took way too long to make it work, but I couldn't get the Unity Sprite Renderer to do anything.   I would debug the code and would work fine, but when it tried to update the code by passing new sprites into the renderer it would not work. Now I have one sprite that flips on the x axis and while it's not great it's better than nothing. 

World

Beyond the AI I worked on 2 other things. a new building, and more stuff for the above ground subway. the new building is a Power Plant modeled after the VW Power Plants in Germany.





It's needs a little tweak to make it right, but over all I'm happy with this.

The above ground subway, I'm also trying to finish by making corner parts.



That's all for today. Again, I know it's not much, but I'm trying.

Thank You
I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Well, I got stuff looking somewhat good I guess...

2D Pathfinding

Well... Uh... I really can't say anything about this because it works kind of... strange  . It works like a toaster that only burns your bread. It does it's job, but (man I sound like broken record  ) need some work.



Well, beside that mess there are a few other things as well.

World

There is a police station now were the drones come from and here is the police car that they will be driving around.





Along with some homeless buildings. There will be some under one of the subway platforms.



So as you saw in the Gif that is what is I'm mainly working on for the last few weeks. I really want to work on something else in the game, but this needs to be finished for me to continue.

Anyway, that's all folks.

Thank You
I hope you have a great day 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Over the last few days, I’ve been contemplating on what I should do with some of the features in the game and well, I really don’t want to do this but I’ve cut a few things from it. The first is the shooting mechanic, and the second is the random maze (I mentioned it in an earlier post. I thought that the game was starting to suffer from Feature Creep and Overblown Scope).

I cut these gameplay elements from the game because they were ether really broken, or a feature I would just put in to make the game feel bigger. I would rather put my time onto other elements that are more finished or refined. Feature Creep is an issue this game had (and possibly still has) but removing these former features will make it better in the long run.

Now with that out of the way…

Main Menu
I’ve been working on the main menu and what it will look like over the last week. I wanted to have a dynamic background when at the main menu. What I mean is having the live background looking at something in the game like a building or a park. You get to see all the NPC’s, cars, and drones walk, drive or fly by.









This is still really, really early I haven’t even finished the buttons in pixel art form yet. 

World
Like I said in the last post I have been wanting to work on something else. So earlier this week I took the time to finish up a few little things that were not really done. Manly just placing building and making more spots in the city that look different.

Small Hobo Villages





Water
Something I want to do, but I don’t know if I even can is make the water have foam around the edges, but while trying to figure it out all it did was make the water look darker. I think that for 3D objects only.



Here is how the water turns dark like that (Unity Shader graph)



Wanted System
I’ve been working on this for a few days tweaking something’s or just overhauling a few things (While working on the Wanted System I made the diction to axe some the features I talked about.) Works better but not where I want it. Hopefully I can show it off next time.

Anyway, that all I got for today. Stay Safe everyone.
 
Thank You.

I hope you have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

Well, these few weeks flew right by. I didn’t really work on much this week, but one major thing Animations for the Player character. Along with fixing some bugs from hacking system. It all works great (as of this post, it works great, but it could just stop working randomly on a bad day).

Animations

This took almost a full week to do making animations for Player character sprites.
The end result though is one of the best things I can say about the game right now.



I had to work with Blend Trees something that I really didn't know how to use, but I think it turned out pretty good.





Fixing Bugs

When the animation was good for the player I was almost not sure what to do next, but I remembered that I needed to fix the hacking gameplay and spent a few days trying to iron out bugs the largest one being a shuffle algorithm call “Knuth Shuffle” where numbers are shuffled in arrays.
 
The Hint system was also not working right where it would just highlight every number or almost all of them. To my knowledge, it’s fixed.
 
Along with fixing bugs I also fixed and tweaked some of the visuals in the hacking screen itself. Replacing the font Arial to a new more fitting one.

When all the elements are finished with this gameplay element, I will show it off in full. For now, here’s a picture. 



Anyway, that all I got for today. Stay Safe Everyone. 
 
Thank You.

I hope you have a great day. 

[LunarWater]

Hello

There isn't much to talk about this time. So here we go.

Animations
Work on 2 new animations last week 1 of them is a seagull. I want birds to be flying around in the game so it looks like a city by the water. 



- That's a picture not an animation 

Yes I have the animation but the bird doesn't fly around. I want to show it off when the bird can fly around.

There is also a pigeon, but it doesn’t look great so I’ll be fixing that.

Main Menu
I got the main menu up and working. This was a little harder than I thought mainly the camera, but I figured out how to get the camera to look at different object every time the game starts. The menu only works with a controller. You can choose your character at the start.



Fixing More Bugs 
Again, working to fix bugs in different areas this time, mainly the code that makes the drones work. I wanted something that could be more flexible to work with so I switch over to using List instead of Arrays.  I tested it out and it works great.  There are 1-2 little things that the drone dose I have to fix them.

Anyway, that all I got for today. Stay Safe Everyone. 

Thank You.

I hope you have a great day. 

[s0]

keeping an eye on this