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[Breaking-Point-Dev]

Crafting the Concept for Damsel

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“We’ve been talking about Damsel for a few years now. We met one of our best friends, well family now, through Xbox playing a game that heavily depended on the teamwork aspect of things. So I had this dream to get that emotional drive going. To have to really depend on another person with your life. To try and immerse your mind and heart into a reality similar to our own, but with endless possibilities and circumstances. What would make our dream co-op survival game. In Damsel, a biblical like apocalypse happened decades ago, the event stained the environments and supernatural entities will pose a very interesting challenge and experience, we can’t wait to deliver.” - Katie

(Everything is still pre-alpha, so no final art assets and a few more foundational systems are still being developed)

Behind The Scenes Video

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We released our first Behind The Scenes video to go along with this Dev Diary, trying to get a start on both. This BTS episode mostly just has some of the details shared here and some extra footage of the current prototype. I know it’s a little rough right now but within a couple months we should have future episodes polished up nicely.




(We know it's a little rough right now but we wanted to get something out there sooner than later)

Roadmap

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I’m currently finishing up the the player’s stats  and creating a bunch of equipment and resources. Such as getting more survival mechanics, looting and harvesting setup.

Next week we’ll continue on the inventory and crafting systems along with changing the scale and look of the house models, since they’re not the best but I know how I want them to work and fit together now.

After all that I’ll continue on the Artificial Intelligence, all while occasionally adding detail to the environment as needed.

Prototyping

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Awhile back we were comparing perspectives for the game and decided to focus on a more immersive and restrictive 1st person camera to emphasize the element of terror we’re going for.

We spent awhile leaning towards a 3rd person view since we play a lot of Dead By Daylight and GTA, thought it may be more engaging. After experimenting some more with a first person camera however it really inspired us to take advantage of the limited Field Of View to craft a more terrifying atmosphere and threats that you’ll really need someone watching your back from.

Changes

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Been making a lot of User Interface changes and it’ll probably go through a few more iterations over the next couple months as the inventory and crafting systems come together.

When we can afford it, characters in the game will be overhauled from using Fuse and Mixamo to Reallusion’s Character Creator and various other tools.

Hope you join us throughout the development journey! We plan to release a Dev Diary roughly every 2 weeks and a Behind The Scenes video about once a month.

[Breaking-Point-Dev]

Damsel - Micro Update #1

Current Work / Finishing Up

I recently started working on the inventory along with some items and equipment. The inventory UI is mostly functional, just need to polish it up a little, make some new UI graphics, change the design a bit and fix a little bug at the moment when trying to crouch, after closing the menu.

I made a quick implementation of the axe swing, since everything character model and animation related will be overhauled when we get our new character and motion capture tools. For now I’m just going to add some impact particles and sound effects to the axe soon, then a little later make a few more pieces of equipment and weapons.

I’m finally making items for the game, starting with basic food, water and items for pain and injuries. Also resources, I’m just now setting up acquiring wood from trees with the axe so I can plug them into the crafting system next.

Other than those I’ve just added some functionality to the bear so it can now deal damage to you, still have a simple little bug with it’s navigation, but relatively soon I’ll come back to it and finish up the Bear’s AI and stats, along with a supernatural enemy type.

What’s Next / Roadmap

After the inventory comes together a little more, I’ll get the crafting system finished. You’ll use resources from your inventory through a selection wheel to place structures, and well just anything you can craft. I’ll have to adjust the modular cabin pieces I’ve made so far, give them a better look and make destructible variants. When you place a structure you’ll start with the frame of it. Holding the action input will continue building it as you watch pieces come together with an occasional secondary action skill check that affects the final build quality.

Within the month a public roadmap will be available for everyone to see, sharing our plans for Supernatural entities, abilities, a violent seasonal environment and more!

Final Notes

In our next Dev Diary I’ll go into details on how we’re initially planning to release demos throughout development, the first of which will be going out to newsletter subscribers and friends. For example we plan to release a few limited, but focused pre-alpha demos throughout this next year to get some feedback on specific features.

Can’t wait to share more with everyone and get some feedback! Till then, take care.

[Breaking-Point-Dev]

Damsel - Dev Diary #2

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The last couple months Damsel’s production basically started over from scratch using the latest versions of Unity. Old code was scrapped since I’ve spent a large portion of the last year gaining experience with architecting a large game and now I have the confidence to say I can launch this game with a solid foundation.

The last couple months Damsel’s production basically started over from scratch using the latest versions of Unity. Old code was scrapped since I’ve spent a large portion of the last year gaining experience with architecting a large game and now I have the confidence to say I can launch this game with a solid foundation.

PRE-ALPHA PROGRESS

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Most recently I’ve been working on the modular building system, the floor and wall are mostly functional now and destructible. Next I’ll be adding more variation to the models depending on the placement context, such as a wall will adapt to the slope of a roof, etc.

After fixing some bugs with the placement system allowing for invalid placements, I’ll finish the rest of these wood models, soon we’ll also show some more primitive structures that you’ll likely need to start with as you begin a new game. I’ll return in the next month or two to add more to the modular structure system, you can expect the following improvements over the next year

 - Further upgrade durability such as double sided walls or higher quality wood

 - Insulated walls (for warmth in winter)

 - New building materials (brick / scrap metal)

 - Materials with weather and aging effects

WHAT’S NEXT?

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Finishing this set of building pieces is next and making sure there’s no bugs left in the placement system. I want to continue expanding on the building aspect a bit longer though to get more of the experience across, which means building more primitive structures out of sticks, stones, logs, leaves, and clay along with properly acquiring those resources with the correct tools and making the Inventory UI and Quick Select Slots more functional. A workbench will be required to create refined wood to build non-primitive structures.

We’ll probably be releasing demos for feedback all throughout development starting with this first build of the game testing the modular building systems.

Another priority right after the build system is to get a full combat sequence playable against a violent spirit who sometimes appears as a mist sometimes filling into a more humanoid shape, throwing things at the player, picking them up and attacking up close. You’ll have to salt the doors and windows, draw supernatural sigils and equip yourself with iron to ward off the spirit while you sense out the location of it’s nearby remains to destroy.

Around the same time after several early feedback builds, co-op will become the priority, death and revival mechanics explored, AI tuned to work against two players, spirits from the otherside interfering in your revival by a friend.

One of the last major aspects on our mind currently is getting the demons in the game as well, all the while expanding the map and equipment to play with.

We look forward to sharing some of the finer details soon.

ROADMAP

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A lot of the (time consuming) foundation has been started and should be functional in the coming months; player actions, skills, equipment, inventory system, networking, artificial intelligence, overall environment and optimization.

I know it’s a lot and it sounds like it might take years before anything is released but I’ve gotten a healthy dose of experience over the last decade to know I can deliver the fundamental experience we’re aiming for, and I am absolutely excited to get more help on the team when we have the budget for it but it’s not entirely necessary.

In the next few months when we’ve gotten a couple early demos out for some feedback we’ll likely run a Kickstarter campaign. If it’s successful, instead of working on Damsel in little bits of my spare time when I have enough mental energy left, I’d be able to work on it as my full time job with updated equipment so the editor stops running at 15fps when trying to capture some nice footage.

If the campaign is wildly successful we have plans to expand our team, most likely would begin working with Composers, Foley Artists, Concept Artists, Character Artists and Animators at first, roughly in that order. A large portion of the leftover budget will be for marketing to help at launch.

COMMUNITY

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We have a lot of community plans that’ll be up and running hopefully next month, starting with our first builds of the game we’d like feedback on. It’s not decided just yet how access will be decided, that’ll be for the next Dev Diary.

We’ll be active on Discord once the demos start rolling out, till then we may not be on as often. Newsletters seem pretty popular still so by our next Dev Diary we’ll have ours back up and running for those interested.

Thank you for following our progress, you can be more involved in Damsel’s development or just have the most up to date info on our Discord.

Discord - https://discord.gg/ymvCTqkEPR

Full Dev Diary - https://breakingpoint-interactive.com/news/damsel-dev-diary-2