Pandora 3chotomy

Devlog

• Shape of things to come
  August 20, 2019 by siepiau

  Surprisingly easy to set up a drivable car in Unity, thanks to a tutorial video from "The Pro Programmer"... Continue reading

  
• Status update
  August 09, 2019 by siepiau

  Full-time job is taking up a lot of my time, but I'm still developing whenever I can. A recent hard disk crash meant I lost a fair bit of progress, but gave me a chance to rethink my approach. While... Continue reading

  
• Status update
  September 30, 2018 by siepiau

  Some changes to my life since the previous post: I started working full-time, which means I will only work on my games over weekends I participated in Lartu's Mini-RPG One Week Jam II As you probably... Continue reading

  
• Pandora Arena version 0.4 update
  August 28, 2018 by siepiau

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  What's new: Converted "Progress" to "Objectives" panel Added event log window Minor changes that should help make more sense of what's happening in the game... Continue reading

  
• Something missing...
  August 17, 2018 by siepiau

  After 5 months of learning and creating the basic systems for what I believe to be a very playable and solid foundation for an action RPG, I beginning to feel that I may not be approaching the develo... Continue reading

  
• Pushing for completion
  August 14, 2018 by siepiau

  Despite taking much longer than I expected, the development of the Pandora Arena mini-game is a major step forward in solidifying many aspect of the final game design. In addition to fleshing out the... Continue reading

  
• Building an action RPG - feedback needed
  August 13, 2018 by siepiau

  About 5 months ago, I started prototyping a 3D action RPG. This is the current state of my prototype. There's still a long way to go in terms of visual presentation but the basic movement, interaction... Continue reading

  
• Teching up
  August 06, 2018 by siepiau

  Still tweaking the gameplay and fixing bugs, but also gradually replacing gray box stand-in objects with textured assets... Fun work but really time-consuming... Continue reading

  
• Status update
  August 04, 2018 by siepiau

  Just a quick development status update which hopefully provides an idea why it's taking so long to complete the Arena mini-game: NPC conversations are now non-modal and flow more naturally compared to... Continue reading
• Early access
  July 27, 2018 by siepiau

  TLDR: Combat Arena pre-release version is available for download! Development continues until final release. Making a game is tough. Making a game on your own is even tougher. Progress can be consiste... Continue reading

  
• Mech it so
  July 10, 2018 by siepiau

  The last component of the Combat Arena mini-game was always going to be a mini boss battle. Early concepts ranged from a flying drone with gun turrets to a transformable heavy mech, but I eventually s... Continue reading

  
• Hard target to hit
  June 25, 2018 by siepiau

  Once again I underestimated the amount of effort it takes to complete something when the targets are moving (unforeseen problems, feature creep, new realizations... etc) A lot of content and systems h... Continue reading

  
• Getting there...
  June 06, 2018 by siepiau

  It taking longer than I hoped, but the next playable mini-game is well on it's way. What caused the delay? The NPC combat AI needs an overhaul, but it was getting too unwieldy to edit and debug, so I... Continue reading

  
• Prepare for combat
  May 27, 2018 by siepiau

  I have expressed how I feel about guns in a previous post . That said, weapons and aggressive action is a component of the game, so the player's experience of handling weapons in the game should be sa... Continue reading

  
• Making the grade
  May 17, 2018 by siepiau

  I've been staring at barely textured gray box levels for a few months, and there is still more coding and level design to do before I move on to creating proper art, not to mention color grading which... Continue reading

  
• Incremental update
  May 10, 2018 by siepiau

  Much progress was made to the real-time combat system: Added support for both tap to toggle lock-on and hold to lock-on (both works simultaneously, use at will ;) Added support for direct mouse clicki... Continue reading

  
• Gunplay
  May 06, 2018 by siepiau

  I have mixed feelings regarding guns and violence in video games. On one hand, I do enjoy games with eliminating targets as a core mechanic (provided there is acceptable narrative justification). How... Continue reading

  
• Ramblings: Why make a complicated game?
  May 02, 2018 by siepiau

  This is a question I keep asking myself. It is a question more sensible people will direct at me, and advice against doing. There are a few times in my life when I felt like I had to pursue a particul... Continue reading

  
• A Place for Everyone
  April 28, 2018 by siepiau

  Fresh from the oven! Get to play with the latest Pandora RPG systems (that you could only read about in these Dev Logs until now) in this puzzle mini-game! The objective is to talk to the scientists... Continue reading

  
• Enabling NPCs
  April 24, 2018 by siepiau

  The past week was all about building internal systems to support NPC behavior. Much of the time was spent reading up and learning new techniques (see resource links below), then designing and figuring... Continue reading

  
• Knowing my place
  April 21, 2018 by siepiau

  Location awareness is a necessarily component because I wanted to be able to select which conversations and cutscenes to play based on where the player is currently at. My initial thought was to manu... Continue reading

  
• Tools of the trade
  April 18, 2018 by siepiau

  When I started this project as a one-week jam game one and a half months ago, I didn't imagine that it would eventually become so complex. But when I think of an RPG there are just certain features th... Continue reading

  
• What you say!!
  April 13, 2018 by siepiau

  Just testing the localization capability which has been available since day zero (yes, it's even in the One Week Jam version). It's a simple system I cooked up for a previous project and has been re-u... Continue reading

  
• UI, UX, IxD
  April 13, 2018 by siepiau

  A good game should have a clear User Interface (UI) that provides a smooth User Experience (UX). To that end, a fair bit of time was spent on Interaction Design (IxD), though everything is still in th... Continue reading

  
• Give us our trespasses
  April 10, 2018 by siepiau

  Typical game quests fall in one of the following categories: Kill - murder someone or destroy something for some contrived reason Obtain - find & fetch, sneak & steal, kill & loot, solve & unlock an... Continue reading

  
• Busted again
  April 09, 2018 by siepiau

  The start of another week sees more updates and bug fixes to the CombatAI behavior, the most complex and bug prone part of the whole game. It is complicated because in an action game situations can ch... Continue reading

  
• Pretending to be smart
  April 06, 2018 by siepiau

  I told myself I should be working on the quest system, but testing the NPC CombatAI with the new environment and gameplay features brought out some issues which I felt compelled to resolve as a priori... Continue reading

  
• More stuff
  April 04, 2018 by siepiau

  Lots of updates over the past few days. As usual I keep adding new gameplay mechanics to support my planned narrative. But several core systems still need to be put in place before I can start to add... Continue reading

  
• Speaking gibberish
  April 02, 2018 by siepiau

  Key updates: The conversation UI is fully functional, with up to a maximum of 4 dialogue choice options (each mapped to a gamepad hat button, but also works with mouse and keyboard) The lighting work... Continue reading

  
• Busted
  March 31, 2018 by siepiau

  The latest update to the game mechanics: Guards will now detect and chase Pandora as well as the player. This makes the stealth option more challenging and also relevant. No more free pass for Pandora... Continue reading

  
• Aziz, light!
  March 28, 2018 by siepiau

  While the quest system is still being worked on, I started to add lighting to the scene. The lighting is kept low key to match the stylized look I'm going for, and even without proper textures and wit... Continue reading

  
• Let's open a dialogue...
  March 26, 2018 by siepiau

  Been implementing a UI that allows dialogue options. I'm still exploring how best to do NPC interactions... Continue reading

  
• Setting the stage
  March 23, 2018 by siepiau

  This is just a test shot with some NPCs placed inside a new room in Act 1. I've been fleshing out the cast of characters, working out their MOPs (motivation, objective, personality), and will embark o... Continue reading

  
• So much to do, so little time
  March 16, 2018 by siepiau

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  Another day passed, I'm still mostly adding content to fill the rooms. I think it's spoiler-free to reveal that this is some kind of underground research facility. I can't wait to put in all the big... Continue reading

  
• Filling in the blanks...
  March 15, 2018 by siepiau

  Designing and adding content to the empty rooms of the Act 1 map. My workflow: Concept Come up with a functional idea for the room Design furniture and objects appropriate for the room Build Create 3... Continue reading

  
• Renovations are under way!
  March 14, 2018 by siepiau

  As promised, I'm working hard to upgrade and complete the Pandora prototype. The Act 1 map has been designed and modeled, so bye bye placeholders. Next up would be the laborious task of decorating, ad... Continue reading

  
• v1.1: Bug fixes and improvements
  March 11, 2018 by siepiau

  Prototype v1.1 updates Bug fixes: Pandora now moves with correct speed in Act 1 Hiding behind low cover now works properly Fix gravity sword hit detection bug Fix enemy not attacking when up close bu... Continue reading