Developer Diary #6

I continue to develop the game Pangit alone, in the profile you can find all my articles and the chronology of how the process of creating the game is going. A month ago I announced that for technical reasons I was forced to start making the game from scratch, which naturally led to a small, but outflow of the audience, and from my diary if everything continues in this spirit, it will be possible to compile good literature on how not to make games.

The other day I found out the reason why the FPS died in the previous project and breaking it down into sub-levels, reducing polygons in static meshes and reducing texture resolution did not solve the FPS problem globally.
Maybe if you follow my blog, you could see that I added video cameras to the production and logging interface. So, four pictures from the 2D camera ate up about 18-25 fps, the problem was in them.

At the moment there were thoughts to return to the old version of the project and continue, but I like how it is going now. In general, this is an eternal struggle with myself, which is very exhausting and because of this I took a short break and for the last week I have been putting things in order in my head, I recommend it, it helps.

Now let's talk in more detail about the concept of the new version of the PANGIT game.
I started making a player lobby called a scientific base, where the player develops his settlement, produces resources with the help of local residents, then processes them and builds new objects, creates items, then goes into the world and explores it, where he gets items, artifacts, etc. He brings the received back to the base and invests it all in the development of his settlement. And then I had a question. For what?

For example, you need to find all the artifacts and insert them into the portal found in the cave and which opens access to the territory of the ancients. Well, or, as before, collecting and searching for Pangit to decode and decipher it for understanding the history of the creation of the entire universe.
In essence, the whole idea of development is based on the fact that with the help of the game to convey my vision and thoughts based on one of the hypotheses about the origin of the universe. What could be placed in one article, I decided to create a game.

Video of the development of a scientific base.

Video on YouTube

In the process of testing the obtained result, I don’t really like that the base is separate from the main level, this will have a good effect on optimization, but as a gaming experience it looks negative.

What changes do I want to make?
Move the base to the main level, give the player the ability to move freely throughout the island and make a free decision in what order to open areas.
By the word areas I mean objects of interest that will perform a certain functionality and display the player's progress.
Next month I plan to make some big changes from the current work that has been done.

Objects:
The further the objects are from the settlement, the more the difficulty of capturing the given object will increase and the more valuable the resources received will be, which serve for the development of the character and the settlement.
The object captures will be performed by the following scenarios.
– Reach the checkpoint and activate the object.
– Clear the object of enemies and activate it.
– Solve a puzzle in the format of hacking the system.
– Complete the construction of the facility, spend the accumulated and necessary resources, transport cargo from the base to the facility.

Example:
Sawmill and mine.
The mine is where the ore is extracted and obtained, we process the ore in the settlement and obtain metal. The sawmill produces logs, the logs are processed in the settlement. The work requires workers and fuel for the generators.
We can increase the working staff for our settlement by helping people on the map who are in trouble or in need of something.
The working staff consumes food and water, to meet the needs of the staff, it is necessary to build a farm and a pumping station.
Personnel may die and stop working if there is not enough food and water.
In general, everything will have certain chains and connections for the integrity of the entire mechanism. I will tell you more in the development process.

Map:
The map will be about 4 km2. I think that I may not be able to physically pull out a larger map size, I will be a realist and the plans are already “Napoleonic” but I will try to make it so that it can be expanded with the introduction of additions. I preliminarily think that when the key object is built and the data decryption cycle is launched, a transition to a new level with a new or additional history will open.

From the videos above you could see that I pay a lot of attention to economics, accumulation, and distribution.
I do not aim to create a game about excel tables, but I want to make one where you need to think and count a little, set priorities. With the correct management of the settlement economy, it would be possible to achieve the goal easier, while the economy was not linear and had various variations of its application.
This is one of the most difficult parts of game development and I myself can’t even imagine what the end result will be.

Statistics:
According to statistics, the game has currently collected 82 VKPlay wishlist.
Thanks to these people, the best motivation that shows interest in my work.

Localization:
In one of the videos “Developer's Diary #5” I said that I plan to make the game in two languages at once. Before the release of the game, I will make it only in my native language at first. Closer to the end, we will see whether it is worth translating it into other languages, going to steam, etc., since we live in interesting times, you don't know what will happen tomorrow, and my knowledge of English is at the level of Yandex translator. And this means that there will be additional costs for localization into other languages.

Game news publication schedule:
Additionally, I made a schedule for publishing information about the project.
– Publishing videos once a week. On Youtube, VKVideo, Rutube. (I had to consider other resources because of news about the slowdown).
– Developer diary articles once a month. On Habr and StopGame.
– IN telegram there on the situation, recently published how bad it is to drink coffee at your workplace and where I had to disassemble a laptop that was damaged, but was saved. It's good that my technical base allows me to repair equipment myself, and this situation reminded me not to forget to make backups.

Thoughts on organizing support for the game's development:
Once the game is a bit playable, I plan to create a page for sponsors or boosters, where two subscriptions will be available.
The first level of subscription will provide access to the game build.
At the second level of subscription, there will also be access to the game assembly and in addition, I will include those users who have subscribed to the second level in the credits of the game as sponsors of the project.
The game will be updated once a month with all the changes that will be made.
This may help the development and the project will receive community support, but I may still abandon this idea, I don’t know yet, I have doubts.

Developer's diary:
As for the developer diary, I want to explain what it is and why. First of all, I want to draw attention to the fact that this is a developer diary, not a development diary, mighty Russian language.
That is, this is my personal blog and my path, and not a checklist with instructions and details on how to make a game at all stages. First of all, I get to know the audience in order to somehow minimally close the gap of what kind of game it is, who makes it.
Well-known studios or developers close this gap. That's why some moments of my diary touch, among other things, my personal life.

Development goal:
The goal that has already formed over the distance, first of all I want to realize my dream and make my own game, through the game to convey my thoughts, ideas to the player.

The concept, mechanics and the game as a whole often change. It is unclear what it is about, whether the game will be released at all.
Yes, it is difficult not to agree with this, this is really true, the first mentions of the game development began on May 1, during this time, quite short in my opinion, a lot of things were done. Various mechanics, ideas expressed, demonstrations. All this can also be useful, because the majority of my audience at the moment are the same developers as me. They can see something interesting for themselves and do it in their project. This already says that my activity makes some useful contribution to the gamedev sphere.

As I have already said before, the development of the PANGIT game is not my main activity, although I would really like it, but for now I need my main job that provides my existence and the opportunity to invest in my hobby. So, at the moment, the development of the PANGIT game is a hobby that I am passionate about and I have some hope that it will become my main activity in the future without harming me and my family.

The game will definitely be released, it's just that all the changes are based on the fact that I want to make an interesting game that is not like others, that's why I am leaving the template format, compiling a design document, and analyzing other popular games. I also always say that I do not recommend doing the same, since I may be wrong about whether this is the right way to create a game.
To put it bluntly, this game can essentially be called the developer's fantasy. I wish I could just release a game for the sake of it, I would start developing some novella, they say that 18+ novellas are popular =)