Dev diaries: Polishing the game

Howdy, readers! It's been over two months since a proper dev diary, and the planned early access release of our game Enemy Remains is less than four weeks away! 

During our "radio silence" we've been keeping ourselves busy with polishing the game, focusing on the core gameplay and making the experience as fun as possible. The game already had a good basis for a creepy horror shooter back in August, and we've been in re-hauling and refining mode since. In late 2020 we stopped adding new maps into the game, locking the current level set for the early access release.

There is only one more survival map that we gotta add into the upcoming release, but otherwise all the other new scene ideas have been put into the slot after launch. The enemy roster or weapon selection will not change either, and we've just been refining the mechanics for all the foes, adding more use for the existing enemies. Lots of ideas popped into our heads during development, that we just have not had time to implement before. 

There will be a few surprises in the upcoming versions to the people who have tested the previous builds. The difficulty selection in the game now actually works, and there will be serious re-balancing with the levels on higher difficulties. Bosses will also be made tougher, since we were in a hurry just to add them into the previous versions.

Pretty much all of the features that we've talked about here are either already in the game, or are work in progress. We've also added tons of optimization to the levels, working on our own level of detail code trickery. We're getting pretty solid frame rates on our test machines, and we're generally pretty confident about the performance.

Enemy Remains will not be a game like Kalaban, which was purely 2D and ran on every grandmother's desktop computer and laptop. This is a feature-complete 3D game, built from the ground up to feature modern visual effects and physics simulation. There will be particle effects, realtime light and shadows, ragdolls, physics obstacles flying around and tons of action on the screen. 

For a full-on story game I think it's important to get the product running as wide array of systems as you can. But this time we opted to create a fast-paced and frantic action title with Enemy Remains, and that's a genre where players expect to see a lot of fireworks and top notch visuals. 

We've been especially happy to welcome Tuukka Kuusisto (with his artist name 'Arctic Sounds') on board as our new musician. With his help the worlds that we've created have really come to life, and have been accompanied with the fitting mood. Music is really magical in the way that it makes all kinds of new connections in your brain, and further expands the world that's presented on screen. 

Previously we've had placeholder soundtrack in the game that was entirely composed and mixed by myself. Those tracks were pretty shoddy creations, and I'm glad we're getting a real professional to do the final soundtrack. We're also in progress of re-mixing the audio effects, making sure that all the necessary actions can be heard in-game. 

It's always difficult to balance the gunshot sounds, I've found out. You want your weapons and attack effects to sound punchy, but not over-do it by making them too loud or obnoxious. We're not quite there yet, but hopefully will be by the time of the release. 

Our character artist Sean VandenBerge started his work on this game in September 2019. Just think about that! It's incredible how much development time this game has already taken. Enemy Remains started out as a simplistic survival shooter, and I set out to create a 3D game that I could develop and finish by myself. Granted, the early versions we're quite ugly and unappealing, especially compared to the more recent builds.

Pretty soon though I realized that the task ahead was way too big for one man to handle. I was aiming for this kind of "Diablo with guns" feeling with the game, and back then I had no idea in what capacity I would be involving the narrative stuff into it. I looked at the project, and though that the game would end up taking AT LEAST two years from now (summer 2019 back then) if I started implementing quests and friendly NPCs.

Luckily, we got environmental artist Dalton Costa working on the game from early 2020 forward, so the task of building this whole world felt a lot less intimidating. Even with these two key additions to our team, I figured that I'd be better off creating a good, solid exploration shooter game, without heavy story elements. And I figured if the game would come together fast enough, there might even be time to add the story in as we went along.

Like is often the case, developing a game takes a lot longer than you'd expect. I had already predicted that developing a full 3D experience in Unity would take at least twice, if not three times as long as making a 2D game with Clickteam Fusion. Adjusted to Kalaban's development time, that would mean that with all the inventory, quest and story stuff, along with NPCs, we'd have a game ready around the year 2023. 

Making plans for a release that far away just seemed outright silly. I had no idea if I'd even be able to support full-time indie development of this project for a year, let alone four. So we put our heads down and started working on Enemy Remains as a topdown shooter. Now, almost two years later, we're near the early access launch with a game that has its focus in the core gameplay, and is overall a lot more polished experience than frankly anything we've put out before.

I've learned along the way that every little UI element or small interface feature takes a good few rounds of testing in-game, going back, tweaking a few lines of code and fixing stuff. Just adding different, changeable weapon icons might take one whole day by itself! And you gotta add in another day for the art and testing alone. This is what it's like when you're the only programmer working a 3D game. 

There is a plus side to all of this though, being the sole programmer commandeering the ship, and that is having the complete mental picture of the project in your head. If say, main menu does not load the proper scene it's supposed to, and instead just jams in the loading screen, I can pretty much instantly figure out what the problem is.

Or if a boss enemy's death by pistol triggers the right kind of level end sequence, but the same thing doesn't happen if he's gibbed to death. In that case I can also sniff out the bug that's preventing the sequence from commencing properly. All I need to do is a quick troubleshoot, tweak the code, do a round of testing, and the problem is solved! 

For another programmer working on the game these problems might turn into a nightmare of pulling hair out, and bring the coding to an absolute halt. They would have to spend a good chunk of their time trying to debug the program for strange occurences, and maybe eventually figure out the issue in someone else's code. Sure, it does take extra care and time to do everything by myself, but this project has already taught me so much than any programming degree at school ever would. 

I'm not here to learn how to write perfect code, or how to get employed by a company making utility software or database work. I'm here to learn about project management, creative, on-the-fly problem-solving, and ultimately how to become a real game programmer.  

If we're talking about future plans, and what's next, then that's all still pretty much in the air. Naturally we gotta look this launch through first and put our marketing and PR hats on, and change gears from pure game development mode. 

That's the burden of self-publishing and working as a full indie developer. You gotta get your hands dirty with this stuff. Sure, we've been looking around for a publisher during Enemy Remains' development, but none of the candidates have taken us seriously enough, or have had the qualities that we need as a developer. Most of the publishers have just snickered at our games, or have given us cold shoulder in way of saying "looks neat, but there's not really anything we can do for you", or worse yet, have turned out to be literal scam artists.

Maybe in the future, when we've established a larger recognition we can shop around for a serious publisher, that's willing to put the money on the table for actually funding the development. But until that time, we're on our own!

As for continuing in the indie space, I would gladly work with another hard-working and self-driven programmer. The qualities I'm most looking for in possible business partner are; ability and will to figure stuff out by yourself -- and simply doing it.

If you sit around all day dreaming about games that you would create if you had the team, the money, or whatelse, and waiting for a programmer to fall on your lap, then I'm afraid I can't help you. After all, I'm not that talented of a coder myself. I learned how to code and use Unity simply because I wanted to make games. That was motivation enough for me, and it's what has been driving me to learn new stuff in the field since I was a teenager.

At the end of the day, making a polished game is not fun. There is enjoyment to be had when you figure out a more elegant solution to problem you've had, or see your game running much better because of some optimization that you did, but it requires hard work and some serious sitting muscle. 

If you truly want to become a game developer, at some point you gotta get over that "fun" seeking attitude, and just take pleasure in the work itself. It's a point that only a developer can understand. Often times people look at games and think they can be created way more faster and cheaper, than they really are, not seeing the hard work that goes into making a decent product. 

Near the end of the development you get to do some actually fun stuff too - adding "bells and whistles" like it's called in programming or hacker terminology. Once you have a solid game, that runs well, you can start adding features that have no real relation to gameplay - like say; ragdolls. They're there just to add general value and appeal to a product.

Experimenting with physics in Unity has been especially interesting for me, and it's something that you just couldn't do in a full 2D game. The way that things have a mass, speed and momentum, and the way collisions work in a truly 3D environment, that is all fascinating stuff for me. 

The game's store page is live on Steam with "coming soon" status, so you can wishlist it and stay updated for new updates and the upcoming release: 

Enemy Remains on Steam 


- Harri J.

Dev Diaries: July update & Neurotron re-visited

Pardons for being away from the blog for so long! I noticed that there were no dev diary updates during June, so we gotta fix that right away. I've been tangled in real life hassles such as moving into a new apartment and dealing with stuff related to that.

But during this time game development has taken steps forward. Our graphics artists Dalton Costa and Sean VandenBerge have worked hard on the game, creating assets and content for the players. Our topdown horror shooter finally has an official name -- ENEMY REMAINS.

A new enemy type I rigged and animated for our upcoming horror shooter.

I've been releasing new playable builds of Enemy Remains on our Patreon. It's been great to hear early feedback of the gameplay and how the game runs on different computers. We're gonna need a lot more data before we release the game publicly however.

Earlier games have suffered somewhat from lack of testing and quality control, and it's been hard to get people to accurately report how the game works. We've reached out to our friends and family with earlier titles on both PC and Android, but testing a game properly is a real job in game development. We've had gameplay issues in games like Kalaban which should've already been fixed in internal testing, but endured months and even years after launch.

New lab environments feature lightning traps in addition to the earlier laser traps and mines.

Working full indie on your game has its pros and cons. Pros definitely include retaining full creative control over your product, and the freedom to make it represent your vision. On the downside you have to rely on revenue share model to get the game done, having to search for income from somewhere else and using voluntary testers in place of actual quality assurance people.

Looking at the game now, I don't think people realize just how many steps we've had to take in order to get the game looking this good and playing this well. I started learning Unity in February 2017, and before that I had zero experience in working with C# script. I had opened the editor once or twice, and deemed it un-usable for the projects I was working on.

Now, don't get me wrong, Unity is a great tool and I love using it now. I think that all changed with Unity 5. Before that I remember the free version having only spot lights and no area lights at all, for example. I looked at the editor in 2014 and thought that it looked like a toy with no commercial use. I gotta say, the team behind Unity has really made some great updates during the last few years.

I'm not that big of a fan of aggressively changing the UI with every update, but at least stuff is being added and new features added. At some point I had to stop updating Unity to the newest version because I feared the older code wouldn't work. Once we finish this project, I'm going to have to jump to the newest build of the engine again.

In other news, Ben Hull from Alien Seed Games has been remastering our old game Neurotron. The title was originally released as a demo on GooglePlay, but the game was never completed. There were talks of doing a PC port of it back when we had released Kalaban, but never got around to do it. Currently, the progress on this version is looking good.

Of course it's still early in development, and will take some time before it will have all the necessary hero powers, and gameplay that was originally in the demo. There is surprisingly a lot of depth to the game, even though it was a touch screen title.





Above is the announcement trailer for our horror shooter, and a new playable build will be added on Patreon soon. Join today and get exclusive access to all the newest updates!


Become a Patron!


-Harri J.

Friday Dev Diaries: Dreams of spring

Good Friday y'all! The spring is here, and summer is coming. Here in Finland the weather has been really strange lately. Week ago the sun was shining, and people were wearing shorts. This morning there was snow in Southern Finland.

There is this thing here called the "backwinter", which means that once all the snow from the winter has already melted in Finland, and you think that summer is finally coming, the weather decides to give us a full doze of hailstones and sleet. It's always a surprise and keeps people on their feet, especially folks that have to use a car daily.

Of course weather like this is perfect for game development if you don't have to leave your home. With all this social distancing it is important to take care of your mental and physical health though. For me, hiking and walking are some of the things that I enjoy doing, and I put in so many hours of screen time a day that a balance is kind of hard to achieve.

The only thing I'm really missing is seeing my friends freely, and being able to socialize normally. For a person who does a lot of monkish work with writing and game development I'm used to abnormal life style though.

When I need motivation for my work, I go for a walk, do some cooking or baking, or cleaning. Anything besides staring at a screen gives you new things to think about.

And speaking of game development; there is a lot that has happened with the Kalaban sequel project. It's taken huge leaps forward, and there are a ton of new features in the game now. I have programmed ten different weapons into the game, and finally pulled some of the maps together. Most of the work has been on gameplay, and there are lot of different bits and pieces but no full structure yet.

There are now deadly traps like mines, lasers and spinning wheels of blades in the levels. I've also added wooden crates containing random loot, and tons of other details. There is thunder, rain and environmental hazards like fire and glowing green fungus which hurt you. The game is really shaping up to be a real experience, with lots of fun things thrown in.

This time I've done things completely differently than in original Kalaban. Back then we started with story and scripting for it. Gameplay was programmed while working on the story structure and level design. And now gameplay has been first, and story will be implemented later on, once we have the maps together. The budget we have by that time will decide what capacity the storytelling will be implemented.

From the gifs above you can see the spinning wheels of death, and new plant topside map with lightning, rain and creepy monster tentacles. There are also stationary enemies like the body of a tentacle monster, which spins around and tries to hurl its projectile at you.

We are also updating the Area 51 Defense game currently on Steam. There's going to be major performance fixes, and a few nice gameplay fixes. Looking forward to getting people playing the new version.

Have a nice weekend you all, and stay safe!


- Harri J.

Friday Dev Diaries: Purification plant in progress

Hello there!

Since our last update, I have created at least three new playable scenes. They're all work in progress however, and we will continue work on them until the whole Act 1 is ready. Me and our environmental artist Dalton Costa have been busy churning out new assets and map pieces.

The biggest new area is going to be the water purification plant, which will consist of multiple different maps in the game. We're in the progress of building the first map of it now, and seeing how the assets will look in the engine.





I've also been updating the enemy AI code, its animations and attacks. There will be some specialist code needed for the boss enemies in the game, and that's what I'm going to tackle next. In Kalaban there was only a couple enemies with firearms, but in the sequel there will be more.

You don't want the enemies to feel robotic killing machines in the game, but instead make them fun and challenging foes. No matter how hard, there must be a strategy for beating them. This of course is a matter of gameplay balance, level design, enemy placement and the attack style of the enemies (fire rate, animations, etc).

It's a lot to take into consideration when you're not simply making a game full of mindless foes. Even the mindless foes must have strength in numbers, and special enemies among them to spice things up. For example, I have always enjoyed the Fallen minions in Diablo II, where there are shamans sprinkled among them. The shaman will resurrect fallen foes, until you take him out.

I haven't gotten into the special scripting part of the maps yet; secret areas, story triggers, traps - but I'm looking forward to it. I enjoy creating new fictional words, be it on paper, in text or in video games. During the last three years I've gotten pretty familiar with Unity, and there are a number of incremental steps which needed to be taken in order for a project like "Kalaban II" to be possible.

One of the biggest has been the rigging and animation of the human / humanoid characters. It used to be such a challenge for me, and when I made prerendered graphics in the past I had to use all kinds of workarounds to do simple animations. The finished sprites usually looked fine, but they took a number of hand-crafting and polish which just wasn't optimal in the long run.

 


One thing that you can be pretty comfortable with modern engines and tools is the fact that the visual fidelity will just be there. With the right lighting, tweaking of post-processing effects and just generally acceptable or above level assets you can create really impressive scenery.

People who on the internet are constantly fighting and bickering about "what's the best engine for 3D games and game development in general", but I think it's a matter of getting intimate with the tools that you're using. When you know the basic "do's and do not's" you can be pretty comfortable with content creation.

Of course there is room for improvement and optimization, but that's something you should really do constantly. We'll continue with our work, and hope that everybody's having a great weekend!


- Harri J.

Friday Diaries: Fresh recruits

Hello there!

It's been a couple weeks since our last devdiary update. We here at GameRealmMadness have been busy developing new stuff for all of you to see.





First off, we've had some new blood join our team. We have a new musician and a sound effects artist working on Hybrid Children. We are still in talks of getting a 3D character artist to handle the monster and enemy models in the game.

Because we had so many good applications, we took the IndieDB job listing off, but you can still send us email to grmgamedev(at)gmail.com - Especially if you have talent in Unity3D level design or programming with C#! If you only know JavaScript, then unfortunately you are not a match for our team. We're currently not looking for any new audio artists or musicians, as those places have already been filled.

In other news; we also have put an older test build of Hybrid Children on download at Itch.io and IndieDB! This is just meant to showcase how the graphics look in the game, and how well it runs on your computer.

Please note that this is not the current test version, and that can now only be accessed by joining our Patreon. We recently updated the Patreon build with brand new music track and updated sound effects for weapons and damage hit.

We have been building our Patreon profile slowly, and giving more incentives to join. In October we're planning on giving out Kalaban for free to all our 5$ tier members. Be sure to track our progress to stay updated on such deals and more.

We also have a surprise update for this blog entry! During the last few weeks we've been working on a simple arcade shooter called Area 51 Defense, which puts the player into the boots of a US Army soldier. Your task is to defend the air force base against 2 million invading dweebs! The game is going to be a comedic "meme game" made for fun, and it will be released on Steam before September 20th.

The game is already playable, and by joining our Patreon, you can get full access to the current demo. There is already player movement, shooting, enemy spawning and score systems in place. There's also going to be more than one enemy type in the final game.





That's it for this week's update, thanks for stopping by!

Head on over to Itch.io or IndieDB to test out Hybrid Children, and join our Patreon to play the current version of the game, and the demo of Area 51 Defense.






Become a Patron!


- Harri J.