Friday Diaries: Making progress

Hello there!

It's been a few weeks since the last update on Hybrid Children. I've been making lots of improvements to the game recently, so I decided it was time to make a new blog post.

Firstly, I've been adding new weapons into the game; shotgun, submachine gun and grenade launcher. The full game will have an arsenal consisting of at least ten different weapons. I don't want to reveal the full list before we have implemented them in the game.

I have also released the first playable build of the game on Patreon, so you can go and support the game, and participate in its active development.





The game currently is shaping up to be a more action-oriented experience than what I originally designed it to be. I applied for a grant to create a story game, but now that I didn't get the money, I'm planning on making the design simpler and more streamlined.

Only possibility to fund the game successfully would be to launch an Indiegogo campaign during the fall. That's the earliest possible time that I could have a really impressive demo of the game ready. I'm developing this game by myself so the progress is slow. Extra funding would definitely help to bring the game together faster.





One especially helpful thing would be to get a developer dedicated to 3D character art and animation. I'm happy with doing the game design and programming, but generating the art for a realtime 3D game is quite tasking.

I've usually been in charge of making the game design and art, so it's refreshing in a way to be brushing up my programming skills for a change. Medlab Terror was the first Unity game that I releassed to the public, and in that game I basically did everything except music.

Creating a good-looking first person shooter with just one active developer was a bit too tasking though, so I ended up with the concept of a topdown horror shooter.

We've recently been adding Hybrid Children to game sites to gain some attraction. There is now a page for it at IndieDB and Itch.io. There is also a job posting for a hobbyist 3D character artist.

If you feel that you have a passion for indie development and can create characters that would fit our game, please see the job posting and contact us at grmgamedev [at] gmail [dot] com

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That's all for this week, thanks for tuning in! Go follow us on social medias, maybe join the discussion on our Discord, and show your support by participating in early testing at Itch.io or Patreon. See ya!

- Harri J.

Become a patron

We here at GameRealmMadness believe in fun gameplay. Every title we have developed, or helped to develop, have had a focus on delivering what the box says, and more. 

Currently we are developing Hybrid Children, a story-oriented topdown shooter with horror elements, plus a currently unnamed first person shooter game. If you become our Patreon, you get access to playable builds to all our games.

Also newest updates to our existing games will be posted on our page, so you get insider information on them, catching the newest sales and other news.

Become a patron at patreon.com/grmgamedev

@Unnamed FPS Project

Developing Horror Part 1

Today modifying Post Processing Effects. Currently Developing the Horror Project. Added some effects Bloom, Color Grading and many others Post Processing Effects. Camera layer looks different now. 

Before Post Processing 

     After Post Processing 

-Oneak

Friday Diaries: 'Hybrid Children' out of stasis

Hello there!

It's been a while since I last talked in long form about our plans for game development. Kalaban is still on sale on Steam, Humble Store, itch.io and Gamejolt, as I mentioned in the previous blog post.

I started working on this tech demo of a topdown horror game in March 2019, called Hybrid Children. The idea was to apply for a grant to keep on developing the prototype. I did, and my submission was not succesful. So in the beginning of June I decided to dust off the tech demo, created in the Unity engine, and see what I got. My plan is to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the game, either at Halloween 2019 or at the end of this year. 

I've been testing out with Arnold renderer for 3dsMax during the last few weeks. The gif above is one animatic that I did with the protagonist, an unnamed boy who wields a baseball bat for bashing monsters. The story of the game is still in its early stages, and all I can say is that there is a small town involved, and also some monsters, and possibly friends you have to rescue from the clutches of evil creatures.

The tech demo already had a good base for the gameplay, but I decided to try out multiple things that I already had in mind for Kalaban. A lot of people complained about the crammed interiors and houses that you visit. The movement and AI programming was less than optimal in Kalaban, although being pretty much the best we could achieve with Clickteam Fusion at the time.

But now, in Unity, most of those 2.5D problems are fixed. Any true 3D engine can draw the interiors right, and handles collision-detection way better than faking "threedee" environments in a 2D game engine. When we made Kalaban, we wanted to simulate 3D gameplay and perspective camera, but it came with a lot of problems. Even the Y-layering was a little bit buggy at times, when there were loads of monsters and stuff on screen. The problem was that at lower frame rates Fusion just started skipping events, and one of those being aligning the layers properly.

Another huge leap that I've done in recent days has been putting in couch coop. Yes, you read that right! I've been dreaming of creating a game to be played with your buddy for such a long time. It was one of the first feedback things I heard after Kalaban's launch, that people wanted to "explore the mutant-infested town with a friend". 

Well now it's finally happening. First I spent couple days coding the movement and making sure the health system worked in game, and having the 2 Player Game option in the menu. Next I re-coded the camera script to follow both players, or switch to one of them, if the other one has died.

Currently, I have the enemy AI chasing after either one of the players, depending on which one is closer to them. The enemies now can also damage the other player, as they can damage player one. All of this has been really new and exciting for me.

We'll see what future brings for Hybrid Children, but we'll keep on developing it. When we have a working test demo for people to try out, we can finally launch our crowdfunding campaign. It took us two and a half years to get to this point with 3D game development and Unity skills, but it has all been worth it so far.

Like mentioned, Kalaban is still on Steam Summer Sale up until June 9th, so go grab yours, if you already haven't done so!

-Harri J.

New Soundtrack Released

This year the GRM is 5 years old. We made a TechDemo "5 Years of Horror'' to Birthday of GameRealmMadness. It will be released later with Document of  GRM History 2014-2019.

Feel free to listen the Soundtrack and keep calm. The TechDemo and birthday is coming soon.
Thank you for all the years!

Soundtrack music by © Pasi Kaihlanen 2019