October 2021: Tech Demo & Health
Hey everyone! I hope you’ve all enjoyed Spooky Month. This month I’ll be covering more of our progress on the upcoming tech demo - primarily the creation of the assets we’ll need for it, and also a bit about the UI systems we’re creating for Robot Farm. I’ll also go a bit into my health situation and why it’s been slowing down progress toward releasing the video.
Tech demo & artstyle progress
So we’re still working away on the tech demo. We’re building a lot of assets for it, and this takes time. I’m also working on some World Editor functionality that’ll help us have more to start with than just a flat world since giving it shape takes too long. What’s exciting is that I’ll be bringing back some of our old generators to help with level creation - so our old approach of “generators and artists working together” will be making a return.
It’s a powerful concept that’s seen more use in these recent years, which is letting the computer do what it’s good at, and letting humans do what they’re good at as well. So we have the game editing tools generate parts of the level that it’s good at, such as basic starter maps with heightmaps and hills, then letting the artist do what they’re best at, and editing it further to give it its “soul.”
Asset-side, it’s taking awhile since we’re still building up an artstyle for the world graphics. There’s been a lot of iteration and testing. I’m also looking into a way of automatically retexturing blocks with just sprites to save money and time as well, since at the moment you have to make a unique model for every block texture you make, since magicavoxel/voxels in general don’t support simple texture remapping like you’d expect from a polygonal model.
We’re also looking for ways we can “round” the world out since we don’t look the game to look too much something like Minecraft. We just have to really put our heads to it since the world is also made entirely out of voxels. Here are some of our early tests of “cornered terrain,” but we’re not quite sure if it looks good yet. What do you think? Let us know on Twitter, or you can email us via the contact form on the homepage!
2D rendering & user-interface progress
I’ve also been working on getting our new UI rendering systems working. It’s grabbed my attention these last few days because the World Editor is beginning to grow in its functionality, and I’m slowly learning that I won’t be able to keep expanding it just using some placeholder hotkeys. I’ve gotten the last of the required base functionality working, so now I’m beginning to build up the UI components that Robot Farm will need.
We call the API “SDCGraphics,” where SDC just means “Single Draw Call.” It’s very powerful and I detailed more about it in last month’s blogpost. You can read more about it there. Below you can see what I’ve added and improved this month, such as adding MSAA to it, along with rendering functionality for circles, rotated rectangles, outlined rectangles, and functionality for drawing lines as well.
These are important to get working first since they’ll be used to build up the various UI components we’ll need - such as checkboxes, buttons, lists, and so on.
My health situation, why progress can be slow, and why I make games/software
I’ve mentioned in our posts that I’m dealing with a rare chronic disease. I struggled with it more than usual this month, so progress on the game has been way slower than I’d like it to be. I’d like to apologize for the fact I keep hyping our tech demo up and have failed to deliver it these past few months, but we are making progress on it, even if it can be a bit slow.
Health-side, progress on getting my tests done and treating the illness have been slower than I’d like it to be, and it’s affected my mental health as well. I’ve been pretty sad about it, and this can also affect my productivity. But I’m continuing to fight, and I’m going to see this through. If I can beat this illness, I feel that I’ll be able to work way faster in the future, it’s just a matter of sticking it out to get there. Robot Farm will be completed.
Fortunately I’m very lucky to have a good support system, including my supportive SO, family, and a gamedev team that’s very understanding of my situation. So I’m confident things will get better. I’m doing my best with what I have at the moment, and I want to release a game that makes people happy.
That’s a major reason I love to make games - not only is it a good coping mechanism for my illness, but it also gives me the opportunity to make something that I hope others will enjoy - whether it be the game itself having gameplay that helps someone forget their worries, a story that touches their hearts and leaves a meaningful impact, or even the release of the tools themselves that make it easier for another young gamedev like I was to make a game and learn more about the process.
In particular, I really love the idea of my tools being useful someday. When I was a young boy, a big reason I was able to get here now was because of all the kind programmers that would open source their projects and respond helpfully and patiently to my silly twelve-year questions. I had a hard childhood, and video games were one of the ways I was able to escape to my own worlds - whether it be by playing them, or making them. So above all, I want to pay it forward and do the same for all of the young budding programmers out there who may need games and game development as a means to escape for a little while.
I say this to my team all the time: I don’t really care if the game is popular. But if it can make at least one person smile, or their day less difficult, then all of the hardship I’m going through to make it will be worth it. It’s extremely difficult to make a game and manage a team when you’re as sick as I am, but the prospect of bringing joy to someone’s life, no matter how miniscule it is, drives me to push harder. I have too many people that believe in me, just for me to quit because it’s difficult.
Robot Farm early access & goals for player-made content
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but we’re hoping to release an early access version of the game next year. We’ve all finally settled on an idea for it. The plan is to release a more sandboxy version of the game that leans more heavily toward the Harvest Moon inspirations of the game, being more focused on a single town that you’ll help build up over time. Story-wise, it’ll have its own small self-contained story and take place as a prequel/setup for Robot Farm’s main story - drip-feeding some cool lore that’ll help establish some context.
Additionally, we’ll make all of our mod tools up to that point available, so players will be able to create their own content and stories for the game as well. We’re hoping to get to a point where players can vote on custom content they like the most, and then offer those creators the chance to have their mods potentially canonized/sold as official DLC so they can earn some money from their projects. However we’ll do this very sparingly since we firmly believe in giving players free additional content through mods, as well as encouraging the sharing and iterating of mods through the community. This is so we don’t run into issues where people are stealing mods and selling them as their own.
With plenty of mod content available as well as the base game content, we’re hoping this would keep the game interesting and fun until we release the final full game using the money we’d make through an early access version.
All-in-all
So there you have it. Progress is continuing and we’re mostly focused on building assets for the tech demo at the moment. We want to make a really good impression with our first video in a long time, so I apologize again that it’s taking so long. A lot of the programming for it is essentially finished, so right now we’re just focused on making the actual content that goes in the game right now. I won’t give a specific time frame on the tech demo this time, other than saying we’ll hopefully get the video done Soon™.
See you next time!
Thanks again for tuning in to our monthly blog post! I’m hoping we’ll have more substantial news soon, For now, I appreciate your patience and understanding of both the speed of progress and my health situation. I’m not working in ideal conditions, but I’m certainly doing my best to use what I do have to its full potential.
Also if you’re interested - check out our Projects page! I updated it today to include some information on NNGINE-L. You can check out the cool logo we commissioned for it.
Until next time - you guys take care. Thanksgiving is coming up next! Be sure to eat a lot of great food!
Happy Halloween!
♥ NOKORIWARE
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