[Game] - Name to come
Hi all,
It is awesome to have a website like this for us SA gamedevs. I never realised game development was so alive in our country.
I would like to show you my current game progress. The motivation for starting development on this came from my great passion for the outdoors and the real world survival techniques I already learned and trained on.
The basic plot is as follows; the player is spawned at an unknown location in the middle of nowhere and needs to find their way back to civilisation. They need find resources on the way to keep themselves alive. This includes finding food, creating shelter, making fire, using navigation techniques to keep them on coarse (no GPS) and foraging for required items to make these things happen. The day/night cycle is so far aimed to be real time. So an hour in real time will be the same length in the game, unless the player sleeps or crafts something big where time can be advanced to when such actions are completed. If the player does not actively manage the direction in which they travel, they can find themselves walking around in circles and getting lost. Drinking contaminated water or eating bad food would get you sick.
There won't be zombies and players won't be crafting/building wooden houses etc. in the process. It aims to be survival on the move, as close to a real world scenario as I can have it.
The player's hydration level, stamina, hunger and body heat (hypothermia/heat exhaustion) is updated through the environment and their own actions, so they need to manage these to stay alive. The landscape will be massive and can take the a few days to cover end to end in some cases. The distance will we determined by the type of survival scenario the player chooses to embark on. I still need to add some interesting things to occupy the player as they traverse the great expanse.
The inventory system, although very ugly at the moment allows inventory items to be actioned against each other, for example decontaminating water with water sanitiser, carving a piece of wood to smaller pieces if you have a knife etc. Each type of item also has their own "abilities" to be used in the world, for example, any wood can be added to a fire to make it burn longer, a water container can be filled from a water source etc.
With the work I've already done, most of the above works the way I need it to but there is still a lot of detailing and other work to finish off. Screen shots attached. Please let me know what your thoughts/comments are on my progress so far – I value all input and criticism!
It is awesome to have a website like this for us SA gamedevs. I never realised game development was so alive in our country.
I would like to show you my current game progress. The motivation for starting development on this came from my great passion for the outdoors and the real world survival techniques I already learned and trained on.
The basic plot is as follows; the player is spawned at an unknown location in the middle of nowhere and needs to find their way back to civilisation. They need find resources on the way to keep themselves alive. This includes finding food, creating shelter, making fire, using navigation techniques to keep them on coarse (no GPS) and foraging for required items to make these things happen. The day/night cycle is so far aimed to be real time. So an hour in real time will be the same length in the game, unless the player sleeps or crafts something big where time can be advanced to when such actions are completed. If the player does not actively manage the direction in which they travel, they can find themselves walking around in circles and getting lost. Drinking contaminated water or eating bad food would get you sick.
There won't be zombies and players won't be crafting/building wooden houses etc. in the process. It aims to be survival on the move, as close to a real world scenario as I can have it.
The player's hydration level, stamina, hunger and body heat (hypothermia/heat exhaustion) is updated through the environment and their own actions, so they need to manage these to stay alive. The landscape will be massive and can take the a few days to cover end to end in some cases. The distance will we determined by the type of survival scenario the player chooses to embark on. I still need to add some interesting things to occupy the player as they traverse the great expanse.
The inventory system, although very ugly at the moment allows inventory items to be actioned against each other, for example decontaminating water with water sanitiser, carving a piece of wood to smaller pieces if you have a knife etc. Each type of item also has their own "abilities" to be used in the world, for example, any wood can be added to a fire to make it burn longer, a water container can be filled from a water source etc.
With the work I've already done, most of the above works the way I need it to but there is still a lot of detailing and other work to finish off. Screen shots attached. Please let me know what your thoughts/comments are on my progress so far – I value all input and criticism!
1.png
1920 x 1048 - 8M
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1920 x 1048 - 8M
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1920 x 1048 - 8M
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1920 x 1048 - 8M
Thanked by 1Karuji
Comments
I think a realistic-themed survival game (without the zombies etc) is an interesting and fresh approach to a survival game! I don't think I've heard of a survival game that is sincerely about mountaineering. I think your passion for the outdoors could inspire some interesting gameplay!
I like the idea of not managing your walking direction, (I presume not having a compass? or map?), and having to be careful about which way you walk. I think that kind of thing is quite novel (I think most survival games have maps and compasses and hold the player's hand with regard to finding their way around)...
But having said that, if you want real outdoorsmanship to be what the game is about, then it's got to be represented across the game. I can't tell from the crafting interface, but I expect it'd be quite easy to fall into survival-game conventions that don't really represent surviving out doors. The interface already makes crafting things a lot easier than in real life, which is probably okay, but if done wrong it might feel too contrived and video-gamey. If it's possible to use less interface for this kind of thing it'd probably feel more immersive (I know you said you are still working on this aspect).
(I'm not saying change anything necessarily. I'm just saying the realistic-survival-outdoors seems to be the unique experience this game can deliver, and it seems to be the thing that makes the game exciting to you and I expect exciting to others, so it's worth thinking about every element of the game and figuring out how it can feel more authentic).
Thank you for the valuable input. I must admit, it was not easy figuring out how everything should work since it is a bit of a niche direction I'm taking this into. Perhaps it's the path less traveled due to the difficulties that can arise in making a game like this. However, I'm determined to make this good even if it takes time. My aim with this is to inspire people to get out there in the wilds (not necessarily to this extreme, but just to get outdoors more often).
Regarding management of the player's direction, I do have a compass system and topographical map which will be available in some “expeditions” and others not. This strives to be much more real world though so the player won't know their current location unless they use the compass and map together correctly, much more detail to this but will provide some more details later. There are two, maybe three other techniques I'm also building that someone without a GPS and compass would use to find direction which will be more challenging but is cool to know if you do get totally lost one day.
I totally agree with you on the inventory system and how it might become too easy if not done right. I've been thinking about this myself. Will surely come up with something interesting. The idea I have for shelter crafting will definitely be different from the norm.
Thanks again.