- April Update: New shaders, polishing. - 29 April 2021
https://i.imgur.com/lYlPBWs.gif I took a few months off from this game to brush up on my Unity skills so I can further polish the game along with bug fixing quite a few issues with the current demo (some functionality with the rocket launcher got streamlined as well, remote control functionality no longer needs to be equipped, you only hold the button down to get it or tap rapid fire rockets, some visual/audio polish WIP etc.). I worked on a clean side project just so I can learn post processing effects among other things, not something I plan on taking seriously, just a space where I can try out new cool things before I bring them into Organism 8. You can check it out here. https://twitter.com/MFSDDuong/status/1382742739750592515 I ended learning some new water shader techniques so hopefully I can make a nice pixel water shader for Organism 8.
- December Update: New alpha demo gameplay, new sprite work. - 4 December 2020
If you haven't seen the November Gameplay demo featuring new sound effects and a reworked Odal fight (still WIP) feel free to give it a watch. As you can see from the Odal fight, non lethal take downs has it's own merits. It's not just some moral choice, it will have some strategy value and may be used for various purposes like pressure plate mechanics as that is now possible as well. The game now features audio reverb zoning with various settings for caves, underwater, etc, more sprite work has been added to the game and adjustments to lighting in many areas were done to provide another layer of polish that was much needed in many areas of the game. https://i.imgur.com/9tEV1zc.jpg As always thanks for your time and stay safe!
- November Update - New audio system, new sounds, more polish, electricity - 17 November 2020
New audio and sfx have been added to the game (more still coming), for those who have been invited to the closed alpha test, feel free to give them a listen! More fixes to Odal's encounter is on the way including more stun opportunities and a rework to ambush damage to reward flanking and proper stealth. Electricity is on it's way as part of Organism8's electricity system and I look forward to showcasing more. https://i.imgur.com/RN1nZJd.gif
- October Update - 28 October 2020
Happy halloween in the case I don't make it to my computer on Saturday. I've been working on redesigning Odal's boss fight to simulate a more cat and mouse style encounter while trying to roll in some of the things the player learns about the Nekril Marines once you reach his area. https://i.imgur.com/E168lnn.gif Adding tutorials to the game is always important. For Organism8, I've decided to roll it in as part of the environment rather than have a pause text for it, this helps keep the player in the game and maintains flow for those who don't really care about the tutorial. https://i.imgur.com/HlSZga5.gif More alpha keys will be given out eventually as more polish and the rest of the features reach a usable state. I look forward to getting these in the hands of metroidvania fans.
- July Update: New Lighting, Pixel Rendering - 5 July 2020
Happy late Canada Day/4th of July to everyone. Progress has been slow as I've been trying to secure myself financially during these hard times (as is everyone). That being said; I've moved over to the new 2D lighting system that Unity offers. https://i.imgur.com/uxtip15.gif It's for most part really easy to use and fast. I've been able to apply this to the dynamic day/night system as well as environmental lighting. The result is being able to easily change the light mood of the environment to help signify if someone is outdoors or in a spooky cave which adds to the world building aspect of the game. https://i.imgur.com/s2eMoHX.gif This next month will be focused on finishing Odal's new design to coincide with what the player is expected to learn up to that point. Stay tuned. As always thanks for reading and stay safe.
- May Update: Non Lethal Combat, Event Based Weather, Closed Alpha Soon - 2 May 2020
It's been a productive month, core components of new systems have been instantiated and I finally have an early alpha test version available on steam (it's super early alpha but it works on other people's PCs so I'm happy, if you want to give it a shot, feel free to drop a message on the community forums, it's pretty lonely there.) https://i.imgur.com/kQQXa8p.gif Day and Night cycles and weather associated with time of day now works in the snow mountains biome. The main goal behind each day and night cycle for each biome is that they are specific to their regions. In the snow mountains biome, a blizzard happens at night which causes Yulana to lose her thermal energy at a faster rate while outside on top of spawning ice wraiths in specific areas. This requires the player to choose between the harsh outdoor environment or to share shelter with a spectral assassin who is out for the blood…
- April Update: Physics Puzzles! - 2 April 2020
Now that more of the modular components are completely functional (not polished), I've been able to add some more value to the demo via physics puzzles and the like. https://i.imgur.com/z5rRqQU.gif You'll see a couple varieties including some fairly standard bomb puzzles as well as ball puzzles like the maze puzzle. https://i.imgur.com/DZ0Ftf3.gif It's been a long time coming. A lot of UI elements are still being drawn to provide additional polish to the user interface and hopefully I'll be able to get the demo out the door. There is now a beginning and the end to the demo so technically you can play through it from start to finish but a lot of story, polish, and some additional puzzle mechanics to the boss fights still need to be put into place.
- March Update - 27 March 2020
Apologies for the long silence. Recovery from my workplace accident has been slow but on the bright side I'm walking great now so that's gotta count for something, still hard to think but we'll get there. Now on to development. https://i.imgur.com/qJU4WwC.gif As you can see, some work has been done on pressure plates, switches, logic, etc to add more depth to a lot of the areas. This came as a natural progression as I've continued to add generic logic scripts to interactables. Along with the material conductivity that I've showcased prior, I am hoping the puzzles in the game are both engaging and fun. https://i.imgur.com/HkG4dnd.gif Odal is still receiving work to make him feel more menacing (he'll have more attacks outside of the charged strike and the das boot). The general goal behind the bosses in this game is to make the player feel physically inferior so that wit and strategy beco…
- Happy Holidays - 25 December 2019
Some bad news first. I fell off the back of a truck and sustained an injury at work (back sprain) so I've been trying to recover from that the entire month. This unfortunately means that progress has been slow and I was not able to make some new Christmas decor for the holiday card but none the less. Those of you who follow my twitter know that allied units are on the way. https://twitter.com/MFSDDuong/status/1203411075288334336 They function as an assist and will pop up from time to time in areas that you've fully secured. Enemies will still spawn in these areas and sometimes super strong ones that your staff cannot handle or even scratch will spawn, requiring you to do most of the lifting. More details on that later. I hope you guys have a good Christmas and Happy New Year!
- Happy Early Halloween - 29 October 2019
https://i.imgur.com/Zbe0awl.gif I like to mix in some gameplay mechanics I've been working on with my holiday cards as a bit of showcase as to what you'll be expected to do in the game, in this case bringing an item to an NPC!
- September WIP - 14 September 2019
Hi Guys, First the bad news. I don't believe I'll be able to make the end of September date for the demo. Earlier in the month a cardboard bale almost fell on me (they're around 800lbs each) when I was helping the recycling courier load the bales onto his semi (he also has a really shitty tailgate so I was helping prop them up from the bottom as he only has a manual pallet jack), so I've been lieing down after work for the most part or playing the odd game here and there. Now onto the game. Work has been done filling out the demo area just so there's enough for people to play around in and be satisfied. I was asked to go into further detail on how the augmentation is split. Each "Series" of augmentation pertains to a specific action that the player makes whether it be crouching, recharging energy (ammo), blocking, reflex parry, or picking up health orbs. Many with downsides depending on…
- August WIP - 27 August 2019
A lot of things in the works and a few new happenings this month. Last weekend I was able to attend the Alberta Game Jam featuring developers from Calgary, Lethbridge, and Edmonton in Alberta and was able to crank out a quick concept by myself along with some help with sound effects by Kyle Daly. It’s a dungeon delver featuring a quick delve mechanic after a level clear and a steady hand mechanic for sword play. You can grab the game at. Now to get back on topic. Some new adjustments to current mechanics. I was on my Quake/UT hit and borrowed some inspiration from these games as shown below. https://twitter.com/MFSDDuong/status/1164322594134167552 Similar to the bomb jumping from Metroid except with a bit more punch. Odal is still being worked on, this is the swordsman boss soon to be “The Honored Flame Swordman” once the additional mechanics get implemented. Odal is a re-occuring boss…
- Mini Update July 24th - 25 July 2019
Most of the adjustments have been internal (mostly bug fixing and adjusting a lot of physics stuff to prevent the player from falling into the tiling) Here's a youtube link to the current alpha demo build. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0PxrRT1wU8 You'll see there is a lot of different changes to that specific area to coincide with a lot of things I wanted to implement for a while now. Singularity rifts have been placed in more areas to help change up the encounters when returning to them so that we are not always killing the same things each time. These will also get stronger as the player progresses more throughout the game. Before I release the demo I want to give you guys a couple more bosses that use the actual marine AI and the temperature system, more on that later. Last weekend I attended the Game Jam in Calgary hosted by Direct-Play and was able to churn out a small game call…
- Update: June 1st - 2 June 2019
Hi everyone, Apologies for the sparse updates, polish and more UI studies was taking place throughout the month. https://i.imgur.com/1H8L4dw.gif As you can see, some standard fair items have been instantiated, health bars for major bosses are present and a few of them have undergone some revisions to better suit what the player is suppose to know before reaching the boss. Door locks that require you to defeat enemies in the room akin to other action games exist but in Organism 8 however, you'll be able to use "door breachers". These are cheap craftable items that you can make but can only hold few at a time requiring you to think about when you just want to force a door open and skip a fight. https://i.imgur.com/tZSNon4.gif They are also needed to reach certain chests that hold new items and blue prints I'm a big fan of lore books in games. Here we have a simple page flipping mechanism…
- Progress Report April 08 2019 - 9 April 2019
Hi Guys, I took a couple months break just to learn some better ways to animate characters using Unity's animation system, some inventory management protocols and cleaned up some deprecated code that is no longer viable. If you guys remember the floating shield boss from the steam trailer that had no arms or animations, well... He now has both! https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BrokenRecklessChamois.webp The actual fight has also seen some changes that better suit the area. Since this is part of the beginning and I wanted the player to focus on simply reflecting shots and taking advantage of the opportunity from it early on in the game, it would make sense to refocus the fight on those mechanics. Status effects and crowd control have also started to make its way into the game along with animations for them. https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BraveLimpingEskimodog.webp Thanks again for your patience and…
- Mini Update: Jan 29 2019 - 30 January 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33435850%2F4129c92cbc436c62ae99bf3646ce09e5fe2df76b.gif A lot of learning/research in 2018. I would like to apologize in regards to the interval in updates these past few months. I've been going through workshops and text in regards to various different things and as you can see in the top left, a lot of time has been spent on learning what Vulkan is about, something I've been aggressively following since mid 2016ish (recently supported by Unity). The result? Almost triple the amount of frames in certain areas or at the very least a 60% increase in framerate for high load areas such as underwater rooms where the water utilizes an acute grid system for temperature handles(currently WIP, this may be swapped for localized behavior). So far I am quite happy with the transition (some crashes, no blue screens though). Also we ha…
- Website finally back up - 3 January 2019
First post of 2019! A jerry rigged wordpress is up and running for some of my bigger blog posts at https://mind-framesoftware.com/. I'll have to spend some time to design a custom font and various other things to get away from the default templates and get something going that is more original. None the less, the first blog post of 2019 is up on the website and I hope you guys enjoy reading it. What are your guys' new years resolution btw? mine is to get a playable demo up and running. EDIT: new blog seems to be not showing on PC D: Here is a direct link. https://mind-framesoftware.com/first-post-of-2019/
- Happy Holidays Guys! - 22 December 2018
https://giant.gfycat.com/HighImaginaryBaiji.gif Thank you guys again for the continued wishlist adds and views. Happy Holidays and Happy New Years!
- Nov 16, Mini Update: Loot Crates - 17 November 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33435850%2Ffeea44df2febe59f9944ebd069f003a7b2a2d602.gif Hi Everyone, I've been meaning to add this in for a bit, a simple addition to the environment, loot crates of various sizes. Smallest ones introduced near the entrance of a room with the largest and most plentiful located off the beaten path. The main focus of development is still on the marines at the moment. Currently the game goes into alert phase the moment the player is seen by a marine, this is to be replaced by a radio mechanic that will give the player time to respond to an alerted location. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33435850%2F91833ef3f3756d128451bed9c9eec735ca12f0ed.gif As always, thanks again for your time.
- Small Update: Nekril Marines Nov 06 - 7 November 2018
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FloweryPinkHammerkop-size_restricted.gif Hi everyone. The progress of the marines is moving forward. Work has been busy so progress has been slow but still steady. One of the main design choices I've made in regards to the marines is modular attributes based on what armor and equipment is generated for them. As you can see, there are different helmets, chest pieces, legs, etc for them. These will dictate various factors such as whether they generate an aura or if they grant Amp to fellow marines. Helmets can dictate whether they either see or hear things as both a sight and audio component is assigned to them. AI has been worked on as well. I look forward to providing a detailed post once more has been accomplished in regards to their array setup and the new weapons that I have in store for them. As always, thank you guys again for the continued interest.
