"Secrets of the Waves" - v2.0 is out now!

A week after Global Game Jam 2017 began, I've finished off version 2.0 of "Secrets of the Waves" and I'm super happy with it!

Grab a copy here for Windows or Mac and give it a play!
https://muzboz.itch.io/secretwaves


Here is a little teaser video, showing a few snippets of the game in action...




In version 2.0...

• I've added a big storm, which was always meant to be in the original release.
• The camera is tweaked in several ways.
• The compass now has a marker to make it clearer which direction you are traveling.

I'm planning to come back another time and work on...

• A new boat model that's deeper, and can therefor sit in the water better.
• A cloth sail, and perhaps even proper simulated sailing mechanics, with the player having to catch wind in the sail to move.
• Detailing the environment with more decorations, trees, grass, ruins, etc.
• Add more other islands and objects of interest in the ocean.

Below you can see a video of the full journey in action, but the game is about exploration and navigation, so play it yourself before watching the video if you want to discover things for yourself!  (Recommended).  :D

- Your pal, Murray of MUZBOZ Manor

"Secrets of the Waves" - Global Game Jam 2017

I'm really happy with my Global Game Jam effort for 2017!  

Here's a teaser video that show the first 7 minutes or so.  The full journey goes for about 20 minutes.  




I made the game entirely on my own, and I got a nice little sailing exploring game finished!

It's was a bit inspired by the music of Secret Exploration Society, a band/album I made with my friend Jim Batt... four of those tracks make up the soundtrack for this game. The album itself was very much about exploring and sailing, and I made this thinking of it as a sort of music-video for the album.  :D

The game features numerous things...

• An ever changing sky / fog color, as the weather and time of day turns.
• Quite a nice feeling sailing mechanic.
• Nice camera controls that are mostly smooth and cinematic.
• A compass that shows the direction you are facing at the top of the compass.
• Some OK little islands and environments.

Things that didn't make it in, but that I want to get in are...

• I aimed to get an actual storm into the game, but I didn't get time. 
• I wanted a better cloth-sim sail, and a little person in the boat with a cloth-sim cloak.  That would look cool in accompaniment of a decent wind system in the game!
• Better sailing physics.
• An ocean that also grows and swells, waves become huge in the storm, then calm down again.
• More detailed and pretty little environments.  Trees, grass, stones, more finesse.
• Improvements to the way the sky color and fog colors work, to prevent distant lands popping in and out on the horizon clipping plane.
• Finish off the narrative better.  Currently there's no clear ending.
• Add sea foam around objects emerging from the ocean.
• Add more other islands and objects of interest in the ocean.
• And maybe being able to get out of the boat and walk around!?  :)

- Murray

ROMACK: Dev Log 003 - Ragdolls, Doors, NavMesh Obstacles

I had fun this past weekend adding some new features to my Thiefy / Quakey prototype.



I added doors which open away from you (depending which way you approach them from).

The doors are also Navmesh Obstacles, which carve into the Navmesh when closed, thus blocking the AIs from going through.

Ultimately, I plan to make it so the AIs can open and close the doors where logical.

I'm thinking of swapping out the Quakey stuff and focussing on Thiefy stuff as I keep going on the AI.  I might use the Thief guard voices as my placeholder sounds, so I can check off the AI states as I get them into my implementation...  things like...

• "Dum da dum..." -> Idle / Patrol between patrol points.
• "Hey, did I see something?" -> Suspicion.
• "You there!  You're dead meat!" -> Chase and attack.
• "Hey, where did they go?" -> Lost sight of you.
• "I'll find you!" -> Suspicious, searching for you (cooling down).
• "Hmmm, gone now, I guess..." -> Given up, lost track of you.

ROMACK: DevLog 002 - A Quake-meets-Thief style AI system

I took these Christmas holidays to work on various fun projects.

I've been working on a Quake-meets-Thief inspired project these past few days.

Some basic AI & gameplay is taking shape!

I'm really happy to be learning new things about in C# and Unity in general. :D



I've been working on some enemies that launch grenades at the player.  They detect you by sight, taking field-of-view, line of sight, and the lightness of the player's position into account.  

I also added basic ragdolls for when they die, and they carry around torches to see with.

Here's several minutes of me just running around playing with the AI's.


Note: I'm using some sounds from Quake, but the grenade and launcher are my own models and textures.

ROMACK: Dev Log 001 - Beginnings of a Quake-like

I started playing with some Quake-like elements in my prototype level.




I made a Grenade Launcher and Grenade in Maya and Substance Painter, and made my homage to the Quake Grenade Launcher.  What a beauty!

This demo also has the lighting of torches, spreading light around the building.  But I removed that soon to allow for "hiding in the dark!"...