EXOP - 501 - First person puzzler-survival-horror

Welcome to EXOP-501 (Exoplanet 501). It was discovered by probes after the technology to exploit wormholes were discovered, and Earth send out thousands in every direction. There's something down there. Down there, the probes have registered artificial structures on the surface, but have not picked up any electronic signals from the planet or any of the surrounding planets.

The Rickenbacker, a research ship has been dispatched with a team of scientists and security personnel to investigate.

EXOP-501 (yeah, I know, I need a better name) is a first-person puzzle RPG with a survival-horror attitude. There's something down there, getting to that something is hard and difficult. The fauna on the planet is unknown, and possibly dangerous. And there's that something again. Hidden. Powerful. Intelligent.

This is my current project. Unlike my last, it is limited and constrained in scope and locality. Right now I'm working on the layout of the Rickenbacker, which will be the first level.

 

This is Ms Emelia Bell, the protagonist of EXOP-501.



I spent an hour this evening trying to make her in MakeHuman. All the assets are from there. I decided to clothe her with MakeHuman assets for public consumption. Those are not the clothes she will wear in the game.

Ms Bell is a 2103 graduate of the "Natural Sciences" program of Cambridge University. During her graduate work she was the one who spotted the discrepancies in the telemetry from the EXOP-501 probes. Like with all science, the great breakthroughs start not with "Eureka, I've got it!" but with "Wait, what? That's funny..." Now she has been rewarded with a junior position on the Rickenbacker.

There's nothing special about her. If someone gave her a gun, she wouldn't know what to do with it. She's clever, but not very trained. And she's about to meet the Something.

 

My retopology of Emelia Bell is going okayish, I just wish I had more time to spend on it. I've also spent some time writing a design document, and the outline of the story. I have also started to work a bit on my first enemy, which is a cross between a crow and an octopus.

Silly design document is full of things like this.

Code reuse is a wonderful thing. I have a lot of that already from my other game, End Time. But isn't such vague descriptions wonderful? How do you translate that into code.

 

I'm working on two levels for my game. One indoor level and one outdoor one. First I'm going to do the indoor level. I'm going for a style like this.



I've already boxed out the whole level.



Next I want to add detail and better materials and textures. Here's a quick (and very boring) render I did in Blender with the Blender renderer.

 

My studies in art continues. What I've been doing over the last few days is to try to learn anatomy. I've been abusing Blender's sculpting functions bad. Some truly horrid things have passed over my screens of late. But also things I'm kind of proud of. Not much related to THE GAME, but it's all about building foundations.

 

Sounds interesting! The interior of the ship looks cool, like the design, but also pretty luxury. Very clean look I assume the technological advance is far.

Just wondering: how far are you with the programming part of the game mechanics? I often fell from the road by distraction from graphics and art.

 

Emelie is coming along.



There's a lot of work left to do, mainly when it comes to textures and animation. I've started the texturing, and I'm pretty pleased with what I've done so far. Obviously there's a lot left to do on that front. This is a 3 million poly model that I'm using as a base for texturing.

Thanks! I haven't actually sat down to do much coding on this. If I do, I know I'll spend most of my time there, and I'll end up with a lot of 'programmer art' which look terrible. I have an old project along these lines, and I plan to repurpose a lot of the code from that one. It should cover maybe 60 per cent of the mechanics for movement and cameras and interaction. The rest I'll do when I'm done with the art. I have a list of what needs to be done.

 

Maybe I should update this thread...

But it's not like I plan to release this game. It's my "screw around in" project. And it's spread across two engines: unity where I try out coding, and Unreal where I try out art.

Anyway, first page of my design document is (yes, I have one of those):

You are Emma Bell, 25 year old post-graduate from Glasgow University. This is your first job, and you took it to get out and see the universe. Thing is, the universe is now about to show you more than you bargained for because… The game starts with you waking up in an escape pod on an alien inhospitable planet. The pods next to you are emtpy, and if the people in them had died, they'd still be in the pods.

They're somewhere out there, and your task is to survive long enough to find them and join them.

Your first task is to get the pod operational. The pod has a shackled AI which you can use to control instruments: samplers, replicators, nanomanufacturing facilities, and so on.

The shackled AI will also scan the emergency networks, to see if you can find the others. Having done that, there's a whole world out there to explore, and you will need to explore it. You need to find materials and substances. Your replicators need to make water and food. Without it, you'll die. And out there are the answers to the questions you have.

Where did the other survivors go, and why? Why did they leave you in the first place in the pod? Why didn't they wake you along with the others? This planet obviously has plant-life, but does it have animal life? And is it dangerous to you? And what is that structure two miles south from the pod. Nature abhores straight lines, and there's no straighter lines than that thing.

You try to the nanomanufacturing. Maybe you can make a gun, but you find that Emma is a product of her culture. Emma has never held a gun in her life. Making guns is prohibited, and you need the permission of the security detail to do so.

And of course, the security detail is likely dead or scattered somewhere out there. There are guns, but has very little ammo – I’d be surprised if there are 200 bullets on this world.

This world is not going to be won by swinging a gun. This world is going to be won by intelligence: using avalanches to block geography. Going around, or over, obstacles. And everything will come at a cost: water, nourishment, sleep - everything has to be managed to progress.​

What have I done since the last post? Well, I've scrapped what I had three times, and started over. Still, the idea for the game is the same.

What will I write about here now that I've updated this post? I don't know. I don't really do coding, and it feels weird to talk about the stuff I do in Unreal here, so I probably won't. I'll limit myself to my blender work, and my texture work.

Maybe I should get collaborators? But then I'd want people who are both serious about the project AND who realise it's a "screwing around in"-thing where the aim is to learn and try things, and not to release anything. Anyway. I thought I should update this. Either that or remove the link in my sig here on the forums.

 

This is the oldest part of my game which has survived. I made this a couple of years ago. Haven't seen a reason for a change. I quite like this.




I have started to texture the world now. I have implemented player stats, a quest system, inventory, and so on. Just started on the first iteration of my universal ground texture.





And, for you technophiles... This is what I develop on.