Games [WIP] Hostile Mars - HDRP/DOTS/ECS Base Building Tower Defense Automation game

I've been working on this project full time for about 3 years now. I left my corporate job path as an Electrical Engineer to pursue game development full time. This is my first title (I had a few XBLIG releases as a nights and weekends thing). Some of you may have seen it previously under its original title which was Hero Syndrome.

After a lot of feedback, I've changed directions of the game into what Hostile Mars is today, a base builder/defense third-person shooter. This was a little over a year ago when the direction drastically changed.

More recently, I decided that the performance wasn't what I needed for a game at the scale of enemies that I had designed for, so about 4 months ago I rewrote much of the engine in DOTS.

I am starting this thread because I am getting closer to release and I am starting to write dev updates to try and get exposure and feedback. I will post my dev updates here.

For starters, here is a sneak peek video showing that automated delivery bots are used in the automation system in place of the traditional conveyor belts that other games have implemented.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Wishlist if you find it interesting: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1402820/Hostile_Mars/

main page: https://www.HostileMars.com

 

I decided to rewrite most of the engine to accommodate one of the design pillars: lots of enemies.

 

Short clip of the bomb traps in action:

 

Devlog #03
Development Update Highlights: Plants! (Lichens and Bryophytes), New Robot Textures, and Data-Oriented Design: IK

Another productive week and another devlog!

The past week has been spent on implementing an IK (Inverse Kinematics) system using a data-oriented approach. All of the enemies are entities instead of traditional game objects, which allows for a crazy amount of enemies both active and on-screen simultaneously!

The only problem with this is that most of the systems that were in place need to be rewritten in ECS.

It isn't necessarily the best task to show off, since the IK is relatively the same as it was before, but it is nice to have out of the way. It is one of the last things that needed to be converted over to DOTS.

A few other things that have been completed in the last week:

HIGHLIGHTS
Plants!
Yes, some forms of moss are beginning to be engineered to stay alive, even thrive, on Mars. These are not traditional rooted plants, but lichens and bryophytes:



New Enemies
They might seem friendly, but then why would they have a laser cannon for a face?



Laser Trap
An updated laser trap:



That's it for this week, another update each and every week! Also, I am posting a development roadmap this week on the Steam page.

Take care,
-Jake

 

This week was spent on a number of improvements with a goal to get the build into playtesting soon. I've also created a road map for the development up until PC and Console launch.
I wasn't happy with how the enemy interactions were so I reworked the behavior coding on how they react to bullet hits, seeing the player, and pursuing the player. It's getting better day by day. Here are a few of the things that were completed this week:

Turrets


Moving along to the turrets! I want to have the base turrets in the game and upgradable within the next few weeks, which include:

1. Projectile Turrets (laser bullets, physics-based)
2. Beam Turrets (continuous laser beam, hitscan)
3. Tesla Turrets (shock turret, hitscan )
4. Rocket Launcher Turrets (rockets, physics-based)
5. Glue Turret (Coming Soon!)

I hope to have the VFX done in the next few weeks to show this one in action!

Environment
There are also a few new variants to the plant life on Mars, as seen here:





Looks like the terraforming activities paid off! I wonder if these can be harvested for use ...

Performance
I've also further polished the IK Conversion to be Data-Oriented and am seeing great results. Here is a test showing the performance difference between the traditional game object/object-oriented paradigm coding and data-oriented focused coding:



Development Road Map
As promised, here is the roadmap for development:


And More
Next week I am going to be implementing more enemy behaviors, focused on the ground enemies.
Ground enemies take more damage from most damage-based traps while being more resistant to physics-based traps such as force traps and other movement-altering traps.

After that I will be introducing combining enemies, a new enemy type that gets stronger with units packed closer together.

That's it for this week, another update on progress next week!

Take care,

-Jake

 

Devlog #05
Development Update: The Craft Bench, Submitting to the Unfold Games, Playtesting, and Bomb Traps, Human Rail Cannon!
This Was A Busy Week!

I felt that this week was super productive and I managed to get a number of things accomplished.

I've added a few new models to the game and did a lot of playtesting/cleanup in preparation for the Unfold Games Awards submission deadline on Monday, March 15th.

We are also getting ready to playtest very soon. This week I am going to go over the build with a few people and then plan to playtest with a few people that have shown interest in helping test the game.

I've also started inviting people to the Discord to manage the playtesting selection and feedback. If you are potentially interested in helping with early playtesting join with this link: https://discord.gg/EpmPSmd

I've worked a lot on the initial 30 minutes to an hour of the game, honing in on a good flow for time spent between combat, gathering resources, and the number of items that are unlocked through upgrades or built.

Craft Bench

This brings me to the first model to show off, the craft bench. The craft bench is attached to the Home Base Command Center and is for the manual creation of items. Although you can still queue up items to be built, you cannot retrieve or deposit items to the craft bench with delivery bots. The main purpose is to craft items in small quantities that you may be short on to get to the next upgrade stage.



Stacking Thrust Pads

I've updated the thrust pad and have had some interesting builds with it, one propelling anything that walks through it into the air!



This will work for enemies as well. The ones that take fall damage and that are susceptible to thrust pads will be shot into the air and break to pieces on impact. If they land on other enemies, they will also take damage as well.

Mesh Updates

A bunch of the panels were updated to be simple 6 sided meshes instead of the previous LOD versions. There will be a lot of floor panels in the scene and this way performance won't take a hit when someone like Josh from "Let's Game It Out" tries to break everything.



Force Fields

I've added force fields to the Home Base Command Center and the player as well. You will have an over-shield that protects from projectiles and other damage. Be careful, once the shield is down you are susceptible to pretty much any kind of damage. If you get shot while your shield is drained, it's game over! But the shield regenerates after being out of combat for a short time.



I've done a lot of work with sound effects in the last week as well. It was fun to design sounds to play along with the force fields, their deflections, and powering up and down.

If you aren't following on social media, I also posted a short video of a bomb trap container on Twitter.

It boosts enemies into the air with a thrust trap, pushes them into a box with another thrust trap. Then, you know, bomb traps. I also did some volume testing with 1000+ enemies at the same time with great results on performance.

Lastly, I've been working on a few new visual effects for explosions and machine functionality, so I will have those complete and ready to share for next week.

That's it for this week, another update on progress next week!
Take care,
-Jake

 

Devlog #06 :
Development Update: Energy Shields, New Spawn Mechanics, The Harvester Building, And Playtesting Preparation!
Preparation For Playtesting (Steam link: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1402820/announcements/detail/3049473159354835664 )

A lot of tasks were completed in the last week, one step closer to getting the game into playtesting. A few days were spend on cleaning up things for the playtest alpha, such as UI elements, the objectives system, and inventory management. I've also tweaked the way enemies spawn. Previously they would spawn as a continuous stream of enemies, giving the player a chance to harvest the scraps and any valuable materials they drop when destroyed. Some playtesters found this to be cumbersome at the start when they were trying to figure out how to play the game and navigate the systems. They now spawn every couple of minutes based on a wave timer.

Objectives are shown on the left-hand side:


Obviously, waves are nothing new in the tower defense genre but I do feel like it plays better at the start. And when the base gets bigger the enemies start to spawn more frequently, still allowing some major farming to happen in mid and late game.

UI Tweaks

I've been also tweaking the UI a bit. It is not finalized and the assets are still placeholders until some more testing happens to find out if the necessary information is there before investing time in making a final design. (UI work is probably my least favorite part of development, and I usually try to hire someone that enjoys it and is more talented than I.)



Lots of Enemies and the IK System

I spent a good amount of time refining the IK system that I made to work with Unity's DOTS framework. It has been more of a challenge than I anticipated, simply because of how translations (positions) and rotations are updated each frame. I should say "not updated each frame" and that is what caused some headaches with having to update the positional and rotational data for multiple iterations inside of a multithreaded job. But it's coming out nicely and there should be some walkers out in the following weeks finally.



Most of these enemies have already been implemented prior to the decision to move to DOTS, so these tasks are mainly converting them over to the new system.

Force Fields

I decided to add a force field to the player and the buildings. It plays well with the health recharge of the player, which adds power back to the shield in increments after not being hit for so long. Health is very limited but the shield is the main defense the player has and can be easily recharged if in cover or after clearing a group of enemies.



Harvester Upload Station

A new building is ready to show, the Harvester Upload Station.



This is built along with a harvester robot to collect ore that is on the surface of the environment. This is different from the rock and mineral harvesting you do manually as the player (which later turns into a drill-bot to do it for you).

Instead, the harvester gathers ore embedded in the ground that the mining tools can't harvest. This is much more efficient than harvesting these materials through rock processing and deconstructing.

I've also added some visual effects to show the power range of Home Base and power distributors alike. They both have a wireless range for electricity to energize buildings, turrets, and traps. Each of these requires power to operate. The only buildable items that do not require power are some storage systems and base building panels.

A few new rock variants have been made as well.

VFX System Causing Crashes

I squashed a nasty bug that was causing crashes in the playtesting too. There was an issue with the way that images were stored within the Visual Effects System. Due to wanting to have thousands of effects in the game at once, I had to write a custom system to handle the visual effect spawn locations.

Normally a new effect would be spawned on demand one at a time, like an explosion or a bullet impact effect. This wasn't effective when pushing into the hundreds all at once so I created a system that would take the positional and rotational data of each effect and save them as a pixel in an image as color data. each color is 3 points of data (red green blue) and positions/Euler rotations match up perfectly with that data. So effectively each pixel represents the location to spawn a new visual effect particle which spawns all of the effects needed that frame in the same vfx group, reducing draw calls, calculations, and additional overhead. It works really well and I've tested up to 30,000 explosions at once without a problem!

(a video of the vfx testing with 30,000 particle effects: https://imgur.com/gallery/08lRrrz )

But I am relieved that the bug was a simple fix. I was assigning a new image to the variable each frame and it was being saved in memory. they added up and eventually crashed the system. All I had to do was resize the existing image and reassign new colors instead of creating a new image. Problem solved.

That's it for this week, come back next week for another update on development, and information on the start of the first private playtesting!

Take care,
-Jake

PS - I'm going to start adding Bug Fixes and Design Changes in the dev logs moving forward now that playtesting is approaching. I started recording everything a few days ago so it doesn't include the entire week. Future weeks will have the entire list of fixes and changes.

BugFixes:
Changed character collider collision detection to extrapolate to fix rare occasions of the player falling through the terrain.
Fixed bug that caused a crash when an enemy entity was removed while in the middle of a pathfinding calculation. The entity now waits until the path calculation is complete or doesn't start it when an enemy is queued for removal.
Fixed a crash caused by reassigning a new image in the VFX system each frame by assigning new data to the existing image.
Fixed UI bug that caused the selected machine crafting item to un-highlight making it hard to see what was selected.

Design Changes:
Changed enemy spawning from "continuous over time" to "intermittent waves" to allow the player more time to figure out the mechanics when starting the game and to better expose them to the combat system.
Moved Objectives panel to the bottom left corner to avoid being covered when the inventory is open.
Added text on the screen to display the time until the next wave is spawned.
Changed the layout of the Craft machines and Deconstruction machines to clearly show the input and the output in separate blocks.

Added:
Game Over text screen for when the player dies or Home Base is destroyed.

 

Devlog #10: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1402820/announcements/detail/4792368847583580718

As more people are getting the chance to playtest, tons of great feedback continues to come in about the systems and gameplay. Thanks again to everyone that has been kind enough to participate in playtesting while providing their feedback.

Over the past week, I have implemented a lot of changes, a lot of new items, and a lot of performance tweaks to the engine. As usual, we'll look at the new stuff first.

Environment




Additional environment pieces are also being worked on and some have been added to the playtesting version of the game, as shown:

Home Base Drill




This is the entire reason that you were sent on this mission. Be the first to establish an operational drill for the mining colony to claim its rightful place on Mars. (picture in the header image)

The player will be responsible for slowly building up the drill over the course of the game. The completion of The Drill is going to be the target end goal of the game. Progress will be done through collecting various resources, researching new technologies, and unlocking items.

Weapon Upgrade Station




I have also been working on the environment quite a bit. The models for area debris from previous attempts by humanity to land someone on the surface, which always ended in disaster. But luckily for you, their ships and scrap parts are still left behind to salvage. You can find materials, weapons, tech, and some other surprises in their cargo containers.

Quickview Popup Window




I've added a new popup window for machines that automatically shows up when you are near the object. This hopefully will make it easier to see what a machine is currently making, how many items are queued up, and how many items have already been made, all without going into the menu!

It will also allow the player to pull items out or restock a machine without going into the menu.

UI Updates


With feedback and bugs coming in, I'm continuously working to fix and clean up any parts of the game that might be confusing for the player. A lot of the texts have been changed and hud elements re-arranged to better suit the initial tutorial phase.

I've also finished up on the harvester menu, which has been added into the playtesting build. This shows what each assigned Harvester Bot is doing and how far away they have wandered to get resources. You will be able to call them back in the middle of their harvesting activities if you need more of a resource.



Remember to join the Discord channel if you are interested in playtesting as I will continue to bring more and more people into playtesting as it gets more stable. I want to get all of the obvious bugs out of the way before more people get access so they don't have to worry about the common stuff.


Take care,
Jake

 

This is looking awesome. Best of luck with it.

 

Looks sweet!

 

@carking1996 @sheffieldlad Thanks a lot guys.

Devlog #11: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1402820/view/3061865032399655225

Tons Of New Environment Hideouts, New Scrap Turrets, Frost and Magnet Traps, UX Overhaul!

Dev Log 11


It's been a few weeks since the last update. I've still been focused on Hostile Mars and have made some great progress. There were a few weeks that I was unavailable due to my first baby boy being born! It was an incredible experience and am extremely grateful to say he is doing well.

The past month has been focused mainly on two things: expanding the environment exploration content and adding more items. A few new features have been added as well and the menu has had a complete revamp to make things easier for players to understand and engage with them.

First I'll start with the visual stuff.


Traps


New models were made for both the Frost Trap and the Magnet Trap. I really like how they both turned out:



Scrap Turrets


I've also added a lot of new items for the beginning of the game to ease the player from a starting point to building the main base elements. A lot of scraps and pick-up items have been added so that the player can make "scrap/makeshift" type weapons and items. For example, you can now create a turret much earlier with just a few scraps from the enemies with similar parts. Here are the projectile and shock scrap turrets:



And as usual, they are upgradeable. Stage 0 and stage 1 turrets shown above.

Hideouts


Tons of new elements have been added to place around the maps and allow the player to explore while discovering new items and technologies.

Here are a few of the hideout spots you will find around the maps. Careful, the Legacy Bots are protecting some of them!





UI Updates

Another big piece that has been done since the last update is the UI.

I received a lot of feedback during the last playtesting regarding different aspects of the machine, turret, and Home Base interface menus. I don't feel that it is a good thing that the menus were one of the more discussed items. A menu is there to connect the player to actions in-game and ideally, should be as seamless and simple as possible. If it is done well then they should be invisible to the player and feel like an extension to their immersion in the game world.

I spoke with a few other game-devs that have studied UX design quite a bit and went through an exercise where I took out as much as possible, then focused on which elements the player would interact with the most then made them the most noticeable elements on the interface.
Here are a few of the updated panels. The Color scheme isn't final so as of right now they are simple greyscale, and I won't worry about that until after the next round of playtesting because if they don't work well and have to be changed then the design piece would have been wasted time.

I also redid much of the code for the UI eliminating (hopefully) any inventory or UI bugs that were there during the last playtest. This also includes adding hotkeys for shortcuts for inventory management, like half stack submit and click transfer (vs only drag).

Here are some of the new layouts:





I've also added a new build menu feature that allows you to see all of the unlocked elements for the player and see which they are currently able to place. This included adding functionality for "free placement" items such as the new scrap turret, which does not require a panel to build on:



A few days were spent cleaning up some of the old code and trying to get everything as clean as possible to reduce regression and unit testing bugs.

Coming Next


Moving forward I plan to finish all of the new items and environment integrations after which I will be adding the automation into the build! This is the core of the game and I am excited to see how players interact with this.

Also, a new "Wave Leader" enemy type is coming soon, more details on that next week

Thanks for all the support! If you want to join us for the next playtest, join the Discord: https://discord.gg/EpmPSmd

Until next week,
Jake

 

Hostile Mars Devlog #13
Automation With Delivery Bots and New Super and Mega Upgraded Turrets!
AUTOMATION


Automation is finally here with the addition of automated delivery bots!



These bots take items from and to wherever you choose. It is set up through a simple interface where the pickup location, item to pick up, and dropoff location are set.



They can be upgraded to move faster and carry more items.

It makes a huge difference with time spent on distribution when implementing automation bots, though the base versions are a bit clumsy...



NEW TURRET DESIGN


The upgraded turret models were updated this week:



The late-stage turrets have been revisited and remodeled for a few reasons:

• They were too tall and it was hard to tell how many floors up they would occupy. I've changed the max height so that it occupies 2 floors of space.
  
  
• The animations were very hard to see with the barrel configuration. Basically, the barrels were too close, so they are more evenly distributed now.
  
• They needed a better frame. Previously it was a bit of a "copy and paste as many barrels as you can" but if you looked closely the edges and corners didn't really look great. Now they are constructed so that the geometry makes sense.

The projectile turret and the tesla (shock) turret were both redone:



ENVIRONMENT


The environment is still being developed as well, adding functionality to randomly generate Legacy Hideouts and place them with varying items randomly around the map:



There will be plenty of these little hideouts on the map. There will also be distinct points of interest locations on the map to help with navigation as references points. These custom areas will offer more loot and greater resistance from whatever may be defending that area.

I am still trying to get the build in a playtest-able state which is proving a bit more than I thought with the new environmental changes.

HIRING


I am looking to hire a few artists part-time to help with the environmental design, environmental setup/config, and UI art/Icons. If you know of any talented people that might be looking for a side gig, please pass this information along or let me know.

That's it for this update, keep up with any playtesting updates on the Discord: https://discord.gg/aK8aVtY

Take Care,
Jake

 

I love those tesla turrets!

 

@jorikito Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. I am fortunate to have found a talented modeler that produces great work for the game.

 

Devlog #14
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1402820/view/5664952058190906665
Automation System Overhaul with new Flying Delivery Drones! New Wave Leader Elite Enemy, Base MODS!


REVAMPED AUTOMATION SYSTEM!


The past few weeks have brought many changes and upgrades to the existing automation system design.

The ability to directly interact with each delivery agent is no longer necessary and has been replaced with a delivery agent job system.



To create a new delivery route the player just defines a route in the new Delivery Route Planner and defines how many delivery agents will be assigned to that job. The automation system automatically assigns any unassigned agents to that job.

(If you are an avid fan of automation games, this replaces the conveyor belt system that is common in other games.)



This makes changing delivery routes extremely easy. Instead of removing a long conveyor belt and fitting it inside of a complex base, just reselect the pickup or dropoff location and the delivery bots automatically handle the pathfinding to an optimal route. This also means no more splitters or combiner blocks.

New Flying Delivery Bot


The starting delivery agent is the delivery bot you've seen frequently in past updates. These bots, though effective, can be limited in their pathing due to being a ground unit.

Though there are plenty of upgrades to apply to make them faster, smarter, and carry more units, ultimately they are bound to the limitations of navigating around ground buildings.

But.. don't worry about clogging your base with hundreds of delivery ground units because now there is a delivery flying unit that doesn't need ground! It transports your goods in whatever open space is available.



Player Combat Bots Revealed


I'm excited to finally announce the first screenshots of the player combat bots. These guys will fight incoming bots and patrol around the base to alert you of the location of any threats. They can also be assigned to follow you out and about in the harsh Mars environment.

The extra firepower will be needed on longer ventures away from Home Base. Just remember to keep them fully charged as there aren't any charging stations on Mars (yet).



MODS


Another BIG feature in the game that I am excited to finally announce is the MODS system. Every single building, trap, turret, and even delivery bot has the ability to add Modules. Mods are extra boosts to existing production, firepower, efficiency, and many other details of how each item works.



Each mod can be printed and then programmed in the mod programmer to your specific needs. Finding new Mod blueprints will enhance your selection on how to upgrade each building.





Some examples:

• Turrets: Increased Range, Damage
  
• Buildings: Decrease Production Cost, Decrease Time To Produce
  
• Traps: Decrease Energy Consumption, Increase Damage
  
• Delivery Bot: Increase Speed, Increase Storage Amount

A New Threat: Wave Leaders!


Another exciting reveal this week is the addition to Wave Leaders. After the first few initial waves, each wave of enemies will have a Wave Leader.

These guys are sort of a sub-boss and are the strongest unit in a non-boss wave.

Defeating them will give much more loot than a standard unit, but as you can imagine they are much tougher to bring down.

They also have the ability to boost the stats of enemies around them but usually are the last to reach your base. It's up to you if you want to take shots with a long-range rifle or venture out past the standard enemies to try and take them out before getting too close to the base.



PLAYTESTING NEXT WEEK!


As everything gets polished up for playtesting, I will be looking for more automation fans to play some of the game. We have a survey if you think you would add value to our playtesting. Fill out the survey here.

As we did last time, we will be monitoring the playtest live in some cases, as that is the most valuable way to learn how to make the game better. It was extremely successful last time around and we found a lot of things that needed to be modified to make the player experience better.

Thank you to everyone that playtested last time. If you playtested (and anyone that playtests moving forward) you will automatically get the build each playtesting cycle and be added to the Playtesters Channel on Discord. Your feedback is still extremely valuable. The live playtesting sessions will be reserved for fresh players each time that haven't experienced the game yet.

That's all for this week. If you want to support the game, join our Discord channel!
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg



Take Care,
-Jake

 

Devlog #15
Power System Management, New Enemies, New Environment Hideouts, Bosses, More ...
Steam devlog: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1402820/view/3142949576414442929


Lots of Updates!


It has been a while since the last update but progress has not slowed down a bit! A few of the systems received revamps while the power management system was fully implemented.

A bunch of new items have been created and there have been big changes to the item progression in general. Enough overview, let's jump into it:


Power System Management


This is a major component of how everything works in Hostile Mars. Most things that use power can receive power through Power Distributors, which supply wireless power to nearby devices.

Power Distributors get the energy they distribute from Power Generators, Renewable Power Sources, and batteries.

Generators can transfer energy from fuels and batteries found in the world into usable power for the Distributors or Batteries.

Batteries can be built to store surplus energy to help out when power generation can not meet demand.


(Ignore design, this will be updated to look like not-programmer art)


Progression


A big rework of how the game progression works was a large focus of the last few months.

If you were unlucky enough to play the previous demo versions, you will know that the progression system was a multiple tech unlock wave-based system.
I have shifted this to a technology skill branch system with separate Stages to separate the type of material that is most prevalent. For example, "Scrap" is the first that the player can unlock.

Technologies are unlocked by collecting data drives from the Paragon and the Legacy bots. The hard drives aren't in great shape, so multiple drives will be needed to decrypt complete files that provide new technologies to the player.



New Piece of Junk Weapons!





Environment Progress


A lot of work has been focused on the environment and creating interesting scenarios for the player when they feel the urge to explore the surface. Larger format hideouts are placed around the world and have interesting ways to provide additional materials to the player through puzzles, combat, and other trickery. Careful though, these junker-bots like to place traps.



Junkerbot Areas


The junkerbots have been multiplying and making new buildings and hideouts!






Tunneler


A lot of focus was put on creating out livable spaces prior to any human arrival, so it only makes sense that there are giant tunneling machines that are now only interested in hunting you down in large open areas of the map.



Pick Machine

Leave it at a rock to harvest while you are away or standing nearby in T-pose.


Some more new items/models


Recycler - Turns junk into usable materials!


New Harvesting Tools!


Mounted Scrap Turret!


Assembler!


Scrap Battery Banks!


Explosives!



That's all for this week. If you want to support the game, join our Discord channel! https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg


Take Care,
-Jake

 

Added scrap spike and scrap spring traps:

 

Well done. Looks stunning.

 

Scrap Town, Item Progression Changes, Tech Tree Updates, And More



Hostile Mars Devlog 16!

I've been continuing work grooming the new systems into the game to cooperate with the existing systems. I'm going to push a new build-up in a week, so let me know if you need a key to playtest.

Here are a few things done in the last couple of weeks:

Sand Hider

Sand Hiders are a new enemy type that hides in the sand and pop-up when they detect any threats to alert nearby scrap bots. Take them out quickly before they attract more scrap bots to attack!



ScrapTown

Scrap Town is the first of many areas on the map for the player to explore outside of their own base. It will contain lots of items, puzzles, enemies, and a few surprises too.

Scrap Town was created by the legacy robots that were abandoned from prior terraforming attempts gone wrong. Little robots looking for shelter from the more aggressive ones will be hiding in their makeshift shelters.



There is also an Arena in Scrap Town. This will trigger a small mini-game where waves of robots come out for the player to destroy and collect more scrap metal.

Careful, a few traps and sand hiders are waiting there as well.

Cell Storage Drives

A major revision has taken place with how the core mechanics of the game work. Cell drives are now the main component of item progression for the game and you will find them from fallen enemy scraps. Decrypting cell drives will uncover new technologies and items for you to build to continue expanding and upgrading the structures in your base, player weapons, vehicles, armor, and more.



Wave Progression

I've thought a lot about how to improve the wave progression in Hostile Mars. Throughout playtesting I have received feedback that the prior system was a bit arbitrary or confusing. It was based on collecting the required materials to be able to upgrade to the next stage in which an enemy wave would spawn.

I've split the game up into 6 stages. Each stage will have a set number of Paragon (the main attacking threat in the game) waves. throughout each stage, there will be sub-boss waves and at the end, a boss wave.



I feel that this plays much better while shifting focus more on combat and base building vs just gathering resources required by the next stage. Item management and progression is still a core-mechanic of the game, but it won't be the focus of the enemy wave system.

This also allows the player to progress the specific items they want. So a player more interested in automating their base defenses can unlock items that will allow for better delivery automation, turrets, and traps. Another player more interested in exploration could focus on vehicles and companion robots to help them travel and carry items from around the environment. And a combat-focused player can unlock better weapons, ammo, and gear first.



A few other minor things that have been completed in the last week:

Capacitor Charge ECS System

A capacitor system has been added for certain items in the game like the Scrap Launcher, allowing for supercapacitors to charge up and release a high amount of energy at once. This ties into the power management system and is being used by the new Scrap Launcher Turret.

Scrap Detail Lines to Turrets and Traps

A minor change showing the player the current stats of a turret or trap:

If you would like to know more about the project, get a key for playtesting, or follow future progress, join the Hostile Mars Discord:

https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg

Take Care,
-Jake

 

Devlog #17
Playtesting The Alpha, New Ground Enemy, New Wildlife Robots


Hostile Mars Devlog 17!

Game Playtesting

Thank you to everyone that helped playtest Hostile Mars!

This past weekend the alpha build was undergoing playtesting by the Discord community and I feel it went pretty well. Aside from all the small bugs and cleanup tasks, the build is relatively stable.



The playtesting build only included the first Stage of the game, which includes all of the scrap and junk items that serve as an intro to craft items, exploring the environment, collecting materials, and the item progression.

I plan to release the public demo here in the next week. If you are interested in the demo, come join us on Discord. It is the easiest place to provide feedback and/or bugs.

https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg

For the Demo, the second stage of the game (the core gameplay loop) will be added to the build. This includes Machines and Automation.

Playtesting Results



This last round of playtesting marks the 4th playtesting of the game. I am a big believer that playtesting is the key to a successful game. It is a good idea to have a goal or target of the playtest, and this time it was the first stage item progression and enemy waves.

Feedback comes in different forms, bugs, requests, annoyances, and enjoyability. The most valuable feedback is negative feedback and what seems cumbersome to the player.

Positive feedback is great but not extremely valuable outside of knowing which key features the players really enjoy, which can help shape design decisions.

The most valuable feedback is what players hate, what annoys or confuses them, and what they think is a bug that is actually intentional.

Usually, the player will provide what they think the problem is along with their pain points of the playtest, but the solution most of the time is something much different. It could be something as simple as an added sound effect, a different screen shake, or a different color.

I always try to provide a survey for players after they play to ask questions about what is being tested specifically, which I plan to do with the Alpha Demo initial playtesting.

New Enemy Types

Ball Bot



A new ground enemy was introduced in the alpha build, the Ball Bot (for lack of a clever name). They are the first Paragon ground enemies that are encountered in the game with a simple laser attack.

It is important to recognize that the different types each have their own strengths and weaknesses against player defenses. For example, ground-type enemies take much more damage from the spike trap, which hover enemies take more damage from the scrap launcher.



New Legacy/Wildlife Bots



A few legacy bots made their way into the build so that we can begin testing the interactions with random encounters while the player is exploring.



The Alpha Demo

As mentioned earlier, the alpha demo will be released and will focus more on the core gameplay elements that make up Hostile Mars. I would love for you to try it out for yourself, so if you are interested come over to the Discord.

https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg

I have a survey for anyone that decides to play the demo, so please fill the survey out if you can about your experience with the game and your experience with other builders like it.

Take Care,
-Jake

 

Looks sweet. Keep doing it

Which solution / approach did you choose for IK? Is it procedural?
What algorithm you based on?
I.e Fast-IK Is one of many.
Or did you use prebaked walking animations in fbx?

 

It is procedural. I implemented using CCD and used FinalIK as a reference. It is still one of the areas that I need to go back and clean up because there are some issues, but it's very similar to how it is done in FinalIK, but in DOTS.

 

WIP Opening Sequence. A crash landing (super original!)

 

Cool. Thx for an insight.
Myself I actually started at some point CCD conversion to DOTS but had little time to finish it. I did however converted final IK to DOTS.

 

Awesome, by any chance is it public? Just curious, I would be interested to see the implementation.

 

Unfortunately it is not. I haven't finished conversion, which WIP. Means broken

But OOP based code I was using as a reference starting point, was public. I would need to dig out it however.

 

Hostile Mars was selected to be in the PAX Rising Showcase! So I will be heading up to Boston this week to show the game at PAX East.

Also, new design for the logo. This is a poster for the convention. The tagline is only for this poster.

 

How is it went?

 

I am currently running an open playtest on Steam if anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088900/Hostile_Mars_Prologue/

Just click Request Access and it will automatically give you access and let you download it!

We also had a live let's play and answered questions people had from the game's Discord, posted here:

It went really well. A lot of positive feedback and interested players. Have had a big uptick as SplatterCatGaming followed by Real Civil Engineer posted videos on their YT channels.
Thanks for asking!

 

Devlog #18
Problems With Latest Playtest, New Spawn VFX, New UI, and Tech Tree, World Visualizers, Scrap Melee Trap, More

Quite a few things have been going on since the last update!




I'll show some of the changes and additions that have been worked on in the past few weeks. After that, I have some thoughts to share about the last playtest and why I feel that it didn't go well.

Some New Stuff

Spawn Effects

Added an effect for spawning objects, making it a little bit more enjoyable when placing objects.



Object Visualizers

Machines have a "quick view" window that shows the progress of that machine without having to go into the machine's menu. The same concept is being applied to traps and turrets with Object Visualizers. These will show health, ammo, power status, and any other useful information about an item without having to go into the menu.



Scrap Melee Trap

A new melee trap has been added which does high damage to hover bots and will initially be one of the first traps the player will be able to build.



Building Damage

Health on buildings, traps, and turrets is finally enabled. All of them can be repaired manually by the player with a button while looking at the object, or by Ally-Bots later on in the game (which roams around Homebase and repairs damaged stuff). The repairs cost different amounts of materials based on the 'Stage' the object comes from.

For example, Scrap Stage objects will require Scrap Metal while Iron Stage objects require Iron Plates. They will also require some repair-specific items in many cases, such as Machine Parts and Electrical Parts, which are new to the game.

We are also working with a new system that handles streaming the objects and terrain, allowing for more detailed environment areas and giving the room to add new terrain sections when needed.

Tech Tree

Ultimately I want the tech tree to be like it is, a custom chart displayed in an easy-to-read layout. With so many items being added to the game it is starting to become a bottleneck adding each new item one by one. For this reason, I decided to implement a new system that automatically sorts all the technologies by Available to unlock, unlocked, and locked.

When a technology selection is clicked then it will show a chart with the prerequisites and what is unlocked as a result of unlocking that tech.

This will remove an entire step of skill tree grooming each time a new item is added, meaning a quicker turnaround with adding content. I am open to the idea of keeping it this way if it doesn't hurt the experience at all but do feel that it will be better as a traditional skill tree later on.

Proof of Concept



Main Menu

The different UI elements used throughout the game needed to be cleaned up a bit. I've redone some of the menu elements and changed the look of the main menu:



Save System

The save system was (mostly) functional but very clunky, and the way that each save was "static" in a sense made it prone to overwriting with new builds. I've rewrote how the save system works so you name your own saves. No longer are there only 3 save spots.

Power System

I restructured a lot of how the power system works to fix a few of the lingering issues with battery-powered items and items that spawn when loading a saved game. The UI Tab now shows where the device is drawing power from and the remaining battery charge.



Bug Fixes

I've also sorted out a large number of bugs that were found during the playtest, so a huge thank you to anyone that was involved with that. I wouldn't be able to successfully make a quality game without help playtesting, considering the number of people working on the game. I am looking for a part-time QA lead, so if you know anyone with experience that might be interested, please let me know.

The Problem With The Playtest

A few weeks back was the Hostile Mars Prologue playtest. A lot of people played the game over the few weeks it was publicly available. Over 2500 people participated and the feedback is always extremely valuable and encouraging to the future development of the game.

After closing the playtest, I really dove into the prologue playtest and tried to figure out why it didn't feel "right". I was disappointed with how it turned out and I feel that a number of things could have been done better.

Ultimately, I believe that creating a build with an attempt to focus on a particular system of the game doesn't always work.

I wanted to see how wave progression performed and focus on that specific aspect, so I gave a bunch of items to the player and made building elements much quicker than normal. This undermined a lot of what makes Hostile Mars what it is and stole the rewarding nature of unlocking and building items from scratch.

It was also lacking an interesting hook to drive the player to advance and make interesting decisions. There were really no decisions. It was only to defeat the enemies and lay down the items provided.

The enemies still have not been fully fledged out yet either, giving all enemies a simple point-and-shoot interaction. Again, the player has no decisions to make. Each weapon just does damage and the only decision is which gun to use, but really, there are no consequences or choices within even choosing which weapon to choose.

This is definitely not intentional. In fact, the entire premise of the enemy and weapon system is to introduce different problems for the player to solve in interesting ways. Different enemy types will behave differently when in groups or when solo, they will have different behaviors based on the enemy types that are nearby, and they will have strengths and weaknesses between different trap and turret types.

As for the main driving force of the story progression, that has not been introduced in the playtest either, so really it is a sandbox of how damage-based traps and turrets deal damage against damage-prone enemies. And it turned out really stale as a result.

I've decided to go in and implement some of these things that need to be integrated into the game. A lot of it is "done" to where I have the concepts and implementation working in a test scene, but not integrated into the game system as a whole.

To do this in the most effective way, I've been working on environments that allow for quick iteration and testing of newly implemented systems and features. I spent about a week refactoring some of the codebase that provided a lot of resistance when testing and created a sandbox scene decoupled from a lot of the other systems, which took a bit of work.

There are tons of systems integrated together and dependent on one another in the game, and I caught up on a lot of technical debt from implementing some of the game like this.

I've also reworked how items get initialized in the game. There have been quite a few issues regarding power and colliders among other things, and the new system makes it much easier to identify objects that are incorrectly initialized, which should lead to much more stable items in-game.

Today it is looking a lot better. Most of the systems can be enabled or disabled without affecting the other systems in the game, which allows for much better development cycles, along with making it easier to pinpoint bugs as they appear during integration.

Finally, a few first-look pics at things being worked on:









If you want to keep up with development, join us on Discord:
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg

 

Devlog #19
Featured in Unity's Tech Blog + Tons of updates! New enemies, new mining system, new Home Base cores.


The past 2 months have been extremely busy.

My second baby boy was born
and
my wife and I couldn't be happier
with how well he and his older brother are doing. Despite some sleepless nights, progress on the game has been moving forward. There's a lot to share with everyone.

Unity X Havok



First I just want to mention that Hostile Mars was featured in Unity's latest blog post regarding the Havok Physics engine now being supported for production in Unity. I am flattered they thought Hostile Mars was the best game to showcase Havok Physics with Unity's DOTS system. We had an interview and they actually wrote a really awesome overview of the game. Check it out here: https://blog.unity.com/technology/havok-physics-now-supported-for-production

Mechanics Overhaul

Being in the pre-alpha stage, a lot of mechanics aren't polished to a point that is satisfying. I spent a good couple of weeks identifying the most performed actions in the early stages of the game and tried to focus on how to polish them up and make them more enjoyable actions to perform.

During this exercise, I took the focused mechanic into a completely new game build where it was just the mechanic itself, and I altered and adjusted until the mechanic was fun on its own. Thanks to Jason Storey for the guidance on what he thought was wrong with the game. Always feels good to have him tell you why the game you've worked on for 5 years isn't good

This led to a complete overhaul of the player harvesting nodes, the player adding ammo to turrets, and the craft bench.

PLAYER HARVESTING

Lots of changes here. No more single-button interaction into a set animation to harvest nodes. First of all, the hammer has been replaced with a mining gun. This electromagnet-driven spike gun breaks rocks apart with ease (and can be upgraded to break through more advanced materials as well)



When harvesting a node, the player now has complete control of each impact on the rock. As the player continues to mine more nodes, the weapon heats up and hits harder. There is a visual indicator for this in the form of a progress bar. As you string together more hits, the gun does more damage. It can be upgraded to unlock 5 different stages of increased damage.



Also introducing "Backpack Robot 1" (for lack of a clever name at the moment, any suggestions in the comments are welcome ). "Backpack Robots" opens up a whole new topic in the game and I will get to that next week, but for now, just know that backpacks will have multiple robots integrated into them and that they are used for various tasks to help you.

This bot will come out to collect any pickups or scraps you collect when mining or picking up items.


(this is a partial posting of the Steam Devlog. Much more about new wildlife enemies on the Devlog Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1402820/view/3648510249329954478 )

 

Devlog #20
Introducing the Communications Cave, Backpack Bots, Terminal Tasks, Resource Scanner, New UI, and More


This week I will finish up most of the work that has been done over the last 2 months (a continuation of last week's post). I also want to announce the public demo that will be available in a couple of weeks as part of an upcoming Steam Festival, starting January 23rd. The demo will likely go live a few days before that.

Communications Cave



This is a feature that I am excited to share with everyone, as it will be a big component of exploration in the game. The Communications Cave is a new area on the map that has a community of friendly robots inside. They are looking for specific resources and parts to construct various items in their base. The cave contains rooms corresponding to the different areas of the maps which contain tasks for the player to retrieve items, kill enemies, or destroy stuff. Once a task is complete, you will receive special rewards from the bots there. Once all of the tasks for an area are complete, there is a much larger, significant reward given.




You can access the tasks from the terminals in each of the rooms. I won't spoil where the cave is located, but it's not far from Home Base.

Resource Scanner

A lot of players were asking about being able to ping resources due to taking a long time to find certain rock and ore types, so I've implemented a new system that allows you to ping rock nodes:


(see the gif on the Steam Devlog page, doesn't seem to be working on Unity)

There is a limited range that can be upgraded from the tech tree. It starts with the ability to ping for Rock Nodes, and anytime a new, undiscovered node is within range, the scanner will gain the ability to ping that new type. This will allow players to go at their own pace and reward players for exploring new areas to find new resources.


New Main Menu

Last week I showed a screenshot of the new main menu, so here is a quick gif of the new menu. This is significant because it not only makes navigating the main menu easier, but it is defining the aesthetics of the menus in-game as well, which was something that had been lacking before. The in-game menus have not been completely updated to fit this yet, but I am happy with the design that will be in place moving forward and think it compliments the feel of the game nicely.

Bridge Builder

While building out the new cave, Hugo has made a bridge builder than makes it extremely easy to place new bridges anywhere in the environment. The tool is an editor tool, but thought it was pretty cool so I wanted to share it:



Player Backpack Robots

Last week I mentioned that I will go into a bit more detail about the player backpack robots. This is a bit of a deep topic, but I'll explain at a high level where this is currently at.

Player Backpacks

I'll start with the overview of the player backpacks. The player will have the opportunity to acquire different backpacks at Home Base. Each backpack has robots that help the player do tasks such as picking up items, repairing buildings, jumping higher, etc. Some of the backpack abilities are specific to a particular backpack, and some are shared across all backpacks like the pickup item bot.

The backpacks will focus on particular aspects of the game. For example, one will be more combat-focused and have robots that attack nearby enemies and shield the player from damage, whereas one might be more focused on mining resources, and one might be more focused on mobility.

These will need a lot of attention to ensure that they are balanced and work well with the game, so I don't want to mention anything specific because they are likely to change a lot.

I feel that once co-op is there, this is sort of a micro-class system and will add to replayability as different roles. I also feel that this might be entirely awful and if it doesn't mesh well with the existing gameplay experience, I will have no problem taking it out. But if you have any ideas for backpack abilities, definitely let me know!

Here are a few of the current backpack robots:



Robot Ranching

Hmm. Something about using the magnet gun to catch wildlife robots and put them in enclosures. More on this in the next DevLog!

Next Devlog

In the following weeks I hope to redesign the automation route creation system so that it is much easier and enjoyable to use, so more on how good (or bad) that is going. I think we are going to move to a node-based visual system that is kind of a drag-and-drop between drop-off and pick-up points.

Confusion From Last Week

Last week there were a few comments about the manual craft bench and how everyone hates the idea. I didn't do a good enough job explaining it exactly, so I'll clear that up now. Manual crafting (holding down a button for the crafted item to complete) is ONLY on the Home Base Craft Bench. This is to encourage you to build machines and buildings for automating the creation of items. A few people mentioned that it would be nice to include a feature where pressing a button like space will hold it down for you, while you are there and have the UI open, which is a good suggestion and I will likely include that.

That is all.

If you want to keep up with development, join us on Discord:
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg

Take Care,
-Jake

 

Seems your images broke in the last post.

 

Thanks. I saw one break and added a comment, are they all broken when you view it, or just the one?

 

Resource Scanner image is still broken.
Other fixed.

Btw. nice interactive UI, and first GIF