Log inDev Update – May
Hello everyone! How are you all doing? I’m pretty exhausted, myself. This is probably the fifth attempt at writing a dev log over the past few weeks. I’ve been extremely busy working on the upcoming project and, honestly, I’ve felt a bit guilty about not posting something, anything, about it.
It’s tricky when things are still in the early stages. There’s always the temptation to immediately scream out “I’m making this thing!” the moment work begins, but I’d feel a bit weird doing that before the game has progressed much beyond a concept. That said, there actually has been quite a lot of progress and I do have some things to talk about, even if mostly in vague terms for now.
Rebuilding
Some of you might think that setting up a wave shooter should be relatively quick and simple. After all, Sin Spire exists. Just take that, add a wave system, and you’re good to go.
Well… not exactly.
I’ve mentioned numerous times that Sin Spire didn’t have the most cohesive codebase. A lot of systems were heavily hardcoded and not particularly modular. Instead of directly building on top of Sin Spire or migrating systems over piece by piece, I’ve been refactoring and rewriting the entire foundation.
That means redoing things as basic as movement mechanics, gunplay, and general gameplay systems. At the same time, I’ve also been learning and implementing some of Unreal’s newer systems like Enhanced Input and Common UI – systems that should make things easier but are mostly just kind of different.
It definitely doesn’t feel great having to rebuild systems I’ve technically already made before, and it has slowed things down quite a bit, but there are major benefits to doing this such as general stability and modularity.
For example, I’ve been rebuilding the weapon system with data-driven gameplay in mind. Essentially, that means systems are being built around reusable data rather than hardcoded variables directly tied to individual objects. This makes testing a lot easier, as I can quickly tweak variables without needing to recompile, but my hope is also that this approach will make things like modding significantly easier down the line.
Mod support has been sitting in the back of my mind while rebuilding these systems. I’d love to create something capable of automatically detecting and registering new content through data assets and tags. Whether I’ll actually manage to pull that off remains to be seen, though. This is all still very new territory for me.
While working on all of this, I’ve also been making sure to get proper gamepad support functioning early on so I don’t end up playing catch-up near release like I did with Sin Spire. So far, movement feels good and gunplay already feels noticeably better than before.
Content
Content-wise, not a huge amount has been completed yet. I spent a couple of weeks experimenting with the visual style of the project, working on shaders, creating a couple of basemeshes and two characters derived from said bases, and making a weapon.
To properly test movement and gunplay, I needed an actual weapon with animations. For that, I needed a functioning pair of hands and, for those, I needed to make the main character. So, I needed to get the main character finished before I could properly visualize and test the new movement and gunplay.
Alongside that, I also worked on a female side character as my main style anchor for characters. Most of the characters in the game are female, so it made sense to tie how the game will generally look to her. Overall, I’m fairly happy with where things are at stylistically.
Because the game is much more action-oriented, I’ve been focusing heavily on making animations faster, punchier, and more responsive, with plenty of attitude. There still aren’t many animations implemented yet, but that will probably change soon as my next major task is rewriting the sex scene system.
The purification system in Sin Spire actually worked pretty well overall, but I think it can be pushed much further. I’m currently redesigning it to support better environmental detection and more contextual animations depending on, for example, how close you are to a wall, a table, a waist-high surface, and so on.
I also want to experiment more with procedural elements that can help both with the practical reuse of animations as well as adding more visual dynamism. Whether I can fully achieve that remains to be seen, but it’s definitely one of my goals.
Announcement
So, when’s the announcement? Well, that’s a bit difficult to answer right now. I could probably throw together a visual teaser relatively soon, but I really want to get the core gameplay loop functional first. It’s less exciting visually, but it’s much more important long term.
Most of my time so far has been spent rebuilding and improving older systems rather than creating flashy new content. Once I get the core gameplay loop fully functional, especially the wave spawning systems, I can start putting together a proper showcase and presentation for you all.
Originally, I was aiming for the end of May, but considering we’re already halfway through the month, I’m not making any promises yet.
Overall though, progress has actually been pretty steady, all things considered. Rebuilding an entire codebase while simultaneously working on new systems, mechanics, art assets, and animations is a massive amount of work.
Because of that, I also haven’t really had time to respond to messages or check Discord much lately. Part of the reason I wanted to put this post out was simply to reassure everyone that I haven’t died or dipped.
I’m still here, I’m still working (usually until around 4am lately), and I’m excited to finally show everyone what I’ve been building.
…eventually.
Anyway, until next time, see you guys later.
