Aliens of Earth--3D 3rd person Action/Adventure with Destructible Environments

I've been working on the "Marble Caves," the first area of the game. Note only the flight mode is shown, thus you see only wide open areas so far. While it still has a long way to go, I'd like to show some work in progress texturing experiments:











Note that you see the ship flying around inside the caves, the mipmapping is working without holes or gaps.

I've also recorded a short video of a test flight through the caves. Note that enemies are still disabled, I'll be showing off combat soon. For some reason the recording software caused annoying pauses in the video, because those pauses aren't there normally. This was recorded from the simulator because I thought it'd be easier but I'll do a video off the real device soon.

Anyway it's recorded at iPad resolution, please ignore the pauses. Also note that camera collision is not currently implemented but it will be of course.



Please note that this is still all work in progress, expect big improvements as the project progresses.

 

Thanks for the compliments. So far the plan is to support the iPhone 3GS and equivalent iPod Touch (3rd gen) or better and iPad or better. If there is enough demand for lower end devices, I could see about toning down the view distance, mipping faster, etc. on the lower end devices (which would not negatively impact the currently planned devices). I haven't actually run the game on anything slower then an iPhone 3GS, so I can't make any guarantees however.

As for Minecraft, this project is really unrelated. While there are similarities - voxel engine, malleable terrain, liquids... that's about where it ends. There is no building in this game, though you can affect your environment. Blow a hole in the wall and the material falls onto the ground and stays there for example. There will be other game elements that cause the environment to be changed as well (more on this later). However this isn't a Minecraft-like sandbox game but an Action/Adventure game that utilizes the strengths of a voxel engine. I hope I'm being clear.

However once this game is complete I will be using this engine for future iOS projects (especially if it sells well) - so there are a lot of future possibilities.

 

For most weapons, the material won't disappear and will pile up and such. So if you blast a whole in the wall, the material has to go somewhere - so in that sense you're changing the environment rather the completely destroying it.

 

This particular game will be underground in caverns, alien structures, tunnels, etc.. However there will be some technological structures/buildings/interiors in parts of the game. But no surface cities, in fact the farther you get in the game - the deeper into the Earth you will go. However this isn't a limitation of the engine, more focus of the game if that makes sense. But there will be several different types of environments and a mix of "natural" and technological areas and some of them will be pretty wild (more on this later).

I've been working on it for a while now, in fact I'll have a few enemies working and basic flight-based combat done soon. This stuff is still work in progress, but if you have artistic comments then go ahead and make them.

And I'm sure you can see now why I said I needed a custom engine before.

Don't forget to check out the IndieDB page every once in a while, I'm using that as my game blog and news outlet - other then here of course (see my signature below). Also do you guys think I should post a thread about this game in the Upcoming iPad Games section since it will support the iPad as well as the iPhone/iPod Touch from day one?

 

Thanks for the comments.

IndieDB is decent. The format's pretty good and you get people looking at your news items are articles. There is a delay between posting a news item and when it shows up, but the blog doesn't have that problem. It's worth it for me and probably not too much additional work for you guys.

 

I posted a thread in the Upcoming iPad Games forum since this will also be an iPad game. I decided to do this after seeing several other universal games do the same thing, such as Fantastic Knight.

 

I just wanted to drop in to provide a small update.

I'm currently working towards getting the first area playable in terms of exploration and combat - finishing enemies, combat and AI. At that point I'll post a gameplay video, which will be me playing on the actual device this time, that'll highlight environment destruction, improved ship controls and movement, improved camera and of course the aforementioned enemies and combat.

Beyond that I plan on finishing up the remaining items to "complete" the first area of the game - HUD/UI, humanoid form and transformation, the 2 unique items that you can collect from the first area (the energy shield and sword for the humanoid form), checkpoints and the initial pass on sound/music. Some of this is partially complete already but will be left alone until I finish the stuff listed above.

Once this is complete I will begin a limited closed Alpha Test (Alpha Test Phase 1) - which should be happening in a couple of weeks. I have one candidate so far, I will probably take on up to 4 more for the first round of tests.

Here is how I plan on doing the testing, at each new phase new testers will be added:

Alpha Test - Phase 1: First area of the game only, fully playable.
Alpha Test - Phase 2: X% of the game complete (X is still to be defined, this will probably be affected by the Phase 1 testing).
Beta Test - Phase 1: Game is complete but niceties still missing such as GameCenter integration for achievements.
Beta Test - Phase 2: The game is polished and ready for release. These testers will be getting Release Candidates (or close).

Note that once you become a tester, you'll remain so until you decide to stop or the product is released.

The reason to split the testing into tiers like this is to allow me to get "first impressions" throughout the testing process. This will be vital for testing things such as usability and controls. How easy are they to learn, how easy is it to navigate the UI, how hard is it to figure out what to do if this is the first time you've played, and so on.

I will be asking for volunteers for testing in about a week and starting the test a week or two after that. I'm not doing it now because I still have to finalize the minimum OS revision that I want to use, so cannot properly give out the requirements yet. Currently I'm using version 3.2.2 but I'm considering moving up to 4.3.x, which I will be decided soon.

 

As I work toward the first real gameplay video, I'll drop by to show progress as it's made.

The first thing is that the lighting has been improved. Previously the normals were based purely on the voxel faces, similar to a game like Minecraft, which causes a lot of contrast between faces up close and didn't show the overall geometric shape as well as I'd like. However I do want to maintain that "3D pixel" look and support thin, single voxel structures. So the result is a blend between the volume gradients (from which the normals would be derived when generating a smooth isosurface) and the face normals. In cases with thin structures, they will look just like they always have. For larger scale structures, the lighting is softer and the contrast between faces is lower (though still visible up close).

In addition I've also softened the camera light somewhat, changing from the standard harsh Lambertian falloff to something that allows light to "wrap" around the surfaces a bit more.

The next improvement is in the surfacing and environment, accomplished by improving the generator. Note that the "floor" and "ceilings" don't look exactly the same anymore.

Finally the ship controls and camera have undergone improvements, you can see that in the screenshots a little. Notice that the ship isn't always exactly in the center and that banking looks more natural now.

Screenshots: