Unexplored Territories Dev-Diary

Dev diaries
#1

Hey everyone! First of all I want to thank everyone for their support and help with resolving many issues I have run into (especially @Pkeod and @britzl thanks again :slight_smile: )

I wanted to create an official “Dev diary” to document my progress on my game. I’m attempting to make a simple ARPG game with a focus on fast paced gameplay.

Here’s a video of the current state (running on my Android device):

Excuse the apparent visual lag. It seems to be an issue w/ the video conversion. The game runs super smooth on my actual device.

Here’s a video of the game 5 days ago:

Making rapid progress! Hope this continues and I’ll be able to release some iteration of the game within a few months.

9 Likes
Does 3d and 2d essentially function the same?
Defold and 3D Support - Discussion
#2

It looks very interesting. Keep up the good work!

Did you think to use a neural network to train enemies?

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#3

No I hadn’t thought of it, but that would be a cool project for sure. The enemy AI is pretty basic right now as the video shows. To be honest though I have no idea how to do such a thing so it would take a lot of time to research :blush:

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#4

New screenshot of a more expansive zone (currently the 3rd level since it’s just a series of levels the player has to beat for now:)

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#5

Uploaded a new video showing gameplay of the battle tested “Chambers2” map. Still tons of work to do. I’m working on creating a cave zone for the next level at the moment and working on adding a new enemy for that area. My plan right now is to complete a short campaign w/ a reasonable variety of enemies and level goals for each chapter. This chapter (chambers) features a simple mechanic where you simply have to kill every monster to unlock the next chamber and proceed.

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#6

Another gameplay video is ready for viewing! Added enemy spawners and a new enemy type:

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#7

One more video! I now have 3D modeled objects in the game to replace the sprites:

Working now on creating more maps, and trying to resolve some bugs to make sure everything I’ve added up to now play’s well. Looking for any feedback if anyone has some ideas/input!

Best Regards All, hope to see all of your games on the AppStore/Steam soon as well :slight_smile:

6 Likes
#8

I’ve setup a domain/website at https://unexploredterritories.com/ where everyone can play test the game as of now. This is just an extremely early version of the game to try to get some feedback. Let me know what you think! :slight_smile:

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#9

Runs for me and is cool! Looking forward to seeing your further updates. :slight_smile:

If you’re not already doing so you may want to domain lock the game to your site at some point so that you can control distribution of it, otherwise it would be possible for people to rip it and rehost it and once that box is opened it’s not easy to close it since the rehost sites spread like wildfire.

2 Likes
#10

Thanks for the advise! I’ve still got a lot to learn :blush: I updated the game w/ the module.

EDIT: Curse my bad luck! The website hoster’s domain just listed as parked or for sale immediately after I posted the demo :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
#12

Thanks! I hope I’ll have a small update to the web game soon with some more levels. I’m working on adding some health packs / shields to the game to make it slightly more forgiving. What were your impressions on the difficulty so far? It’s hard to tell since I’ve been working on it for so long now :blush:

I’ll look into adding a loading screen to help address the bandwidth concerns. I haven’t used external collections yet, but that seems like something to research. I don’t want everything to have to download at once in the final game but I also don’t know if the project is far enough along yet to worry about yet. It might be better to address this sooner than later though.

2 Likes
#14

I have a new version of the web demo up!

https://unexploredterritories.com/

I’ve added an overworld (extreme work in progress), a portal to the tutorial dungeon which gives a small reward, and a portal to a work in progress roguelite dungeon. This will probably be the last update to the demo for awhile as I work on adding content, etc. and prepare to try to launch this thing. Please let me know if you guys run into any bugs. I know there are some issues with the level reloading which I’m working on but this feels like a good point to update the demo.

EDIT: I’ve updated the web demo w/ fullscreen support on PC and some new menus. I’ve also added the barracks to the overworld and a new area. I’ll probably continue to update the web game until the game feels enjoyable, through the first boss. After that I’ll transition my focus over to the Android version which should have the full content. Eventually I may do a Steam port if there are enough players.

6 Likes
#15

I have another teaser video for the game! This video features a multi-level 3D zone with multiple “islands.” The player can bounce from island to island to complete the objective.

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#16

A quick stress-test video to show off the power of Defold! I’ve done some optimizations of the AI and things are running quite smoothly. BTW: This also runs at a smooth 60 FPS on my mobile device :slight_smile:

9 Likes
#17

I’ve updated the web demo on my website with new features! There are now 3 dungeons to play through and an upgrade terminal which the player can spend “chips” acquired from dungeons and killing enemies to upgrade their character: https://unexploredterritories.com/

Annoyingly, I’ve found there’s a bug with Firefox. If the player drags to move (instead of using gamepad) and the mouse exits the side of the canvas while the screen is scrolled to the bottom of the window then the scrollbar jumps up to higher up on the page. I quickly tested with Microsoft Edge and there’s no issues there (and the game seems to perform better as well…) If anyone knows how to fix this let me know. Otherwise maybe I should report this on the Firefox support forum.

#18

I don’t think it’s a Firefox bug. It’s just one of those quirks that makes browsers so loveable :slight_smile: And there’s probably some DOM event that can be overridden to prevent this.

2 Likes
#19

Updated the web game with a new (easier) first starting zone, a collectable map item, and reworked UI menus. Working on adding equipment next (which should be fairly time consuming :blush: ) I tried looking for DOM events that could explain the scrolling but was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. I since compared with Opera and there’s no issue with that browser either so I filed a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1670534 to see what the Firefox gurus think of this :smiley:

EDIT: It appears it is a Firefox bug so hopefully it can be fixed :smiley:

1 Like
#20

Updated the web game again (if you played previously you should erase game using the “Erase Game” button prior to starting it.) Apologies for this, I am still adding lots of content so don’t want to bother yet with save file migration :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m noticing some severe performance issues on Firefox on my computer. Perhaps if anyone else uses Firefox they could let me know if they are experiencing the same issue. The game will run fine for a bit then the sound starts to stutter and it drops frames for a few seconds. I have recently switched to using Microsoft Edge since the performance is a lot better for the game so I assume it’s using a more powerful JS engine.

New in this version: Base construction and research. Equipment upgrading (extremely basic for now) Enemy AI improvements, Warp stations for fast travel, and many other small improvements.

1 Like
#21

Do you get any information in the browser’s developer console output?

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#22

I re-tested it today and the issue is no longer occurring. I had checked the running processes on my PC and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary but it must have been some other process on my machine slowing things down.