Fronterra Devlog #5
Previous post: Fronterra Devlog #4
Disclaimer: Apologies about the sound levels on the video - I forgot to dip the game audio and the sfx are super annoying currently (I’ll do a pass on audio soon).
Hey all!
Here’s some of what’s been happening on the prototype this week:
Simple Recipes & Item Crafting
I spent some time creating a first implementation of recipes, crafting and item storage. Currently this is limited to a single recipe made using a single resource (3 iron bars makes 1 cannonball), but now that the various parts of the process are functional it will be quick to add and iterate on different recipes & resources. You can see more about this and the updates below in this video:
Conveyor Belts
The most basic version of this system is what I implemented first: you put the required number of iron bars into a ‘crafting machine’ and it spits out a cannonball after the process is completed. I wanted to extend the functionality to include some forms of automation so I added conveyor belts and hoppers to the mix.
Mining Laser!
I expanded on the voxel destruction stuff I was playing with last week and added a mining laser as an alternative to digging manually. It’s pretty fun to use it to cut a path through the voxels.
Sentry Enemy + Mining Laser + Conveyor Belts = FUN
I combined a number of things I’ve worked on recently (enemy variants, conveyors, voxel damage) to show how the combinatorics in a game like this can create interesting and unique gameplay possibilities with a relatively small number of game systems/elements. Anything with a rigidbody and a collider on it can move along the conveyors so I spawned a laser sentry on top of one!
Next Steps
Another thing that I started working on this week was a rethink in terms of the potential IP/setting for the game in order to give it a more unique feel. I’ve done some initial ref gathering/doodles and I’m starting to have a pretty good idea of what direction I want to take it in, so I will share that work with you next time!
Written By