OUTRIVAL: The Game I'm Making

Dom said:

Should get a mod to add the game name to the title to get some web search presence.

Click to expand...

I'd be down for that.
Today is officially 1 yr.
Reddit:

A "defensive" ability for this support character.




First simulation for gameplay, very rough & flawed:



I'm going to work on a better simulation. Getting a Simulation running will help tremendously with testing & finding bugs etc.

Updated Simulations, seeding in 60 players (15 players per team).

1.5 months since last update, been working on a lot of systems that might not seem like much but had a lot of moving parts & details to work out.

Upgrading Tiles & Tile benefits:
This stuff took most of the time these past month(s). The biggest issues is always Multiplayer & getting these details sync'd up across all players, in a (hopefully) performant manner.
The gist of it is:

There are 89 captureable tiles, each tile grants 1 to 4 benefits. Most of these are generic stat-buffs, but some key tiles grant additional on-hit effects, reduced Respawn time, movement speed, etc. In total, there are 182 effects linked up to 89 tiles.

If that wasn't enough, I also incorporated Upgrading, which increases the strength of the benefits. Upgraded tiles do NOT lose their level when captured, so deciding what to upgrade is going to be a strategic move, since you don't want your tier 5 tiles going to the enemies.

And once all of that was sorted, I made some UI enhancements to show the buffs/upgrades on the UI/Map overlay. Linking up systems to the UI can normally take a couple days itself to work out all the bugs & issues.


This video shows a tile getting upgraded to tier 5, and a couple stats improving due to it, as well as the map with hoverable tiles showing the benefits + other info.
There is a glitch : I'm upgrading a tile I'm not standing in, this is due to my teleports (I'm using for development purposes) being stupid, which I can easily fix, and probably should for more accurate videos. Right now my character thinks I'm in the tile getting upgraded because the teleport I used said that's where it would put me.


Invading:
If you invade enemy tiles, you'll take damage (like a circle in BR games). Invading means going beyond the battle lines (Battleground tiles). I want invading deep into enemy territory to be possible, but risky.. it could be a way to comeback from a dire situation.
I've implemented Damage & a visual effect when invading. However this video also contains a glitch where the damage isn't happening.

Something isn't triggering properly with the damage portion, sometimes it works, maybe due to Teleports again. The video shows the transition after capturing an enemy tile while invading.
Damage also scales up if tiles are upgraded, which I had working reliably a week or so ago.


Movement Modes:
Movement is a critical topic in UE4 when talking about networking & replication & protecting against hacks. I have some features planned that require I build out the movement system more. Anything movement related is 95% c++ whereas a lot of the other things are being done with UE4's blueprints (and can be converted to c++ later). I've never coded c++ before working on this so anything c++ is a challenge for me.

One reason I moved to Movement modes is because I plan to beef up the respawn mechanic and to do that requires teleporting the character to a desired location. So I had to figure out teleportation, which will also be used for some tp abilities. So teleporting is now possible, but I haven't done anything with it yet. On the fun side, I wanted to add Flying. 2 Characters have wings: Serath & Muriel, both are "support" characters.

Serath can now fly:




Adding flying has been rather fun and I'm extremely happy with the progress thus far. Animations need tweaking/adding because Serath never flew in Paragon, she only had abilities that would display her wings for a brief second or so. I hijacked some of the animations to create a flapping animation and combined a falling+idle animation to create a flying animation.

Flying has a bunch of parameters including whether to use wings or not, max elevation, gravity while flying, etc.
The controls are very smooth, double-jump starts flying, approaching the ground will seamlessly exit the flying state.



Future "key" tasks:
Spawn Island : A spawn island is a "cheat" for loading a bunch of characters into a big world. I need to create a spawn island -> game start mechanic to get things rolling smoothly.
Respawn Mechanic
Win Conditions
Resource Acquisition/Expenditure (spend resource to upgrade).
Map improvements - I want to spend 2-3 months updating the entire map.
A ton More abilities


That's all for now.

Fight said:

It is impressive stuff bro. Are you working on this, because?

1. Purely for your own enjoyment?
2. You want to release an indy full-fledged product?
3. Proof of concept for a potential job opportunity or kickstarter project?

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A little of all of them.

1.) I have always enjoyed creating things, this is the ultimate since there is so much to create. It's very enjoyable "solving" each problem and seeing the things work at the end. I do love games but since my time commitment has dwindled, I find myself spending 30mins-1hr working on this, rather then logging into an actual game for that time. Any game I would be interested in would consume so much more time per session. I feel like I can't make any decent progress in most games with the limited time I have. However, with this I can identify a task, do research on it sporadically throughout the day(s), and when I can sit down to work on it, I have a decent gameplan in place to accomplish it. For example, the movement mode additions was something I was working on for maybe 2 weeks off & on. I never have time to just sit and grind out a problem.

In a way this way of "developing" allows me to keep a fresh mind & not get burned out very easily. And if a task starts burning me out, I move on to something else, maybe Art instead of game systems, or something I deem as "fun", like flying.

Lastly, I like to know how things work, and this has given me so much knowledge & insight into how games are designed & work. Mechanics you "innately" understand as a die-hard gamer, but don't really understand why or how it is that way, now I have greater insight into why things behave as they do.


2.) I don't care so much about releasing, what I want is a playable game to finally see everything I've done put to the test. I'm not planning to just release it on steam or rush it to a marketplace. I would want to prove it's a decent game beforehand. Which maybe is never, or maybe it's 5 or more years from now, no idea. I want a game that can be logged into & played to a conclusion, and hopefully it proves to be fun! If these goals can be accomplished, only then would I consider pursuing the next step of trying to release.


3.) Proof of concept for myself, we talk a big game on these forums, I want to create something from scratch and see what happens. Kickstarter or adding more people to the team could be something in the future, but not before there is something playable and knowing the final direction. I'd only involve more people if it means turning this from a hobby to something that needs polish for a release. I am not using this for a resume piece, I have no desire to work 14+hr days in a cubicle at some gaming company. I either do my own thing or nothing. However, using UE4 for other things than games could be an idea for the future.

My current profession is not creative at all, someday I may wish to reenter the space. Filmmaking/TV/VR stuff is all gaining traction and knowing how to use UE4 to do these tasks is a nice tool in the toolbelt imo! (more lucrative than game development too, probably!). The fact I'm in a non-creative role also allows me to work on this project feeling rejuvenated.

Also imo games are only scratching the surface and we're going to see an explosion of innovation in the near future. The Borderlands 3 integration with Twitch is yet another step taken in the future of entertainment. We're not even scratching the surface of where things are headed imo.

Almost 2 months since last update. I feel like I did a lot in that time. Website updated: www.outrivalgame.com

This video is unlisted & not on the website but has a medley of items:

• Yin Whip: Added physics to the whip, it's a little jerky but at least it moves now. Creating whip attacks is the next challenge. TBD.
• Gideon: Multi-Projectile ability. Implemented ways for an ability to fire multiple projectiles in succession or simultaneously.
• Aurora: Movespeed debuff. Implemented movement speed debuff, which is trickier than a stat debuff since it effects character movement. This ability does a 10% debuff stacking up to 50%.
• Game Start Processes: Load onto a starter island, wait for players, when target # is reached begin a countdown, then transport all players to their team's starting base.

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Melee Attacks:
Finished my melee attack template. A little easier than projectile abilities, but still has it's own challenges, such as how to handle weapon collision and I wanted to chain attacks together to create more natural flowing combat. In the video below Aurora has 3 abilities as a part of her primary melee attack ability. In this case it only progresses to the next attack if she deals damage (some won't require that condition, some may require other conditions, such as a specific debuff on the target),

HUD Update:
Also in the below video is a HUD update. I battle with the HUD constantly and this is probably my 10th revamp. Hopefully it's a little more intuitive & appealing.




Map Update:
I'm gearing up to spend a few months on updating the entire map, more thoughtful layout and better textures. The Starter Island was my first test. Here's an initial blockout using a better landscape material:





That's all for now.
Most of my key future tasks are similar to the previous update:

• Spawn Island : A spawn island is a "cheat" for loading a bunch of characters into a big world. I need to create a spawn island -> game start mechanic to get things rolling smoothly.
• Respawn Mechanic
• Win Conditions
• Resource Acquisition/Expenditure (spend resource to upgrade).
• Map improvements - I want to spend 2-3 months updating the entire map.
• A ton More abilities

Also, Amod , I wouldn't mind a title change to something more appropriate such as "OUTRIVAL: the game I'm making" or something

2 Month Update!
Website: https://www.outrivalgame.com/
Newly Created Discord: Join the OUTRIVAL Discord Server!


The past 2 months has seen progress in these areas:

• Character Movement Animations
• Map Visuals
• Networking fixes/updates
• Updated to the most recent Unreal Engine version 4.24.1
• Respawn mechanic implemented
• Many bug fixes

Map Update:
Lengthy video running around what represents 12% of the map. There have been significant updates to the visual design.



Respawn Mechanic:

• Can only respawn if you own a “base” tile.
• You will respawn at the nearest owned tile’s pillar
• Respawn time can be reduced by upgrading your “base” tile.

Character Movement Animations:

• Additional Animations: Backpedal, Strafe Left/Right, Uphill/Downhill, Leans
• Feet IK

OUTRIVAL: Rampage IK

OUTRIVAL: Aurora IK

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Future Task List:

• Respawn Mechanic
• Win Conditions
• Resource Acquisition/Expenditure
• Map improvements (Ongoing)
• A ton More abilities
• Experience Gain

Screenshots:

Some additional remarks...

This marks 18 months of solo development and im still shooting to have a build multiple people can run around in by the 2yr mark.. so 6 more months.

Going to be a bit if a crunch.

Right now im shooting for having a few "game modes".. try a few different win conditions to set what feels good, and iterate from there.

"Vanilla" is conquering the map basically

"Blitz" would be a point based system, allows for quicker matches, acquire points via kills+ capturing territory.

"Capture the Objective" would be the moba style condition where taking the enemy base tile would wipe out that team.


Initial testing will lack a lot, I'm hopeful each champion will have a primary attack ability at the minimum.

Abilities will take a while, so will updating the entire map with the new art direction.

In any case, any comments/ suggestions / questions feel free to post. I also normally post a reddit thread but traffic is lacking:


I may start doing more frequent updates especially as im closing in on the 2yr mark.

Im hoping at some point to increase the team size.. need to setup a dev server. Ugh.

For the past week I've been working on Abilities again.

I had finished my Melee Attack template a month or 2 ago, now to create a bunch of them.

Building Melee Attacks:


7 Characters, each with an "attack chain", taking 23 abilities and over 100 files to create it all.
2 Characters still to do, for a total of 9 characters with some form of "melee attack".
They're still WIP, this is just setting up all the little pieces.
All the attacks do vanilla +dmg right now, next phase is to add extra effects to some of the moves. (DoT Effect/Knockup/Stun/etc).

Some breakdown of the process:
Each character's "base melee attack" (Left Mouse Button), is comprised of a series of abilities (2 to 4 abilities in this set).

Every ability (23 abilities in this set):
Ready for Network play
Particle Effect Trail
Character Animation
Weapon Collision(s)
Character has a chance to say an audio cue
Weapon Swing Sound
Impact Sound
Impact Particle Effect
Deals Damage (scales with level)
Has Cooldown (reduces with level)
Has Cost (scales with level)
Changes to Next Ability in the chain
If next ability isn't used in a timely fashion, the chain resets to ability #1
Some abilities do AoE, others are single target

Some effect examples to be added:
Steel's Uppercut will knockup the target
Some attacks will inflict a DoT effect "bleeding".
Stuns
Lifesteal
Debuff that increases damage received.



www.outrivalgame.com
https://discord.gg/cDfwMM

Updated another part of the map: Desert biome.
Some hitching later in the video when map chunks load, minor and shouldn't appear if this wasn't being played in-editor.

Also added since last post:
Footsteps based on terrain, which can include a footprint / sound / particle, and can differ by character.
Also more sounds (jumping/running) & hit react animations & sounds (not shown here).

End of the video shows some of the old-style desert still, I'll update another time.



Next little side-project is to add a slide movement similar to Apex so we can go Dune sliding + quickens travel. (Challenge is to add a slide animation for each character, since none exists yet - may try using a Mixamo pose to save time.)
+ start work on updating the next biome.
+ finish up more abilities
+ finish footstep implementation (requires updating about 600 animations to "mark" the footsteps).

Dom said:

Something I've always been curious about one-man indie game development situations: Do you stop at points and feel like you no longer want to develop the specific game style you've been working on for so long and just decide you have to stick it out instead of resetting all the progress?

Click to expand...

I think that is a feeling you battle early on in most projects. I had 2-3 attempts at a game before my current project.
After getting as far as I have it's become my passion project, because at this point I feel like I've got a clear path.
Also I spend between 1-3 hours nightly, which isn't that much, so I rarely feel burnout. And instead of gaming, I'm now game-designing.
If I feel burnout I just change up what I'm working on, there's always something.
Doing map stuff gets tedious, as does abilities, but mixing in something new always injects a little energy back into the project.

Spent the past couple weeks polishing up movements a bit and creating a Slide ability. Video showing both:



Flying has been in for a while but the biggest change is a lot of work was done on the animations.
Also 2 characters can now fly. It should look much more fluid now, I'm really happy with it and it feels good to play imo.

Sliding is in it's first iteration and the animation/pose looks wonky because it's mostly a placeholder until some future time.

Sliding was a unique challenge but I'm happy with the results. It's built out in C++ and network ready. It seems like something so simple but once I dug into it there are a lot of pieces to simply sliding down a hill. Allowing a character to face the opposite direction & use abilities while sliding was a feature I wanted.
I believe I found a sweet spot with the physics of it. There were many challenges with either Sliding too far (on flat ground), or hardly sliding at all (on steep hills).
Speed fluctuates based on angle of slope. There are 5 different Float Curves being fed into the Move to allow tweaking of Friction/Speed/Braking/etc. Different characters could have different settings (if desired).

Also finished adding the Footsteps code to all characters (posted above).

Lastly, I started on a massive update to the map which will be the biggest & most ambitious update yet, so we'll see how that goes... It'll probably be weeks/months to realize my goal here, but I'll likely post some progress updates throughout. I think it's going to be awesome.

March Update

A major Networking objective has been achieved. Also updating my map continues to consume a lot of my time.

Map Update:

• New Sky : Utilizing new technology in UE4's latest update, implemented a new Sky & Atmosphere.
• Landscape is being redone / retextured
• Background vistas updated/added
• Color Grading & Lighting is constantly being tweaked.
• The central POI (Floating Islands) has been re-envisioned, made much much larger. They are a major WIP at this point. What is shown is very rough.

View from a Wetland/Swamp toward an Icy Landscape in the distance:


View from Direct Opposite angle of previous image.


Desert Quadrant looking down from the Floating Islands, running through the Desert was a previous video:


Looking down the middle of the map. I bulldozed a lot of the central terrain and created MASSIVE islands above. The goal was to make it a lot less claustrophobic. More open terrain and long view distances.



Network Testing:

After much pain & suffering, a huge accomplishment in the past week(s) has been successfully setting up a Dedicated Server for testing.
First issue to resolve was Characters not loading correctly, that has been corrected.
Next new issue is that at least 1 map tile does not successfully load for the client, still investigating.

Running around the map for over 10 minutes last night, client + server on 1 PC, FPS was 70-90 the entire time.


Upcoming:

I'm planning to take a break from Map stuff for a month or 2 and resume work on Abilities & other mechanics.
Some important tasks on my list:

• Hit Scan ability template & implementation for the few gun-users that are in the game.
• Win Condition(s) need to be created & implemented
• Resource Deposits / Acquisitions
• Experience Gain implementation

Punko said:

1. I don't know anything about what you are doing, but it looks interesting. Well presented.

2. Stark contrast with other companies that write 8 years of blogs with 3 screenshots total.

3. Do you have a rough ETA yet? Or a date by which you'd like to finish?

4. What starting price will you be aiming for? Via steam or?

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1. Hey thanks!

2. I think studios are more bound to stakeholders & trying to surprise the market, whereas I'm 1 dude that might not even release something. Getting feedback is part of development, and while I get some critique from people close to me, getting some from the internet could open up new ideas. I don't really mind sharing a lot of media because there are plenty of solo-devs out there doing exactly the same thing, really there's not much threat of having an idea stolen in today's gaming climate. Studios gravitate toward the safe bet. My ideas won't be put to the test until some real playtesting can occur.. in which case it might be the case that year(s) of my time were for nothing... but that's why I still consider this a "hobby". It makes me feel better about the time being spent (Also, if this doesn't work out, maybe I can someday work on The Mandalorian Season 5 or something - (Disney has been using UE4 for Movies/TV).

3. ETA: I have a goal to have a few players able to login by August 1st. (2yr anniversary of starting this project). Getting the Dedicated Server running is a key part of this. It may even be possible now to login however there is some hardware issues & of course a lot of gameplay issues to iron out. I don't have a goal "release" date. All depends how testing goes and if I can find financing that could help cover costs for servers. Ideally I'd use Amazon's Gamelift, which gets expensive, right now the (1) Dedicated server is in my house.

4. I like free to play but with microtransactions (cosmetic only). No box cost. That would be the goal. Right now I've integrated the game with Steam, it would be stupid not to release on Steam. If Epic wants to dump a ton of cash on me, than ok I am actually working to setup a Steam page soon.

Punko said:

How are you designing the terrain for the quadrants? Are they all supposed to be equal, or do some favor defenders / attackers?

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Some things are balanced, some not.

The concept is rather simple: It's a territory control game. There are 89 tiles, each a Hexagon. All are equal size. This video shows a simulation while viewing the map:



4 teams (1 in each Quadrant of the map).
Team #s could always be tuned later, but I'm tired of 2-team multiplayer games. I want something more reminiscent of the old RTS games that had 4-8 teams present. Something where you could get flanked by a 3rd party, and you need to be strategic where to push.

You can see in my map layout that there are "missing" tiles here & there, this is to help funnel players toward the center & other areas.

Now the idea with the floating islands is I moved a huge portion of the middle tiles onto islands, this way there are chokes around "portals" that travel you up to the islands.
However, if your team decides to try and control these areas, you may lose territory below...

The map is fairly large and to ensure quicker pace of play, all characters will have some movement ability, also I want a fair amount of movement disables or just very powerful abilities that can effect a large range or area. Running past enemies and capturing territory shouldn't be easy. I want players to HAVE TO fight. Players do respawn, similar to a MOBA and atm it takes place at the nearest uncontested tile. I intend to have some forms of teleportation or portals to quickly advance or defend areas too.

I just love huge maps and wanted to make something different than a Battle Royale game, which atm makes the best use of a huge map (other than an MMO).

I want team size to be somewhere between 8-15 people, depending on how testing & performance goes.. x4 teams that's 32-60 players.
Since players can respawn (until you no longer own tiles anymore), I am hopeful there will be enough players to keep it fast paced, with little wasted time running around.

I envision 3 phases of the game:
Phase 1: Initial 5 minutes is similar to the laning phase of a MOBA... your team runs around capturing tiles and establishing your territory.
Phase 2: Next 20-30 minutes Battles rage on the battle lines, take territory/defend territory/ upgrade key tiles to improve your character's stats.
Phase 3: Push for the Win or get pushed for the loss. Also depends on the Win conditions. I have a few different ideas using this tile-based system. Win condition could be "first team to own x amount of land", or "team that achieves x amount of points first wins (achieve points through kills & tile captures/upgrades)", or "last team standing wins" (would be the longest game mode).

The testing phase will answer a lot of questions.

Also, to keep players funneled toward battle lines, if you enter enemy territory you will take damage similar to a circle in a BR game. This damage can be amplified if your team upgrades the tile. However, if an enemy team captures an upgraded tile, it remains upgraded. Also, every tile grants your team benefits. Your characters grow more powerful as the game progresses. The goal is to allow players to become "carries" like in a MOBA. Of course teamwork is also very key since 1 player can't capture all the land needed to win.

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Most of what I said is actually implemented & working (mostly).


So yes & no, tile size is equal, everything else is not... however your team is not restricted to any particular quadrant. You just need to capture territory. Killing the enemy players helps achieve that. Respawn times will increase as the game progresses (similar to a MOBA). Characters are also not meant to be perfectly equal.