Demo Released, Feedback Welcomed! Announced and delivered, a key milestone for my very first game dev project. Even if it's no Balatro or R.E.P.O., still proud that I made it that far. Now it's time to see, how the overall feedback and response will be. Thing will move forward based on the responses... Glimpse Back in Time, and a Shoulder Pat Looking back, it has been so far a hell of a journey…
Swamp with Updates Actually a good thing: I feel there is so much going on, that I think it makes sense to cut the news a bit, and focus just on the most-interesting things - and just mention the rest briefly. Road to the Demo in March A small and solid playable demo remains the next big milestone. Currently steps are polishing and debugging. Just like in the weeks before, I remain absolutely c…
FAQ on Website It is somewhat tricky to explain and showcase the game via pictures and short videos, as it is not a clean "1-genre game". To tackle that, I've setup a FAQ section on the website . Discord Setup Speaking of setup: A Discord server is now up and running and decided to open it up. While the game is still in development and there is no public playable game out, can't hurt to have th…
Wishlists Exploding It's awesome to see, that Gate Project's wishlist count is taking off like a rocket - a great motivator to stay committed to the development and deliver the best possible game and experience! The numbers itself may be "small", but the trend is going in the right direction, a nice growth curve. For that, many thanks to you all wishlisters! Polish Things Up On the dev-side, th…
Steam RTS-Fest Gate Project appears in the "Upcoming" list - for the popular list, it is of course still some way to go, but hey.... got to start somewhere. In parallel, the Taipei Game Show is running this week, so let's see, what kind of games this week will bring! HN Librae b, a new trashy place Besides that, wrapped up to make a new mission location, called HN Librae b. A trashed place, so…
Adding Interactive Objects As part of the out-of-combat work, last week was somewhat sluggish and filled with non-dev occupations, but still managed to make a few interesting additions and progresses. For example added interactive elements, which will have various purposes like triggering doors, mechanisms and many more. One is for now a mystic "Power Stone", which can be activated, often actin…
What's upcoming? 2025 has arrived, time flies by and it's time to lay out some battle plans for the upcoming time. Thinking about something like following and will move things as needed - given that it is for now a "1 man wolf pack" project, since it's start in June 2024. · (End of 01-2025) Steam's Real-Time Strategy Fest is coming. For that, might update some of the marketing contents like ima…
Surprisingly lot happened during last week in and out of the core game dev. Short updates below... Dedicated Gate Project Website Opened Lucky find (like with epic loot ːsteamhappyː) was that the domain gate-project.com was still free to be taken. As emergency action, all work was temporarily set on hold to get it up and running with basic info. Just as the Steam store page, it will be from now…
Better animations, better UI, better combat There were improvements on all fronts at a surprising pace - must have to do with the new workflow since last month, pays really off. The UI keeps improving to levels, where it can be considered as robust enough for proper usage. Feeling for the core game loop of going out on missions keeps getting better, too, via SFX and VFX improvements. And ultima…
Focus on out-of-combat experience In the HQ there is a lot to do. One of that is to plan your missions in terms of setting the next destination, selecting and equipping your team properly. Unlike last weeks combat features, it is a very UI-heavy and often not visually popping topic, but it is needed nevertheless.
More Units On The Field Without Chaos "Perfectly balanced, as all things should be" - at least that's the goal, and we're on good terms with it. Got to make sure, that scaling up the combats with more units, abilities and so on does not hurt first and foremost the fun, but also overall balance, performance and so on. In this regard, the updates for this week were a success. We're now on good te…
Starting with small scale mission maps and setups to make sure, the overall game flow is cohesive and feels right. Already for micro-sized mission maps, the experience has to feel on spot - and it does. It just took the previous weeks' general tweaks and reworks, consuming several articles, video tutorials and more on game design theory, applying it to a first proper micro-mission map. The resu…
Full Internal Unit Behavior Rework It was a large task, which was tried to be avoided with "the old system still works - wonky - but works". But it kept breaking, being sometimes unpredictable and hard to debug, so it had to go. A full revamp of the way, how units behave and act, took 3 days (which actually is nothing compared to the current and future benefits). Only during dev of the new Beha…
Stop to drift away It's too easy to get carried away during gamedev a la "let's improve this on the way" or "got a new idea, will immediately implement it, will be quick". Stopping that and will focus on a more planned, disciplined way. That also helps to keep updates more frequent in all directions: new features, bugfixes, something to show. Hopes are, that this will speed things up significan…
Continuous work regarding feeling, pacing and performance A bit less "visual" updates happened, as the focus was more towards gameplay and feeling. That means, reaction times of the units, general behaviour improvements and fixing performance issues, which were all in the way of a nice, smooth and consistent experience. As a small test, 100 units were simultaneously running around, sensing each…
The combat-tests were great, and focused on improving not only the feeling and responsiveness of the units, but also ironed out bugs and fully reworked a key element: the unit sensor system. Questions (and answers) from the play-test - Is the combat engaging and fun? - Definitely engaging! The cover mechanics work, strategy, positioning is key to win... However, we want to improve on the active…
Currently working on a playable small combat-orientated test arena. It is meant for a basic check of feeling and performance at this stage of the development. Questions, which this playtest shall answer are: - Is the combat engaging and fun? - Is it fluent, stable and properly working? - Is it performant?
Nothing serious, just updated all the related media content like trailers and images to reflect the latest status of the development. Some key differences compared to before are: Overhauled UI, new map and visuals as well as sound improvements. Basically, worked on all fronts. Anyways, was just intended to be a small update to also test the news function on Steam itself, as this is the very fir…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.