Now that Alpha 6 is out, I want to talk about Alpha 7. Alpha 7 will bring underwater gameplay and will be the last Alpha for Gaia. After Alpha 7 is out, I'll work on getting the game out of Early Access.
Onto water gameplay. So ideally what I want is to make something like Subnautica, involving lots of exploration and awe inspiring environment. Although Gaia will never be Subnautica simply because Gaia is not focused on underwater gameplay and it has to play nice with the current mechanics in game. There is a reason why there are so few games out there that have both 'normal' gameplay and underwater gameplay: these are 2 completely different game styles, involving completely different game mechanics, goals, graphics, physics and ultimately design. Implementing underwater gameplay a la Subnautica in Gaia is going to be a challenge that will take time, but I'll be doing it anyway! I'm not promising the same level of detail, though I'm hoping to make something worthwhile.
First let's talk about topography. In the current maps in Gaia, water depth goes down to 50m and there is absolutely no way of changing the existing maps to go any lower due to technical reasons. Therefore, Alpha 7 will get rid of the current 3 maps and come up with completely new ones. Maps will have a maximum height of 2000 meters, with the ocean level at 1000 meters. That means mountains can be up to 1000 meters long, just like now, but ocean depth will be up to 1000 meters long as well. Each maps' underwater topography will be subdivided into 4 levels depth: From 0m to 300m, from 300m to 600m, from 600m to 900m and from 900m to 1000m. At each level, there will be different fauna and flora. So near the water surface you'll find innocent-looking fish and some corals and as you go deeper, you'll find some horrors of the deep. This applies to coral and minerals too. At the bottom, you might find pits of lava too.
Each level can only be reached with the help of certain equipment, like an oxygen tank and different types of underwater vehicles, like a submarine or Subnautica's Seamoth. These will of course be locked behind decryption modules.
So what will you be able to find exactly? Well near the surface you'll find normal fish such as bass and salmon with a mix of alien creatures, such as a... biomechanical whale. Gaia is all about that mix of real life wildlife mixed with alien life so it's only natural this extends to the underwater as well. As you go deeper, you'll discover less friendly creatures, but I don't want to go into the details about this yet as this blog is merely about the grand scheme of things.
Now, Gaia is a mix of procedural generated stuff with a static terrain. If you've played the game, you'll notice that the ground is always the same, but what is spawned on top of it is completely randomized. That includes rock formations, ancient ruins, all resources, animals and so on. Underwater is going to be no different. That cool plateau at depth 240m is always going to be there, but what you can find there will always depend on RNG.
What about rewards? Why go to the depths of the Earth in the first place? Well, for one, certain resources will only be available under water at certain depth levels. Therefore if you want to progress with your base building, you'll have to go exploring. For two, pure exploration and cool ancient loot. Also, you might be craving salmon, idk.
This exploration aspect brings me to the last point in this blog, which is raids. Currently, raids are hardcoded to appear at specific time intervals depending on difficulty and your chosen story teller. This makes it so that going exploring is a risky, stressful and unintelligent decision because your base will come under attack frequently. Alpha 7 will bring some changes to raids mechanics, pathfinding for underwater creatures, new controls for vehicles to move in water, reworked oxygen mechanic and a lot more. I could keep going on but you get the point.
I wasn't kidding when I said making underwater gameplay is almost like making a new game so I'm not sure how long this Alpha will take. Maybe it will be done in January? February? March? We'll see.
Until next time!