Hey guys, thought I would create a dev blog so everyone who's interested in how the game progresses behind the scenes can stay updated! I think I'll be posting one every week or 2 weeks, depending on the amount of stuff I get done.
For our first dev blog, we'll be talking a bit about vehicles. One of the big problems in Gaia right now is the huge 8 by 8km maps offer no ways of getting from point A to point B in a timely manner. In the current version, all you can do is walk/run or fly with the late game hermes set, which is barely any faster than running. So you can potentially spend a ton of time just waltzin around searching for resources.
A temporary solution to this problem has been to concentrate almost all resources close to the player spawn. All ores are nearby when you spawn and gold and diamond are at 500m+ and 800m+ from the spawn point respectively. Flora is a bit all over the place, except for globosa, gel pouches and spiky fruits. You could be spawning kilometers away from any one of those 3 and you'd have a hard time finding them, especially as a new player.
There are 70-80 rock formations spawned on the map, but a normal survivalist player won't need more than 10 to finish a game. Out of those 10, some of them can be more than 1 kilometer away while every other formation is surely much farther than that. Players who like to play for the sake of building without leaving the planet have to travel a tremendous amount to get resources late game.
Alright, so what can we conclude? We have a problem of logistics here. We need to speed up getting from point A to point B both in early and late game. Ideally, the solution would scale up. So early game you wouldn't be able to just discover the whole map with a basic vehicle.
I've thought about what kind of (ground) vehicles would best fit Gaia and I think the best we could have is a Rover and a Mech.
The rover would be an early game vehicle that you could build after you decrypt a blueprint or 2. You would also be able to build one or more containers inside it so you can have more mobile inventory with you. Theoretically, we could even have turrets that we can attach to it. But the rover will be strictly a civilian vehicle, with 0 offensive capabilities, except for running over some AI at a cost. Here's how the model of our rover is going to look like:
Exterior:
Interior:
Since our game is both first person and third person, it is important to be able to climb inside any vehicle and have some kind of pilot seat. Fortunately, both the rover and vehicle have that.
The mech on the other hand would be a more complicated system. Let me begin by showing a picture of what's in the works right now:
Note: The colors are all over the place I know, I'm testing out a few options to see what would be best!
The mech will be extremely customizable as opposed to the rover. As you can see on the left side, each Mech can have light, med or heavy legs or top plus a different assortment of weapons. These include a shotgun, flamethrower and miniguns. You can see a fully assembled mech on the right side as well as the different parts nearby. Of course, you'd also be able to attach a backpack on it for extra inventory.
Each version of the mech (light, med or heavy) will have different stats of course, but they will all be slower than the rover. The purpose of the Mech is to go out there as a tank and destroy everything that opposes you. It could even be used while defending the base.
The Mech comes with extra gadgets, such as metal and energy shields, chainsaws and more. However, using these gadgets would require a form of melee combat system for the player and this is outside the scope of this package. There's already a ton of work to be done for Alpha 4 anyway, such as all these different types of weapons that require new systems. But when we're done with this alpha, we'll have the groundwork done for laser and flamethrowers done making it easier when the time comes to introduce turrets or player weapons that have these characteristics.
How about flying vehicles or water based vehicles? Water vehicles will be implemented with the water package. Flying player controlled vehicles... I'm not sure that's ever going to happen. We're going to have to see how the game progresses.
Anyway, the plan is to make the rover work by the end of next week. The mech will probably take a bit longer. I expect Alpha 4.0 to come out about a month from now.
There's more I have to say but it will have to wait for the next dev blog. As always, happy gaming!