Hey everyone!
It’s been a few weeks since the last development update, and a lot has changed in Gearbound: Odyssey.
Most of my development time recently has been focused on getting the Steam Next Fest demo into shape. That means building actual levels, polishing the systems already in the game, fixing problems that show up when those systems are used together, and improving a lot of the behind-the-scenes tools that help me build the game faster.
Here’s what’s been happening.
Work is well underway on Level 1: The Silent Relay, which will make up a major part of the Steam Next Fest demo.
The opening section of the level is now built, and the first major encounter is playable.
The level introduces Ember, establishes the environment, teaches some of the core mechanics, and begins introducing the enemies and situations you’ll be dealing with throughout Gearbound.
The current goal is for the full demo experience to land somewhere around 45-60 minutes, although that can still change as the level gets more playtesting and polish.
The Silent Relay still has plenty of work ahead of it, but it’s finally reaching the point where the individual mechanics I’ve spent so long building are starting to feel like an actual game.
The magnetic traversal system has gone through another large round of improvements.
Ember can use magnetic surfaces and ramps that completely change her orientation, letting levels extend onto walls and other unusual surfaces.
Recent improvements include:
Better automatic alignment when entering magnetic surfaces
Improved movement while transitioning between orientations
Fixes for sliding off magnetic surfaces
Better jumping while magnetized
Fixes for climbing magnetic ramps
Improvements to ground detection
More reliable transitions between normal and magnetic movement
Magnetic surfaces can now be enabled or disabled during gameplay
New audio and visual feedback for magnetic surfaces
I’ve also been working on the Flux Core system.
Flux Cores can be carried through the environment and used to power certain machinery, including magnetic ramps. They can attach to compatible devices and change parts of the level when installed.
These mechanics are going to play a much larger role as the levels become more complex.
The weapon system has also been undergoing another redesign pass.
I’ve been improving how weapons physically interact with Ember instead of having everything rely entirely on pre-made animations.
The new setup includes work on:
Improved weapon IK
Better hand positioning
Weapon-specific recoil
Running weapon movement
Weapon bobbing
Holstering and unholstering
Better weapon alignment while aiming
Support for different weapon handling styles
Cleaner transitions between melee and ranged combat
The goal is to make each weapon feel like something Ember is actually holding rather than something simply attached to an animation.
There’s still plenty of tuning to do, but the new system gives me much more control over how every weapon behaves.
Another experiment that ended up becoming part of the game is active ragdoll physics for Ember.
Instead of ragdolls only being something that happens after a character dies, the system can blend physics with animation.
This gives me much more room for physical reactions and interactions without completely giving up animation control.
There’s still a lot I want to do with this system, but it has already opened up some interesting possibilities.
With the demo becoming playable from beginning to end, I’ve also started building the tutorial flow.
New tutorial prompts are being added for things such as:
Movement
Jumping
Combat
Weapons
Interactions
Other mechanics introduced throughout the level
A big goal here is to teach the player naturally while they are moving through the level rather than stopping everything for giant walls of text.
The interaction system has been simplified and made more reliable.
Interactable objects are now detected using a radius around the player rather than relying as heavily on the exact direction of the camera.
This makes things like picking up objects, activating machinery, and interacting with level elements much more consistent.
That becomes especially important with systems such as Flux Cores where the player may be approaching an object from strange angles.
There has also been quite a bit of work on how gameplay transitions into and out of cutscenes.
The cutscene system can now properly spawn the player, lock gameplay controls, disable gameplay cameras and UI, and then restore everything when the sequence is complete.
I’ve also been improving how these sequences interact with save data.
For example, introductory sequences can now check whether valid save progress already exists so players aren’t forced through the same opening sequence every time they continue their game.
Loading has received another reliability pass as well.
The loading screen system now has better control over scene-loading progress and minimum display timing so transitions feel more consistent.
I also added fallback handling for situations where a scene fails to load correctly. Instead of leaving the player trapped on a broken loading screen, the game can safely return to the menu and display an error.
It’s one of those systems that hopefully nobody ever notices, but it’s important to have.
There has been a lot happening with the voice acting side of Gearbound too.
I’ve been going back through existing recordings and reorganizing the dialogue pipeline after finding several lines that needed to be rewritten or recorded again.
Characters are also getting expanded dialogue for gameplay situations rather than only story cutscenes.
That includes additional reactions, shop dialogue, interaction dialogue, and smaller character moments throughout the game.
I’ve also started building proper voice profiles for each character.
Voice actors are providing samples covering different mouth shapes, speaking styles, and emotions. Those recordings can then be used to create more accurate character-specific lip-sync profiles.
I’ve built additional tools for working with facial blendshapes too, including separate controls for the left and right sides of the face and more detailed eye controls.
The goal is to make conversations feel much less like a character simply playing an animation while audio happens in the background.
A lot of internal tooling has been built or improved recently as well.
One example is the audio processing workflow.
Voice actors frequently provide multiple takes of the same line inside one recording, so I’ve been improving my tools to automatically separate and organize those takes instead of manually cutting hundreds of audio clips.
It isn’t something players will directly see, but these kinds of tools make a huge difference when you’re developing a game mostly by yourself.
I’ve also expanded the internal Gearbound development console.
There are now tools for quickly moving around levels, testing equipment, jumping between sections, working with save slots, testing progression, and debugging different gameplay systems.
Having these tools means considerably less time spent replaying a level just to reach whatever feature I’m currently testing.
More time testing the actual feature means more time making the game.
Alongside all of the bigger additions, there have been tons of smaller fixes involving:
Character movement
Camera behavior
Animation transitions
IK
Weapons
Saving and loading
Cutscenes
Level scripting
Magnetic traversal
Audio
Interactions
AI
UI
Editor tools
A lot of game development at this point is finding two systems that work perfectly on their own, putting them together, and discovering fifteen new ways they can break each other.
That process is happening constantly as The Silent Relay gets closer to being a complete playable level.
This is probably the biggest difference since the last update.
For a long time, most Gearbound development consisted of building individual systems.
Movement.
Weapons.
Enemies.
Dialogue.
Cutscenes.
Saving.
Interactions.
Magnetic traversal.
Now those systems are finally being connected inside an actual level.
There is still a lot left to build and polish before I’m happy putting the demo in front of everyone, but Gearbound: Odyssey is starting to feel much closer to the game I originally pictured.
The Steam Next Fest demo is my main focus right now, and I’ll have a lot more to show as The Silent Relay continues coming together.
Thank you to everyone who has been following the project, watching the development videos, testing builds, giving feedback, or simply keeping Gearbound on your wishlist.
Every wishlist helps the game tremendously.
If you haven’t already:
Wishlist Gearbound: Odyssey on Steam and follow the page so you don’t miss the next development update.
See you in the next one!
Extynct Studios