Category Game Design

Production schedule

Yes, I have a schedule/deadline now. I'M SO NERVOUS. :)

Here's the plan. And when I say "forum", I am of course referring to the fabulous GameDev.net forums.

  1. October build - Release 0.3, Oct 31 - with the following AI droids: shotgun, sniper, shield, cloaker, melee, chaingun. Virtual file system, XML map format, working multiplayer with scoring and simple "game over" condition. No ability to choose units yet. First forum announcement.
  2. November build - Release 0.4, Nov 30 - implement unit suppression from grenades and melee jump jet. Complete match/round logic. Simple squad orders. Unit selection screen at match start. Rough draft YouTube trailer. Forum announcement update.
  3. Official release - Release 0.5, Jan 9 - special abilities, finalize multiplayer maps, finalize YouTube trailer, overall polish, official website goes live. Image of the Day post / official forum announcement.

January 9 final release! Which means Stainless will have been in development for exactly one year! Quite impressive for a guy who never seems to finish these things.

More shiny!

Three updates, one in graphics and two in gameplay.

Graphics: new water shader! Thanks to Panda3D's new built-in support for user clip planes in the shader generator, the reflections were a piece of cake. It's a very basic shader that simply deforms the render buffer and the reflected render buffer, then blends the results 50-50. No fresnel, no lighting, nothing. It works, though.

Using the distortion shader from my last post, I added a shield droid that puts little shields around team entities in its vicinity. The shields decreases ranged damage by 25%.

And now for something completely different...

I actually planned a full-fledged single-player campaign for Stainless, before I came to my senses and downgraded it to a much simpler multiplayer game. However, I'm still considering a short (2-4 hours) campaign. What I have in mind is similar to Valve's strategy with Left 4 Dead: a short, highly replayable campaign designed for 2-4 players. With one catch: the players are fighting against each other.

With my limited marketing and branding skills, I have dubbed my idea an "anti-cooperative campaign". It would be best with 1v1 or 2v2, but regardless of the player count, the computer would balance the teams by bestowing various power-ups. Which means, if I ever add an online component beyond LAN, matchmaking would be unnecessary.