A Turret's Life is a first person arcade shooter/tower defense game for PC and VR where you are the tower defending an area against the endless onslaught of attacking robots and crafting overpowered dream guns that can be traded as crypto-backed items.
Updates
Inventory System: After looking at some of the different backend solutions for storing and syncing player accounts online, I became frustrated. Each on of them had 80% of the features needed but were all lacking in some of the core requirements. So for the time being I am just storing the player data locally for development and I will worry about the backend after the release of Enjin's Effinity once I have a clearer idea of the game's needs in relation to Effinity.
Crafting Mechanics: I have started on arguably the most important mechanic in the game, namely player customization. In particular, I have been creating the functionality of the UI system for players to search through their turret modules.
Social Media
Over the last week, I was contemplating different ways that are most ideal to reach out to you guys but still allow me to balance with development.
The best solution I can think of for now is whenever I start working on the game to post a message to Twitter and Telegram just keeping you guys informed about development, such as what I'm working on, its role in the game, how it is going, strange obstacles, or if I need your guys' advice etc. This also opens up a nice entry point where you guys can ask questions and what not :). Anyhow, starting tomorrow I will be more active in Social Media for the project.
In all honesty, like many game developers, community (and social interaction in general haha) is not our biggest strong suite. So if you guys have ideas for the community and social media now or in the future, please let me know! (I need all the help I can get :) )
Progress
Inventory System
My research looking into the different backend systems was still quite fruitful. I noticed that all of them used a certain file format called “json” in order to store the items. Json is basically a very general way to store a wide array of data. It is very flexible across different platforms and is easy to convert data to and from that format.
So by locally storing the items as json right now, when the time is right to convert to the actual backend system, it should be fairly straightforward... knock on hard wood, of course.
Crafting Mechanic
The player's inventory items are represented on a conveyor belt which has buttons to toggle between the different categories of crafting modules, namely the Turret, Gun, Ammo, and HUD. Then there are smaller buttons to toggle between the different subtypes of modules for each category, for example the gun has the barrel, magazine, and receiver submodules. The player then cycles down the items to find what they want for crafting.
The UI in the game is ideally mostly diegetic. This means that the UI is represented as actual world objects within the game, rather than a screen overlay like most games' UI. This is beneficial in that it creates more player immersion and is necessary for VR since traditional UI overlays don't work in VR, in fact the Unity game engine doesn't event allow for it! But if you did try it, it would basically be like trying to put text on a pair of glasses and then try to read what it says – it is just way too close and annoying to focus on.
Until next time!
Join the Community!
Website: https://www.aturretslife.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/aturretslife
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