A Turret's Life is a first person arcade shooter/tower defence 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
Crafting Mechanics: This week ended up taking on more of a game-design direction than a programming one. I redesigned the crafting system to work with a grid-based system rather than just a node-based system. I think this a little more unique and can create some interesting possibilities.
Art: I have commissioned a small set of concept art that should be arriving within the next couple of days. I also personally met with a potential 3D Artist interested in the project.
Progress
Art
Thanks to your guys' help, I have finalized choosing the art style! The style is moderately stylized, but still with some realism. There is more of an emphasis on making the colors pop, than on the small details of realism. It will have an acrady feel to it as well, with lots of flashy particle effects and scores. This style is a callback to the nostalgia of simpler times - of childhood cartoons on TV and classic arcade shooters; yet at the same time still having some realistic design to emphasis the modern progression of video games. In other words, it is a mix of the old and the new.
I am still trying to figure out the best way to get the art assets in. Art is incredibly expensive to commission for any custom work and the costs quickly add up beyond my budget. I think it will have to be done progressively throughout development. However, I plan on getting the basic environment, enemy, and player modules out so you guys can see some core gameplay in the near future :).
I have commissioned concept art for 12 environment items which should arrive in 2-3 days, but I am thinking in the future it is probably better to just get art for an entire scene rather than individual environment items. I will still most likely have to get some basic concept art for the AI and player modules, but hopefully that will be enough for the 3D artist to create their own designs from afterwards.
I met with an old classmate of mine who does 3D art, and he is potentially interested in working on the project, but it is all still tentative.
I am quite anxious about how all the art can turn out, but at this moment all I can do is wait...
Crafting Mechanic
For most of the past week, I did not really get around to doing much actual programming but spent much time researching the art and updating the crafting system design. Ironically, a large source of inspiration for the new crafting system came out of my planning out the best way to implement the system in code. But one idea led to another; so let me briefly try to explain how the system works.
When the player enters the crafting room, there is a conveyor belt that contains all of the Enjin-backed items that can be used, where the player can sort through and find the ones they want. Next, they will grab the module from the belt and take it over to the crafting station.
The crafting station is represented in a 3D grid, of something like 5 x 5 x 5 cells. The player takes the module and places it anywhere in the grid. But each module has its own shape consisting of several cells in different configurations, so the player will have to maneuver their items to fit optimally like virtual Lego. However, one constraint is that every module must be attached to a structural connector piece. These pieces can connect anywhere you'd like onto the turret, and allow for you to really customize the design and appearance of the turret, but they are also a part of the puzzle, since they too have different shapes and have to be strategically placed so they can connect to the most modules.
I thought about going with the standard convention of having to snap/connect each item to something that is already placed and on the ground, but realized that it could be quite a pain to reorder stacked placed modules. For instance in this scenario, if you designed your whole turret but wanted to change the stand on it, it you would have to remove the entire turret just to swap the stand since the turret is supported by it. Instead, without the standard connecting constraints you can now just delete the stand and add in new ones without any issue (or not, there will be an achievement for beating a wave without having a stand :D ).
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Website: https://www.aturretslife.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/aturretslife
Talk to you guys on next week's blog!
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