First 365 Days of Developing My Indie Game (Arcadian Rift)

hey everyone david here with an update on arcadian rift the sci-fi shooter i've been working on in unreal engine in the game you play as a pirate aboard your own ship with the ability to scan for cargo ships board them search for loot fight off enemies there's also a deeper story going on involving hunting down a few artificially intelligent machines that have become more advanced and a little mystery that unfurls as you do so and it's been a full year since i first created the project file for arcadian rift which you can see here this is my my day one progress i thought it'd be interesting to show everything that's been done since then and how i went from this empty project to a functioning looking game this is going to be purely a development overview if you're interested in more of like an analytical review of things i'd recommend checking out the other video i created on that topic of it linked below and in the end cards also if the game interests you be sure to wishlist it from my steam page linked below i just got the steam page up recently so it's still a little rough but um there's a big step that i'm very proud of and it'd mean a lot if you took a moment to add it to your wish list and finally before we get started i'd like to talk about core which is this video's sponsor core is a free game creation platform that lets you build publish and play 3d multiplayer games you can build from scratch or modify and reimagine content from other creators all without any coding necessary but with the option to write your own game logic in lua core also provides a massive library of free music sound and art assets so you can spend more time creating games and less time making assets you can even make money off the games you create with the perks program which shares 50 percent of the revenue with core creators this is double the roblox revenue share and 10 times more than fortnight creative quit your day job or buy your dream car like many core creators already have there's an ongoing dystopian world's dead mouse and core collab jam where you can use cord to create a dystopian scene and top submissions will be included in his next music video enter quickly before the event ends on july 26th also the core invitational game jam applications have been extended to august 1st with over thousand dollars in prizes including a tesla model 3 this is a game jam you don't want to miss and beginning shortly is the traffic jam competition to create a vehicle-based game with core which includes a 25 000 cash pool all of these events will be linked in the description below with additional information to check them out and enter soon before the deadlines core is partnered with epic games and you can download the game completely free with your epic games account by using the link in the description below and start playing and creating today okay so what had to be done to get this little blank game i made a year ago into the arcadian rift game you see today player movement was the first thing this involved a lot of tweaking of the unreal engine player movement component as well as some custom code for creating smooth crouching jump crouching sprinting and other functions following this was the player's first person arms these were concepted by flair modeled by myself rigged by zophie and then i animated them to perform all the different functions for each weapon so i kind of had to do the movement arms and weapons all simultaneously at the beginning of the game so then i added the weapons five concepts were created by flair which i then expanded into a larger array of concepts using microsoft paint all these weapons were modeled and then the aforementioned animations could be created using the arms i also had to create unique vfx for each weapon firing and the projectiles as well as creating crosshairs inside inkscape this was all done for my current 10 weapons the typhoon riptide thresher hammerhead squall angler hydra cyclone scanner and leviathan boy wasn't that fun just listing off a bunch of stuff i wanted the player to be able to use gadgets and abilities so i have created three so far the magnet which is very much like the gravity gun from half-life except you can use it while using any weapon it can pick up and throw objects and has a cool vfx spline i created the shield which the player can use to deflect incoming damage i made a concept in blender before recreating it in unreal and doing animation and effects and the dash which allows the player to dodge quickly and i created a 2d effect on the screen which flashes briefly switching over to environments one of the main environments created was the player's spaceship this began in early blockout stage then i brought it into the game to test the scale and the player movement through the environment after being happy with it i created the higher detail model did some lighting tests inside blender and finally exported and moved everything over to unreal engine with collision animation and some other details the hollow table was one of the main interactables on the ship which began with a basic placeholder design but eventually i went back and gave it a nice ui and made sure the player can manually scan for ships another important interactable is the weapon wall which serves as the player's physical armory and allows them to equip their weapons there's an early concept for player decorations aboard your ship just missing a misting just missing a system for saving their state i modeled many different loot crates most of which needed animations for opening the loot crates provide the players with loot in the form of a generic currency and each loot piece has a few colorful effects i made to simulate kind of light rays and indicators of rarity the hud was a big feature that took a lot of concepting and work inside inkscape i eventually moved everything into unreal and set up all the functionality optimizations as well as created a curve effect to make it feel a little bit more like a visor later i would add the radar to help players figure out where enemies are did a lot of testing on player shield and health stuff to make things a little more fluid and readable with different indicators the player death was implemented causing a unique animation to play when the player dies and they slowly kind of lose control their character i also created damage indicators in also an escape i think in 2d which appear on the screen and give the direction of oncoming damage to further help the player know where they're being attacked from prior to creating actual enemies i did a ton of work with these cute but grumpy little placeholder owls i use these for a long time to learn how ai works and make sure all the kind of facets of combat was functioning and then there's a handful of actual enemies that got made some of which were concepted by flair and the rest were just kind of freestyle by myself while modeling all of them were modeled rigged animated set up all these ai behaviors and logic and made into destroyed versions in total we have the enemies for the standard drone shield drone heavy drone with some extra work on the missiles laser drone where i also updated the laser vfx standard turret missile turret and then these mines which have my first ever flying logic and the tank oh and a little spinning laser thing that's kind of outdated and i've hardly ever used there's a kind of non-enemy that was the loot bot which is a hidden crate that turns into a robot and tries to run and hide from you this enemy was challenging to model and was rigged by zofi it also features a more complex ai system which seeks out good hiding spots i created the space skybox manually inside blender using ev volumetrics and doing a full panoramic panoramic render panoramic render i then recreated the space skybox later to look even better the salvage freighter was the first full cargo ship created involved in creating tons of modular industrial artwork which i can use to build remaining ship interiors i also had to make many dynamic things like the conveyor belts the cranes the crushers flame throwers scrap droppers air vents that launch you up in the air and these cool laser arms that are just cosmetically look awesome did a lot of work lighting it and then i had to create the actual light source prop models i also got around to making tons of other small medium and large props at this time i created a system for doors they can be locked fully unlocked one way requiring a key or requiring certain amounts of power i added a lens dirt mask couldn't find a texture i liked so i ended up just creating my own inside blender the main menu is set up functionally but not artistically and this also includes the functioning save menu and the accompanying save game code there's also an in-game menu which has come fairly far along with a matching settings menu that i did get off a template on the marketplace i added critical hits at one point allowing the player to hit enemy weak points for additional damage and we see a unique effect appear just for the criticals another marketplace template that saved me a lot of time are the explosions i did customize them a lot to fit the game a bit more i set up the loading screens which include a cinematic smooth loading and streaming to avoid any pauses or hitches the laser puzzles are mostly complete i modeled a few pieces and set up the system to allow players to redirect or split lasers in order to power up crates or other devices story mission 1 was a big task began with layout then i designed the art style and blender applied it in unreal added all the lighting and details and i also had to make a lot of dynamic things for these missions which fit the art style such as the new doors the powerball spawners and catcher things the unique loot crates with an awesome dissolving effect and a light bridge story mission 2 was similar but also a big task layout just finished up recently actually and i created the asset for a few of the dynamic objects such as the bus blocks and the piston blocks i created a soft respawn mechanic for falling off the map and a hard respawn that allows the player to replay the current mission rather than returning to their ship i programmed a wave system which allows enemies to spawn in waves and events to be triggered from defeating each wave this required an enemy spawning effect which i think looks pretty cool recently there's been a lot of concept artwork by frizzle on the space station which the player will use to shop sell items and for story bits this includes layouts interiors exteriors lighting and style guides concept art has also been done by kurt on the first three ai bosses the scorpion turtle and owl the first two have awesome concept renders to go along with them and the third is just beginning about now another important feature is sounds after infinity has created sounds for weapons enemies abilities and a few other items also been doing a lot of concept work for music refining and exploring what we want for the sound of the game a while back i created an initial alpha environment used to test some of the basics of the game which was the first time anyone other than myself played arcadian rift i then created a second alpha environment which tested different forms of combat and level loading and and since then i've been releasing monthly builds of the game which include the full experience of the playership scanning boarding and even the story missions and with all the patrons playing and leaving feedback i was able to make a ton of fixes changes tweaks and just other stuff which have just really improved the overall playability of the game i also did a lot of optimization at one point really researching things learning up on it and tried to make the game run smoother on all devices and finally from before i even created this project file and ongoing to this day i've been doing a bunch of work on this story with the help of people like badger and after infinity this includes so much different stuff but most of it i don't want to reveal as the story is something i'd like to keep secret until it releases and that's it that's how in the last 12 months i turned this blank unreal engine project into what you see today which resembles an actual game there's definitely a lot more work that went into this such as coding stuff brainstorming rejected ideas and features and just stuff i simply forgot but i hope you enjoyed and don't forget you can wishlist the game now on steam if it looks cool to you link in the description below which listing the game helps support the project and that doesn't mean you have to buy it if you later decide you aren't interested and the other way to support my work is to become a patron i gotta give a big thanks to all my current and past patrons who have supported me over this first year as this is my first game and i'm the only one developing that means you put a lot of trust in me and that really does mean a lot i hope everyone's happy with all the kind of progress and stuff and likes the direction the game is headed and remember check out core with the free download link in the description below or by visiting coregames.com and have fun playing or creating sweet new games as well as entering all the awesome game jams and competitions with sweet prizes thanks for watching see you all next video do

Channel: David R. B.

Views: 152,667

Rating: 4.9686618 out of 5

Keywords: indie game, sci fi, unreal engine, devlog, one year, first year, steam, indie game steam, development, ue4, arcadian rift, space pirate, game development, beginner, beginners, for beginners

Id: a22an0hCFHY

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021