Boilerline: Critical Pressure - DevLog #1

Heya!

And welcome back to our devlog! Last week we introduced you to our core gameplay idea. This week we are back to show you how our fledgling project is developing!

First of all, we have decided the official title for our game: Boilerline: Critical Pressure ! A name that not only sounds badass, but also perfectly encapsulates the theme we have going on: Operating a steam(punk) train with a small crew and being able to work together under high stakes. What are the stakes you might ask? Your very lives, and that of your trusted train! Welcome to the world of Boilerline!

In "Boilerline: Critical Pressure" four players ride a lonely steampunk train through the wasteland of a zombie apocalypse. They have to work together, harvest resources, craft and upgrade, in order to keep their train running through increasingly difficult hordes of zombies.
Players are challenged to communicate and cooperate in order to keep their train (and themselves) alive and survive as long as possible in this pressurized couch-coop game.

Now, enough of the boring text! Let's delve into some visuals!

Our artists have been busy defining the style and theme of our game, and have come up with some really cool ideas! Take a look at the character concepts that Justin has been drawing up! He managed to put a lot of character into these figures, whilst making the design for players and zombies feel distinct, yet still very connected.

Meanwhile, Adriaan has been building up our material pipeline. The idea is to use an adjustable smart material in Substance Painter to texture all of our unique assets - and procedural world-tiling Unreal Engine materials combined with trim textures for all environmental assets. He already created a Smart material prototype!

Adriaan also started experimenting with foliage and is already getting some pretty neat results! The shading of the grass captures the general shading style we want to use for the environment quite well.

In the meantime, Jan has been working on a prototype layout for our home base, the Steam Train. The goal here is to make the player experience inside the train as smooth as possible, to allow for quick and efficient access to all major interaction points: The engine in the front, gun placements and doors on the sides and the material storage in the back.

Jan also got our GDM (Game Design Model) started, so that we can have a clear overview of all the features of our game without getting lost.

Furthermore, we have progressed the theme of our game. Boilerline takes place in an era that is comparable to the early nineteenhundreds in our history of the planet earth. However, in the world of Boilerline electricity was never invented. Instead, steampowered technology has made massive advancements. But in this edition of Steampunk no-one has bothered with the laborous, finnicky task of transferring power using cogs and gears. 
Why use a secondary medium when you can just power everything directly with steam? Therefore, there will be thick, bulky and strong steam-transferring pipes everywhere!Together with canisters of pressurised steam, pressure valves and gauges these pipes will drive the artstyle of our game.

Naturally, this "artstyle" also has to translate into sounds! And Gauvin has been at it! Next to building up the entire sound bible, he already created some test sounds for you to enjoy! Listen to it here
These sounds are already implemented into our internal prototypes, and will most likely be there for you to enjoy in next weeks public prototype!

But enough of all the fancy art shenanigans! Lets get real and talk some code!

Our developers Patrick and Seppe have proven their worth and prototyped several new mechanics this week - from resource crafting over an advanced zombie AI with obstacle evasion to a train platform that actually moves through the environment whilst players mount and unmount onto it. Ideally the transfer from environment to the train should feel completely frictionless to the player, whilst adhering to the correct physics -  and this prototype proves that we are underway!

Note how brown boxes can very easily get crafted into yellow boxes without interrupting player movement. Awesome!
The crafting system is built on data tables, making it super easy for us to add new items and crafting recipes on the development side. This also goes hand in hand with a new inventory management system, that massively streamlines the inventory process both on the gameplay - and the development side.

As you can see, advancements have been made this week on all sides and corners of our project. Our team is in good spirits, and we're excited to start into our next week of development - the progress of which YOU will be able to see here in our devlog next Monday.

Until then:

Cheerio!

Your Group 21