Drone Zero Gravity
Update: Achievements & DZG Playground Beginnings
So what's new?
-Achievements in the story mode are ready!
-The pause menu has a new button titled "Stats/Data Orbs", here you can view the progress of achievements that are stat based and you can see how many data orbs you have collected.
-The beginnings of DZG Playground has been added. When you click play, there is a new button that's purple. When you click it, there is a room that gives you a bit of backstory about the objects in the game as you progress. So you can check back there every so often.
What's in the works?
-The story is done but there are the mini games that I am working on that I will be adding over time. I consider this game an adventure at heart with various gamestyles so I want to expand on a few of them to have more of an arcade feel too.
-More achievements for the other gametypes and research trading cards.
-Looking into building the game for other platforms, will most likely start with Linux first. There have been a few request and also I used to try out different linux distros in the past.
Well, I believe that is it for now. I will tweak and add things here and there but the things above are the big ones.
Talk to you all later,
If you come across anything gamebreaking let me know and I will roll back a version fix it and update it again.
Thanks again everyone,
Bye,
Isaac
Talking about Achievements, DZG Playground and Trailer
Just an update on what I have been up to. We have ten achievements now and I will be adding more. The other achievements will be incremental based like destroy x amount of drones and land x amount of shots. This info will be saved in game and once fulfilled, the achievement will unlock. A bit of a work around but it will work.
Next, the beginnings of DZG Playground will be available sometime tomorrow. The goal here is to provide additional info about the game and descriptions of some of the objects. All of this will be available in the main lobby but there will also be rooms added to play other game types. I will add these additional rooms over time which will also have achievements and trading cards.
Lastly, I made a trailer for the game to show off some of the other things that happen in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-eLkp2HTDM
Thanks everybody for you support.
Bye,
Isaac
Yo Dawg...
Ok maybe Exhibit didn't say that but that's what came to mind once I was able to unlock achievements on my test machine :D So I made a meme :)
...
So, next time you log into Drone Zero Gravity, an achievement should unlock. There are only 3 at the moment but I will be adding more. I stayed up late every night this week trying to figure it out and finally it is working now. The programmer who worked on the flying AI, Rama, gave me a bit of feedback too to make sure I was doing everything correctly. I wanted to go to sleep but I figured let me try one last thing and it payed off. Is there an achievement for enabling achievements?
Bye,
Isaac
Steam Achievements...What?
I think I finally figured out how to incorporate achievements. I will be rolling out an update today to see if they work for you all. Right now there are three but I will continue adding them throughout this week. If anyone has some interesting names for achievements with a description, please share, maybe I will use some of them :)
Some of the achievements are event based and then will achieve when you pass certain levels i.e. Chapter 1-4 and Chapter 2-6 those difficult ones :D
Alright that is all. I will add this to the forums for everyone to have fun and brainstorm.
EDIT: By the way, if you keep your saves, I should be able to crawl the levels you played and activate those achievement as well for you. The event ones not so much.
See ya,
Isaac
Launch Day Thoughts
After talking with some of you today, I realized I have a hard time communicating the game to the player but that should get better over time. The lack of information is my attempt to not take away that sense of discovery away from the player however there's fine line where the player can feel lost. So, I will add a level where you just interact with objects that give a short blurb on what they do. I had made a level called DZG Playground for development purposes to make sure all objects are interacting accordingly.
So far there hasn't been any major issues as far as performance or crashing (yet :D) so that is good.
Just wanted say, I really appreciate you all playing the game, it means a lot to me.
Well I'm probably going to work on that tutorial level now and make some more improvements. I thought I would take a break but this has been a part of my routine so long that I can't help but make more content. Well that's all for now.
Enjoy!
Isaac
Fixed it...
So why isn't the game available you ask? Well I'm going to do one more wellness check of the game and see if I stumble across anything like the volume issue we had yesterday. So if everything is good, I will release it tomorrow.
Strange thing about this game being done is, I don't feel like it's complete yet. Maybe because no one has played it in it's "finished state" yet. So that is where you all come in. Hopefully most people will enjoy it and I can make plans for the next project but still support Drone Zero Gravity - my baby :)
Talk to you all tonight or tomorrow morning.
Have a good day!
Isaac
Delay due to audio issue
:)
Isaac
Drone Zero Gravity Progress Update (Post Delay) Post 6
Speaking of quality and settings, I tested the game on my lower end pc and it runs at 720p 60 - 30 fps (there will be dips). Here are the specs
Windows 7
Pentium 4 Dual Core Processor E5800 @3.2ghz
8gbs of ram
Nvidia Geforce GT 640 1gb
I wish I could make it look better but it does run. I figured if I can get it going on this machine, it should help with all other systems out there overall.
Special thanks to a friend out there who sold me that E5800 processor about 2 - 3 years ago to make my second pc build and got me into pc gaming, look where it led me :) And a couple other friends who cosigned :)
Ok thats all, I believe I skipped a progress update post last week. The giveaway kinda overshadowed it for me. So to all those winners, keep an eye out for your keys. Maybe at midnight. Here's what the spreadsheet looks like now :D
http://www.dronezerogravity.com/#!game-development-progress/c1diq
The last bit of talk is about steam achievements last. I hope to be able to incorporate this but I have been struggling to integrate them. If not on the campaign, I will have them implemented with the free dlc with the additional gametypes. I provide a hefty amount to make up for it :)
Talk to you all later.
Isaac
Drone Zero Gravity Giveaway is Complete.
Congrats to all the winers. Once the game is ready, I will send you a steam key for the game. Check your inbox for a friend invite from me if you haven't already. I also posted the winers on the forums.
I just wanted to say I met some cool people along the way too. It was nice chatting with some of you. I also was pleased to hear that some people still wanted to purchase the game anyway. Well for those of you, thanks that means alot to me. All that I ask is that you find someone interested in the game and pass the key along.
Well back to work, hopefully I might have a trailer out sometime today. There's still a lot of work left however I am REALLY CLOSE to having the game be playable from start to finish. I'm going to be so happy when that is possible and the testers can get an overall feel.
Talk to you all soon.
Isaac
Drone Zero Gravity Giveaway Begins!
https://youtu.be/WmCQ-V7c7Bc?t=2m48s
@2:48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmCQ-V7c7Bc
:D
Stay tuned.
Isaac