Hi everyone! It's been a while huh... I'm going to talk about what we've been doing and what will happen to this project. First of all, I want to say that I love this project and the idea behind it. I love immersive sims and interesting horror games.
But sadly we have to announce that the project's development has been halted
Why?
Development first started in 2019. We've had worked on it for 2 years or so but it was not a full-time project due to our workload with our university. After a while, I had to start developing another game called DoubleWe due to external reasons. I thought I could juggle between the projects but working on Red Frontier 2 proved to be difficult due to legacy code, bad unity project files, and outdated systems. Unity editor got so screwed that I couldn't even edit the terrain due to the extremely low performance of the editor. Also, Red Frontier was way technically overscoped for a two-person team. So we couldn't work on it consistently for the last few years.
Future of Red Frontier 2
Development will be halted while we focus on DoubleWe. When we return to this game, we have to remake most of the project. Currently, it's very very time-consuming to model, rig, paint, and place every environmental object by ourselves. Since I was still learning 3D during this project, let's say it turned out.. not so good. We lost our visual style along the way. We plan to return to the art style of Red Frontier 1 & DoubleWe which are much more manageable and stylistic for an indie game. I can't say when we'll return to this project but hopefully, it will be after the release of DoubleWe.
Permanent Demos
We'll release what we have as a permanent free demo. I don't like unfinished projects so we decided to release what we developed so far as a free demo. Along with this new demo, you can play Centipede Demo (the old one) and Red Frontier 1 which probably most of you haven't tried before. Here's the summary of the demos:
Snake Demo (Outside) This new demo features a giant roaming snake similar to RF1. You start at a safe station and have to make your way to the city entrance. It also features gadgets, the power mechanic, safe houses, and the ever-present dust storm. You might experience bugs & issues so we're sorry in advance!
Centipede Demo (Inside) This is the demo we published before. It shows you what the gameplay will be like inside the cities & stations. This demo is happening after you finish the snake demo. The game should be pretty stable
Red Frontier 1 The origins of Red Frontier and it's a jam game made in 3 days. It's a finished game but controls might feel a bit old. It takes about 20 minutes to 1 hour to finish it.
Demos will only support Windows. Sorry, Unity doesn't like it when I switch build targets :(
DoubleWe
We're developing another game called DoubleWe. In this game, you have a clone hiding among the crowd and you have to kill them before they kill you. I think it's a pretty unique horror game with highly emergent game mechanics. Here's the link:
Thanks to everyone for sticking with the development! I hope we'll return and finish this awesome game and give you guys an awesome experience! If you have feedback or just want to say what you liked about the game, don't hesitate to open a topic! We're not disappearing anywhere and very much like to hear your feedback!
If you want to keep up with our future projects, here are the links:
It's the fifth of Friday Frontier. I know it's been a while. We've been busy with school and other life stuff but here we are.
Helmet System
The atmosphere of Gliese Cc is not hospitable for human life. Yeah, the planet is terraforming but humans can't breathe outside. The air needs to be filtered. This isn't a problem inside the stations. But you need to travel on the surface to reach other stations. So we've made a helmet that filters the air for you! It is attached to your suit and it automatically dispenses when it senses that you're on the surface atmosphere.
It doesn't affect the gameplay that much (Though this might change later). It's mostly for increasing immersion and improving the gameplay atmosphere of the outside. We can also use this system if we make a room filled with toxic gas or something. I've also made the helmet sway when you look around and it has its own animations synched with the camera animations. Take a look at the video (Skip the beginning if you experience motion sickness with) :
So that's it for today's dev-log. As you might've noticed the sound also changes when you wear the helmet. Maybe our next dev-log will be about that? Comment below! Let us know what you think!
-wolderado
FF4: Sounds from below
Hello everyone!
This is the fourth of Friday Frontier. Today we want to talk about a system player footstep sound system I've made. There are two systems that are somewhat connected: Inside and Outside (Terrain).
System
We put an extra code to the moveable areas. This code only carries the data required for the step sounds. The most powerful aspect of this system is creating layered sounds. For example, I can combine concrete step sound with metallic sound to produce something completely different from the other two sounds. I can also change each sound's volume or add a delay or even change their pitch. There's no layer limit. In this way, the game offers much more variety in the audio experience.
Inside The Station
You've probably already experienced this without notice if you played the last demo. We've used this system to create different feelings while you progress through the station. We first look at the texture and think of what kind of sound will this make when stepped on with a spacesuit. Then we start to mix sounds that best fits that texture. After we've done it, the code takes over and plays the sound with the parameters we gave to it.
An example data on a floor tile in the demo: (Max out the volume. No jumpscares I promise)
Terrain
On terrain, the system works a little bit differently. In the station, there are discrete places where the floor is divided into. Like you enter a metal tiled room then sound suddenly changes and that feels normal. In terrain, we can't afford such luxury. The terrain is a mix between 8 or more texture that blends into each other. So you expect a smooth transition into other sounds.
To achieve this effect, we set up the sound with the parameters normally. But we give each texture its own sound layer (On the inside, only one sound layer is present for each floor tile). Then the system checks the texture and learns how dominant each texture is. After learning that, it adjusts its parameters (for example volume) and plays all of the sound layers with their sounds. This creates a really smooth transition into other sound layers. Here's a video of the system in action:
Next time (probably next week), we'll talk about a sister system. Sound profiles and other sounds from players. Tell us what you think!
This is the third of Friday Frontier. This is starting to become a weekly thing right? Today we want to talk about a new asset we acquired for the game which you didn't see yet.
Aura 2
We always had a post-processing effect to make the game look nicer. We both aren't very good at 3D modeling so we really need good effects to make the game look nice. Of course, we have and will always have the option to disable such effects. So we decided to invest in another effect to add volumetric fogs. We saw some feature videos of such systems and we realized that they are perfect for our game since the planet you'll be playing is under constant dust storm. Having those effects will enhance the immersion and overall visual aspect of the game. I guess Auro 3 will come out this year but since we're using the built-in render pipeline for Red Frontier 2, we won't be migrating to that version.
Volumetric Fogs & Lightning
We already implemented the system to our demo scene. It significantly improved the visuals at a relatively low cost. Here are some comparisons:
Of course, it won't be this dusty everywhere. I picked the places I've used this system. And the outside will be foggier than inside. If we implement the weather system, the fog's intensity and color will change according to biome.
So that's it for today's update. Tell us what you think!
