Wormventures: Barrier 51
One-month Sabbatical to finish develpment of the game in full time
I'm quite excited, because today my one-month Sabbatical started, in which I will try to finish my solo developed 3D cartoon point&click adventure game "Wormventures - Barrier 51" in full time instead of just working on it every now and then in the evenings.
I'm working on it for seven years now and if all goes well I plan to have the full game ready (at least for starting a beta testing round) at the end of October. For that time I'll post my progress regulary on my Devlog at http://www.wormventures.com, so I want to invite you to follow me along.
Wish me luck!
With best regards
Marcus
Gameplay video with german voice overs
I will wrap up a similar video in english language without the voice overs in the next days to have a gameplay video on the english/international store front page, too.
Wormventures - Barrier 51: German Voice Overs / Longer Demo Version
Voice Overs
I thought about implementing voice overs in the game for a long time and it seemed to be something that I could not afford financially and also time-wise. Then I made this terrible mistake at the end of 2022 by recording some test voice overs for one scene of the game. What can I say: It sounds and feels so good and adds so much quality to the game that there is no way around this anymore:
The game will have full german voice overs!
I am currently casting german voice over artists to record all the voice over files for the demo version of the game and a bit more for the characters, that are featured in the demo and have appearances later in the game. At the moment I cannot say anything about english voice overs in the future, but for now they are not planned and I'm not working on them.
Demo Version
After having a demo version ready mid 2022 I found it to be a bit short. It featured the interactive intro to the game (Chapter 0.5) and had a playing time of something like 20 to 30 minutes. So I decided to include the whole first chapter (of seven) into the demo version which will result in a playing time of 1 to 2 hours I guess which I think is better to get a real impression of what the game will have to offer.
Wormventures - Barrier 51: Worms, worms, worms – They multiply!
The last 10 or so days I was busy creating characters for the game. Until then there were only 9 out of a total of around 50 characters ready. In most scenes there were dummy objects, mostly cylinders, that you could talk to. Now, the total worm count in the game is at 23, which means that almost half of the characters are done. And even though some of them are not final it is very motivating to have real characters in the game now that look, smile and laugh at you.
If I had to animate and create blend shapes for facial expressions for every single worm I wouldn’t be able to do it, but all animations I create for Looky are useable by any other character. A list of facial blend shapes like phonemes (for lip synching) and expressions are also available for all new characters. I only have to create those that are unique for a character.
In addition I recently bought a new asset pack from the Unity Asset Store that has 100 hats available game ready. I already used some of them for the new characters like the police officer and the Cannibal Chef and I tried to let Looky wear a christmas hat which makes him look quite festive:
Wormventures - Barrier 51: When worms learn to run
From time to time I come back to my worm models to add some animations like last weekend. I added a nice looking run animation to Looky so that when you double click somewhere on the screen and that point is far enough away from Looky, he will run (or better said „jump“) to that point. To have points of interest in a scene that are quite far from each other by design is one thing, but not to have an option to get there fast is another. Or more precisely: It’s best to keep the routes very short by design, but occasionaly you want the player to be aware of distances between things and you have to make sure as a game designer to not let that frustrate him or her.
I’m quite happy with how the run animation turned out and I made some other animations too, to make dialogs a lot more lively. For example I added a dismissive gesture when Looky said „Aw, don’t worry!“ and a shake animation when he holds his breath, while trying to buy some chili powder from Aunt Emma.
The very cool thing about this is the fact that those animations are not only recycable across several dialogs, but also across all worms in the game. Since all characters use the same „Animator Controller“ (maybe I explain the animation engine in more detail in a future blog post), all animations that I add to Looky are automatically usable by all other worms.
For example these are some moments in the game, where I could use the „Point“ animation:
But don’t worry: Wormventures – Barrier 51 won’t be a „Point-On-Everything“ game.
Wormventures - Barrier 51: Moving the devlog to steam
This time I want to tell more about my approach to create this game, beginning with implenting the raw game logic and then detailing each scene.
Creation philosophy
First thing I did was creating each scene with just simple geometry like boxes and cylinders that represent the very rough scene layout and the things, the player can interact with. This was completely done with Blender, a free 3D modeling software and meanwhile a beast of an application. I work with Blender for many years now and since it was a little bit quirky in the past (selecting with right mouse button and so on, which can be really confusing when switching back and forth between Unity and Blender) it is now completely industry compatible in terms of controls (common mouse and keyboard layout).
This is an example of a super-rough greyboxing scene layout in Blender:
After designing the scene in Blender it was opened in Unity, the game engine I'm using to create this game. In Unity all logic elements of a scene were added like hotspots, markers to move the characters from point to point and triggers to make things happen if the player moves into a certain area. Camera and a rough lighting was implemented as well at this point of time.
This is the same scene in Unity with the hotspots and markers in place:
This process was done for all scenes. Basic dialogs were implemented, some of them as simple as "Give me item" for the player to say. Just there to connect the whole game logic underneath. By doing this I had a completely playable game in a relatively short period of time ... which was unbelievably ugly. Since then all the graphics, sounds, music, lighting, animations, dialogs and of course the story are being added. Some rooms with local puzzles are unfinished and are currently skipped when playing the game. They can be included into the game very quickly and get in, when they are done.
This is the same scene in a more detailed state:
