Age of Rust Dev Update #13
It’s better to light a torch than curse the void.
Last quarter, the game was embroiled in controversy, which was a bit unexpected, but gave me an opportunity to go deeper into the game not only technically but story, characters, and worldbuilding. The game isn’t about NFT’s, blockchains, or play to earn, it’s about exploration and adventure. So, over the past few months, the development has moved forward to round out the gameplay based on what early beta testers wanted, so all those things were added into the game.
The game will be coming out later this year, but it needed some work around a few key areas to make the game more enjoyable for players trying to solve puzzles. Some of those improvements are being able to go back and explore areas players have already been through, being able to save the game without using checkpoints, improved weapon handling and AI, and combining the storyline with missions and what players are expected to do in those missions.
Let not the universe go dim on your wrath.
One of the things that players wanted to do most was go back and explore areas they’ve already been through. However, the game was designed to keep players on a rail of moving forward, as is somewhat of a tradition in adventure games. Doing so meant changing a few things, not only in the design, but with the storyline as well, so it required rebuilding a few things. In doing so, I was also able to improve the performance of the game significantly. Loading and unloading areas of the game in smaller sections brought a lot of advantages, mainly lowering the memory footprint for several scenes, as well as the framerate too.
The darkest age is just before the rise.
Some of the original vision was cut out of the game last year due to time, but I made a decision to put those things back, which required more development time. One example was the caves that were supposed to be present in the first level, in the beta the caves were short and way scaled back in what they were supposed to be, now, the cave system has been restored into game giving players a much longer gameplay experience for the Temple Vault, which is the first Act in the game.
A few elements in the game didn’t have the right lighting or aesthetic, one was the lockpick minigame with the nanobot. If you have the nanobot in inventory, the mini-game is much easier to solve. However, the game didn’t allow players without the nanobot to play the minigame, albeit with increased difficulty, which was a design choice that has now been fixed.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it
One of the gameplay elements is being able to get into an off-roader, called the G0R-1LL4, and go bounding off the trails and exploring some of the landscape, but there was one problem, it kept flipping over way too easily. The outrageous physics of the vehicle was a lot of fun, but at times it flipped over when hitting a small rock. There was a balance that needed to be had, and luckily, I found a solution that allowed the vehicle to still go bounding over cliffs, but remain upright for the majority of the ride.
A holstered gun doesn’t speak the truth.
Quinn, the leading character and protagonist in the game, needed an updated design, so the new Quinn has a bit of a different look in the upcoming full release of the game. Now using 4K textures to show off more details in HDRP, it also has a complete character rig to show off full motion capture animations for gameplay as well as cinematic cut scenes. It was also important to remove the face veil of camouflage netting, which confused a few players, so the new Quinn fits the explorer and down to business combat environments much better.
Place for everything and everything in its place.
Mad mechs and bounty hunters go out in the midday sun
Age of Rust had some more gameplay elements around traps and enemies that were removed, now being restored into the gameplay. So one of the things that I wanted players to experience was a bit of a sci-fi horror to explore a derelict ship infected with some spiders that run along the walls, ceiling, and then take a run at the player. I’m excited that I’ve been able to take that level and put it into Age of Rust, I think it’s something that players will enjoy playing though. Also, adding back some of the original offworld locations for the player to explore and uncover the mysteries beyond.
Combat and AI needed a huge update, players expected a more well rounded experience with gunplay and the AI systems. So, Age of Rust has had a major overhaul with replacing the AI with a finite state machine to control AI behavior. I’ve adopted some of the mechanics as discussed in the GDC presentation by Matthew Gallant, who did the combat design for Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us. The AI for Age of Rust is now more in line with acting like enemies in other games, they’ll reload, run for cover, and won’t constantly focus all their firepower at once, overwhelming the player.
Other developments include visual clues that players have come to expect, such as a damage indicator as to where the enemy fire is coming from. I’ve also include things such as tracer fire as to where shots from the player are going, but from the enemies as well so shots show up easily. Gun mechanics have also been added, allowing for different gameplay states of weapon handling, such as downsight view for the rifle as well as a closer grip on the pistols.
Journey of a thousand lightyears begins with a single jump
I’m very much looking forward to releasing Age of Rust this year on the Enjin Platform. I did run into some hiccups with migrating the tokens from Mainnet to JumpNet and Enjin has stated that while they support JumpNet, no additional development will be done on it, which likely means Age of Rust may need to wait for Efinity. While I wish the game was being released tomorrow, it still has some more development required with tools that Enjin is still developing, such as Efinity and the backend to go along with it, like the wallet daemon and integrated platform. So, while Enjin is doing its development, I continue to work on Age of Rust to make it a better game as well as a lot of fun for players to experience with it.
All good things…
While NFTs and blockchain games have received a lot of criticism, it’s also important to understand that Age of Rust is not a play to earn game. I didn’t build the game to be something which some crypto games have turned into, where people are looking for a financial return. Age of Rust is first and foremost an action adventure puzzle game. It’s meant to be a game for people who like solving puzzles in a myst-style like game, the game simply rewards players for doing that with a token. While some will be disappointed with this, it’s not a game model that allows you to make a living from. That’s not what the game is or will ever be.
When the game does come out, I hope that you will see the story I’m trying to tell, what I’m trying to do, and that it resonates with something that you remember. The games we remember playing are ones that we were emotionally invested in, the games we remember playing all night and thinking about how to get to the next stage all the next day. Those games had something special and that’s why I made this game, something to draw you into a new universe, a new story, something… special.
