I have finally made enough progress in my game to really start making it unique and show off all the big plans I have for it. Discord - / discord Instagram - / overphildev #unity #gamedev #devlog
No idea if you've already considered this, but if the boy is going to be in the house the whole time, adding upgrades to that (independent of any robot upgrades) would be neat! You probably should be allowed to use the house as an extra chest. While it's certainly more work from the coding perspective to sort out and deplete only what is edible, logically a *house* should be usable for some storage. Maybe bigger house storage could be an upgrade? The "tools come from the robot's hand" idea is awesome, huge kudos for coming up with that The flamethrower looks awesome, but the way it instantly turns with the character is a bit wonky. Seconding Sasquatch B Studios' comment about world space vs local space. Or just really lean into it and make it a napalm gun that literally shoots a flaming gel. Something you may want to consider sooner rather than later: Geometric placement I like BespokeBean's name ideas. Roger seems like a good name for the kid and Douglas for the robot. A lot of the other comments are suggesting meme names, and while it is something a kid would do, keep in mind that this robot is owned by the family (and likely purchased by the parents), so a name like "chonk42069" would definitely not fly. Douglas is a nice humble name I could see a farm family using. keep up the great work!
@@overphildev Would you plan on making the house instead be ruined/debris and you get to make your own house using that and resources? Or just staying away from building could make sense
You could implement the energy bar as like this glowy bar on the back of the character that slowly dims as you lose energy. Garbaj has some cool videos on implementing UI in the game world instead of as a funny bar. It'd be a good touch for that 'robot' aesthetic youre going for w/ the player character. It'd be really cute to get to talk to the boy who you're trying to protect ingame. cant want for him to show up in these devlogs.
Yesss!! One of my favorite things about Astroneer is that almost everything has an interactive 3D model to represent stuff rather than a bunch of 2D menus for everything.
This is looking really fun already! And I totally would have made the flamethrower first too lol. I agree with your decision regarding running/attacking. At least if you are out of energy you can run away if you can't attack. Walking sucks. FYI- I would change the flamethrower particles from local space to world space so the flames look more natural when your character turns. Keep up the awesome work!
I love to watch this and i feel your job of "Make work now. Make pretty later" Idea: What if you keep the hose and give the robort two sort of tanks on his back One for Water and one for items or anything else needed. The Water tank could be see trough material so you always know how much water you got and you dont need that bucket item. It could be that the cheap old robot is a farming specialist robot who has these hose extras build in. Or you have to craft that tank with a hose trough out metal material or smth. And btw. I dont think that your game will be like every other survival game. They just mostly all start out the same way. But i love the way you are "Daydreaming", making these dreams come real and keep on going deciplined (i hope) We will Play your game if you finished or go in early acces or beta test. Just let me know! Robot name (if you dont have one already): Fidus / Fidutron / Fid-Bot It means "Loyal" in Latin Like Loyal to his Kid / its controlls Or "Agricola" wich means "Farmer" in Latin (Yeah i like these Translations)
If you update the robot, could I suggest two things? Decal across the back with the manufacturer (Borderlands?) or robot code (RB212m or whatever Robby etc name hehe, M for manual, etc) - second, a little aerial or dish. Aerial could be broken to show age, a satillite dish could always point back to the house it's being remote controlled from. There are little kitch ways to show the UI is in the hands of a boy, but sound effects like "thanks Robby" when dropping off food and quiet panicky noises when driving into water or bumping off rocks and walks ("oops" "haha" "ugh")
I think something that would help this game would be the surroundings. From what I could tell from your story it was more darker and right now it looks like a happy game if that makes sense
Absolutely loving the vibes! Some folks have made good points about a down to earth name, but maybe the family would rather keep the Default Name for the Machine They Bought. But maybe the kid would rename it something cool! Like...Plotty for land plotting.. or... De5tr0yer... but I digress
the fact you have sprinting not affecting or being affected by the stamina bar is easily the best lack of a feature in a video game period. making all the enemies corrupted robots is a great idea , however I think it would be cool to add a zombie cyborg like enemy when you get around to adding enemies. as a neat little reference to the Devlog. story wise they could be soldiers that had a cyborg thing going on, that got yeeted onto the island, however they didn't survive the trip due to there implants so there bodies are controlled by the corrupted AI.
making a unique story and making a unique game are two different things but im interested in how "protecting" the boy will play and what youre gonna do to the robot
I think that the robot should be called something almost basic and scrappy, like Junkbot T7 or Scrapper 984, and the little boy gives him a name like Junkie or Scrappy. Now it doesn't have to be those exactly haha but I think something like that would be cool. Also love the progress! I love watching the progression of this game :)
Really like what you're doing here. Also don't feel forced or pressured to puke up lore if you haven't figured everything out yet. It's okay to completely redesign the entirety of the story/lore while you're still working out the mechanics and such.
I'd call him something like Bud, the wholesome kinda names seem to work best for this kinda of thing Especially because bud has multiple meanings (buddy, its also a part of a plant, etc)
Awesome video! Really am liking the progress of the game. The story concept is very interesting and also the game idea. The new features looks really nice. The forest generation is spot on and really like how the trees forms into a dense forest. Keep it up! :)
“Make work now, make pretty later”. That’s some great advice haha! Now I am wondering: what is the final art style of the game gonna look like? Is it gonna be cartoonish or are you gonna replace the models with realistic highly detailed PBR models (idk something like the look of far cry 5 may be good. I saw some people on Tiktok that made some STUNNING looking games just by themselves. In fact: the first far cry game gives a few of the same vibes as your game :). Could be some inspiration!)
This is looking amazing so far! I can't stress enough how much I love this concept. I have an idea, that could be well imlomented into the game: sometimes the government sends more robots, and yours can't exit the base, due to the transportation energy, and the game turns into a tower defense game. This is inicated from early on, so the player have to work on a base that can be defended. I think you'd like this idea, because you mentioned clash of clans in your first video.
Definitely like where you’re headed! Hopefully you’re not overwhelmed by suggestions, but I’ve got some too. :) First off, definitely lean into the “symbiotic” relationship with the robot and the boy. Why the boy needs the boy makes sense, but why does the bot need the boy? It doesn’t have to since it’s manually controlled instead of “AI”, but coming up with a deeper lore reason for that would be interesting. Having two sort of upgrade “trees” with one focused on the house and the other on the bot would be spiffy. Especially since it doesn’t seem like permanent base building out in the wild is what you’re aiming for (unless I misunderstood the random location deal every time you start up). Perhaps at times you switch over to directly controlling the boy inside the house, and he has a “man in the chair” kind of role by providing data to the bot from sensors at the house (which can be upgraded over time)?
i just started making something like this and seeing how good you are with your whole vision depresses me lol but i wish u the best of lucks man honestly you'll get far if u just keepgoing
Nice to hear more about your games uniqueness! I understand why the robot wouldnt need a hunger meter but if the player is a boy controlling the robot wouldnt it make sense for there to still be a hunger meter? I think the water damaging the robot will make for a very interesting change and also not having the players movement affected when low on energy sounds like a nice feature. Cant wait to see some enemies!
This game looks great! My one suggestion: when the robot gets damaged and loses health, there's visible scrapes and dents, having to return home for a repair. I feel as if there's no drawback from roaming other than the food situation? Traveling further away from the house for more materials can be a high risk high reward. Going back and forth from the house to get healed would feel tedious so... I don't know about this- just a thought
Love this. Instead of a basic health bar you should think about the more advanced heath mechanics that involve different status in each limb and part of body. (e.i. the long dark)
Maybe you should make an Oil mechanic where you can mine trees and burn them in your stomach so you can gain Energy (or you could just make a mining mechanic where you can get fossils and burn them inside of your stomach).
U said it would be an old robot. But you don't really see that. So I think it would be pretty neat if the robot was all rusty at first but later you could upgrade it a lot
Not sure whether this is a terrible idea or not, but being able to actually walk inside the house to do certain things could be cool. Maybe it could even have some animal crossing style house customization.
Your flamethrower looks like a mesh with some kind of shader style graphic. Should just make it a particle system so it uses 3D space and looks natural when turning. Particle collision could also be beneficial as it could help you "start" fires.
Be a good game designer and reverse the energy bar. So that "no energy" mode is the default one, full energy is a "power up" Just like wow experience bar. Does not change anything in game. Feels much much better!
The stamina idea is cool, I would encourage you develop other mechanics around avoiding the annoyances in the genre. I notice you haven't talked about building yet. So there's an opportunity, assuming the robot has the tools you should get back 100% of the recourses. After all, loosing recourses like that only costs the player time. It doesnt make it more challenging.
Structures I will add for sure. Biomes I am a little more hesitant on since the island is only so big. If I add them I think they would just be new islands you can go to
Do you know your planting system lolks kinda weird, but i have a suggestion boy, make the plant have 4 slots at the ground, not only one, if u let in that style i feel it looks bad organized. Thx for viewing this com, hope ur game go far.
Loving your videos. Maybe name the robot Robbie. It speaks to how a kid would name a robot. Also you could make it so the name has sentimental value. Maybe a family member or pet was named Rob and the kid misses them and therefore named the robot Robbie.
I think you should make the enemy robots pretty overpowered, and a hive mind, so that for the first part of the game you cant fight them, but after they gather enough they can start taking them out
Are you the only poor guy with a manually controlled robot in this universe or will there be others? Are all other non-human-controlled robots corrupted and your enemies? What's the second goal of your survival game once survival is "solved"? Is there any way to bring the boy back to his previous planet? Can you sell things to an intergalactic market to pay a hospital and transport bill to heal the boy and get him off the planet? Also you should lean more into the theme, a camp made by corrupted robots won't have a campfire, it will have some kind of alert system, stacks of batteries, destroyed robots from previous fights and such stuff. If robots now live on this planet, they will build their own stuff.
CAN WE ALL JUST MAKE AN AGREEMENT... when OverPhil drops his DREAM GAME can all his subscribers PLEASE BUY IT and PLAY it! I will buy it, play it, and record a RU-vid video of me playing it. It would be a shame if someone has put there heart and time into their dream, have thousands of people watch him make it, just for us not to buy it... That's very weird of you, especially if you been keeping track of his progress. Obviously if you don't have the funds to do so you don't count. You all have my word that ill buy it and record some gameplay on it when it comes out.