SSH #20 — First Saturday of Pride
Happy Saturday! It's time for some learnin' about MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80!
Last week, we showed our playable intro level, The Junkyard, alongside some other spick and span new bits of art.
This week, we've got a new prototype weapon, some new VFX tools, and some physics experiments — but first, an aside.
Happy Pride Month!
It's June, and that means it's Pride Month. In today's world, with so many big companies withdrawing from pride events and kowtowing to fascists, it's important for me to say that we stand with our LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones.
We're a very small, not-quite-established studio, but we can't espouse empathy and humanity while leaving our most vulnerable behind.
Energy Launcher Prototype
I've been prototyping a bunch of new weapons this week! One of them is a energy grenade launcher, like Zarya's alt fire from Overwatch.
The weapon itself is a very rough prototype! It tends to blow itself up and the projectile is an emissive sphere, but it sometimes works!
This was a great opportunity for Laura and I to start learning how to use EmberGen. That little explosion is the first flipbook in the game and it's turned out surprisingly well!
Container Cranes Enter Sector 80— Rasmus
The elevators we have are using the physics engine to move around with motorized joints. This makes them composable in interesting ways. I have been pushing the limits of them by making a crane that can move containers around. This is all done using a series of "elevators" attached to each other.
Friday @ Second Half
Every Friday, we get together as a team and play a game or watch a movie. It's a great opportunity to spend some casual time together and it's nice to build common touchstones. Recently, we watched Mickey 17 and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and recently played Dark Souls and the Mycopunk demo.
This Friday, we played The Division 2. It's got interesting enemy design and none of the folks on our team had much experience with third person cover shooters or looter-shooters.
Next week, we're planning on playing the Jump Ship demo. It looks extremely cool from what I've seen.
Looking Ahead
Next week is a playtest week! I'm excited to see how the game feels with some of our new effects and I'm still rushing to prototype as many weapons as I can.
Dune: Awakening entered advanced access this week and has taken over my life. Stay tuned to see if I ever come back to work or if I'm going to be work on my new spice mining startup full-time. We've already raised 500k Solaris during our Series A round and are always open for additional investors.