• ProjectsWIP

  • Project UCG - An action packed twin stick shooter with RPG elements.

Hi all! It's been a while. Work have been brutal and we moved in to a new house so haven't had the time to go public with any updates.

Introducing multiple arenas. A lot have happened since last update. Me and Mr. Artman realised we needed to expand the game a bit and we decided that the game should have multiple arenas to battle in and also an end. This to create some more variety to both the gameplay but also visuals. This also gives us a bigger canvas to experiment with. Drawing some inspiration from the old Smash T.V we also want the gameplay to be coninous with minimal loading time (if any at all).

So I prototyped a new arena system that seem to work quite well with the spawn system for each arena. Still needs tons of refinements but it's a start.

Hopefully I'll have time to post updates on the project more often now.

7 days later

This update focuses on combat. Weapons now overheats, dashing and close combat now also play a bigger role in gameplay. Not balanced in any way. Just getting the mechanics in. It's designed so players need to be a bit agile and more tactical in how they choose to fight.

When the player stops shooting, after 3 seconds the cooldown process starts. But if you reach 100% heat then you overheat the weapon and you have to wait 10 seconds before cooldown starts.

The turret placeholder mockup also got a small visual update. Felt it needed to be a bit more clear between the different states (hunting the player vs planted and shooting the player)

6 days later

Introducing Rocket Launcher. Fun one to prototype. Still needs tons of balancing and the target indicator also needs more work. But it's a start.

3 months later

Devlog 01 - Origins

First proper devlog for the project. I talk a bit about what inspired the game and what we want to achieve with it. We are getting closer to having an MVP version of the game prototyped and figured it would be good timing to share a bit more about our progress and thoughts.

13 days later

Progress #11 - mixed update.

We are getting close to having a MVP version of the prototype. We can basically play the game from start to finish now. It's by no means balanced and we still have mechanics to implement, bugs to fix etc... But we can start the game, battle through arenas and in the end, beat the game. And with that we have been talking a lot about the art direction for the game and have started the art process.

Hopefully we can start talking more about some solid art after the summer some time. And by then probably start replacing the placeholders with real assets and start making the game pretty.

In my opinion this is both a good game and a very useful devlog, showing the development "from the inside". 👍️

    7 months later

    Finally, another video 🙂 It's been a while. The project is not dead. Just life getting in the way.
    Progress #12

    Some of the new things:

    • New mockup Player design
    • New enemy, Drone added.. kamikaze style flying to kill you.
    • Camera shakes
    • 3-step combo with a ground power punch as 3rd hit
    • When killing an enemy with a melee attack, the death of the enemy will spawn cooldown pickups
    • Tweaks to the controller. Gameplay flows much better now.
    • Dash now has a limiter of 2 and fills up within a few seconds.
    • UI update, Dash limited displayed with two dots over the health bar
    • UI update, All weapons heat meters are now displayed. The inactive secondary weapon greyed out.
    • Leaderboard implemented and connected to a server database
    • Tons of code re-written to be better and more organized (will help with further development as the game grows)

    Tons of bugs have been hammered out. However, I still have some micro stutter issues I need to resolve. I also tested Effekseer, the ground power punch. It has a great editor to create the designs, but I feel the implementation isn't the greatest, so I will replace that and return to Godot's native particle engine.

    I'm experiencing something strange. When I run the game through the editor, the game runs at solid 60fps (besides the stutter issues). However, when running a build of the game, I get very bad performance. Any idea what can cause this?

    Looks great. I was wondering what happened to this project, it looks very promising.

    Are you building in debug mode, cause that is always slower. You can export to Windows/Mac/Linux and make sure to uncheck the debug option. That should be full speed.

      cybereality Hey man! Thanks!

      I did build it without the debug mode. Strangely though, I tried the build again today with a restarted PC, and it seems to run much better. So don't know what I was experiencing when I tried it yesterday.

        It looks good and promising as it has already been said, good job MikeCL. The robot is very nice.

        Would you consider a beta release here in the forum ? It may help finding more bugs and get feedback before a pre-release on Steam with a lot wider audience with less aware people who are mostly players and who can write tons of negative reviews, which could be a serious hit to the mood, I especially think of "Wings of Universe" game from another member.

          JusTiCe8 Thanks man!

          Yeah... I plan to play-test it with the community at different stages of development. To see what people's reactions are. I can't say when that will happen, though, as my active time developing the game fluctuates wildly (load at work, life, etc.). But if we are lucky, perhaps something before or closer to the summer. We will see. No promises as to when. But I will test it with people that are interested at some point.

            19 days later

            Finally, there's some sound in the game. It makes a big difference!

              11 days later

              Playing the game with a controller 🎮

              MikeCL Great, your game is taking shape 🙂

              I'm just concern about flame thrower, does these bots are made with wood ? Paper ? Or recycled valueless dollar bills 😛
              Just for the sake of realism, fire may damage them a little bit, or more if they have some rubber parts, otherwise, fuel would just burn until exhaustion and leave some burnt marks.

                  JusTiCe8

                  Thanks! The mechanics are getting there.

                  Not sure I'm aiming for full realism. Gameplay comes first. I see what you mean, though. But looking at this example
                  It's a mix of materials, sure. But in general, it seems to be burning pretty well.

                  The flamethrower does not deal that much damage in general, but as the bots keep burning for a few seconds, they take some extra damage. So it becomes more efficient to kill the bots quickly by combining the flamethrower with the machine gun.

                    Uragun : is this a future yourself already releasing your game or someone else got pretty much the same idea ?

                      Mechs used to be a pretty common game/shooter trope/subject.

                      JusTiCe8

                      Not sure how to take your comment. Uragun looks great, though 🙂 . However, besides having mechs and being top down.. Our project will look and feel different (the only thing you've seen so far are prototype placeholder graphics and a couple of concept tests) and have other player objectives and focus.

                      Of course, we have taken inspiration from games we love. I would say there are other games we come closer to than Uragun if you can see past the mechs and top-down angle. And we don't only look at one game. We have several we draw inspiration from. (the first devlog talks a bit about it). I'm sure the same thing can be said about Uragun. I could compare that game with ten others and have the same comment. Not to take anything away from the Urugun devs, they seem to have done a great job. I'm tempted to try it. 🙂

                      The point is, There are always other projects to draw inspiration from. These days, nothing is 100% original (even if we try our hardest to be). People can always find other games and make comparisons (like the other day, someone compared our game with Brotato, which I've never seen before it was mentioned).

                      And who knows, since we haven't shown the final art direction yet, There might not even be mechs ( mechs are cool though 😃 )