The Start

It all started out as an idea in 2019. My old friend, Brendon (Nova) had the idea of making a game. I told him alright let's do it I'm willing to help out. So off we went, on the 11th May 2019 or somewhere around there ROBOLAND was born, in Unreal Engine 4.22. Brendon got a random part of Australia in a heightmap, following a tutorial on YouTube on how to import it into Unreal Engine and voila, we had the beginning of the map. It was dodgy at best as we didn't have much of an idea of how the engine worked at the time but we did our best to start out.

Initially of course I had to work on some 'basic' but necessary functions. You see, the initial idea was that Brendon wanted a Survival game. So it had to have some incentive to well, survive. So I got the little UE4 Third Person Character and got to work on his blueprints.

The first thing I remember working on was the Main Menu. It was ugly but simple First it was just a blue background that shifted colors between various blues with some buttons on top of it, then the background changed to a video that Brendon recorded of him walking around the map and he edited it to have a blur on it. I also worked on a Pause Menu and TWO Options Menus. One for in-game and one for the Main Menu, because apparently back then I didn't realize you could use just one by doing some simple stuff with variables.

Then I worked on the Health and Water functions. The Health was pretty simple to do. It's essentially just a float that goes down on a timer once the water reaches 0. This was before any other damage could be taken so that was it for Health. 

The Refill Water function was annoying because I remember having to redo whatever it was I did because I had finished making it and was showing Brendon and then somehow I broke it. The system was a trigger box you walk into and then press E. But then I think I tried to make it so you could hold down the key and that's what broke it. When I say it broke I mean you would walk out of the trigger and still be able to activate it. So you could refill your water tank no matter where you were as long as you had activated that trigger initially. That was only the start of the development struggles and me feeling like an idiot.

But to be fair on a side note, this was our first time working on something like this. We didn't even plan on releasing this and were just really in it to learn the engine and see how far we could get into developing a game. I feel like I learnt a lot and I could pretty confidently work on another game, granted I can use Blueprints.

If you don't know what Blueprints are, they are basically just how a certain thing functions in Unreal Engine. For example, we have Brink, he is technically a "Character Blueprint" the distinction between different blueprints is important. A character blueprint can contain basic things like movement and certain functions you want that character to be able to achieve. I'm not saying I'm able to do it efficiently but I can make things do things and I did that pretty well in the game I'd like to think. 

I never needed to learn C# or C++ and I'm grateful I didn't need to for this project but I'm sure if I was put up to the task I could adapt to it eventually, as I did with Blueprints the first time working on it.

Back to ROBOLAND though. Brendon needed a character, so he loaded up Adobe Fuse and began creating the Brink we all know and love to this day. He went for subtle metal and plain white for the body. Of course, ROBOLAND's theme was blue so he got some blue clothes, and some sunglasses to add to the character. Can you imagine Brink without his cool sunglasses? It exists, and Brendon thought he looked more robot/android this way. 

We did want face rigging later on but Adobe Fuse stopped supporting that a while back, so no facial animations for poor Brink. Then we imported him into the engine with some Mixamo animations and I transferred all the blueprint logic from our little mannequin friend to Brink.

So we had our character, but we needed a voice for him. We asked another friend of ours if he would do the honors and he agreed to be the voice of Brink. I got to work writing down the first moments of the games dialogue and made the very first 'cinematic' for the opening cutscene.

While waiting for the voice lines to be recorded I was still yearning to work on the game further, so I began to learn the ins and outs of the AI system in Unreal Engine. Some YouTube tutorials and likely some frustration later and I created an AI that would wander randomly, or if it saw you it would follow you around. This would suffice for now until we had more to work with.

Jump forward a couple of months to September and development was still going strong. We moved away from the other person we were working with for Brink's voice and decided Brendon would be a better fit for it instead, as he was more reliable and after all, it was his idea in the first place. He wanted to be apart of the game and this made sense for him.

We also found a new friend for the team and he created some brilliant master pieces of music for our game. He made the Main Theme and some ambient tracks too. We absolutely loved their work! 

The games story was coming together as well, I had written up most of the story we have today at this point and the voice lines were getting there. You would be contacted by an unknown voice that would essentially help Brink to find voice module parts so he can communicate. After finding all the pieces and putting them back together he would be warned of a meteor headed into the atmosphere! He finds a key within and ends up in a brand new area.

Speaking of brand new area, the map also got a BIG extension and a new landscape material for us to begin using other materials on it to give it a more landscapey feel and not just a single green grass texture everywhere. 

There was also an Audio Tab in the Options Menu added finally, which worked mostly. It was a pain to get to work, next to the water refill system back then.

Nearing the end of the year, a new logo was created, a splash screen added, an upgrade to UE4.23 and the story, voice lines and basic mechanics fully complete. Although there was still no Save System, and the maps didn't get streamed all in one level, what we did have was more music, music for the loading screen! The loading screen got a significant overhaul, a visual map was added and so much more.

2020

In 2020 is when I made a To-Do list in Google Sheets to help us keep track of the things we wanted to develop. The 3 sections for this were Small Things, Main Things and lastly Long Term. 

Small Things is obvious, they are the little things that wont take much resources for us to work on, and thus most likely end up first in development. 

The Main Things are the main things we WANT to work on at the current point in time. Key features, game mechanics and other such important things would go here, with as long a timeframe needed for each thing, as they are what the game would need for it to be, well a game. 

Long Term was created for the big one. The main event. Brendon at the time wanted a Behemoth Monster Boss that would show up at some point in the game, but this would be far beyond the current development timeframe, and also would take a long time to work on in general, thus it was aptly put in the long term section.

Below is the final version of said google sheets. As you can see we added a lot more over the year to work on, and completed a decent amount of it all. Some simple things like Crouching, Objectives UI and various options. And then there are some more difficult things like the Inventory System, Weapons, Melee Day/Night Cycle etc.

But it was at this point, Brendon wanted to create a Trello Board, because he saw Phasmophobia do it so he decided to create one for ROBOLAND.

This felt more satisfying from a development perspective, it looked more modern and it was fun creating labels like Not Started and In Progress and automating things to the Done section when marked as complete. It also kept things more organized and allowed us to separate ideas from currently working on etc. 

As of current day, there are still many things on this Trello Board that have gone untouched. Many things were completed, some things got near completion or only started but by the end of development things had already slowed down significantly.

The Slow Descent

Development isn't just about developing the game itself, it's about working as a team. Well it wasn't easy working with Brendon. We've had our ups and downs over the years, including within the development space. Brendon was always thinking up big plans and ideas for the game, and overtime even he admitted he was thinking to far into the future of development. Of course, we didn't have to get these ideas done right away, we don't even have the budget or talent for it. But he kept listing down, or rather making me list down his ideas.

He was also always on and off development. Sometimes he'd work on it for a week, and then he'd just stop for months. Now of course, this was a hobby at the end of the day, and I don't blame anyone for taking a break; but he had specifically mentioned various things he wanted done. Only I couldn't do them without his help, his guidance. After all, he was meant to be working on the story and providing some insight. But I was getting nothing from him. 

For example: He wanted a building system since forever, I went through many variations of attempting to create a sufficient building system for the game, and in the end I had to just drop it all together because the last one I was working on, I had asked him to provide me with some meshes he wanted in the system, his own design and such. He said he would eventually, and then proceeded to go radio silent. 

Another one, the last thing he did, was create a rock mesh and place it in the map. He said "I want it to be made so you can break it and collect the materials." I'm pretty sure he said HE would work on it another day, and yet to this day he has access to the files and hasn't touched them since February...

At least he updated the map a little more to his liking, by adding some of the android structures in a flat spot of land, but it was so weird working with him, because even though it was his idea, it felt like I was the one doing all the work. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed working on the game, I'd argue I was more passionate than him about it. AND IT'S NOT EVEN MY GAME! 

While we did work together on it and it was his idea, I wrote the scripts, the story, did the cutscenes, made the game into a game by actually using blueprints and making all these variables and functions work together to bring you the game you have today. 

Now Brendon didn't NOT do anything, he created the map, he created Brink, he created some of the models, came up with ideas and listened to me yap on about some new feature I developed and had nobody but him to tell. 

Final Thoughts

To summarize, we had our ups and downs. Development slowed significantly after 2020, but I kept on going. I still had hope for the project and while it was never going to reach full game status, I feel like I not only developed a game, but I developed my brain just that little bit more and it made me appreciate games on a whole other level. 

Before ROBOLAND, I had pretty much no idea how games did what they do, and while I'm sure there's still so much more that I don't know, I can at least feel proud to have dipped my toes into a project that taught me even just a little bit about the behind the scenes of games, their development and how it's not easy. From a development perspective and working with a team, even it's just your friend. 

I feel like I could've explained so much more, and that I have just kinda skimmed over most of it because I've been writing this ever since the last update, and looking into the older project files to gather the screenshots and info you've seen thus far. 

I hope this has given you a peek behind the curtains of ROBOLAND and while I've stopped development for good, mayhaps this game could return if Brendon really wanted to come back to this project. But unfortunately I see this as unlikely. Even if he did he'd need to learn Blueprints, and he didn't seem to interested when I was showing him some basic nodes.

In conclusion, if this was to show you anything, it's that ANYONE can develop a game. Just maybe don't go for such a big one right away. Start small, and then work your way up as you learn more. You'll get more games out of it, and maybe even less stress. I essentially developed this solo, if an idiot like me can do it, you can do it way better. So get out there and develop something. The gaming scene can never have too many games. 

I've also made the ROBOLAND Trello Board public, so I will post it once more here: https://trello.com/b/I0aVfws2/roboland so you can get a look at what would've been, could've been and was. SPOILERS in there but unless Brendon makes it private again this is free for you to observe.

Thanks,

- StolidSnow0