my attempt to complement the main story with environment storytelling

Side art update

made a banner

and having a bit of fun with pre-made shadows

And some "fan art"

Chromosome evil strike team versus a monster from another developer game.

We decided to remake the tutorial.

In the final version, we are going to make the road animated & loopable while conversation and basic instruction are issued within the APC, also we plan to combine them with the story.

The main inspiration for both interior and exterior of the squad APC is:

So here it is:

Can you guess from which movie is this from? :)

So, the tutorial is now in the final implementation stages.

Few notes:

- tutorial miss one is for basic controls learning mixed with a bit of story and setting out the mood of the atmosphere

- after the first-time player finish the tutorial he will get an achievement for it that will have as a reward a skip tutorial button unlock for next time he starts a new game(I want all achievements to give rewards that boost re-playability)

- in the tutorial mission, 1 player will be outside any danger but in mission 2 he will have a small taste of danger

- I want everything the player does to feel like a reward, for example in order to unlock the interface player must press some buttons in the command APC. He can choose(optional) if he already wants to move the mouse on them and see the tooltips now or later

Screenshots of the 2 tutorial missions

Edit:

and vehicle version for cutscene and normal maps

Mockup/little spoiler for one of the upcoming bosses in Chromosome Evil.

Not much time to post lately, lots of stuff happening in the background of this development, good and bad.

And tactical map design for this scenario.

You will need to excuse me, the text from the design pic is full of mistakes and hard to understand, it is meant to be only for my eyes and programmer eyes. So as you can see we are pretty chaotic but it works just fine, we have a lot of history behind so on this final process of development we are going to work guerilla style.

Since our game is made in C++ and all shadows and lights must be hand drawn/animated, I now resumed some of the light "systems" polish. On the good side, with such a system the game will basically run even on a potato computer.

My aim here was not to create realistic lights but rather atmospherical ones.

- top layer got an alpha object with main shadow shapes

- all walls and big objects generate a shadow PNG 

- light object shapes used to cut through the generated wall shadow 

So each time a map starts the game will generate one huge shadow / light layer PNG. We also got light animations that we had to fake trough some torture procedures.

So here are a few possible shadow/light combos that we use in the game. Hope you enjoy

UPDATE.

We have now the final scenario design. Please note that the game will have a high re-playability value core pilar. SO in addition to the 4 main endings path, those endings will also have 2 additional endings based on secondary vaccine and satellite quests + a variation based on player choices in random encounters. Also, all days between main scenarios got high random elements. In addition to this, we also got a starting quiz that will affect player start bonuses and also we made all achievements to give rewards on new games.

So I have a few minutes so I was thinking to share a bit of the game history.

The first instalment of this game was made in flash and it was my second flash game made(i think it was in 2011 and was called "awaken front line"). I collaborated with Sergey D. , the game got featured on Kongregate, Newgrounds and all major flash game portals. And here is how it looked like back then:

[...some more flash games made and experience...]

Then flash died and I had to migrate to PC / Steam, for me it was like "WOW" I could not even dream of reaching Steam but since I had no other choice I thought to myself I can at least try. So it took me 8 months of development to make the first PC version of this game series, I had 3 programmers abandoning the game and only 4th one managed to finish it, Dmitry N. and because of problems the game did not get polished, did not get balanced, had very little content, had bugs ... BUT ... despite this, the people loved the concept and I managed to get a positive rating and give more than 100k units.  and here is a screenshot of it:

[ ... more history that I do not have time to go into details, I made and released more Steam games not related to this project, some via publishers and some via self-publish...]

and then I got back with my default programmer and mentor Sergey D. to make this game as truly intended from the beginning. Took us 4 years so far but luckily I had some funds from my other game releases to survive and a day slave job. SO here is the evolution to compare with the current version of Chromosome Evil:

Hope you guys enjoyed this little history page :)

UPDATE.

And here is the first actual screenshot for the above Lovecraft tentacle monster design + scenario design above.

The outside area is not polished and I will probably replace the outside urban theme with farm theme to be more related to "he who walks behind the corn" aka the movie "Children of the Corn" . ALso, I want to make it darker and more horror.

Will add soon some gifs and a final map layout screenshot.

UPDATE time

Ok, so I removed the urban theme and replace it with a cornfield/farm theme. It is still a work in progress, I still need to add some details in the building and on the outside zone.

I think I will remove the trees.

On the lower side of the map, can you find an easter egg here?

Hint: from a movie

On the upper side of the map. Also if the monster is killed player can use that off-road to move forward.

Can you find another easter egg here?

HINT: from a game

And here is the monster emerging from the upper side

Did some more map polish so it is time for some gifs (still not 100% done)

The exit corridor is full of dead bodies from the first strike team, the bodies and dead tentacles are inspired from the hive from "Aliens" with a mix of "The thing" creature design. We also added some basic animation of bugs and flys on dead bodies + the animated fog.

And here is the actual Lovecraftian Alien creature.

I only did basic breathing animation and a bit of rattlesnake on his tentacles. The eye rotation is code-based and always rotate towards the target

Monster got 3 states: idle(vulnerable), tentacle attack(most deadly), and birth(spans worms, the one I used in the screenshot).

Also, you can manually target the barrels to deal extra optional explosion damage, oh and also if you do not kill the worms fast they grow

hope you enjoy

I think of starting a small development blog series about How can you add horror/thriller in a real-time tactical game.

Big idea is to use different phobias but in a smart way. 

EPISODE 1 

- BUG PHOBIA: in most residential houses maps there is old food so each time I place 1 or 2 animated bugs, sublime to appear from time to time from under table nothing too exaggerated, sometimes I also combine them with some animated fly`s but in this current map I want to really mess up players with BUG phobias so under the animated light that flickers from time to time I placed a huge amount of bugs. I also plan to later make a room full of bugs that the player must move his squad through. Note that bugs do not have any mechanic, this is purely psihological

- MIND PLAY - PSYCHOLOGICAL: during this stage, the player does not know anything about the creature's origin, it can be a religious factor, military experiment, alien factor, and so on. So in this map, I placed a pentagram to encourage religious plot affirmation but then again under the flickering light I placed some dead tentacles coming from the wall that can also move the mind toward a Lovecraftian type of plot and not removing the idea of an alien invasion either, I mean the pentagram can be just the work of a madman.

-MIND PLAY - MECHANICS: in most residential maps thing is simple, you enter the map and zombie type enemies start coming according to your aggro level(aggro level is based on how the player plays the game) but if you enter on this map with lower then LVL 3 aggro, no monster will come, the player will not know this so he will always be on edge, and if you enter this map with aggro LVL 4 or 5 then very strong monsters will come, the kind of monsters that the player will not normally encounter. Basic by doing this I train player's minds to always have a certain fear/caution of the unknown.

- MAP ARCHITECTURE - CHEAP SCARE JUMP: this is one of the very few bathrooms that got a dark edge from where monsters can come, note that after many of the other buildings exploration if the player sees the bathrooms and dark edge but never had any monsters come out from there he will have a nice surprise when this design element will be different this time.

- MAIN MECHANIC: the player can always leave the building whenever he wants but then he will miss out on the looting rewards,  this will be placed in balance with perma-death and unique characters that the player can get attached to (either because of invested equipment in that character, or past history or purely by personality trait based on text lines) so the player will try hard to keep his squad alive and will always be on edge of decision making.

Hope you enjoyed

PS: I do not know if I will continue this series because soon I must concentrate my attention on marketing and actual scenarios + ending + loot more work :(

So I received feedback regarding the thumbnail of the Chromosome Evil steam page. I took it very seriously so I remade it.

Old:

Iteration A

I am not happy with this but I wanted to share it

And now final iterations, I got 2 of them, the only difference is the font, maybe if someone wants to help me out can vote one of the 2 so it would be easier for me to make a decision:

Just finished all remaining banners and capsules, I think it is safe to say now I got the final logo for the game, since this is a strategy game mix with Lovecraft-horror I think it is only fair to use the iconic tentacles and triangle. Hope you enjoy it!

Minor update new banner

I thought about sharing some of my desk inspiration "tools" for Chromosome Evil