u/TAUWAY11

Title ideas:

Project Update: Camera Shake, New Level, and Dev Progress

Small Devlog: New features and a personal note

Text:

I’ve added a couple of new features to the project:

New camera shake effects.

Specific camera shake when falling from a great height.

Also, as you can see from the screenshots, I’ve started building the location for one of the upcoming levels.

As always, I’d like to answer a few questions in advance. The game is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 using C++. As for the release date, I’m honestly not sure yet. My current estimates are either September-October or December or January.

I know, it’s going to be a long wait.

I also want to address something specifically to u/Loud_Math2023. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry that the development process is taking so long and that I can’t send you the script for recording just yet. The truth is, I’m hesitant to hand it over right now because if the worst-case scenario were to happen like a project cancellation your hard work and voice acting, along with my own, would essentially go to waste. Realistically, we’re still about two months away from that stage.

However, I want to emphasize that cancellation is highly unlikely. First off, I’m stubborn, and I’m determined to see this through to the end. Secondly, it would be heartbreaking for me to lose all the months of work I’ve already poured into this project.

Well, okay, thanks for listening to my chatter and bye everyone.

Title ideas:

Project Update: Camera Shake, New Level, and Dev Progress

Small Devlog: New features and a personal note

Text:

I’ve added a couple of new features to the project:

New camera shake effects.

Specific camera shake when falling from a great height.

Also, as you can see from the screenshots, I’ve started building the location for one of the upcoming levels.

As always, I’d like to answer a few questions in advance. The game is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 using C++. As for the release date, I’m honestly not sure yet. My current estimates are either September-October or December or January.

I know, it’s going to be a long wait.

I also want to address something specifically to u/Loud_Math2023. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry that the development process is taking so long and that I can’t send you the script for recording just yet. The truth is, I’m hesitant to hand it over right now because if the worst-case scenario were to happen like a project cancellation your hard work and voice acting, along with my own, would essentially go to waste. Realistically, we’re still about two months away from that stage.

However, I want to emphasize that cancellation is highly unlikely. First off, I’m stubborn, and I’m determined to see this through to the end. Secondly, it would be heartbreaking for me to lose all the months of work I’ve already poured into this project.

Well, okay, thanks for listening to my chatter and bye everyone.

Just to clarify, what you are seeing right now is the render version, as I rendered it in Blender using the Cycles engine. And I bet your next question will be: "When is the game coming out?". Well, that is a bit tough to answer because I have come to the conclusion that I need to rewrite the weapon logic almost completely to make the gameplay more dynamic. In case anyone is wondering, I am developing the game on Unreal Engine 5.7, but I have recently switched to 5.8. As for the model you see in the render, it sits at around 80,000 vertices.

Even though I only have 30 followers, I want to say a huge thank you for staying with me. We’ve all grown up quite a bit during these 2 years. Let’s keep moving forward and chasing our dreams! For example, my dream is to finally release my game, MURDER DRONES: DEATH INSTINCT, on this platform and see it get lots of downloads and likes.

In conclusion, thank you again to those 30 people who continue to stand by me, and a massive thanks to everyone who has supported me on both Reddit and GameJolt. You guys are simply the best!

By the way, my game MURDER DRONES: DEATH INSTINCT has almost reached the 400 views mark. :()

And I finally finished her after a week of work! Yeah, you might say this model looks fucking awesome, but honestly, I still want to tweak a few more things before moving on to rigging. Or should I just screw it and start rigging right now because the result is already pretty solid?

Also, I wanted to share that I finally graduated from school, specifically the 9th grade. Don't be surprised why I'm leaving after 9th grade I was born and live in Kazakhstan, and leaving after 9th grade is a pretty common thing here. Anyway, thanks again for reading. I truly appreciate you all!

and by the way, if you're interested, the model has 41157 vertices.

Yep, you heard that right—I’ve decided to bring the game back to Unreal Engine. And well, I can finally say that I’ve finished all my exams! That’s exactly why I haven’t posted anything on Reddit for a whole two weeks.

Why did I decide to switch back, you ask? The answer is simple: I just genuinely love Unreal. Fun fact: about 80% of the game is written in C++, and the rest is handled via visual scripting (Blueprints).

I'm also really curious to know: do you actually enjoy reading my long posts? Since childhood, I’ve always dreamed of keeping my own dev logs and having someone actually listen to them. That's why I started writing these long-form posts here on Reddit—because it feels like people are actually listening and reading my thoughts about life and game development.

One more thing I wanted to mention: I’m planning to disappear for one week every single month. I’ve realized that if I don’t give myself these regular one-week breaks, I will likely get completely exhausted, or if I get really unlucky, catch a nasty case of burnout.

Well, I think I’ve shared everything I wanted to. After surviving two weeks of exams, I’m diving straight back into development!

And if you’ve read this far—thank you so much for listening to my story.

this whole model weighs 4981 vertices. and this is what I'm doing before tomorrow's exams.

Let me break everything down for you. I decided to switch back to Unity because I realized I don’t need an incredibly heavy engine. Sure, it gives you a great look out of the box, but it strains the PC so much that Unreal Engine 5 kept crashing constantly for no reason. On top of that, not knowing the catch, I was writing the entire game in C++ instead of Blueprints. Imagine this: it could take up to two days just to make a single script. Plus, the engine's architecture is very unfamiliar to meI've only been learning UE5 for about half a year, compared to my 4 years of experience with Unity. Finally, I realized I don’t even need hyper-realistic graphics, because stylized realism is more than enough for what I want to achieve.

Well, I think we understand each other now. But don't worry, DEATH INSTINCT won't fall into development hell just because I was bouncing between engines. Unity is definitively the final choice. This is the engine where the second demo, and eventually the first chapter of the game, will be built.

Now, if you're wondering when the game is coming out: the second demo might drop around August or September. Honestly, I really want to release it in August to line it up with the anniversary of Murder Drones Episode 8. Keep in mind, though, that I have my final exams coming up from May 29th to June 12th. If things don't go according to plan, I'll aim to release it around late October or early November.

And that’s all I wanted to share with you in this post :3.

Let me break everything down for you. I decided to switch back to Unity because I realized I don’t need an incredibly heavy engine. Sure, it gives you a great look out of the box, but it strains the PC so much that Unreal Engine 5 kept crashing constantly for no reason. On top of that, not knowing the catch, I was writing the entire game in C++ instead of Blueprints. Imagine this: it could take up to two days just to make a single script. Plus, the engine's architecture is very unfamiliar to meI've only been learning UE5 for about half a year, compared to my 4 years of experience with Unity. Finally, I realized I don’t even need hyper-realistic graphics, because stylized realism is more than enough for what I want to achieve.

Well, I think we understand each other now. But don't worry, DEATH INSTINCT won't fall into development hell just because I was bouncing between engines. Unity is definitively the final choice. This is the engine where the second demo, and eventually the first chapter of the game, will be built.

Now, if you're wondering when the game is coming out: the second demo might drop around August or September. Honestly, I really want to release it in August to line it up with the anniversary of Murder Drones Episode 8. Keep in mind, though, that I have my final exams coming up from May 29th to June 12th. If things don't go according to plan, I'll aim to release it around late October or early November.

And that’s all I wanted to share with you in this post :3.

So, let me just say that the current version of the game isn't canon in terms of plot. But let's do it this way: I can create a public release of old beta versions of the game to celebrate 300 views, or I can publish a nearly complete version of the game for mobile devices. Or, for example, I can publish the same game on itch.io. What do you think I should choose?

(I blurred the link so as not to violate community rules.)

and by the way, the good news is that if everything goes well and the upcoming exams are successful, the game may be released in August (although this is unlikely), but if it doesn't, I will release the game in late October. Additionally, the first demo version of the game has already been released on Game Jolt, although it was released a long time ago, so this version of the game is marked as outdated. Furthermore, I will soon begin creating character and enemy models, followed by animation.

I decided to try using a different lighting system today, and let me tell you about my problem. I used to use the Lumen lighting system because it was the default one, but it doesn't work well at a distance and makes a lot of noise. In the second picture, I'm using the ScreenSpace lighting system, which is much cleaner than Lumen, but it looks very flat compared to the soft Lumen lighting. So, I need your help to solve the problem with the flat lighting and at the same time, I want to address the noise issue. I'm looking for your advice to help me overcome this challenge. (and I remind you that the first picture is Lumen and the second is ScreenSpace.)

I decided to try using a different lighting system today, and let me tell you about my problem. I used to use the Lumen lighting system because it was the default one, but it doesn't work well at a distance and makes a lot of noise. In the second picture, I'm using the ScreenSpace lighting system, which is much cleaner than Lumen, but it looks very flat compared to the soft Lumen lighting. So, I need your help to solve the problem with the flat lighting and at the same time, I want to address the noise issue. I'm looking for your advice to help me overcome this challenge. (and I remind you that the first picture is Lumen and the second is ScreenSpace.)

I decided to try using a different lighting system today, and let me tell you about my problem. I used to use the Lumen lighting system because it was the default one, but it doesn't work well at a distance and makes a lot of noise. In the second picture, I'm using the ScreenSpace lighting system, which is much cleaner than Lumen, but it looks very flat compared to the soft Lumen lighting. So, I need your help to solve the problem with the flat lighting and at the same time, I want to address the noise issue. I'm looking for your advice to help me overcome this challenge. (and I remind you that the first picture is Lumen and the second is ScreenSpace.)