OGZ | Progress Report 10/31/2024: Entering End Game Development #1

Hey guys, sorry for not posting much lately. Was not sure which direction I'd like to go next but I've now ultimately decided a choice to get the game to be playable from start to finish which equally establishing the game once and for all.
 I've been replanning, setting the game scope and simplifying the goal of the game due to the game world size is beyond 10000km x 10000km (100 millions km2) and I have to establish and simplify the stuff before it gets tedious to work on for the long shot.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Discussing of the Game's Goal.

The goal of the game is now simplified to just survive the Rogue Planet and the game will barely hand hold the players. The entire goal of the game is gonna be related to the player owned ship and the installed ship modules. And by that, all the contents I've discussed before are now the optional contents for players as those are no longer essential to goal of the game and the game will still be playable from to start to end without them.
 Players will have to grind and collect the credits to purchase the ship and then grind and collect the materials to get or upgrade the ship modules. Most of the game contents such as unique high reward missions and special jobs will be locked behind the ship modules.
 The players are gonna be completely free to do everything to get the credits. Players will be able to:
 -Explore the active/deserted/abandoned POIs, then become the loot goblin and sell all the valuable loots for the unpredictable amount of credits while also getting some valuable materials for crafting and upgrading (RNG based)
 -Taking freelance jobs for the small and easy rewards if legal or fairly to big rewards for the illegal jobs.
 -Joining up the deadly high-end missions/operations for the high rewards (if RP is enough) or Etc.
 Method will be countless but all will lead to the same path that is getting and owning a ship and get out of the planet.
 There will be at least 2 major ways to leave the planet: either get a ship, then install the specific ship modules, then remove something from the inventory, then try to leave the atmospheric zone of the planet and avoid being detected by the heavily armed defense system or just join any corporations if RP is maxed out but it is all about how players will do it and that's basically make your own story and experience. While doing so, players will get to meet up both countless procedural generated non essential npcs and main npcs along the way. (There are only 13 confirmed main npcs for now and all of them are essential to the core gameplay contents)

Ship System.

 These screenshots are the modular set for the Class B Ship. I'm still working on the high poly model right now. I've discovered the new technique for the hardsurface modeling and that will enhance the quality of my work especially for the weapon model, the vehicle model and anything that is related to sci fi stuff.



These are the screenshot of the cockpit area. This area will be only for interactive cutscene.
Couldn't get the hub area model in time, sorry, probably for the additional post.

 I've been focusing on getting the ship to work and because the game world is 1/5 of the Earth size, I've considered to make a ship to be actually flyable instead of a static ship model inside the base. I also don't want the players to spend chunks of credits for a static model that does nothing.
 A lot of the mechanics are outdated and some are obsoleted because of the existence of ship system.
 Ship was supposed to be an APC but due to the world size, APC would be very non practical and so I simplified most of the stuff to be just a ship which solved lot of issues.
 Ship will be the mobile base and players won't need to head back to the HQ/base for the most part which will make a lot of stuff become much more convenient. The ship will have things available based on the installed modules.
 Ship will feature Hub as one of the mandatory modules that will be able to carry 1 small ground vehicle (a Quad and a Bike) or 1 drone and that will operate as a Mobile Private Room which makes Safe Rooms and Planned Feature: Building Small Outpost become useless and so I'm about to discard the useless stuff. I'm not sure if I'll actually scrap the idea of building your own small outpost but I might actually add it into the game much much later.
 The Deploy Zone will be discarded and will be replaced with Landing Zone instead. Players will get to fly and find the suitable landing spot in the expedition site for themselves.
 The Deploy Management Area inside the base will be replaced with Hangar. Players will get to purchase and custom all the vehicles here.
 Ship will be one of the most expensive things of the game, even for the cheapest one. Which comes to me planning about the rent mechanic. Renting a ship (or anything) will cost some additional fees for every reward player gets based on how expensive the rent stuff is but it'll start from 0.1% and cap at 50%. If the fees get any more than 50%, players will lose the ability to rent stuff.
 Rent ship won't allow most of the ship modules to be installed btw.
 If the rent/owned ship is destroyed, player will get to pay fees to regain the ship access by 10% of the ship's + all the installed modules' full prices at any hangar.

Conclusion System.

 If the Ship System and the Deploy System are in place, I'll start to work on Conclusion System which is basically the ending for player character. The game it self will never feature the actual ending because the world is persistent and so it makes sense as I have a plan to keep adding more stuff into the game for a few next years after the launch on steam.
 If the Conclusion System is in place, the game will be playable from start to finish and the rest is all about me adding the sandbox contents or even mods into the game. Yes, the next patch won't be here for a while because I need to get Ship, Deploy and Conclusion System to be 100% working and so the next patch might be as well playable from start to end but it won't contain any gameplay loop anytime soon. The gameplay loop and the contents can come later and if the game is playable from start to finish, that is already the accomplishment. The game is not in postlaunch state after all, it's in the mid development.

End Game Content.

 The game will enter endgame mode if player managed to buy a ship for their own or get the RP towards any corporations to be above 100. The game will no longer cap the max level of everything, from difficulty to the marketplace. Everything will become adaptive based on character level of the player. The endgame will be the endless grinding mode because things to buy will get better and get more expensive. Players may get the same weapon and vehicle modules but with better startup stats for example.
 The end game mode is the real game mode and the early game mode is just a safe mode.

 After the conclusion, the previous character will be gone forever if players chose to escape from the planet, but it doesn't imply that the player inventory will be reset too. The player will get to play as a replacement of the previous character and of course, player will have to rebuy the license to access the inventory and all the owned vehicles but that will only cost 2.5% the price of all items combined together.
 New player character will use the same stats and character level from the previous character and player will have an option to respec the entire skill tree from 0.
 Some key and ticket items will be removed from the inventory after the conclusion btw and so player will have to grind to get the key and tickets from the missions and the questlines again. Missions are gonna be procedural generated and so the questlines.
 The objectives of mission and job maybe the same but the settings, the non essential npcs, the locations will be different (it could be anywhere on a planet) and that will solve some of the repetitive elements of the game. Npcs will send private messages most of the time and so I won't have to spend much budget on character voice acting.

The Progress So Far

Procedural World Generation [WIP]
 PWG system is now considered to be in place and is ready for the contents implementation but I'll do it later because my focus is now on the end game mechanic. Foliage is now very dense and navigating through some of the biome is now a miserable experience and so the ship or Air Vehicle will solve this.
 I'm using the landscape features from the engine currently and it is very limited, I may consider changing the terrain generation to Voxel instead because it's much faster + much better performance and more powerful but I'll also do it later.

Major Location Spawner System [WIP]
 The game world is now filled with thousands of major locations across a planet, both active and non active POIs.
 There are now 5 capitals on Planet Terra III such as Station 101, Station 102, Station 103, Station 104 and Station 105. Capitals are thousands km apart from each other. Major POIs too are hundreds of km apart from each other.
 Only 3 of the capitals (102, 103 and 105) are the active ones and the other 2 are considered to be the warzone and dead zone.
 Each capital will feature the entirely different vibes and I'm gonna use the example from other games and movies for the quick references:
 -102 and 105 are very similar to each other because both set in the green zone where people are still very active and living the non stop grinding life, these capitals are under control of Union Earth Federation and Super Corporations. The vibes will be similar to Blade Runner 2049, Cyberpunk 2077.
 -103 is set in the yellow zone where the station will be in curfew during night because of the terrorist and the outbreak, half of this station is also in quarantined. The vibe will be very similar to [Prototype 2] and The Callisto Protocol (for interior exploration)
 -101 and 104 are both the outbreak zone but 101 is also the active warzone known as Groundzeroes which is a heaven for Private Military Contractors while 104 is the literally hell where the entire station is covered by the orange chemical gas and is isolated from the outside, full of unimaginable abomination and terror. The vibes for these stations are MGS4 and The Division's Dark Zone for S101, for S104, it is going for Dying Light 1, The Callisto Protocol and Caelid.
 For the most part, the game will feel similar to Death Stranding (on foot) and GTA (on vehicle) combined together. The grinding aspect of this game is very similar to GTA online and Monster Hunter World.

Now that the major location data does exist in the game, the job and mission generation are now ready to be worked on. Both are the infinite sandbox contents and will be focused later.

Note that I'll use my procedural system to create the capital stations and it's not a handcraft work because it'll save the whole load of time. Players will be able to only enter the sections of the capital and the rest will serve as a background, players will be able to fly a ship above the capital station but unable to land on anything. The size of capital station will be around 5km radius and will definitely feel like a city.

Vehicle System [WIP]
I've added the flying movement and physics into a vehicle and now the game supports ship and helicopter movement aka Air Vehicle Movement (AV)

New Base Models for Human Characters [WIP]

I've been updating the rigs and the base models for the human characters tho it's not my main focus yet. I'm now aiming for the more realistic style while still maintain the attractive look but definitely not going for the hyper realistic one. The human character model both male and female are now taller and thiccer.
 Due to the human character models and rig are being updated, I may not be able to post things with the character animations for a while. The updated base models will discard all the old outfit models, avatar models, hair models and all of those will need to be reworked from ground up (the new ones will be modular set instead which is designed for character customization system) So please give me more time to get the things together.

 If the game is playable from start to finish, there will be nothing to worry about at that point because the game is established and it's the matter of time that I'll slowly adding all the contents I've discussed and the timeframe for all the contents should be around 2025 to 2027 or maximum is 2030 (postlaunch included) this is the safest ETA from me.

I also have a plan for the online aspect of this game and it's the player support (retrieve lost packages for other players, cryptic notes (helpful and trolls) on the floor and etc.) and player posted job (gather specific items for other players and etc.), not the coop and multiplayer system. This isn't confirmed but it's been in consideration for a year now. (I just don't want to deal with server stuff)

This is the maximum and established scope for this project btw.

I personally want the game to feel very immersive and mature especially the real elements for the world building. The game will be pretty slow for the most part because I want the players to feel the world I've been crafting, I want the world I craft to be more than something and has a meaning.

Bonus Artwork

Alright, this is Halloween month and so check out the pixiv page for the artwork. There might be as well 1 to 4 artwork every month from now on though it may have nothing to do with the game project.

That's it for today. I'll be active and be back to the same schedule again soon, just need to get project things together for awhile. The next post is expecting to be the in game ship and in game updated deploy system btw. I hope you guys have a nice day.
See you guys next post.
Matto.