AnchoriteGames

2025 has been a bit of a wash for Anchorite.

Exoloper launched in Febuary to... basically zero sales. Not zero, and thank you to anyone who paid for the DLC in the game, but nowhere near enough sales to have made it worth my time. I've covered this before, so I won't go into too much detail.

A month after that my youngest was born. They're amazing, but they're also a baby, so goodbye any level of creativity or sleep for what has now been eight months. Also goodbye home office. Goodbye reasonable thinking and pretty much any decent cognitive load.

All up, I spent about five weeks of this year working on prototyping up a new game, in the Godot engine as a switch away from Unity, but unfortunately it didn't really work out. Partially due to strange design decisions (thanks sleep deprivation) and also due to it being a little too ambitious. I learned a ton, and have a good framework to build on for future Godot games, but yeah this game itself wasn't it.

I really wish this year had panned out differently, but it just wasn't so. Its been lovely to spend the time around my kids and be available as I can be for my family, but I live for my work, and I identify myself by how much cool stuff I can make.

2026 isn't looking much better?

It's unlikely I'll be getting my office space back anytime soon, and with income from my games tapering off, I'm turning to contract work to fill in the gaps. Now to be clear, I'm super lucky I can even do that, and that the pay is more than good enough to keep me going, but that's more or less what next year is looking like for me.

My goal is to try to get something super small out the door. Keep it simple, keep it easy, keep it doable. Something the scale of say Hoplite. 2D, limited verbiage, paid up front game, single aspect ratio, phone only. Limit all my expectations of sales, and just put another game out there. Maybe even avoid the appstore and go for Steam / Itch.

Burnout sucks

Thats where I'm at. I'm tired beyond belief, creatively empty, struggling to even look at my games anymore. Classic burnout. I was here in 2020 - 2023 after my first kid arrived and more or less as predicted, I'm here again with my second. I know this time though that I just need to take it easy, do whatever I need to, to get through this period and slowly get my mojo back.

Exoloper has been out for a month and a bit now and the overall reception has been great! It's currently sitting at 4.0 stars out of five globally on the Appstore with ~100 ratings. The reviews are generally really nice and supportive, and the feedback I've been getting is great. Theres' bugs, but they're being caught and sorted at a dececnt rate. Theres balance issues but none of them break the game in a way thats unfair to players. Overall it's in excellent shape.

There's a lot that's gone well with this launch, and I'm super proud of the myself for launching another pretty dang cool game.

But.

The sales have been non existant, and the reason for that, so far as I can see now, is that the game basically doesn't encourage the player to ever spend money. The funniest part is thats by design, I designed this game from the perspective of someone who despises modern practices in games, who hates microtransactions, who hates games farming analytics from their players, who cannot stand ads or paid blockers. So, the game launched with the only two surfaces to spend money being in the settings menu, where there's a tip button, and in the new campaign menu when selecting which campaign to buy. The latter menu disappeared when you had an active campaign, and was the primary purchase surface.

Suffice to say I didn't really.. really think through my pricing and sales strategy. I spent so long making a game that I thought would be good, and assumed that would be enough to translate to sales. Let me spell that out: Making a "good" game will very rarely equate to sales in a free to play market. If I'd thought about it for more than a milisecond I'd have quickly come to that conclusion, if a the free part of the game is good enough, why would anyone spend a cent on it?

With hindsight I probably should've just made this a paid game, but the primary guiding data point behind the f2p choice was the tens of millions of Impressions Interloper got at launch, and its overall relatively low conversion rate from impressions to sales. "If only Interloper was free" I thought, "then way more people would play it".

So the game has made (to this date) a total of about $200 AUD. For reference, I also work as an independent contract game dev, charging hourly rates, this makes the total sales worth far less than an hour of my time, for a game I've spent about two years work on. To be blunt, that's pretty disappointing.

So what now?

I've been in a pretty raw state this past month. Launching a game is hard, launching a game that makes no money, harder. I spent the first couple weeks just putting out as many fires as I could (expected with launch) and last week I had some brain space to figure out what to do. Way I saw it I had a few options

1) Drop the game: It launched, it failed, move on. Not a fan of this concept, but this year is going to be a little crazy for me.. 2) Carry on as is and release more content: I've got a roadmap for more campaigns and content, and this plan basically says the money will come with more content. Not a fan of this one either as that assumption is likely very wrong. 3) Modify the free component of the game to push players toward paid content and then carry on with more, smaller content: Oof. I hate this one so much because its antithetical to my approach to making games, but it makes the most sense?

So when you're given a whole host of options you don't like, which do you choose? The one that is the most logical. So I'm exploring #3 on that list. The free campaign gives players absolutely no incentive to unlock more content, as it can be played infintely. To remedy that, I'm ~thinking~ of making these changes:

• Adding a Daily Run This is a campaign run that you can complete 1-3 times each day, after which you'll be locked out of it. It'll become the free component of the game, but will also be available to everyone. A random campaign will be picked (of all campaigns, even currently locked-behind-paywall ones) and you'll get to play through it as normal. If you complete all objectives and extract, you'll be placed on a leaderboard. Players who do this quickest, with the most destruction will score best. If I decide to allow multiple runs, you'll be able to update your score if its better.

I'm very aware there are a few instances of insta-player-kills in the game that can make a single daily run punishing for new players. They should be rare enough, but they exist and as such I'm exploring allowing between one and three attempts. Reducing that allowance should increase friction enough to push some players to buy a campaign pack, or unlock everything.

• Making Croseus campaign a paid unlock. The current free campaign will become a cheap paid unlock ($0.99 or $1.99 USD) and will function exactly as before, allowing infinite playthroughs of the campaign. It won't lock any items behind it though.

• Add smaller content packs My initial plan was to launch new campaign packs that came with all the bells and whistles of the Demeter campaign. New Exo's, weapons, maps, etc. This will shift to go to something like a Seasonal model, where each "season" contains a new campaign, but then several smaller item packs. Think "Warp Exo Pack" for $0.99 and you get the general gist. This breaks up the release cadence and adds both more purchase options and better value for the Unlock All Button.

• Introducing an Unlock All button A new button will be added to the DLC page to unlock all content. This will be another single paid IAP of something like $5-10 USD (or like, 80% the cost of all available IAP's) . This will unlock all other IAP's and allow the user to turn off the DLC page button if they like, effectively making this the premium purchase option. This will persist for all future content as well, however the plan is to regularly increase the price of this IAP as more content is added to the game, meaning anyone who buys in early will get it cheap on the promise of future content (and all current content)

• Changing the SKU of Demeter to an Unlock All The Demeter campaign won't change in any meaningfull way other than this. Anyone who has bought demeter will automatically be upgraded to "unlock all" status, as a thank you for anyone who bought the second campaign. Everyone else will still need to buy it.

I'm in the middle of working through these updates, they add a lot of compelxity to an already complex game, and complexity usually just means bugs, so I'm taking my time. There's a lot still up in the air, and a bunch of life stuff that might get in the way, but this is where I'm at right now. I expect these changes may hit within the next two weeks? Maybe?

Exoloper will launch on the 10th of Feburary 2025. Preorder is available today.

I'm so, so tired.

It's been two and a bit months since my last post, so here's a quick rundown on what i've been doing. I spent a vast majority of the remainder of October, and half of December just fixing the game. Cleaning up bugs, clearing up balance issues, making sure it works and plays as nicely as possible. Overall this is the most polished game I've ever released, and likely, it'll feel a little rough at launch haha. I'm extremely proud of where the game's at, but I cannot stress how complex the game is for a single developer to have built, there's just no way I can be across all the potential issues.

From mid December my work hours became effectively zero, looking after kiddo during school holidays through to mid January. It was a hard pill to swallow losing that time when I knew release was around the corner, and it was why I originally wanted to get the game out in November, but it just wasn't ready.

From Late October I also took an extra contract, working with some other game devs making something pretty cool. I'll write more about that later, when it's appropriate, but for now it's worth noting that between my existing contract work, this new work, Exoloper, and looking after my kiddo, I've not had a lot of time or space for anything other than the absolutely necessary stuff, thus the lag in time between posts here.

This unfortunately included marketing. I'd naievely hoped that I'd be able to at least post a bunch of stuff on socials regularly, showing updates on how the game's working, new features and whatnot. Heck even just flashy gifs of the game. Alas none of that panned out. The perks of working alone.

BUT!

The game looks and feels great (to me). It's tough without being unfair, it's exhilirating without being over the top, it looks like nothing else on the appstore and feels distinct enough from its influences. It captures that initial feeling I was after of being on scaveneger runs, disconnected from supplies or resources, needing to make do with what you've got and hopefully getting out with the goods. And you can step on stuff. Oh boy can you step on stuff.

I imagine some people are going to complain about visibility in close quarters, or that the controls are hard to grok, and thats ok. This isn't a game for everyone, it's a game for a specific group of people who want this kind of simulation. I sincerely hope it reaches a new audience, people who've never played a mech sim before, who weren't around in the 90's to see how detailed these games could be, but if all it reaches is old fuddy duddies like myself, thats cool too.

If the game flops? If it doesn't reach a break even? Thats cool. Totally worth it, I mean, look at it? It's gorgeous.

I can't wait to see what my next post says.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

## 31-01-25 // 1.0 rc3 8955
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial issues
- FIX: Incorrect acknowledgment of country.
- FIX: BUG: Campaign select buttons look off on iPhone portrait
- IMPROVEMENT: Lances now look like solid beams.

## 21-01-25 // 1.0 rc2 8929
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial pipes need fixing
- FIX: BUG: Player should be allowed to die in tutorial?
- FIX: BUG: Nullref in when pressing new campaign button.
- FIX: BUG: BUG: Player SSIcon always shows
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial target icons don't come up for static targets
- FIX: BUG: Sometimes enemy units don't properly spawn in tutorial space.
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial exit icon doesn't flash when required.
- FIX: Issue: Dangerous enemies spawn in reinforcement waves too frequently.

## 17-01-25 // 1.0 rc1 8899 
- IMPROVEMENT: Spawn only one dangerous enemy at a time.
- IMPROVEMENT: discarding salvage should turn it into parts.
- IMPROVEMENT: Need to have ssicons for objectives in campaign map.
- IMPROVEMENT: UI: Extract items should be a slider, not just on or off
- IMPROVEMENT: change campaign page to vertical scrolling list to show all campaigns
- IMPROVEMENT: Launch button in roster text animation sucks
- IMPROVEMENT: Graphics: Improve walk animations for all Exos, add backwards walk.

- FIX: BUG: Player Target SSIcon is showing for some reason
- FIX: BUG: Active utilities persist after utility destroyed (thermal vision / shields / etc) 
- FIX: BUG: Forest maps have debug grid sometimes
- FIX: BUG: Campaign movement is frame dependent 
- FIX: BUG: All ui flashes on screen on new scene load, looks unprofessional
- FIX: BUG: Some instances of Time are still used as resource in Foreset Campaign
- FIX: BUG: Campaign Tutorial: If you have zero UAV's and you move before using the UAV, the tutorial is soft-locked.
- FIX: BUG: friendly units don't show up on spawn from dropsequence
- FIX: ISSUE: exit icons need to scale to distance and have distance label  
- FIX: ISSUE: Campaign Tutorial: Objective should highlight objective UI

## 18-12-24 // 8789
- FIX: BUG: nullref in spawnutility
- FIX: BUG: player orientation after drop sequence spawn was incorrect.

## 18-12-24 // 8787
- FEATURE: Add pilot to friendly EXO's 
- FEATURE: Allied unit spawn system
- FIX: BUG: pipelines need caps on ends
- FIX: BUG: minimap doesn’t rotate with torso
- FIX: BUG: popup for error in campaign data doesn’t cover whole screen, iPad landscape.
- FIX: BUG: campaign objective ui didn’t appear post tutorial?
- FIX: BUG: moving items in modify hud is real slow, iPad landscape
- FIX: BUG: visibility of unit stats text in edit unit in landscape desktop / ipad,  is bad.
- FIX: BUG: roster tutorial iPad landscape is in a weird spot at the top of the screen
- FIX: BUG: pressing “done” in modify HUD doesn’t save your changes.
- FIX: BUG: still get stuck trying to exit levels sometimes
- FIX: BUG: Campaign Tutorials show just "add unit" and nothing else.
- FIX: BUG: salvage screen in iPad portrait was too thin, couldn’t read names of items.
- FIX: BUG: Clear slot in AddItem screen wasn't properly assigned.
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial walls can be targeted through / shot through. 
- FIX: BUG: pressing back from "select item" in edit unit doesn't clear active slot
- FIX: BUG: clearing a slot in edit unit doesn’t update the model.
- FIX: BUG: Press to close on drop sequence log does nothing?
- FIX: BUG: UI scale does nothing on ipad portrait 
- FIX: BUG: UI Scale completely breaks iPad landscape 
- FIX: BUG: iPad portrait tutorial in roster doesn’t show up.
- FIX: BUG: Reset all data popup doesn’t fill screen on iPad mini portrait
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: Missing reference for AI missile explosions
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: Pressed Exobay in campaign
- FIX: BUG: CRASH Missing item?
- FIX: ISSUE: Limit damage percentage per part in Exobay to whole percentage numbers
- FIX: ISSUE: TAC nuke and air strikes need proper descriptions
- FIX: ISSUE: exits aren’t marked on minimap
- FIX: ISSUE: Exit line kinda sucked, improved exit arrow instead. 
- FIX: ISSUE: units over weight limit weren't reporting in Roster UI.
- FIX: ISSUE: rebuild intro levels to funnel player across whole map.
- FIX: ISSUE: player wasn't added to global radar list, so AI only fought on LoS
- FIX: ISSUE: hard to exit forrest intro mission
- FIX: ISSUE: weight wasn’t displayed on equip item to Exo
- FIX: ISSUE: All Drop Squence values are up to 3.2 Kv.
- FIX: ISSUE: offset Exo animation speeds randomly but some small amount.
- IMPROVEMENT: Added visual timers to all timed explosives in UI.
- IMPROVEMENT: Put the bug reporter in settings
- IMPROVEMENT: Changed cockpit colour layout for standard Exo.
- IMPROVEMENT: Rethink the tutorial some more. Seems people get stuck just moving around.
- BALANCE: upped all engine speeds. 

## 04-12-24 // 8666
- IMPROVEMENT: when last objective is complete, remove all objectives from list (combat) 
- FIX: ISSUE: Nuke / airstrike utilities need meshes.
- FIX: ISSUE: Layout for "roster" UI on iPad portrait is overly cramped and generally not functional..
- FIX: ISSUE: Possible to avoid death due to lengthy death sequence (and callback for onplayer death) 
- FIX: ISSUE in LoadTutorial in sceneloadcontroller where it wouldn't properly unsubscribe from Scenemanager.sceneloaded
- FIX: ISSUE: Friendly AI have no self preservtion with explosive environments.
- FIX: BUG: No lighting in exobay on campaign?
- FIX: BUG: Cannot tell which item is highlighted in Exobay Repair with controller
- FIX: BUG: Silo Large explodes half way through its health? (just the effect)
- FIX: BUG: Friendly dead units in combat go pink in Paperdoll UI
- FIX: BUG: Controller hints for next / prev unit in "roster" overlap elements below them in all orientations.
- FIX: BUG: Multiple units of the same name in exobay causes exception in dictionary.
- FIX: BUG: Exception catcher report screen isn't showing anymore?
- FIX: BUG: Roster Tutorial: Order of Parts + fuel + UAV make it feel a bit off when completing
- FIX: BUG: Manual firing with a melee attachment in the same group causes melee animation to play.
- FIX: BUG: Objective title in condensed combat objective ui is too big (reduce font size?)
- FIX: BUG: Mashing "next unit/ prev unit" in roster view can end up showing the wrong unit
- FIX: BUG: Enemy target icons hang around after they die?
- FIX: BUG: Enemy target icons are always now purple
- FIX: BUG: Exo's no longer has step animation in drop mission
- FIX: BUG: Aim sometimes gets stuck at a point close to the player Exo
- FIX: BUG: Dead enemy units can sometimes still proc autofire / ai fire.
- FIX: BUG: Controller: Campaign Tutorial popup loses focus to moveto
- FIX: BUG Button audio doesn't trigger with controller / keeb input
- FIX: BUG: UI: Pilot rank shows as six star after resetting data
- FIX: BUG: Controller: exobay interactions overlap in desktop
- FIX: BUG: Dead enemy units can sometimes still proc autofire / ai fire.
- FIX: BUG: Recycled target UI's don't properly update their colours (sometimes enemies are flagged blue?)
- FIX: BUG: Radar icons for enemies are too small
- FIX: BUG: Friendly AI always want to attack non-priority buildings
- FIX: BUG: Priority target UI marker stays at 0,0,0 until player gets a visual on the target
- FIX: BUG: Player still steps on friendly units, it just does no damage
- FIX: BUG: Selecting units in exobay has gotten funky. Often has the wrong unit highlighted vs whats on screen
- FIX: BUG: Exobay: campaign repair only shows items split into categories, should be per unit, per category.
- FIX: BUG: Tutorial loads into a black screen with UI overlaid. 

## 27-11-24 // 8758

- BALANCE: Completely changed all armour values to better work with weapon DPS.
- BALANCE: Removed damage reduction to player.
- BALANCE: IMPROVEMENT: Make enemies easier to kill at lower star ratings?
- FIX: ISSUE: campaign map grass is obviously tiled poorly. Not seamless.
- FIX: Issue: If exo's topspeed is too slow, its impossible to reverse.
- FIX: ISSUE: Decision: UAV Storehouse has no incentive to not take middle choice.
- FIX: ISSUE: Enemy Exo's don't properly fight the player. Kinda just walk around.
- FIX: ISSUE: Post combat popup needs proper art asset.
- FIX: ISSUE: UI: cell extract "weight" descriptor sometimes overlaps with title.
- FIX: BUG: Objective UI race condition led to nullreference.
- FIX: BUG: paperdoll engins and power icons overlap in campaign with multiple units
- FIX: BUG: Extracting a friendly unit ends the campaign
- FIX: BUG: Camera in exobay during campaign is glued to the floor. (not responding to selected unit)
- FIX: BUG: control stick shouldn't move during UI mode
- FIX: BUG: Priority target selected in non combat missions (drop / tutorial)
- FIX: BUG: Graphic: Smoke from utility doesn't render in front of smoke from explosions
- FIX: BUG: Radar destroyed building is offset from original buildings position (likely rotation issue)
- FIX: BUG: Touch controls show up in Modify Hud when using controller
- FIX: BUG: Controller: UI navigation and camera rotation are set to the same stick in Exobay.
- FIX: BUG: Controller buttons for Save Loadout (confirm / cancel) collide with Paint type selections in desktop / ipad view
- FIX: BUG: Campaign node selection on controller constantly fires "selected" event when holding down left trigger, making UI look broken
- FIX: BUG: When using controller on campaign map, it often doesn't select the node you're pointing at.
- FIX: BUG: when using controller player facing in campaign is off by 90 degrees.
- FIX: BUG: Craters float in the air. should raycast to ground level.
- FIX: BUG: Post campaign -> done needs event button bridge
- FIX: BUG: Buttons made non-interactible via canvas groups could still be invoked by event button bridges
- FIX: BUG: extracting a friendly unit doesn't remove them from the unit view (immediately)
- FIX: BUG: iPad Landscape: can see "EXTRACT" on campaign main view (despite closing extract screen) 
- FIX: BUG: Opening Exobay in campaign shows teamcolour Exo? looks like units aren't properlly filling out?
- FIX: BUG: Cannot go to pause menu using PS4 controller
- FIX: BUG: cannot zoom in campaign with controller
- FIX: BUG: using directional pad when in campaign for non-main campaign ui results in changes to campaign map.
- FIX: BUG: when pressing "cancel" button in remap buttons it leaves remap screen
- FIX: BUG: Cannot exit Modify Hud when in iPad Landscape
- FIX: BUG: Modify Hud doesn't work with controller 
- FIX: Bug: DPS Calculations are way off.

## 13-11-24 // 8494

- ISSUE: drop combat frequently gives no challenge
- BALANCE: Changed recharge time on Infantry Carrier Utility to 30, from 20 (used in AI APC's)
- IMPROVEMENT: Graphics: Redo ground textures for forest to better incorporate "wet" feel
- FIX: Bug: Rain droplets on cockpit shield during drop sequence
- FIX: Bug: Tutorial for paint / loadout don't work on ipad / desktop
- FIX: UI: Tutorial: iPad unit editor covers pressable stuff.
- FIX: ISSUE: Lighting feels a little flat during night time
- FIX: Bug: UI: Tutorial: Instructions on Settings overlap after going into settings menu
- FIX: BUG: Unit target icons don't show up after going into settings mid combat
- FIX: Bug: Exit direction line is active during drop sequence
- FIX: Bug: UI: Objective toast covers settings button and objective UI
- FIX: Bug: Combat Tutorial: Launching smoke doesn't tick off task.
- FIX: Bug: Autofire sometimes targets dead units
- FIX: BUG: Some clouds / epxlosion effects render in the wrong order (particularly the large blast)
- FIX: Bug: Tutorial popups would overlap or retain after changing menus.
- FIX: BUG: In tutorial: Weather isn't centred on player
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: lol crashed with bugreporter
- FIX: BUG: after mission report said I got 23 parts, didn't get any
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: Nullref on second playthrough of drop sequence in one session (two campaigns)
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: Tried to repair player during campaign. 


## 25-10-24 // 8434

- Feature: Add save data validation on launch.
- IMPROVEMENT: Tap to close tutorial popups
- IMPROVEMENT: Hit effects for projectiles feel weak. Make them bigger
- IMPROVEMENT: Move IAP View to main canvas view.
- IMPROVEMENT: Explosive Utilities need meshes
- IMPROVEMENT: Explosive Utilities need proper sound effects.
- IMPROVEMENT: default levels for music are too loud in combat (overrides footstep sounds)
- IMPROVEMENT: Buttons on touch are too bright? Make them a little transparent
- FIX: BUG: Audio was forced to mono.
- FIX: BUG: if a friendly is in step range, you step them. (animaiton)
- FIX: ISSUE: utilities tutorial isn't very good. doesn't demonstrate why you should use it. Switch to speed. 
- FIX: BUG: UI: pressing clear slot in edit unit takes you back to roster.
- FIX: BUG: settings -> forefit campaign popup doesn't appear in iPhone Landscape
- FIX: BUG: Objective for destroying buildings always comes up with "destroybuilding" remove this part of the string
- FIX: BUG: CRASH: Pressed "next unit" in roster: Argument out of range exception
- FIX: BUG: CRASH:  Pressed Save new in loadouts
- FIX: BUG: error after choosing Utility exo
- FIX: (potential) BUG: CRASH:  Unable use Loadout with no longer existing item.
- FIX: (potential) BUG: CRASH: Repeat Crash on load. "Type is not a dependency: PlayerInput"

Exoloper is in open beta, and if you're seeing this, that means I'm exhausted.

It's been a good couple months since I last posted here. August and September had me in cleanup mode, leaving little to write about and October has just been dedicated to getting the game's marketing and public presence in shape and ready to go online, and its hard (at least for me) to write about my progress on building marketing material.. at least.. while I'm building it. I also lost the last two weeks of work to sickness and non-anchorite work stuff.

So what marketing material have I worked on?

1. Key Art, branding and "screenshots"

A big chunk of the work I've done over the past little while revolves around building out the games key art. Most of this is never a true "screenshot" of the game, but rather a carefully selected set of images extracted from the game with some minor tweaks. Particularly for the AppStore / App Icons you want to get the vibe of what it's like to play the game. Reinforce that core fantasy that your game sells.

With branding mostly sorted out in the UI dev phase, I simply extended upon that. The purple / green colour choice is never quite as appealing as blue / orange, but it does exude an air of mystery that's particularly useful in marketing. Doubling down on that by utilising the thick fog often seen in the daytime moments of gameplay help to give the world and alien vibe. We know we're not fighting for earth when we see these screenshots, so it's gonna be sci fi, we see mecha, tanks, and lasers, so we're building a picture of something tactical, something combat related. The big strong bold font reinforces that 70's sci fi vibe, like something from a pulpy sci fi book.

2. Website

Exoloper

If you're already here on my website, there's a chance you've come across the landing page for Exoloper. If you're lucky, you've seen it in ok shape. Like my work on the key art and screenshots, most of this builds on the style guide I built for Interloper. In many cases simply copying the concepts. It was still a full rebuild, as Interloper's website certainly could've been built in a cleaner way, but you know what they say? Build better templates.

All of this is hand built HTML and CSS, with only enough JS to show some slides on mobile. There's something really lovely about building websites this way that's just so distinct from using React or Angular. It's simple, easy, elegant and it just works. Is it absolutely perfect? No. Does it do the job? We'll see....

3. Teaser Trailer.

Exoloper Teaser Trailer

I might be crazy.. no I'm definitely crazy. But a couple years ago I dropped all of Adobe's tools, all of Autodesk's tools, and basically any software I was paying a subscription for. This happend in part because I saw what LumaFusion could do on a 2017 iPad Pro 9.7" for $20 odd aussie bucks. When it became possible to run it on Mac it just became my default video editing software. Sure I miss some features from Premier and After Effects, but I barely used a percentage of all their features, and wasn't getting good value from the amount I was paying.

The result is I have a very stable and very reliable, but rather simple process for creating trailers. Capture a ton of footage, slice it all together, chuck a beat under it all then edit to that beat as best I can. My games tend to have enough explosions and what I like to call "HELLYEAH" moments that they can speak for themselves, I just need to jazz it up and give potential customers a wee taste of whats to come.

3.1 Teaser music

One thing I'm particularly proud of doing with Exo is adding "musician" to the list of hats that I wear making my games. Auxy on iPad is one of those apps I wished was available on Mac the same way LumaFusion is. (also man please let my sync my tracks via iCloud while you're at it) This one comes with a subscription, and is currently the only creative software I pay a sub for, but it's just that good. If someone with as much of a tone-deaf vibe as me can make even vaguely ok music with it, it's doing something right. Super easy to use, and more importantly, its just fun to make some sick beats with it.

In terms of the trailer, I could've grabbed one of the tracks from the game and called it there, but often trailers need something more bespoke, something that tells a specific story. As you can see, what I created was as simple as simple gets, but it does the job and I'm happy with it.

4. Promo text, appstore listing, and the BIG ONE.

Copy writing isn't my skill. Go look through the game, check out my writing. Run back through some of my posts here, same thing. Full of mistakes, kinda rambly, and full of vagueposting. I thrive in a medium that you can experience with your body, see with your eyes, feel with your hands, hum to with your ears.

So when it comes to writing up copy for the game, I mostly lifted from my work on Exoloper. I'd guess I spent about two to three days writing various forms of copy for Exo, and for Interloper, more like two to three weeks. In most cases it kinda works in a similar way to key art. Get it right once and you can probably reuse most of that elsewhere. Lets hope it works because:

That copy writing phase was also to build out press releases and the like and to me, this was more difficult than any other part of building out the marketing. Every piece of advice in game dev marketing is all like "market your game from day one" and "don't wait until you're finished to start marketing the game" and well um. Yeah, probably right. I'll be real, I've got no idea what I'm doing with games press. Lovely people, great fun to interact with, but my god I didn't get into being a solo game dev to interact with people. I hope that whatever I sent off was coherent and made sense, and importantly, wasn't of any offense to anyone.

If you're press reading this, hi! Thank you.

Wrap up

I've often said to close friends that I'd love to never release my games, or maybe to just release them for free. Making games is an absolute delight, but the road to launch has me waking up every day with a gut punch of dread. You can't fail when you're just trying cool stuff out, but you absolutely can when it comes to selling a product.

This past month has been devoted to pretty much just tidying up the game. I'm super happy with where its at right now, and just want to get it to the point where I'd be happy to hand it over to some fresh faces.

The biggest addition was adding in a new tutorial system. This new system is more like what most people would expect from a mobile game, hiding all elements that aren't required until they're needed, highlighting the important parts, etc.

Its not particularly engaging, cleaning up a game, but it is satisfying, in the same way that you might find the act of cleaning up your living room not particularly fun, but you're happy when its done.

Whats really nice is seeing how close I am to launch. I can taste it in the air. That bug list in particular gets radically smaller each day, which is particularly nice to see.

The only hitch in this whole plan is that for external reasons, I may decide to launch the game with another campaign ready, which would push out the launch deadline by about a month. We'll see how that pans out over the course of the next week or so.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

- Feature: automatically push throttle to max on fuel injection.
- Feature: Doors in tutorial need to actually open instead of disappear.
- Feature: Tanks need Paintiable trimsheet for exobay
- Feature: Tie campaign length + objectives to difficulty level

- Design: Rethink Campaign POI graphic states
- Deisgn: All items need descriptions in Info page

- Tutorial: Initial campaign step should move on UAV use.
- Tutorial: First time popups.
- Tutorial: Menu: Campaign selection
- Tutorial: Menu: Exo builder
- Tutorial: Campaign map
- Tutorial: Teach what Parts, UAV, Fuel are used for.
- Tutorial: Combat tutorial expansion

- UI: Don't show core components in extraction
- UI: New objectives added during a mission requires a UI Toast to show full objective details

- Graphics: Shield needs better shader
- Graphic Design: Melee Weapons need icons

- Bug: Knockback (hammer) doesn't feel quite right?
- Bug: AI not firing as much as they maybe should?
- Bug: keyboard control tooltips show up on mobile
- Bug: Items + units lost not coming up in player destroyed end of campaign
- Bug: Exobay: Adding a new unit reverts selection to the first unit, should be to the newest unit.
- Bug: nullref on extraction
- Bug: campaign marked as destroyed when only one leg was lost
- Bug: UI: Losing an arm shows both arms as destroyed
- Bug: Units added via hangar can become priority target?
- Bug: Spawned units via hangar don't get added to paperdoll
- Bug: Player paperdoll doesn't update in combat
- Bug: Smoke launcher sfx happens on player, even when played from other units
- Bug:  Allied Infantry dont fire?
- Bug: UI: Forefit campaign / reset tutorial save need to close on accept.
- Bug: sometimes ik control for stick gets reversed
- Bug: Campaign: Able to move while on combat node
- Bug: Getting common loot in loot drops
- Bug: Combat nodes show when selected, even when not revealed.
- Bug: Nullref: Missing Infantry icon for PaperDoll
- Bug: Campaign extraction UI_VCampaignover Out of Range Exception:
- Bug: Unit weight maxes out at < weight max, not <= weight max
- Bug: Utilities disappear sometimes?
- Bug: Exo parts spawn without exo in Exobay
- Bug: Exobay OutOfRangeException
- Bug: Exit colliders need to be far wider
- Bug: Destroyed bunker object has no texture
- Bug: remove time UI from extraction page
- Bug: UI: Tutorial UI often covers interactable content, should have a non-purple background as it's not interactible.
- Bug: UI: Campaign Tutorial: Repair popup stays in exobay until all tutorials are complete. Should be a one and done.
- Bug: Campaign Tutorial: Extract button always appears at extract node of tutorial.
- Bug: Roster: clearing slot means you cannot equip into other slots.
- Bug: UI: target reticles not coming up for shooting / manual fire in tutorial
- Bug: Hangar spawned units have no SSICON overlay.
- Bug: Units spawn in truss of space elevator in Space Elevator level
- Bug: Units spawn in factory in Badlands level
- Bug: Infantry pod deployed units need to show up on radar
- Bug: Unit SSIcons aren't appearing when they spawn in / in drop sequence again.
- Bug: Campaign UI: Remaining Mission time doesnt update
- Bug: Play two campaign missions in a row, nullref on UISSExitIcon.Expand()
- Bug: Drop sequence, no planet, fog present.
- Bug: Tank components need names for exobay repair
- Bug: zooming in campaign is a bit broken
- Bug: Campaign: Travel button sometimes gets stuck in a weird tween state, like it's size has expanded but the container hasnt?
- Bug: Campaign: If no location is selected, travel button still shows up.
- Bug: Campaign Salvage Menu: Salvage sliders start at arbirtrary point, should be zero.
- Bug: Graphics: No connection point on medium exo's shoulder weapon mounts
- Bug: Sword weapon has Exo Trimsheet, not weapon trimsheet texture
- Bug: Exobay: Cannot equip infantry with weapons as the only weapons player has are vehicle ones.
- Bug: craters have emiss in their texture
- Bug: UI: Once you save a loadout on a unit, switching to a new unit will open the loadout page after pressing edit unit, instead of main loadout page.
- Bug: UI: Shouldn't be able to launch extract with zero items
- Bug: UI: Input field in save loadout popup doesn't clear on open
- Bug: UI: Input field in loadout keeps placeholder when typing into it?
- Bug: exits still not showing properly on drop sequence, on device
- Bug: Fortress seems to be the only combat map that gets populated

The past few weeks have been a mix of school holidays (again) personal time off, and being heads down fixing bugs left right and centre in Exo.

Interloper was more or less at this stage when I decided to launch it, all the pieces were in place, but it could've used a lot more love. None of the remaining bugs are totally game breaking, and none of the rough edges would turn away a dedicated fan of the genre, but they'll add up for prospective new fans, so I'm determined to make sure this release is as polished and clean as possible, even if it takes me another couple months to launch the game.

Forty two bugs down in this sprint, only counting the one's I'd added to my task list. Some of these range from simple UI issues to frustrating game breaking problems. Some as recently introduced as last week, others have been around since I first launched the game in early beta. Those older ones in particular are nice to wave goodbye to.

And in the meantime I'm still polishing up edges, adding new animations, updating sound effects, clearing up jankiness wherever possible. It all leads to the game feeling less like a tech demo and more like something that's worthy of shipping!

The new animations for switching units are so much fun

At my count there's another forty more bugs to clear out, and another twenty odd features to modify, extend or upgrade to go with the game. I'm at the tail end of developing it, and am really starting to look forward to playtesting it with a wider audience.

In other news though, I came across a recently released title: SOVL. It's a singleplayer and multiplayer turn based rank and flank game, and it plays so much like Charge . The dev has achieved everything I wanted to do with Charge, and in many ways has done a way better job than I could've mustered. I've been playing the absolute heck out of it over the past few days and I'm super impressed. The addition of a rougelite campaign structure really makes the rank and flank format shine, and is even a nice throwback to the mechanics of old GW gems like Shadow of the Horned Rat!

Seriously, its free, its excellent, if you even remotely liked the concepts I talked about in Charge, go give them some of your time (or even better, buy some DLC!) (the ratkin, you want to buy the ratkin yes yes!)

Exoloper Tasks completed:

• Bug: UI: Shouldn't be able to launch extract with zero items
• Bug: UI: Input field in save loadout popup doesn't clear on open
• Bug: UI: Input field in loadout keeps placeholder when typing into it?
• Bug: exits still not showing properly on drop sequence, on device
• Bug: Fortress seems to be the only combat map that gets populated
• Bug: UI: reset data popup needs to close + need to take us back to main menu on reset all data confirm
• Bug: When viewing other pages in campaign, sometimes touch on POI becomes unresponsive
• Bug: oversubscription of "add unit" -> campaign adds phantom units
• Bug: Current slot in roster no longer changes
• Bug: Ai missiles are guided
• Bug: Sprites are now improperly rotated
• Bug: All Campaign objectives always show as not completed in campaign extract menu
• Bug: Having a seperate canvas for each POI in campaign blows out draw calls.
• Bug: iPhone landscape safe area isn’t working
• Bug: HUD layout overlaps badly on mobile landscape
• Bug: sometimes teamcolour trimsheet shows on Exos after deleting a unit
• Bug: When inspecting the info for a weapon to add to a unit, pressing back takes you back to edit unit, instead of weapon list page
• Bug: "clearing slot" in edit unit takes you back to roster, not edit unit
• Bug: Equipping and unequipping / deleting units can lose items in roster builder
• Bug: Main menu bug report button should always be bottom right side, even on tablets
• Bug: Utilities no longer function after multiple battles.
• Bug: Utilities no longer show their icons
• Bug: Toggling torso twist on iOS requires two taps (double toggle?)
• Bug: Exits aren't all properly accessible across levels
• Bug: No exit icons in intro map for industry
• Bug: Respawns POI in combat showing up in game?! (industrial intro)
• Bug: Fresh install with no iCloud keys breaks on null key. (HIGH PRIORITY)
• bug: Level: Fortress, Cannot leave, exits are blocked inside terrain
• Bug: second Paper Doll sometimes shows up in camping / drop sequence
• Bug: Nullref after losing campaign then switching campaigns
• Bug: Hills map has no exits?
• Bug: Suspect that modify hud doesn't work in menu
• Bug: Not usubscribing from paint view properly
• Bug: UAV Uses are at -1 on new campaign
• Bug: weapon_burst_count not present in default part effect data.
• Bug: Nullref while modifying hud (touch reposition) in menu
• Bug: nullref "top speed" no default string value (some info screen items have no default strings)
• Bug: Tanks make track noises in hangar.
• Bug: Nullref in tutorial coroutine
• Bug: Unit structural parts are in the loot tables
• Bug: Enemies don't appear in hud on drop mission

• Bug: Performance sucks on campaign on iPad mini landscape

• Graphics: Shield needs better shader

• Graphic Design: Melee Weapons need icons
• Graphics: add paint smoke to unit when painting in hangar
• Feature: Tie campaign length + objectives to difficulty level
• Feature: Limit Loadouts per unit type
• Feature: Per unit camera positions in Hangar.
• Feature: Drop sequence mission should just be "escape"
• UI: Campaign: Extracts need to be way better telegraphed
• UI: Haptics needed on toggles in repair cells in exobay
• UI: sliders should fire haptics
• UI: iCloud status in settings
• SFX: UI: Audio
• Audio: UI - Campaign Extract item rarities
• Audio: UI - settings sliders need audio. (specific ones for SFX and Music
• Audio: Specific SFX for reset settings
• Audio: UI - Campaign Battle Complete Popup - objective
• Audio: UI - Campaign Battle Complete Popup - regular
• Audio: UI - Save + delete loadouts need sfx
• Audio: UI - Campaign Difficult choices?
• Audio: UI - Campaign Use UAV
• Input: Add initial support for all controller types
• Debug: on throw error page, always show debug info
• Debug : Battery drain stats in debug info

This week's been again a grab bag of little fixes and improvements to the game. I've hidden away the debug menu, added to and improved the campaign over ui, fixed a bunnnch of issues with iCloud and added a handful of iOS specific stuff, including performance profiles for devices based on RAM quantity, all bitsy, but stuff that needs to be done.

However the big one is reworking the way the game's missions handle.

While playtesting the game through the week I'd often find myself in situations where I'd cleared a level of its enemies, then just had to dutifully go around and smash stuff. Now, don't get me wrong here, smashing stuff is great, but without risk it gets very boring very quickly. You know you'll win, its just time, and at the end of the day this is a mobile first game, so, a players time is something I need to respect.

Whilst working on the fixes and updates, I thought of ways to solve this issue. Nothing quite fit, until this morning, whilst I was out for my morning run the idea hit me.

What if enemies constantly reinforced?

I could immediately see a stack of issues and conflicts emerging from this, but there was something interesting in that concept. So, after coffee I dove in and got it working. It took me about five or so hours but now the concept works more or less as I intended.

When you dive into a mission, a single target is picked out as your priority and your job is to eliminate it, then extract. This target is chosen from either units or buildings present in the level at load time. By default new enemy units will arrive every thirty seconds or so, mounting pressure quickly. This means that stealth and hit and run tactics are the preferred approaches for most missions, as continually getting into scuffs will eventually lead to you losing your Exo. This gameplay change also emphasises the need for defensive utilities like smoke launchers, giving you some space to handle enemies at your own pace.

The thing that makes this work so well however is that it's tied directly into the game's difficulty systems. At lower levels, enemies take longer to reinforce, and deploy fewer units, but at higher levels you're not only having to deal with more frequently deploying units, but also more objectives to take out per mission. This pushes the playstyle from slow and steady up to highly aggressive, leaving only a little room at the very top of the difficulty curve for players with the skill and loadout to smash up to six objectives very quickly before they're overrun.

As with last week, this is effectively a self balancing system. Completing campaigns will push you further up that difficulty range, dying will slide you back down. So if you're having trouble in this campaign run, you get a chance to reset on something a little easier next time.

I always feel that It's at this point in a project that the best ideas come up. Your knowledge on the project is intimate, nearly innate, you understand its strengths and weaknesses and know the best moments to make changes to accomodate for these. It's a pity that often (at least in the games / projects / companies I've been involved in) this is the stage of the project where it's heads down, bums up and its all about racing to that finish line.

It always pays to take a second and think "how can this be better?".

Exoloper Tasks completed:

• Feature: Mission revamp + infinite spawning enemies
• Feature: Add remap controller UI
• Feature: Common items should be infinite in inventory. player should never run out of them
• Feature: set default renderscale to 75% for iPhone
• Feature: Check iCloud is working
• Feature: Add iOS feedback request
• Feature: Combat: Tanks that lose their tracks should be immobilised
• Input: Touch: Pinch to zoom in campaign
• UI: Campaign complete show difficulty increase / decrease
• UI: Debug Menu
• UI: Campaign: split mission from location name.
• UI: Add total amount of missions completed at rank 6.
• UI: centre and highlight “tap anywhere to skip” on intro

• UI: add label to bug report button on homescreen

• Bug: Starting a new campaign after leaving an old one retains items in campaign data

• Bug: Null ref when opening campaign view
• Bug: AI Not following player in combats?
• Bug: new Campaign didn't fire drop sequence.
• Bug: "cannot find bounceback error" has been replaced with gameover.

This past two weeks has had me working on cleaning up the game, tracking down bugs, fixing issues and generally just polishing the heck out of it.

Progressing nicely

There's something really satisfying about actually finishing up UI elements that've been in the game since nearly day one. I cleaned up the intro sequence, added some transitions and boom, it now feels like a more professionally made game.

One of the major changes made to the game was to add a concept of Adaptive Difficulty. I play a lot of Hunt: Showdown and one of the core things I really love about the game is it's player-star-ratings. On its surface it's a six star rating, players start at two, and go up or down depending on who they kill and who they're killed by. If a three star takes out a four star, the four star's rating will drop drastically, maybe even dropping them to three, while the three star player's rating will increase a little towards four. It's a simple representation of an MMR system that tells you just enough detail at a glancable level. At art school they alway encouraged us to wear our influences on your sleeve, so, here's Exoloper's Pilot Rank system. Its functionally the same, successfully complete a campaign and your rank will increase, unlocking more difficult enemies, and more enemies in combats. Die or run out of fuel in a campaign and your ranking decreases. Is this a system that's designed to make it easy to drop ranks? Yes. That way, you have some control over how difficult the game is.

Why didn't i just implement a more traditional singleplayer difficulty system? Maybe a difficulty slider in the menu? or the ability to choose easier or harder fights in the campaign map? Two reasons. 1 I want players to show this off. For interloper we had players in our discord showing off crazy strategies for cheesing endless missions, players intentionally taking rubbish loadouts on the most difficult runs, and more. This should be a bit of a badge of honor for players. "I've been 6 rank for 20 campaigns now." (ps: I just added a 6-rank streak indicator as a todo item). 2 Having difficulty be both Adaptive, and Interactive gives the player a reason to strive to do better. Once a slider is set in a menu it's rarely changed, and I learned in Unstoppable that if you constantly provide an easy / medium / hard option then the players will almost always take the easy one. If you know you're not quite at the rank you can handle, then you're encouraged (forced) to give it a go anyway. Worst case scenario? You lose some gear.

There's so many other things I've added to the game during this sprint: Quality of life tweaks such as torso twist rotating your movement facing to match your look facing, instead of it's previous behaviour that reset the torso rotation to match move rotation. UI tweaks like actually implementing full paper dolls for all possible units in the game for allied units. (And making the whole panel a little more legible, there's a whole tangent I could go on about making UI feel right for desktop, but awful for mobile and vice versa.)

To Gameplay tweaks like finally improving the autoaim functions of guns in the game. This is something I feel like I nailed with Interloper, its an incredibly generous amount of autoaim, but it's totally necessary given the speed and complexity of the core control systems. Somehow I hadn't added this to Exo, despite its control scheme being more complex?

There's a lot of polishing and bugfixing that still needs doing, but oh my does the game feel like it's coming along nicely. Fairly soon I'll start opening up the beta to non-interloper players, and I think thats when it'll really start getting real.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

• Music: Menu
• Music: Exobay
• Gameplay: Radar is too close in on lowest setting
• Gameplay: Visibility and Accessibility on campaign layer is not great.
• Gameplay: Adaptive Dificulty
• Gameplay: Torso twist should rotate legs to face current direction on end.
• Gameplay: Feature: Autoaim weapons within angle (like interloper)
• UI: Show health remaining for allied units
• UI: Show health quantity per item in exobay
• UI: Exit screenspace icons need a proper "exit" icon
• UI: Settings in campaign / combat needs a "forefit campaign" button
• UI: build out paper dolls
  • Medium Exo
  • Util Exo
  • Light Tank A
  • Light Tank B
  • Medium Tank A
  • Medium Tank B
  • Super Tank
• UI: Campaign 01: Campaign POI icons
• UI: Removed "Alpha / Beta" build screen stuff.
• UI: Gifs for each campaign in menu to show off what’s interesting in them
• UI: Controller / Keyboard prompts are now in darkmode
• UI: Reworked campaign select UI
• UI: Added new Campaign Buy UI
• Bug: UI: Intro splash pages don't properly work
• Bug: UI: Radar has jaggy lines around it, cover that up.
• Bug: UI: Controller icons appear when no controller connected on touch mode

This week I've wrapped up work on the content for Exoloper's launch. That means all the art, sound effects, weapons, items utilities, pilotable Exos, ai, vehicles and so much more is now in-place. Will it be tweaked? Yeah, probably, is it final? I'd say so! Is the game done? Noooooooo.

I implemented all the new enemy types for the Forest Campaign, and in doing so, added units that use Utilities (such as active camo or smoke launchers). This makes combats way more dynamic, and it feels great. You'll hate being snuck up on by sword wielding Exos! I also added some new toys to play with, including Heavy Autocannons that just shred through light and medium armour.

I've also completed work on getting the forest campaign layer up and running as well. It's not quite balanced, and not quite where I want it to be, but I want it out there for now, so feel free to take a swing at that, though beware it's more dangerous than the industrial campaign.

As an aside, there's been a few moments recently where I've really appreciated the architecture I've laid down for Exoloper. I'm 99% sure it's all going to come and bite me in the bum in the future, but right now, it works great.

The general concept is that I've got dual event emitting systems happening, one for the game's global state, and one on a per unit basis. The global state handles most of everything, from changing the games state from menu to campaign to combat, and the local states handle the microcosm that is each unit. For instance, when the player fires their gun, global input state emits a message saying the player has requested to fire a weapon, the player unit input controller listens to that message, and then fires an internal message to the unit, with information on what weapon group was requested, and the players current target. That information is then received by the weapons various systems (audio, animation, bullet spawning, etc) and launches the bullet. On collision that bullet then transfers it's information to both the component it collided with and it's parent unit, resulting in feedback animations, damage to internal systems, effects and more.

This seemingly complex set of overlapping systems was built small to start with, initially just covering projectiles and damge, (as seeen in the first gif below) but has blossomed out to accomodate pretty much any system I might think of (seen in the concept of stealth, ai use of utilites and vision modes, demonstrated in the second gif below.)

Oh yeah I also got Exo paint schemes back up and running with the new models and it's great. I'm holding back the temptation to go even further on this as it could quickly delay the project significantly.

The next phase of the development will be bugfixing and balancing. The game is all sorts of out of balance, some things are overpowered, others are barely useful, so its all about reining that in a bit, whilst cleaning up its rough edges.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

• UI: Unit SSIcons shouldn't exist when player radar has no awareness of them
• Ai should use Utilities.
• Ui: improve Unit Screen Space Icons
• AI: Need to not immediately auto-rotate turrets towards player.
• Hangar: Visual Unit Modifications
• SFX: Ballistics
• SFX: Energy
• SFX: Missile
• Weapon: Heavy Autocannon
• BUG: Paint doesn't apply to units on drop or after leaving edit unit in menu
• Bug: Campaign map generation edges sometime connect long distances
• Enemy Unit: SuperHeavy: Massive Lance.
• Weather: Rain
• Weather: Fog
• Enemy Unit: light attack: shield
• Enemy Unit: Exo: Missiles + long range.
• Allied Unit: Scout vehicle
• Allied Unit: Ranger infantry
• Allied Unit: Repair vehicle
• Enemy Unit: AT sniper infantry
• Enemy Unit: Medium main: Autocannons
• Enemy Unit: Medium main: Lance
• Enemy Unit: light attack: swarm missiles
• Decoration: pond / lake
• Decoration: extreme tank barricades
• Decoration: craters
• Decoration: clearing
• Decoration: forest
• POI: desolate forest
• POI: remaining forest
• POI: hills
• POI: Woodcutting camp
• POI: Military spaceport (exfil)
• POI: Outpost
• POI: AA Battery
• POI: KRS ancient site.
• Run project auditor on current project
• Build New Sprint
• Write Sprint review log

It's been a couple weeks again, between some contract work, some Covid at home (not for me though! four years in and still dodging the hell virus) and a bunch of life admin I've had to slow down a bit on Exoloper. I've managed to put a couple rather beefy things into the game though, so thats good.

Lets kick off with how the game's feeling and sounding right now:

I posted this earlier in the week on Mastodon, where someone likened it to Battlezone '98. Definitely the best compliment I could hope for.

There's a couple things to go through here. I added the music I made for the game a long while back, and as always music makes a game feel more complete. I'm kinda surprised that it doesn't sound like crap, and that in-situ it kinda works? Definitely makes me a lot more confident for producing the rest of the games music on my own.

The second thing here is that a ton of SFX have been added / improved / worked on. Once a game starts feeling right it becomes a lot easier to build for it. There's a positive feedback look of "holy moly that was cool, if only I could add more cool stuff to that", that's pretty much my entire development motivation cycle, and also why I gravitate so heavily towards action games. I added a shotgun sound effect, it sounded great for a single shot, I made the gun automatic and the sfx blew me out of the room. Instantly wanted to add more of that.

This week in particular I spent time building out the Forest Campaign's Exosuit, the "Utility Exo". This piece of work has access to six utility slots and two reactor slots. Should be useful for power hungry utilities like Active Camoflauge, Thermal vision, or EM Warfare. Active camoflague hits hard.

On these utilities, I spent a fair chunk of what little time I had last week working on them, as they all required a little more than the utilities so far. In the case of Thermal Vision, I really wanted that "Predator" feel, and knew that it'd have to include some post-effects work. A simple colour ramp was easy enough to implement, but the point of the system was to make the game much more legible, and so I also had to layer out smoke and debris as much as possible. For those that can't stand the visual mess of the game in regular view, Thermal should help a ton.

Using the same post-effects overlay systems I then added the Active Camouflage utility. Visually it was pretty simple to implement however I needed to add a realtime checker for a unit's visible strength. Under the hood of Exoloper there's a relatively complex signal strength system, both visual and radar-detectable emissions, so a unit won't appear labelled on screen (for the player) unless it's detected via either system, and for AI their detection system relies entirely upon these values. The difficulty here though is that I had it as a set-and forget system within the units' campaign data, only modified under the destruction of unit parts, so for Active Camo, I added a realtime modifier to this that can be modified on the fly by utilities when required. This goes both ways, so a player could use active camo, and be completely invisible to AI for a time, but their radars might pick up a massive energy spike at the location you enabled it, which might encourage some to go check it out.

Another shoutout to NoLeternox for his awesome sketch concepts. Seriously makes the whole process so much easier.

With all this done my only remaining content task for the game is to build out the graphical assets for the Forest Campaign's campaign layer. After that there's a couple weeks worth of bits and bobs, little features that need patching and then onto Open Beta, bug-hunting and balancing.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

• Music: Combat 1
• Player Unit: Utility Exo - animations
• Player Unit: Utility Exo
• Player Unit Cockpit: Utility Exo
• Enemy Unit: light attack: repair support
• Utility: chaos burst
• Utility: active camo
• Utility: thermal vision
• Utility: Low emissions Reactors
• Utility: High frequency Sensors
• Utility: Low power Engines