The Return

Wow, it's been a long time! Over the past year or so, Paranoia has undergone a near reset. I've gone back and done a full redesign of the gameplay mechanics and a re-evaluation of the story, and I'm happy to say that it's all coming together! In the last announcement I mentioned a super abstract framework that would solve everyone's problems and make development super efficient. Well, after going back and learning a little more about data-oriented design, I can actually happily say I've thrown that in the trash. The game is being made on its own now, nothing superfluous, no side projects that have to be done first - at least until the demo drops. Here's a few more things that we're looking into:

Upcoming Playable Demo

I do PLAN on dropping a demo in time for upcoming events, but I won't make any promises, I already broke one (well, maybe two if you count the framework) and that's enough as it is. If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I'm a young guy who tends to get way too far ahead of myself! The demo right now is looking to be a short segment from the first act of the game, intended to feature almost all of the game's core mechanics, most prominently the close-quarters unarmed combat that I hope will really push innovation in the survival-horror space. The closest to what we're doing that I'm aware of is some hour-long (and mildly overpriced) DLC (which, by the way, I did play) for a game from 2017. Not bad, just not very long, so I think what we're up to is going to be a big deal.

Switching Technology

Currently, we're building the demo with Unreal Engine 5. It's likely that this will remain our engine for the game's full and finished development, but it's also just as likely that we'll be switching to an in-house game engine. We have a few reasons, but the most important one is performance. Note that if this happens there will be a fairly larger delay between the demo and the full release, because I'm writing the engine by myself, but in any case, it shouldn't be too awful. If I'm correct, the most time-consuming parts will probably be rebuilding all of the development tools and porting the content. While we do plan to go proprietary for future games, it's unlikely this specific engine will be used for them (the current working name is the Shadow Engine, but I'm not fully set on it yet), since I'll probably do a separate project for that. That's all for now! Catch you in the next update!

[ 2023-09-11 06:53:13 CET ] [ Original post ]