The beginning

When I was 20, I had a college course called Object-Oriented Programming for which we had to make an application using C++. I made a small pseudo-3D game which I liked. I knew I wanted to make an Out Run-like game with Outrun aesthetics. So I started working on PalmRide with my friend COVALENT. After the summer of 2020, most of the mechanics of the game were already in place. The art was 100% done by myself. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. A guy saw one of my reddit posts where I would showcase the game, and he offered to redesign the car of the player. I accepted his proposal, and I let him redesign that car. The result was astonishing. I was so impressed that I proposed him to redraw all the assets of the game. At that time, only the city (Shinjitsu) game map was done, so he redrew those assets. When he was done with that, we released the demo of the game which received quite some positive feedback among the people who played it. The guy I'm talking about is Renegade_John.
Until that point, the development of the game was not fast, but at least it was slow and steady. In March of 2021, the development would almost stop for various reasons. I was not only overwhelmed by the college assignments I had to do, but I was also depressed about some personal troubles. At that time, we were in the middle of the pandemic. Not leaving the house for a year had a very negative impact on me, and accentuated my depression. I was almost miserable. Working on PalmRide was the last thing I was thinking about. COVALENT couldn't work on the game much either. College kept him busy too. Not only that, but he was fighting with his own personal troubles too. Regarding Renegade_John, he just got a job at a game studio as an artist, so he had less time to work on PalmRide. Not only that, but he didn't feel that confident working on a game with pixel art graphics, as that was not really his art style.
The game had to be released, so I pushed myself hard to finish the game in June 2021, as I had successfully passed all my exams. I talked to Renegade_John and he agreed that he would create the remaining assets for the game in the following weeks, and so he did. After that, only me and COVALENT were left to finish the game. I was still depressed at that time, so initially I didn't code that much. I pushed hard during August and September, right before the launch. Luckily, the depression started going away before launching the game (as a side note: I recommend the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F for situations like these. Reading philosophy books also helps combat depression, but better off consult a specialist).
One week before launching the game, and the game was missing only one important piece. That piece was the song for the beach (Ocean Drive) game map. COVALENT started working on it pretty much when we started development, but he couldn't get it to sound right no matter how hard he tried. He was now rushed to finish it so we could ship the game. What ended up happening was that he completely threw away the existing song he was working on, and started a brand new one. He stayed up all night just so he could finish the new song. The new song is the one currently in the game.

The launch

It's September 16 2021, PalmRide gets launched. During the launch what I mostly did was share the game with Discord/ Reddit/ Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram.... basically every social media platform possible. I had my posts already prepared in a Google Doc, all I had to do was post them, but still it took some time. Luckily, my friend Taranasus helped me with some posts. He also showcased PalmRide to the fans of his own game at that time, Vecter.
A few days would go by, the feedback for the game was extremely positive, and the sales were way better than I expected. I am grateful for that. Sure, some people didn't like the game, and their reasons were perfectly valid. I noted both the positive and negative feedback, and I will use it for future games, so I know what works and what doesn't, and how things can be improved.
The game would often crash, or take very much to load. After launch I fixed most of the crashes, and also made the game load faster. When it was initially released, the game had no controller support. A few weeks after release I would buy myself a controller and implement controller support too. We also published Episode 1: Dreadful Diagnosis on the official website of the game short time after. That short little story was written by DabuAlexandru, and polished by COVALENT. Updates were going great, and everyone was happy. People enjoyed the updates that improved the game, and I enjoyed making people happy, and also the Discord engagement we had.

A few weeks would go by and the final year of college would begin. PalmRide updates would slowly cease while I was busier and busier with assignments, deadlines, exams and working on the bachelor's thesis. Eventually, the updates would stop, as I would have less and less free time to work on the game. At that time, the pandemic was still going on, and I can't say I was enjoying that time much. A few more months would go by and I would start being motivated to work on the game too. The planned updates were: Linux port, Android port, a new game map and more story episodes. I started with the Linux port. I made the game compile for Linux, but that version was still very bad, lacking sound, crashing.... I also saw the codebase of the game for the first time in a few months and I was horrified of how bad the code was. I had no desire to continue working on that codebase so I stopped. I few month would go by again, and I would start adding the new game map. Again, I realized that I had no desire to work on that codebase, and that I could do things better if I were to start a game from scratch.

Rockets

While these were happening, the last semester of college began, and I had a course called "Simulation applications programming". The subject was about making a video game which contains physics, AI and graphics programming. The game had to be made in a team. After the requirements for the game were set by the professor, I received a text message from a person, and asked me if she could join my team. I said yes, and now she was part of the team.
The project we made was a planet lander game, where the player had to successfully land on 5 planets without hitting asteroids or landing too hard. That project can be found here. Also, here's me presenting the game to our professor (sorry, but I speak Romanian in the video): [previewyoutube=wqB4atBzNfA;full][/previewyoutube] I enjoyed working on it, so I decided that it may be worth turning the prototype into a full game too. That person who joined the team for the assignment is Gunter. While working on that game for college, Gunter proved to be very good at designing things, choosing aesthetics, 3D modelling and presentations. I asked Gunter if she would join me and COVALENT in making a full game with rockets, and she said yes.
So that's the team, me, COVALENT and Gunter, making a new game with rockets. I can't say that much about the game, as we're very early in development, but I can at least give you some hints regarding the game. The game will probably feature multiple game modes:

• A game mode similar to Vecter/ PalmRide where you have to drive a spaceship endlessly
• A racing game mode
• A taxi driver game mode where you take people from one planet to another

Style-wise, the game will probably be a low-poly with Outrun/ Synthwave aesthetics. There may be more dimensions, each with its own unique style, flocks of UFOs, and much, much more.... Again, the game is very early in development, and I can't know for sure what the end result will look like. What I've said here is subject to change, and things may or may not end up in the final game. Here's what the the "game" can do so far:

• Rocket launching
  
• Maneuver the rocket around a planet
  
• Control the rocket as a spaceship when far from a planet
  
• And here's one rocket model prototype, made by Gunter
  

It doesn't seem like much, but what we have is the foundation for the game we are making. We must make sure that the foundation is strong before actually making the game, otherwise, the development process will be very painful. Right now I'm implementing the rocket/ spaceship physics and making a system general enough that it would allow for many types of rockets, each with its own unique properties. As for the models, we're still experimenting to see what import/ export settings work, how the models should look, how the scripts should interact with them..

Giveaway

Since PalmRide turns one year, we are giving away 10 PalmRide keys. All you have to do is join our Discord server, and keep an eye out on the #giveaways channel.

Discount

The game will also be on a 50% discount during this week, it's an anniversary deal. It's the biggest discount the game ever had, so if the game seemed to expensive before, now's your chance to get it cheaper in the case you don't win at the giveaway described above.

The author of this post

My name is SilviuShader, but everybody calls me Shader.

SVET

This section has nothing to do with PalmRide, nor with the game that we are currently working on. The post pretty much ended with the previous paragraph. PalmRide benefited much from the help of Taranasus, who kept a link towards the PalmRide Steam page inside Vecter for almost a year. I think that link brought many Vecter fans to PalmRide. To those of you who are Vecter fans, I want to let you know that Taranasus is working on another game, Super Vecter Elite Turbo. You might want to keep an eye out for that. I don't know how the game is gonna be, but I believe that it's going to be similar to the game with rockets we are currently making. Here's a video about the game: [previewyoutube=BG-fdlEdGgA;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2022-09-16 16:50:29 CET ] [ Original post ]