4D Games: Dev-log Update 5
06 Sep 2023As mentioned at the end of my last update, I have spent a whole bunch of time focussing on Steam and getting everything ready from the publishing perspective. This involved putting together a whole bunch of branding artwork, the trailer and setting up the rest of the Steam Store page.
On top of that I have also been doing a whole bunch of other work!
- Integrating Steam Achievements,
- Developing a Node-based shape editor where you can combine some 4D primitives into custom 4D objects,
- Adding Wireframes to the Playground modes,
- Adding Shape Scaling options to the 4D Playground,
- And lots of gradual improvements to the UI.
Steam Store Page
The Steam Store page for 4D Games is now live!! Make sure to Wishlist the game and keep an eye out for it's release date!
New Logo!
Let's be honest. The old logo was not good. This new one however I think captures the retro vibe I like, but also has a nice clean twist to it that I think goes very well with the style of the game!
Steam Assets
This isn't all of it, but here are a few of the assets I had to put together for the Steam Store!
Steam Achievements
For those of you who enjoy a bit of a challenge, 4D Games now has a set of achievements. The Icons were fun to work on but beware, some of these challenges are much harder than others; Good Luck!
4D Node Editor
As the shapes are rendered using ray marching, I was originally intending to create a code editor similar Shader Toy. However, I didn't want to scare off any non code folk. Whilst this may be slightly more limiting in terms of what you will be able to make, I think a node based system is much more intuitive.
Scalable Shapes and Wireframes
The playground mode wasn't much of a playground before now. Now you can modify the dimensions of each shape. For a cube this would be 4 values for the length of the cube in each of the 4 dimensions. For the 3-Torus, there are 3 values for each of it's radii. For the Tiger there are 3 values, 2 for each radii of the DuoCylinder, and 1 for the thickness of the edge that defines the Tiger.
Furthermore, Wireframes were added to the playground modes! The wireframe is a projection of all the edges of a shape onto a 3D plane. You can think of this like setting all the w components of each vertex of a shape to 0. There is slightly more involved when it comes to the more organic shapes like the Cone, but you will have to see that for yourself!
Chess Piece Destruction
Finally taken chess pieces don't just disappear anymore! Now chess pieces break apart and even in the direction they were taken from! Now I just need some sound effects...
New UI
As always, the UI still needs some refinement, but overall I am pretty happy with the frosted glass aesthetic now in place.
Alongside that I have been working on new UI elements such as sliders, toggles, option carousels etc. The game is starting to feel much more cohesive in terms of the user experience!
4D Chess in 2D
As if 4D Chess wasn't already complicated enough... I figured for the more competitive players, having to reorient the camera to select the right pieces may be frustrating due to the wasted time. As a solution, I tried flattening the entire board into a 2D space. Whilst this isn't quite as intuitive for myself, I am sure the ability to make moves much faster will be valuable to some.
Bonus: Experiments into Exporting 3D Printing Files…
Now I am not promising this will be in the game. If it is, it may come after launch. But I have started looking into exporting arbitrary 3D cross sections of the shapes in the playground mode as 3D .stl files for 3D printing. I will make updates as and when I can iron out the current problems!
Next Time…
A lot of what is to come next is optimisation, artistic improvements and boring stuff like localisation. There may be enough interesting stuff for one more update, but to be honest I am very excited to be coming towards the end of development and almost ready to release!
Remember to check the steam page, and wishlist 4D Games!!!
