The Story So Far…
Hello all!
Thank you for reading this! I’d like to introduce the project I am currently working on, ‘Paper Needs Inspiration!’.
What Is this Game?
‘Paper Needs Inspiration!’ is a survival resource management game where you play as the character ‘Paper’, a writer who needs new ideas for his work. To help Paper find his muse, the player must explore the world and find his reason for being there, thereby discovering a fresh artistic direction for his writings.
Controls:
WASD – Move
Q and E: Rotate Camera
Mouse Wheel: Zoom In and Out
Mouse L-Click: Move to Click Point
Inventory Single Mouse L-Click: Move Item
Inventory Double Mouse L-Click: Use/Equip Item
How To Play: There is a portal behind Paper when the game starts (many more nearby as well). It will take you to the hub for this demo, where there is equipment and crafting items. Pick them up, go back to the mountain portal (the chair) and explore!
Game Mechanics:
The game mechanics Paper has at his disposal are those common to survival and resource management games: character status maintenance (don’t die) as well as object farming, planting, creating and destroying (get stuff). As Paper clears resources from the world and creates objects, new items will become available to him to craft. In addition, there will be quests to complete in order for Paper to reach a state of literary Zen.
Farming:
Crafting:
Fighting:
Quests:
In addition, player UI monitors Paper’s current state of being and current crafting options:
UI State:
Crafting Menu for Currently Known Craftables:
The World:
The world in this game is composed of two distinct types of areas: static and dynamic. The static areas are hubs where the player can go to trade, craft, receive quests and other such tasks.
The dynamic area of the game is a procedurally generated terrain that is assembled by the creation of smaller terrain chunks with randomly created assets placed on the chunks. The terrain goes on forever in all directions and has a plethora of options available for asset placement within the chunks. I feel that this is a unique characteristic of this genre of game: having an infinite Terrain to explore give the player a completely open world to discover and farm from.
The Tech:
I’m developing this game using Unity with the HDRP pipeline. Because of the size of the procedurally generated terrain, I’ve scaled back some of the pipeline settings (notably shadow quality and distance) in order achieve a 30-plus framerate (baseline testing on a GTX 1060 card) while keeping an overall High level of graphic quality. There is always a ‘give and take’ when it comes to rendering but I feel that the initial results from the current settings are acceptable. The game music will be classical and varied.
PC Requirements:
i5 CPU
16G RAM
2.23G Hard Drive Space
GTX 1060 or Equivalent
Project Status:
The game is currently in a basic form (very early in development). The player can explore, farm, build and attack using Paper. There are a small number of items that can currently be crafted from the crafting menu, as well as a small number of interactive objects in the world. These objects are set for testing purposes only, they won’t present much of a challenge to a player and will change once initial testing is finished.
During this upcoming quarter I intend to finish the feature set of this game and release it. Along the way, I will be releasing beta/demo builds that will illustrate the new game aspects I add over this time. It is my hope that players give me feedback during this process in order to make the game as enjoyable as possible.
Some of the larger known issues are as follows:
-Stuttering (caused by terrain loading)
-Terrain boundary/collider issues (invisible wall)
The Future:
Currently, I have implemented basic functionality and will add more as I further develop the game. Once the essential set of features is complete, I will further populate the game with custom objects/items/tasks (replacing the placeholder assets) to complete the game experience.
Upcoming changes include increasing the number of game objects (farmables, craftables and enemies), adding more static hub areas, introducing the quest system and refining the presentation. I will release builds at each phase and very much look forward to feedback I receive from this effort. Thanks again!
Last Note:
Thanks again for reading this! It’s been a fun experience making this and I think that at the end of the process I will produce something people enjoy. I’m not re-inventing the wheel or anything, just putting my thoughts and ideas into a well-established genre in a way players might find interesting.
So be sure to download the demo and let me know what you think!
