ABSENT LOG 2024 A Year In Review + 12/15/24 Dev Update

Christmas is fast approaching, and we are counting down the last final weeks of 2024!

Looking back at the start of 2024, It marked a fairly important time for us. It was the official launch of our community discord, and us going fully public with the development of Absent Log. We also view it as the year that ALOG genuinely entered full development. Since then we've made quite a few leaps in our development, despite some of the technical pitfalls.


(Earliest art of TW and Absent Log as a whole, done in late 2021 during our early planning)

It's hard to believe that since then, through so many iterations, dev reboots, and late night discussions, arguments on mechanics, trouble shooting sessions, and countless hours watching tutorials, that we are now at a point where we honestly have hit our stride.

Video games are a creative medium, yes, but are also a very technically involved one. Being on this development journey has really humbled us. We have become more and more aware of the intricacies of game development, and how challenging it can be to get even the most basic features working without breaking several others. Nearly 4 years ago, when we first talked about developing a game, we only had a few parameters we were certain of. Sci-fi, 3rd person, emphasis on exploration and story. We spent many nights brainstorming and trading ideas, like a top down, isometric investigation game, or classic JRPG story game. The specifics on how the game functioned had shifted many times before we started really learning development and working with Unreal Engine. But since then, the things that always stayed the same, were the title, and the general story.

As we started experimenting with ALOG, possibilities became much more tangible, and we realized that we could actually afford a little bit more ambition with each new skill or process learned. ALOG became less of a little tinker project, and more and more into something real, something we believe has real potential. 

At the start of 2024 (Well, in reality, December of 2023) we finally felt that it had reached a level where it was presentable, that we could show people that we were making something that we thought they would want to see. We shifted from sporadic work to regular updates, keeping us accountable to provide some form of progress each month, which did wonders for our productivity. We started realistically planning our end goal for the project, what the final deliverable game would look like, and how to achieve that with what we currently had. The huge community influx into the server and all the eyes on the project meant the world to us. We have never felt so encouraged and validated in what we were making.

Having regular updates of the play-test builds, implementing feedback, and getting the responses to the progress was pure fuel for us. It was perfect.

Then, Microsoft jump scared us.

In the summer of 2024, A mystery midnight windows update fried the hard drive the project was being stored on, just as we were making plans to move to source control.

The entirety of the drive was absolutely nuked. Numerous attempts to repair the drive failed. This was a devastating event that really put a lot of things in perspective for us.

I (Looming) remember frantically pacing around my room thinking that it was completely over, years of experimentation, hard work, and plans for the year just gone. Entirely gone.

I (Looming) remember breaking the news to Tekka and Seraph Engine, and telling them “If you want to jump ship, I would completely understand, But if you are willing to stick by it, I still want to see this project through”

Tekka had told me “It’s not even a question, let’s get it done.”

Immediately all that frustration and fear vanished, and we started salvaging what we could from the drive. A week later, we made a fresh project in Unreal, refined our backup process, and just moved forward as if nothing happened.

Game development, or any creative endeavor, always consists of ups and downs. This isn't a revolutionary thing, we all understand that. There is volatility in everything, especially in a project this big and complex. The decision to use that event to start fresh, eventually proved to be one of the biggest boons we ever could have hoped for. Ultimately, we were able to create a new game from the ground up with better optimized assets, cleaner more reliable code base, better code practices, better organization and really refocus the game to be closer in line with what we had originally intended, a slower paced, tactical shooter with an emphasis on storytelling and puzzle solving.

The amount of support and encouragement we have received from our supporters and discord members during this event, and really this year, has been nothing short of life saving for the project. All of you sticking by us proved that this is something we can actually do, we can make this happen, and we will make this happen.

Our vision for ABSENT LOG is not to be some breakout success, to make big splashes in the industry, or put us on the map. It's not meant to do something so avant garde and original in terms of mechanics or gameplay, but rather, ABSENT LOG is ultimately just a game. And for us, that's okay. Our vision for this game is to create a compelling, interactive story experience that is deeply personal to us. To take parts of ourselves, our own experiences, art, passions, and creativity, and to craft something that we can give to others and say “We made this because we love it so much, and we hope that you enjoy it.”

Our measure for success isn’t copies sold, or wish-lists on steam. Success for us is, getting the game done and in your hands.

What comes after that, time will tell.

Putting aside all the soppy n’ lofty, TED talk buzzwords of game dev and creativity, 

Let’s talk about what’s next.

WHAT DOES 2025 LOOK LIKE FOR ALOG?

Firstly we would like to stress that we aren't going to create and adhere to a roadmap, we don't have the manpower or organizational structure to really do that. We have always operated on keeping our scope low and manageable, and getting things done when they can be done. When we both work full time jobs, have families and personal matters, you kinda need to pick a free moment to get substantial work done. 

But plans for 2025 are mostly going to be focused on getting content made and implemented (rest of our weapon roster, other enemy types, general assets), and getting the levels and game world built. We are at a point where we need to move into the phase of getting substantial world progress done. These past several months were really focused on the dev reboot and getting our base mechanics and backend as functional and stable as possible. Most of our mainline mechanics are fully functional, including:

- Movement, interaction and animations for TW,

- Basic enemy AI and perception.

- Weapon and gear systems

- Health, Shield, and vitals systems.

- Save/load game system.

- Post process and visual styling
- Core data tables for text notes.

- Cutscene/Cinematic pipeline established

- fully functional world interaction system

- Basic UI functions and menus

- Healing systems

And much much more.

This has laid the groundwork to start getting content made and directly implemented into the engine, using existing code and systems we have made.

In terms of deliverables, our estimated plan is to have a free, playable, stable build purely for playtest and feedback purposes early 2025. This playtest build will consist of a very basic map with minimal detail, sporting our planned layout for how we want to approach levels. In this build we will include nearly all the systems that we intend to have working in the full game, such as interactive world elements, puzzles, Enemy AI, level flow, combat, exploration, and scripted sequences.

We will use this to gauge feedback on what is working and what isn't, and where to focus our efforts in terms of refinement or reworking.

From here, we will continue on our mechanics and systems, and build out the actual campaign.

Aside from getting the bulk of our campaign built, our big goal for 2025 is our vertical slice demo. Which will include the first 2 hours of the campaign.This demo will include the starting area of TW and Huey’s ship, and the first level of the campaign, the Flight deck/Hangar bay.

We want to plan to have that launched and available to play on steam by winter of 2025.

DEV UPDATE 12/15/2024

UI ITEMS: PDA TABS, LOGS AND NAVIGATION

A big focus for this month's update was getting interaction, health, and weapon systems working within a UI framework for the player PDA. This UI element would house all player information on health, items, status, gear, objectives, logs, and navigation. Originally we wanted to work on wrapping up TW and Hueys ship’s level assets, but this took precedence as, though not as visually interesting as a finished level, it required a lot of cross communication with systems to ensure it was working properly and before other items could be built. Most of the current progress has already been showcased in our discord dev channel, but here are some additional items that are planned.

The PDA will be currently separated into 5 sections:

- Journal (objectives, TW’s thoughts written down)
- Inventory (Weapons, items, ammo, key items, etc…)
- Gear (Suit management and tuning modules)
- Log (Collection of various text and audio logs collected from the world)
- Navigation (A map to navigate the game space)

General styling we want to achieve are very indicative of that crunchy, high contrast display screens from early 2000s scifi media, specifically things related to the “Y2k Abstract Tech Art”. Great examples of these are design websites from the early 2000s and various other media such as EDM album covers, posters, and prints.

As for the actual sections themselves, Journal, Inventory and Gear are working but for planning the Log section, we wanted to approach this as a cascading tabbed approach.

Logs are considered anything picked up in-game that is a diary entry, whether text or audio, or some form of lore note left behind. When picked up, it would populate within the list on the right, inside of its designated section. From here you can select which category to view, and open the list of related logs on the right. Logs will always be text based, and if a log has an audio or visual component, they will accompany the text. Any log that is picked up can be freely accessed at any time.



(This is NOT an in game screenshot, rough mockup)

For navigation, we want to make this as simple and streamlined as possible. The map should be quick to access, simple to read and plan with. Each deck or level of the ship will have its own proper map with a “fog of war” system. Meaning that you will not know the general layout of an area until you explore it. Each level map will also have a method of switching which floor you are viewing based on how many actual floors are in a given area. We are still planning on what to include on the legend, or what is considered a point of interest. But the basic idea is that it should cover the most important items such as save points, work benches, replicators, and waypoints.



(This is NOT an in game screenshot, rough mockup)

ENGAGEMENT PLANNING

As we continue with creating the demo map for the play-test, one thing we are paying close attention to is how to structure proper engagements. We want to allow multiple different paths and methods for dealing with enemy units. The most notable two are the Stealth approach and the assault approach. Being that ALOG is a slower, tactical game that really pushes you into utilizing cover and vantage points, we want to strike a solid balance with how that works with stealth and navigation. We want to encourage the player to stop before an engagement and to plan out how they would like to approach it. Taking notes of various paths, key cover points, elevation, distance, and cross reference with what weapons they have, how much ammo is left, what kinds of enemies are present and to ascertain survivability from that information.

This is an important thing to consider as it plays into enemy reactions, level design, and balancing. In the image below, a potential idea is to have 3 generalized methods of approaching an enemy engagement.

The first is the Direct approach.

Here the player would assault head on whatever enemy is present based on confidence. Depending on how you position yourself before engagement, you could potentially get the drop on an enemy and score a critical hit, giving you a starting advantage before the fight really kicks off. Combat should still be challenging, and will push you to navigate the play space carefully as being out in the open will eat away at your health and shields if you are not careful.

The second would be an alt path utilizing environmental objects and access points. Sneaking by enemies, and carefully maneuvering toward cover points around enemy patrol paths, in order to reach a key area that provides solid visual cover unimpeded to your goal, like a vent or some form of walkway. More risky, as you'll need to be fairly close to enemy sight-lines, but much more rewarding as you can negate a potential fire fight if in a tough spot.

Another is an alt route based on exploration and adaptability. still requires some sneaking, but much more emphasis on space and distance, with key points of interest along the path such as consoles, terminals, or environmental objects that could allow you greater control of the engagement. Typically this would be the longest distance to travel and would require the most amount of time to progress into. But it provides much more options for repositioning and cover.

ALOG is not a bonafide stealth game, but we want to provide options to the player, especially if they are low on ammo or resources for a proper fight. One thing we don't want to do is to brutally punish the player for a failed stealth attempt. The worst that should happen is that you move into a full direct engagement with the enemy, or maybe they call backup. It should be a fairly natural transition between these two “states”

In the demo map we will include multiple scenarios much like this. To help make the play space feel more varied and engaging to play in.

 ART ASSETS

Pirate Suit:

“This is something that’s been on the back burner for a long while.  Back when we were figuring out how to implement multiple suit skins for TW, Loom and I had come up with a short list of themed skins that we wanted to be sure to include in the game.  A couple of these have been shown off already, with Loom’s “Engineer” skin being built into a complete asset recently.

One design that Loom wanted me to tackle was a “Pirate” armor style for TW.  He gave me some interesting direction as well, in that he specifically wanted me to channel the kind of shapes and styling that I tend toward in my personal science fiction art.  After a couple false starts and a recent feedback pass courtesy of Loom, we’ve got a design that we’re comfortable sharing:

I’ve tried to design this with the same kind of material sense as armor in my Novus Imperium setting, with shapes tending to taper snug around the edges to create a sleek and conformal look despite the significant bulk that they add, and a fairly even mix of soft and hard armor layered over the flexible bodysuit.  The jackal-like helmet shape pulls directly from some of my years-old space pirate sketches.

I also thought it might be interesting to show some of the personal notes that I make- both for communicating things to Loom, and to help myself keep the details in mind- while I work:

The orange and blue diagram just indicates where the asset will need unique models vs where we can just apply a different set of textures to the base mesh.  All of the armor sets we’ve built have used this method, which has been super helpful for minimizing extra rigging and skinning work by using the same base model and rig with layered attachments to expand and distinguish the individual silhouettes.

And speaking of rigging and skinning, the other tri-color notes are useful there, as they indicate sections of the model that should not deform when in motion.  This will inform how we lay out the geometry, ideally with clean division between rigid and deform-able areas.  It will also be a handy quick-reference for blocking in material properties when texturing.”

-Tekka