This week I’ve mainly been working on the AI and building up the island. It is rapidly growing in size.
The original island we had planned out would take a player 8-9 minutes to walk from one side to the other without running into any obstacles. We’ve made some revisions to this over past 6 months and the latest layout revision is expected to be 3 times the size of that!
The latest AI system is getting there. The mutants can now run and brake when they get close to you. I had a play around with the density of the mutant hordes to see how much the system can handle before the frame-rate started to drop below 60. The answer is… well, quite a few!
Thought I’d post another progress update to bring in the new year, even though its almost 2 months since then… better late than never!
A lot of progress has been made to expanding the city environment. The mod will be split up into several hub areas (separate levels). This allows us to make areas much more densely populated than having everything in a single map as we originally planned.
Also, it seems we have gone beyond the level unit bounds with the map size. The standard level compilers are no longer working with such a large map size!
The city will split up in to 4 unique areas which we are preparing to announce. The first area in which the player starts in is currently known as Claw, it is planned to be on the southern end of the island.
Here are a couple of screenshots. These are still major works in progress. It is all looking quite samey in its current state, but we hope to add more landmarks and many more details in the coming months.
Its been a while since there have been any updates. Just thought I’d post and say happy new year and address a few things.
First up, wheres the mod?
I said earlier in the year there would be a version out by now. So where is it?
We’ve had to push a few things around. I was hoping a beta would be available at this point, but without writing up a long and boring explanation, in short, we did not anticipate the scope of the project. We also had a fewdistractions which didn’t help…
The current goal is to have an Open Alpha out around April-June. This will have the majority of the game play mechanics intact (Inventory/Crafting management, AI, world dynamics) and a decent chunk of the island available to explore.
This Alpha will help us fine tune many aspects of the mod and collect player feedback on what works and what needs to be changed.
We’ll be progressing into crunch time late January on the project, so expect to see plenty of content appearing here and there. We’ll try and do some behind the scenes videos too on how we put this stuff together.
Thank you all for your support throughout the year. This thing has been in the works for almost a decade now, 2015 will be the year. Promise this time!
We’ve finally uploaded a new game play video demonstrating some of the combat mechanics in Total Chaos!
This teaser shows how the crafting and melee systems work in Total Chaos.
There were a few more features we wanted to show in this video, like the stealth system and extended features of inventory management, but we’re still in the process of fine tuning this stuff. We’ll have some more videos out soon showing how this stuff works, but for now, we didn’t want to keep you guys waiting!
We’re also looking for a few artists and animators! Check out the Jobs page for more information on this.
For those new to the development blog, you might be wondering what this thing is?
Total Chaos is an upcoming total conversion mod for Doom 2 that runs on the source ports GZDoom and Zandronum.
The mod is an open world survival horror where players are dropped on an island known as Fort Oasis, once the most secret and isolated place in the world. It is believed it was once run by a community of coal miners, which one day disappeared without, leaving behind the abandoned concrete jungle to waste away.
Total Chaos is a sandbox mod, so the player has freedom of choice of either finding the lost community, surviving on their own against the islands deadly forces, or explore Fort Oasis to uncover its most hidden secrets.
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We’ve been diving headfirst into bringing out a new video teasing some of the combat mechanics you should expect in Total Chaos.
After we release this, expect to see more frequent video updates.
We’ll be releasing some new video content in November showing how the combat and AI works in Total Chaos, along with traps and various other bits and bobs. Stay tuned!
Sorry for the lack of updates lately, been working away at the housing district which occupies the eastern side of the island. Its looking a little overgrown. Someone better call a gardener…
