I went back to brainstorming ideas for the overall theme/story of the campaign. There were a couple ideas about having the buildings being "infected" with some sort of mutated plants or locust-like pest that you were trying to eradicate, or the buildings being powered by some over-ambitious and out-of-control geothermal technology that would trigger earthquakes/volcanos/etc if the buildings weren't destroyed ASAP. But none of those ideas seemed as simple or visually obvious as the Blast Corps plot: In that game, there's a nuclear weapons disposal truck that's automated, malfunctioning, and heading straight towards its destination, regardless of what's in the way. [Blast Corps is a classic Nintendo 64 game created by Rare in the late 90s.]
That plot is a bit to explain, but once you're in game, it's simple: Don't let the big red truck hit buildings or it all goes boom. Given that Instruments of Destruction takes place on islands, a slow-moving exploding truck wouldn't work, but a giant monster from the sea might work. The problem was I didn't think I could make a Godzilla-like beast that looked good, animated nicely, and could traverse a variety of terrain well. But after I realized a giant octopus might work, I tried prototyping it over the next couple days as a big sphere with lots of ropes attached. Everything went pretty smoothly, and within a week I had the Kraken in the game.
The exact mechanics of how the Kraken might change a little, but it currently works like this: The Kraken wants to destroy all the large structures on the islands. As it does so, it takes damage. That damage makes it Rage meter go up, and if the meter fills to the top, it'll do a big smash attack that destroys everything, and will make the island sink. The islands don't *actually* sink at the moment, but I'll be working on that this afternoon.
So you're basically trying to clear the way for the Kraken so it doesn't take damage. You can't kill the Kraken, you can only make it mad, so attacking it is a good way to end a mission quickly. On the bright side, the blast wave looks really nice. There's a lot of work still to do with the Kraken and the UI/story/etc around it, but it was working well enough for the PAX Demo.
A Report On PAX West 2023
So I got the Kraken working less than a week before PAX, and was furiously putting together some missions and refining stuff as much as possible up until PAX started. PAX runs for 4 days, and I spent a lot of time each night refining the UI/game/missions/etc based on how things went. We had 3 stations playing the game, and there were frequently small crowds of people waiting to play, especially on Saturday and the busier parts of Friday and Sunday.
Not everything went smoothly, and there was a bug with destruction getting harder over time that meant I had to restart the game every 30 minutes or so. I thought fixed the bug Friday evening, but it was actually one of 2 bugs that were having a similar effect. The bigger part I couldn't figure out at PAX, though I fixed it earlier today. I ended up treating PAX as a super-intense playtest, as well as a deadline that I could use for gaining some momentum on the singleplayer campaign. In those regards it was a very successful event.
In terms of value, I'd say spending $5,000+ (got the booth for free, but plane tickets, rooms, equipment, and other stuff add up) is not the most cost-efficient way to get playtesting, but it was quite time-efficient. The game got over 2,000 wishlists from PAX, and sales were also up last week, though that definitely had more to do with the game being on sale than PAX. The wishlists alone mean the cost was probably worth it, and the game is definitely heading in a better direction because of PAX.
PAX Demo Playable Now (in a separate branch)
Since Monday's PAX demo build (0.350e), I fixed the annoying destruction bug (I think), replaced the 3rd missions' vehicle with a more-fun variation, and tweaked various vehicle controls. I also made it play better with keyboard, though it's still a gamepad-focused demo. The build is now available in a separate branch on Steam (the one labeled 'pax demo'). It uses a separate save file.
The PAX Demo build doesn't show everything that will be in the main campaign, but it's an indication of the direction the campaign will take. It's also definitely not final. The closest to "final" you'll see in the demo are the first 2 missions (the first mission is likely to have the island/vehicle refined slightly). Every other mission will be revised and likely changed where it appears in the campaign.
Some stuff NOT in the demo: Each island will have a STORY or TRAINING mission with a 3-STAR scoring system, and a BONUS mission with a score/time/place-based system (no bonus missions in the demo). For all mission types, you are given a pre-built vehicle designed for that mission, and that vehicle is unlocked by beating the mission (every Story/Training mission vehicle is unique, but may also appear in a bonus mission). Getting 3-stars lets you use any vehicle on that mission.
Vehicle building (and Sandbox mode) will always be in the game, but the campaign will not focus on it, and it's not in the demo. There will be *something* that teaches the player how to use the vehicle building system, though I'm not yet sure if that'll be its own smaller campaign or a bunch of optional missions in the main campaign. As mentioned previously the vehicle building UI will be undergoing a complete revision (with gamepad support added). I'll definitely be playtesting the vehicle building system at some point to help refine it, but it'll be a few months at least.
So that's about it for now. The campaign will remain the focus for a while, and after I get the PAX demo integrated in to the main branch (and the camera system redone), the number of missions will be expanded pretty quickly. There will likely be an update to the PAX Demo soon to add the "island sinking" part of the Kraken game over sequence, but beyond that it will probably be a couple weeks 'til the integration update.
