Lacuna Passage - Devlog #14 - Kickstarter Breakdown: The Return of the Devlog

 The last couple months have been an absolute whirlwind for our team. In case you hadn't heard, Lacuna Passage was recently successfully funded on Kickstarter, surpassing our goal by 36%.  Since then we've been trying to tie up all the loose ends associated with a sudden windfall of development money. Unfortunately that has meant more time spent on the business side than on development, but it's all part of building a foundation so that we can focus more on development soon.

Kickstarter comes with a lot of strings attached, not the least of which is delivering on the promises made to your backers. Obviously the next year or so we are going to be discussing exactly how we are going to be doing that, so right now we thought it might be best to talk about some of the challenges we faced before, during, and immediately following our campaign and some things we learned from the process.

Prior to Launch - The Long Game of Marketing

When it came to preparing for our Kickstarter we knew that we had a lot of work to do before we were ready, and a big part of that was gathering interest during development. We spent almost six months marketing Lacuna Passage and I think this had a big impact on the success of our campaign later.

The devlog: Our devlog has been one of our most useful tools throughout our project. It is an extremely versatile way to communicate with our audience and it helps to demonstrate progress and improvement over the course of development. Often times when people have questions that require detailed answers I can just refer them to an old devlog post where we have already discussed the topic in-depth.

All aboard the karma train: Reddit has easily been our number one source of website views. For several months before our Kickstarter we participated almost weekly in Screenshot Saturday as well as posting each of our devlogs in any relevant subreddit. Posts of our early screenshots brought us a lot of attention and even resulted in a few articles on sites like Discovery News, Mashable, and Kotaku. Reddit is most useful in attracting an audience for your game which will hopefully translate to twitter followers, facebook likes, and rss subscribers.

The Top 10 referrers to our website over the last 6 months. Reddit is a powerhouse for traffic.

“Like my tweet post tumblrspace!”: Never underestimate the influence of social media. Many people use twitter and facebook as a type of RSS feed for news for things they are interested in, so we made sure that we had a presence anywhere our audience might be. Developing these micro-communities gave us some great early support when it came to launching the Kickstarter. We literally had people waiting to donate.

Presskit: It’s best to have one of these before you need it. When journalists started asking for screenshots, videos, and game summaries we were able to simply point them to our presskit page rather than manually sending out materials to every inquirer. We also made sure it was clearly linked from our website. Sometimes journalists wouldn’t contact us and would just run a story with whatever information we had available on our site. Having our presskit easy to find was very helpful in that regard.

Preparing for Launch - All Ducks in a Row

If you don’t know, ask: There are a ton of things to consider before launching your Kickstarter and one of the best ways to learn the process is to ask someone who’s been through it (and preferably succeeded). We were lucky enough to take advantage of (creator of Cards Against Humanity) Max Temkin’s Kickstarter Office Hours, which I believe he has unfortunately ended, but there are plenty of successful people out there who will likely respond well if you ask them nicely for advice. We were glad we did this before putting tons of work into our campaign because we quickly realized that we needed to change how we were approaching some of our rewards and business decisions.

Doing research: We used the site KickSpy.com to search for projects with similar themes (space, exploration, survival, etc) and with similar goals. KickSpy gives you much more freedom while searching projects than Kickstarter itself, which will give you a better picture of what to expect. With this approach we were able to compare ourselves to other successful and unsuccessful projects to determine what aspects of their campaigns we should adopt or abandon.

Overestimate everything: Kickstarter is pretty unforgiving when it comes to making mistakes. Overestimate how much time it will take you to run your campaign. Overestimate how much money you need to raise. Overestimate how stressed out you will be. Overestimate everything... We estimated the minimum amount of funding that it would take us to complete the game and we increased that by about 15% to cover unforeseen expenses, plus another 8% to cover the fees to Kickstarter and Amazon Payments, plus another 2% to cover failed payments.

What happens if we fail?: This was a difficult question, but an important one we had to ask ourselves. The continued development of Lacuna Passage was entirely dependent on our Kickstarter funding and we made sure that was clear during our campaign.

The page and video: We wanted to keep our Kickstarter video under five minutes and spend as much time as possible speaking directly to our audience. Gameplay footage and bullet points are great for selling your game, but on Kickstarter that is not your goal. You are not selling your game, you are asking for funding. It’s tempting to describe every single feature of your game either in your video or in your description, but that’s what your website (and hopefully your devlog) is for. Since we had been documenting our development prior to our Kickstarter it was easy for us to refer people to those resources rather than clutter up our page.

Art is your best friend: When a game is still in development sometimes it can be difficult to show exactly what the game will look like when it’s finished, yet it should be no surprise that good-looking games do better on Kickstarter. Do whatever you can to put your best foot forward when it comes to visuals. With Lacuna Passage we made sure to have concept art available for any features that did not currently exist in our prototype. This helped us to have more visual aids than text on our final page. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of sound and music. We had numerous backers who cited the music as the reason they decided to back our project.

Deciding on rewards: This was one of the most difficult aspects of the campaign to estimate accurately. Problems will always arise and the costs associated with reward fulfillment may be extremely volatile. This is where the overestimation part comes in. Hopefully if you’ve planned for the worst then you can handle it when it comes. In our case, we avoided physical rewards as much as possible to cut down on production and shipping costs. Extra pledges don’t count for much if a majority of the funding has to go towards extraneous physical rewards rather than the development of your game. Digital exclusives ended up being our most popular option and resulted in lots of extra funding for very little extra cost.

 $25 is the most popular pledge level across all Kickstarter projects, so we made sure that this level would be an attractive option with very little overhead cost.

Launch - No Turning Back

Contacting the press: We knew that we needed to do a press release right after we launched, but we made the mistake of not gathering a press contact list prior to launch. That meant that we spent the better part of two days collecting email addresses and sending out press releases when we likely could have accomplished the same thing in a few hours with a prepared contact list. Whatever you can accomplish before launching your project is always a good idea to get out of the way. In the end we got some great attention for our project through key articles from RPS, Kotaku, and Penny Arcade.

Our Top 10 sources of Kickstarter Pledges. Three articles from different gaming websites brought in a huge number of pledges while reddit was our single largest source of external donations.

The power of reddit: Throughout the campaign we posted announcements and updates on relevant subreddits, but our most successful post was an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on /r/gamedev. AMAs are a great way to gather interest and also figure out the “holes” in your campaign. If lots of people are asking the same questions then you probably need to look at your Kickstarter page and find a way to include the answers somewhere (the FAQ section can be your “catch-all” for common questions). We did our AMA on /r/gamedev.

PayPal: Supporting PayPal pledges alongside your Kickstarter campaign can be a bit of a double-edged sword. In our case we were not 100% confident that we would be funded so if we had begun taking PayPal pledges from the beginning and somehow fallen short of our Kickstarter goal we would have had to refund all PayPal pledges (since they are charged immediately whereas Kickstarter pledges are only charged at the end of a campaign). We didn’t want to deal with that headache so we waited until after we were fully funded on Kickstarter before we began supporting PayPal. It still ended up providing us with an extra $1,155 in funding after only 8 days. You can even use PayPal to “extend” your campaign, which we did for 5 days following the end of the Kickstarter funding. A majority of that $1,155 was raised after the Kickstarter had officially closed.

Expand your outreach: Sending preview builds to YouTube “Let’s Play”-ers can get you some great additional exposure. We had several influential YouTube personalities create videos of our prototype and they were very instrumental in getting the word out early. After we expanded our reach beyond just games journalists we got some really cool coverage from places like SpaceVidCast, who eventually gave us a sizeable donation to benefit subscribers of their show. Find anyone who might even be just tangentially related to your project and let them know about what you are doing.

Stretch goals: This was probably one thing that we messed up a little bit. Early on when we were preparing our Kickstarter we knew that we wanted to include stretch goals from the beginning to emphasize some of the ways we could expand on our root concept for the game. We thought there were plenty of optional things we could add that wouldn’t dilute our main vision. We organized these optional improvements in order of how many backers they would benefit, so we had things like “Additional Voice Acting” and “Live Music Recording” as some of our first stretch goals. These were things that every backer would benefit from if we reached them so it made sense to have them easily attainable. Unfortunately they were not very “exciting” prospects for most backers, so after we reached our main goal of $40,000 there was not much of a push to reach any of these goals. It became apparent in our comments that people were much more interested in some of our loftier goals like Oculus Rift support, but the general consensus was that we were too far from those goals and it wasn’t worth trying to reach them. At this point we made the decision to rearrange some of our stretch goals. We moved them so that the Rift goal would be the next goal to reach, but all the costs associated with each level were still intact. The effect was immediate. It should have been obvious to us from the beginning that the Rift goal would be more exciting for backers to reach. Switching our goals mid-campaign resulted in a few upset backers, but far more were supportive of the change. I think it was almost entirely responsible for our final day surge of over $5,000 in pledges, pushing us past the Rift goal. Hopefully we will still be able to hit a few more stretch goals via our Humble Store pre-order widget, which is available now on our website.

Our stretch goal switch made a big difference in our funding over the last few days of the campaign.

Success! - What next?

Financial planning: We got a lot more money than we were expecting. $54,295 to be exact. $14,000 over our goal (not to mention the $1,155 from PayPal and continued income from our pre-order widget). Since I’m the only one personally responsible for the management and disbursement of the funding I decided that it was in my best interest to form an LLC. There are many reasons to do this and I will spare you the details, but ultimately I would recommend it for anyone who is working on a project who expects to pay contracts to contributors, plus it’s a bit easier to manage your taxes (it’s easy to forget that you still have to pay taxes on all that income - Kickstarter doesn’t take it out for you).

Communication: We plan on doing at least two major devlog posts each month to keep our backers and other interested parties up to date on our progress. This post marks our return to the devlog after our Kickstarter hiatus. I’m sure we will jump back into Screenshot Saturdays on reddit as well.

Full-Time Development!: With the money from Kickstarter I can now work on Lacuna Passage full-time for the next year and a half and I can afford to pay some of our dedicated collaborators as well. I couldn’t be more excited about the future. Thanks in large part to reddit, I have finally fulfilled my dream of being a full-time indie game developer!

If you have any questions at all please leave a comment!

Additional Kickstarter stats for Lacuna Passage can be found here (Kicktraq.com)

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #14 - Random New Stuff

In this week's devlog we cover a bunch of new stuff we've been working on including audio, dust storms, map navigation, and a nearly completed rover model.

In this week's video devlog we cover a bunch of new stuff we've been working on including audio, dust storms, map navigation, and a nearly completed rover model.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #13 - The mundane side of game development

I really struggled to come up with a topic for a devlog this week. I feared that I might have to skip a week for the first time since I started writing devlogs for Lacuna Passage. Despite lots of game-related work that I had been doing I didn’t think that any of it was interesting enough to show off. A few people suggested, “Why not write a post explaining the mundane stuff?”. So you can thank those people for this devlog... hopefully it gives you some insight into the less-than-glamorous aspects of developing Lacuna Passage.

Managing a Team

The sad fact of team development is that someone inevitably has to spend time “managing” the team which detracts from the amount of time they can spend actually developing the game. This means finding reference images for concept artists and modelers, critiquing finished work, assigning new work, and documenting art pipeline specifics. Believe it or not, team management requires more than just poking your head into a room and telling someone to “tighten up the graphics on level 3”.

Google Drive is a lifesaver when it comes to communicating with your team. There is no better way that I have found to share and collaborate on important documents. All of our story and art pipeline documentation is shared via Google Drive.

Another great tool for team management is Trello. If you haven’t heard of it I highly suggest you check it out. It is essentially an advanced to-do list. You can assign team members to tasks, set due dates, attach files and screenshots, and leave comments and feedback. It’s seriously great. Even if you work alone it is perfect for keeping yourself on task.

Managing Assets

When I tell people I make video games in my free time I highly doubt they picture me spending 4 hours on a Saturday night converting image formats and adding new filename prefixes. But that’s exactly what happens more often than many developers would care to admit.

The allure of quickly throwing assets into your game “just to see how they look” can be strong, but you must resist the urge. Haphazardly importing BigAwesomeRock_07, MoreBigAwesomeRock_07_new, and SeriouslyThisIsTheFinalBigAwesomeRock_07_morenew will turn your folder structure into a wasteland of assets that have you scratching your head. Sometimes I wonder what the ratio of asset production to asset management is, but I know it’s much higher than most people think (or at least it should be). I spend a lot of time ensuring that there are backups of all our files and that all those files are properly labeled according to our naming conventions (which are conveniently available for reference in a Google doc).

When an asset is finally imported into the game I make sure that it has been properly checked for quality and conforms to our import settings for scale, etc. On the (hopefully rare) occasion that an in-game asset needs to be replaced it’s a good idea to make sure that both the old and new versions are backed up in a separate folder. Once the new version of the asset is imported into your game’s working project folder you want to be sure and delete the old file so that you never use the incorrect version by mistake. It will always be in your backup files if you need to return to it.

This process of keeping your game assets properly organized can be tedious and extremely repetitive, but in the end you will be glad you had the forethought. You might have a firm mental grasp on your folder structure when your game only has a few dozen assets, but before you know it you will be swimming in hundreds of messy files.

Bug-hunting

I’m not sure if I can even conceive of a more annoying aspect of game development. If someone asked me how I spent last Friday evening this would be how the conversation would go:

“Hey Tyler, so you’re still working on that game of yours huh? What did you accomplish recently?”

“Oh, well just the other day I was trying to get the image loading code for the in-game digital camera working and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. After hours of pouring over my code I realized I forgot to capitalize a letter. If there was a baby nearby at the time I would have punched it.”

Absolutely infuriating. Though I suppose I should mention that I am not a trained programmer and everything I do in code is extremely amatuer (I mostly work in Playmaker), but the stories I hear from close friends who have been programming for years are fairly similar. Bugs and code errors are the bane of the game developer’s existence.

Promotion

Email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Screenshot Saturdays, press kits, Indie DB, and yes - Devlogs. I actually really enjoy promoting Lacuna Passage. It’s great to see people’s reactions to all your hard work, but it really takes a lot of time and effort to do it right. After all, even if you have the greatest game in the world it doesn’t really matter if no one knows it exists.

Just last week I spent nearly three days putting together a press kit for the game so that we have an easy place for journalists to find the latest info. That’s three days that I would love to have back for improving the game, but it’s just another necessary part of the process.

After a full day of work at my 9-5 job I come home to manage team assignments, manage new assets, hunt through the previous day’s progress for bugs, do some quick rounds of promotion, and maybe - just maybe - I will have time to get some real development done. All of this I do without the promise of any pay or reward, because there isn’t anything I would rather be doing. I make games and this is what it takes.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #11 - In-Game Photography

Our first video devlog! This week we talk about some adjustments to the atmospheric effects to make them a little more realistic and our new photography system. www.randomseedgames.com

Our first video devlog! This week we talk about some adjustments to the atmospheric effects to make them a little more realistic and our new photography system.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #10 - Pre-Alpha Gameplay Teaser

Demonstrating some very early gameplay for the Mars exploration and survival game, Lacuna Passage. The time of day has been sped up to show the full day cycle. Find out more about the game on our website www.randomseedgames.com.

​What’s that? In-game footage you say? Yes! We have released our first pre-alpha gameplay footage.

I had considered doing some commentary over the video to explain some of what is going on, but I didn’t want to talk over the awesome music. So instead I will try to break down some of the new stuff here.

The biggest addition to the game in the last couple weeks has been the datapad. This is one of the tools that will be an invaluable resource for you as you explore and document the planet’s surface. We are trying to keep all the HUD and UI elements as immersive as possible, so nearly all the game’s menu screens will be contained within the physical datapad.

Audio playback is one of the datapad’s many functions (some others I’m sure you can gleen from the other menu items). In this video we hear an audio log from a previous crew member who discusses a drilling site where he accidentally left behind some tools. Despite his intentions he never did return to collect them as we find out later in the video (hmm, what happened to him?). Luckily he gives us the exact coordinates of the drilling site. In the final game you will have the option to input these coordinates as a custom marker on your compass, but for the purposes of this example the compass marker is automatically displayed.

On our way to the site we come across a decent sized dust devil which makes for some cool moments with the dynamic soundtrack. Moving on, we trek across the lowest point in the valley, eventually making our way to the drilling site. The music builds as we reach our destination and indeed we find the wayward tools. At several points you will notice a blue outline around the tools. This is an optional feature to help some players find key objects and locations. It can be turned on and off at any time just as is demonstrated in the video.

Finally we look upon the setting sun. We have sped up the passing of time just to show the full range of lighting effects. In the game time will pass quickly, but not quite this quickly. One real-world second will equal about 1 in-game minute. And as you might expect, Mars can be a foreboding place in the dark of night.

Thanks for watching our first gameplay video. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #9 - The Power of Unity Plugins

One of the things I love about Unity is the immense amount of community support it has garnered. There really is a wealth of resources at your fingertips. The Asset Store is an excellent place to find some of these resources and we have utilized several packages quite extensively while creating Lacuna Passage. This week I thought we might share some of our favorites.

Ultimate FPS Camera - by VisionPunk

I can’t recommend this script package highly enough. If you are creating any first-person game at all then you owe it to yourself to at least check it out. This package adds some incredible dynamic camera movement that makes everything feel much more organic. And if you are making a shooter then you will have some excellent customizations available for any kind of gun-play you can imagine.

Unistorm - by Black Horizon Studios

I’ve had to make some fairly significant changes to the Unistorm scripts to get exactly what I was looking for, but they were an excellent starting point and still serve as the backbone for the day/night cycle in the game. There is decent documentation to help you along also.

GlareFX Dirt Lens Effect - by Red Dot Games

You might argue that these effects are a bit cliche now after seeing them in games like Battlefield 3, but they fit perfectly in a game like Lacuna Passage. We always want the player to feel somewhat trapped and enclosed in their stuffy space helmet and these glare effects go a long ways towards achieving that. They have some great customization options that allow you to make the effects as bombastic or as subtle as you desire.

Hard Surface Shaders Free - by Bruno Rime

If you don’t want to bother with writing your own shaders for metal or plastic, then no worries. This shader pack has you covered. I originally considered using them as a placeholder until we completed our own, but there really isn’t anything else I need. If you want even more out of your shaders there is a Pro version on the asset store as well.

ats Colormap ULTRA Terrain Shader - by forst

This shader is absolutely instrumental to the look and feel of Lacuna Passage. The terrain in the game is one of the most important visual elements and this shader makes a world of difference. With the improved terrain materials system in Unity 4.0 the shader is easier to use than ever before. I described more about our terrain creation methods in a previous devlog.

Probuilder 2.0 - by SixBySeven Studio

Most of my level design experience was gained in Hammer Editor and the Unreal Editor so Brushes and BSPs were a huge part of my prototyping workflow. With Probuilder I’m able to get some of that familiarity back and quickly generate graybox test environments directly inside of Unity. Probuilder is honestly flexible enough that I can see how some projects might utilize it for their actual game geometry and not just for testing.

Playmaker - by Hutong Games

Last but certainly not least is Playmaker. I don’t think Lacuna Passage would be possible without it. I’ve never been a strong programmer, but Playmaker allows me to create game logic quickly and easily. Almost 90% of the game will be done entirely in Playmaker and the other 10% is mostly just hooking it up to our other plugins and miscellaneous scripts. For example, we wanted to have the colors of our dust particle effects managed by the Unistorm day/night cycle so I simply inserted Playmaker global variables into the Unistorm scripts with very little effort. This visual scripting system is incredibly powerful and I think it would be a mistake for even master programmers to overlook it.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #8 - Soundtrack Preview #1

Our first preview of the music that will be featured in Lacuna Passage, an exploration and survival game set on Mars. Follow our development on our website http://www.randomseedgames.com. Music created by Clark Aboud (https://soundcloud.com/clarkaboud)

We are very excited to share a sampling of music from the Lacuna Passage soundtrack today. The video above showcases some of the main themes you will experience while exploring the landscapes of Mars.​

Music will have a very important role in the game and we hope to never loop or repeat any tracks during a single play-through. The progression of the soundtrack will respond to how you explore the environment, with new layers and movements triggered by your actions.

We are working with the very talented Clark Aboud to create these soundscapes and we plan to share more samples as we move closer to a Kickstarter. The funding from a Kickstarter would allow us to develop the full soundtrack that we think the game deserves.​ If you like what you hear make sure to share the video with others! We greatly appreciate your interest and support.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #7 - Creating an immersive HUD

Last week we shared a mini-tutorial on how to create effective first-person 3D HUD illusions with only a 2D plane. This week we are going to talk about the important information that the rest of the HUD will convey.

The helmet HUD is one aspect of the game that we are taking very seriously when it comes to balancing believability. We need to provide the player with relevant, contextual information at all times without overwhelming the player or breaking our fictional ruleset for immersion.

There are dozens of background survival and navigational stats in Lacuna Passage that the game is keeping track of; however, not all of these are relevant to the player and some are simply unbelievable. We have a distinct variable that measures your exhaustion level, but it wouldn’t make much sense for your space suit to relay this variable to you directly. Though our game is set in a science fiction universe, we are trying to constrain ourselves by the realities of modern space travel. How would a space suit measure a trait like exhaustion? Well, we can instead filter this information and display it in other ways, like blood pressure, heart rate, and other bio readings that a space suit might be very capable of measuring. In creating an immersive HUD we are trying to avoid abstract forms of information like health bars.

The helmet HUD in Lacuna Passage is your source of primary information - things that are most immediately relevant to the you. Fictionally, we have created a UI that is displayed via light projection onto the inside of your space helmet (think Google Glass, but across your entire visual field). You may notice in screenshots that the projected text is actually a bit pixelated and monochrome. This is accurate to existing technologies that favor function over form (simpler displays require less power and have fewer points of potential hardware failure). This is technology that is not only believable, but highly effective in conveying the information the player needs. It’s bright and stands out from the Martian landscapes extremely well. Right now these are the stats that we are displaying with this method:

1. Battery Levels
We have a very simple battery indicator for instant recognition of current battery levels as well as a percentage to give you more granular updates.

2. Oxygen Levels
Perhaps one of the most important survival stats in the game. Keeping this information visible at all times in the helmet HUD ensures that the player won’t be surprised when they run low on oxygen.

3. Compass Heading
Navigation in an open-world environment is critical. This age-old method of wayfinding is made even more useful with the inclusion of the diamond-shaped waypoint to lead you to known locations; however, if you are searching for unknown locations then you are on your own.

4. Latitude and Longitude
Another useful tool for navigation. When traversing terrain with no visible landmarks it can be easy to get lost. With Lat and Long headings you can know exactly where you are at all times. There may also be a need to record Lat and Long headings that you want to revisit later (or add as a waypoint on your compass).

5. Time and Date
Despite the fact that the Martian day is 2.7% longer than a day on Mars, it still has a 24 hour clock. Knowing the exact time allows you to more accurately estimate how long your battery or oxygen might stay within safe levels. It can also be useful to know how much time you have left before dark when temperatures drop to dangerous levels.

The important thing about these stats is that they are constantly updated and available at a glance. Many of our other secondary stats will be displayed via a wrist display that can be brought up to your visor for viewing when necessary. Both our helmet and wrist displays are fictionally and internally consistent helping to create a more immersive experience for the player.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #6 - Using highly detailed 3D components in your first-person HUD

This week’s devlog is a bit more of a tutorial where we cover our method for creating dynamic, highly detailed 3D HUD elements. The basis for our pipeline involves rendering complex high-poly models onto flat, single polygon planes with a normal map for light interactions.

Pros of this method

• You effectively have an unlimited polycount for your HUD. By rendering your high poly model to a flat plane you will have no noticeable polygonal curves or sharp edges (if you don’t want them, that is)
• Extremely low poly count in relation to the quality of the illusion

Cons of this method

• A change in HUD design requires re-rendering of all your texture bakes
• The HUD cannot move in relation to the camera or the illusion breaks

So, let’s get started:

1. Setting up your camera angle

In order to model your HUD components you need to setup a camera in your modeling software that is exactly the same field of view as your first-person camera in your game engine. This will help you preview what your HUD will look like in game. It’s also going to be very important later when we need to render out a normal map.

2. Build your model according to the view you want in game

This part just comes down to whatever style you are looking to have with your particular game. In our case we are creating a small visible portion on the inside of a space helmet.

​3. Create a plane to project your model onto

Once your model is finished (no need to texture it yet) you need to create a plane that completely encompasses your model from the point of view of your first-person camera.

​4. Orient the plane to your camera angle

Make sure that the plane is exactly perpendicular to the origin point of the camera. Check the image to see a visual.

5. Quickly unwrap your plane

No frills here. Just unwrap the plane however you like.

​6. Render your normal map

Use Render to Texture with a projection modifier on your plane that encompasses your model to create a normal map of the original model. If you’ve never done a normal map bake from a high poly model before check out this guide.

7. Create your textures

You can create your textures in Photoshop or texture your original model and do another render to texture for the diffuse instead of the normal map.

8. Create an alpha mask for the model’s texture

Since our projection shape does not perfectly match our plane we need to have an alpha channel somewhere that determines areas of transparency.

​9. Import your plane and your textures

Bring everything into your game engine and align the plane exactly as you had it in your camera preview in your modeling software. In our case we are using Unity so here are some tips to help you out.

Unity specific directions:

• Have your plane parented to a HUD camera that is distinct from your scene camera
• Have the HUD camera render last and mask only the HUD elements
• Make sure the clear flags are set to Depth Only to preserve your depth buffer
• Use the same HDR settings on all cameras if you are using image effects

So, there you have it. If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #5 - Approximating real survival challenges in a virtual world

​Before I started working on the survival mechanics in Lacuna Passage I did a lot of research about space travel and specifically the difficulties involved with a manned mission to Mars. There has been extensive research done on the topic including simulated missions here on Earth. Wikipedia’s Manned Mission to Mars article presents us with a concise list of the challenges associated with such a mission.

1. Physical effects of exposure to high-energy cosmic rays and other ionizing radiation. 

2. Physical effects of a prolonged low-gravity environment, including eyesight loss. 

3. Psychological effects of isolation from Earth.

4. Psychological effects of lack of community due to lack of real-time connections with Earth.

5. Social effects of several humans living under crowded conditions for over one Earth year.

6. Inaccessibility of terrestrial medical facilities.

7. Equipment failure of propulsion or life-support systems.

8. Basic human needs (I added this one, because I think the rest of the list just assumes it)

Now let’s see how these survival challenges apply to our game:

• 1 and 2 are fairly irrelevant to Lacuna Passage since the game takes place after landing on Mars and in reality these hazards really only increase the astronaut’s chances of getting cancer during their lives by about 1-2%.

• 3 and 4 are very real contributors to the story and gameplay. Exhaustion and isolation have very real psychological effects in the game, including disorientation and perhaps even hallucinations.

• 5 is also not relevant because the story explores the concept of a solitary “shipwrecked” astronaut. There were other crew members on Mars at one time, but a huge part of the game is discovering why they lost contact with Earth and what exactly happened to them.

• 6 is certainly not an insignificant hurdle for space exploration but it is relatively unimportant in Lacuna Passage. You won’t be worrying about getting sick or breaking a leg as these are typically things that are the result of random chance. Being randomly afflicted with a potentially game-ending health issue is not the type of experience I am looking to create. All of the survival aspects of the game involve planning and concepts of conservation. You won’t be breaking a wagon axel here.

• 7 and 8 are probably the most important mechanics in the game. The amount of time you have to explore is directly related to how well you manage your technological and biological needs.

I’ve broken down these survival systems into three primary categories:

1. Technological

Technological survival systems in the game include Oxygen and Battery. If you run out of oxygen while exploring that’s it… you die. If you run out of battery power while exploring your headlamps will no longer function and your digital maps and diagnostics will no longer be visible (perhaps you can use the sun’s position to find your way back).

2. Biological

Biological survival systems include Starvation, Dehydration, and Exhaustion. You would have to try pretty hard to die of starvation in the game (basically just sit around for 3+ weeks) but that’s not saying that it can’t be done. There may be ways to synthesize oxygen and water from the Martian environment, but food is a little harder to come by. Dehydration though is more of a daily survival concern. About three days without water and you’re done. Last but not least, exhaustion can contribute to some ill effects in our third survival category, psychological survival.

3. Psychological

Continued strenuous activity (running and jumping), on top of inadequate nutrition and lack of sleep, will drastically affect your state of mind. You may start hallucinating or become disoriented. The symptoms you exhibit might be different every time you play.

Hopefully this gives you a little better idea of the survival mechanics we are working on and how they will impact your exploration habits. At some point we will discuss how these survival mechanics are communicated to you the player through GUI indicators in your helmet and contextual and environmental clues.