Hi guys, time for a new update on the development of Cavefish, a game set in a fictional cold-war Era, where the player needs to spy radio waves from other nations. Check out the first Dev Diary here.
You may have noticed that the first change in this update is that this game’s name changed from “Project Radio” to “Cavefish”. This is not a final name, but I like it and I may stick with it. Cavefish refers to fishes that live in dark deep caves. Many of them have no eyes at all and rely solely on sound. So Cavefish seemed like a fitting nickname for our protagonist who stays mostly confined to his RV, just listening to the world.
Papers …Please?
Bureaucracy rules the world and for the last few weeks, I’ve been focused on developing the means to add more of it to the world.
You will need to fill forms regarding the position of spies, secret intel, and troop movement across the land. These forms are then submitted via RTTY to your Intelligence headquarters, which then affects your evaluation and how you progress in the game. This is a complex mechanic that integrates with several other systems in the game. So I’ve only developed 2 paper forms, in order to focus on how to interact with these things. These forms have interactive fields that we’re able to fill in at the desk and then send for review. You may also store them in your cabinet file.
Both the desktop and the cabinet have now been implemented. Documents from the cabinet may be moved to the desk and vice-versa. This was one of the few game core pillars that needed to work well and it’s great to see it delivered. Feels like this is the first true piece of gameplay.
Out of pure chance, I discovered a technique that allowed me to replicate what is going on on the desk, to the interior of the RV. This means that whatever documents you have placed on the table (and their positions), will be rendered in real time on the desk inside the RV. This allows for other game mechanics, like having an enemy spy take a peek at what you have laying around on the table and then sending that info to your enemies. Keep it tidy!
Talking of keeping things tidy, I’ve also cleared a ton of useless code and game objects that weren’t being used. One major effort was to move all scenes into a single one. At one point, I realized that I couldn’t do the interior of the RV without having the map around to cross-reference the RV’s position with the emitter’s positions. Especially since I noticed that I had to have dynamic emitters that go on or off depending on the time of day or may even travel throughout the land. I had some performance concerns, but in doing this change I managed to optimize some code that actually doubled the game’s performance (running at 300 FPS right now!).
Plans for the future
For the following weeks, I’m expecting to keep developing the core radio systems, allowing us to sync with the emitters and being able to listen to them. After that, we’ll be able to fill out the forms and documents and send them over to our intelligence agency, via radio teletype.
I think I’ve absorbed every radio video on Youtube. Been watching the show “For All Mankind”. I Highly recommend checking it out!
Morale is high! Got to keep pushing!
Cheers,
Rui