Happy New Year!
It is once again a new year filled with potential for great things, both in terms of Pacific Fury, and for all of our personal lives! Firstly, I hope that each and every one of you has had, or is still having a great holiday, and I hope that you all have a wonderful and blessed 2022. With that being said, let’s get into an overview of Pacific Fury!
Things We Did In 2021:
This was probably the biggest year of development for us yet! We managed to finish modeling and texturing 2 new ships, a variety of AA guns, Buildings, and equipment. Furthermore, we managed to get past Milestone 1 and all of it’s core engine development!
Thankfully things didn’t stop there, we also saw huge engine improvements in terms of new systems (like Damage, Particles, 2d icons, physics, and terrain) as well as refined previously built systems to be easier to work with and support more things as we progress in development. An example of this is switching to PhysX to support our physics. Though this certainly required a lot of work to integrate, and a lot of my time to learn how to use it, it has now become one of the strongest tools in our pocket! In fact, thanks to it, we now have a damage system that registers impacts, as well as the foundations for physics-based flooding!
On a bit of a personal note, this year I graduated college! I am officially a college graduate! It’s been a long time coming, but that was exciting, and hopefully once I start working, I’ll be able to have a bit extra spending money to put into Pacific Fury!
Things We Want To Do In 2022:
I want to build heavily off the work we did last year. The primary goal is to finish Milestone 2. To finish this milestone, we need to build several more ships, texture them, and equip them. We need to add Bases as a new entity type, refine the physics system to incorporate flooding, adding an audio system and effects (stand in effects for now). And do general engine maintenance. It sounds like a lot, but I think it’s completely manageable with the team we’ve got! I would also like to expand the team this year if possible. A new programmer would certainly be helpful!
Another engine feature I want to start working on this year is an in-game editor. I’ve often talked about how I want this to be a sandbox game, and I think that by having an editor that allows for the creation of scenarios and testing specific ships would be very helpful! I want to also look into the possibility of using the editor to actually build new units, making basic modding of the game as easy as a few clicks!
Finally, something I want to see happen. I want to, by the end of the year, be able to do a true ship vs ship battle video like I had made for Pacific Storm back in the day. Pitting two ships against each other to see how they fared. If I can make that happen, I’ll be stoked!
All in all, the thing that will take the longest will be the engine work. Primarily adding the new audio system and refining the physics flooding system. I’ve been working on that on and off through December, but it is still giving me a bit of hassle (not from PhysX mind you, from making the calculations take into account our compartment system.) The other thing that’ll take the longest is basic engine maintenance. I’ve put this off in favor of adding new features, but I really do need to take a good month of this year and refactor the code that’s there to make it more readable, manageable, and efficient. I’ll let you all know when that month comes, but it’ll be a month where not much can be shown, since it’s all back end cleanup.
Let me end off this community update with a huge thank you. This is the single largest project I’ve ever been a part of leading, and it’s all thanks to you guys. I’ve learned so much about game development, programming, modelling, asset creation, project management etc through this, and it’s all thanks to you! Frankly it helped me in college since I was in many respects introduced to so many of these concepts, and I’m sure it’ll help me further in my life. I also want to thank you all for being so supportive and patient as we work to slowly put this game together! Knowing that you guys will be there and are rooting for us is amazing. I hope that this year you all enjoy getting to see our progress, and as said above, I hope you all have a great year along with us! Thank you for all your support over these last years, and here’s to another great one! Please feel free to join the discussion in the discord or steam, your thoughts are always appreciated, and we look forward to the conversations!
Happy New Year!
Let the Storm Begin,
God Bless,
WWJD