I'm Mike Armbrust, the sole developer of VizionEck. Every week or so, I'll be posting about the game. Updates, technical details, peeks behind the scenes, design breakdowns, etc. For this week I'm talking about my experience developing VizionEck.
I was a mechanical engineering student at the University of Colorado Boulder. I developed games in my free time and took programming classes for fun, but I had zero intentions of making it my career. The PS4 reveal changed that. Specifically, seeing Jonathan Blow front and center on stage made me realize just how big indie games can be: they can be a career instead of just a hobby.
The most important thing was to design VizionEck around my limitations. I was a mechanical engineering student at first and had years of experience 3D modeling, but creating a face or tree was completely outside my skillset. So I designed the game to lack faces, trees, clothes, skies, water, etc. All I had left were squares. Game mechanics, lore, genre, etc. all came after this decision.
One awesome thing about development is I love inventing new features and mechanics. Even if some change will go unused by the vast majority of players, I just can't help myself from improving things. For example right now I'm working on VizionEck's menu, and I recently added a key binding ability to most options. IE set Triangle to toggle y-camera inversion, set D-Pad Up to quick jump to the tips & tricks guide, and set L3 to change your emblem to a laughing man. It's kind of a silly feature that has so few practical uses, but the thought of even a single player thinking "wow that's helpful" makes me ecstatic.
As always, feel free to ask any questions. I look forward to sharing another blog post with you next week.
The most important thing was to design VizionEck around my limitations. I was a mechanical engineering student at first and had years of experience 3D modeling, but creating a face or tree was completely outside my skillset. So I designed the game to lack faces, trees, clothes, skies, water, etc. All I had left were squares. Game mechanics, lore, genre, etc. all came after this decision.
Makes sense!
I've done similar things planning wise.
One awesome thing about development is I love inventing new features and mechanics. Even if some change will go unused by the vast majority of players, I just can't help myself from improving things. For example right now I'm working on VizionEck's menu, and I recently added a key binding ability to most options. IE set Triangle to toggle y-camera inversion, set D-Pad Up to quick jump to the tips & tricks guide, and set L3 to change your emblem to a laughing man. It's kind of a silly feature that has so few practical uses, but the thought of even a single player thinking "wow that's helpful" makes me ecstatic.
Haha. :D
Do you ever plan on releasing on steam? Good market on there after you're done with ps4!
Also do you expect a big influx of users to this forum when you launch?
Do you ever plan on releasing on steam? Good market on there after you're done with ps4!
Also do you expect a big influx of users to this forum when you launch?
No steam plans, it'd be impossible to port the campaign. A mp only port would work in theory, but that opens up problems with crossplay. I feel pretty confident saying it's ps4 lifetime exclusive.
Yeah I expect new users. Both as we market more(ie beta) and once it releases.
No steam plans, it'd be impossible to port the campaign. A mp only port would work in theory, but that opens up problems with crossplay. I feel pretty confident saying it's ps4 lifetime exclusive.
Yeah I expect new users. Both as we market more(ie beta) and once it releases.
Getting this forum up and running long before any influx was a good idea. Could be a clusterfcuk if you tried launching them both at the same time.
One of my most hyped games of 2015 2016 :P
One of my most hyped games of 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019:P
Fixed hehehe
Fixed hehehe
What, that's battleship!