Rate top gamesBeyond The Wall (itch) (AEGIS Game Studios)
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Currently available is a DEVELOPMENT BUILD. Please keep that in mind when downloading. This is for test purposes only. The offending textures, development tools and broken interiors will be fixed when Unity release's the fixes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------Beyond The Wall - A short, open world game demo exploring a dystopian, alternate reality setting for a GTA game.
----------------------------------------------------------------- DEVELOPERS NOTE -----------------------------------------------------------------This was commissioned by LazarBeam with the simple challenge of "creating GTA in 30 days."
(What this actually meant was to simply just create a small, sandbox environment where Lannan could go a little crazy and have a laugh mowing down pedestrians. It was a short, simple idea... But apparently I couldn't even make that!)
It goes without saying that this was one of the most stressful projects of my life to date, not for the workload amount - No, I could very clearly see what was needed for a sandbox environment where LazarBeam could unleash carnage upon my digital world...
The stress came from the plethora of technical and mechanical issues that plagued the first 3 (out of the 4) weeks of development, which inevitably meant I had very little time to create, and very little that was playable come the delivery date. However LazarBeam was very kind and understanding, allowing for an extension of an additional 14 days. In hindsight, I should've said an additional 28... But here we are!
Beyond The Wall is my interpretation of what makes Rockstar games enjoyable (to me): the world they create, the story they tell in the world, and most importantly the ability to openly and freely explore the world without hinderance (to some extent).
That is what this is: a world I've created, a story that I've written inside the world, and the ability to freely explore the world as you please.
So this project is not supposed to be just a sandbox environment, but rather the beginning of a larger project - something that has a unique take on the goal and overall focus of the strong storytelling and open world aspects that we've come to know and love about Rockstar games.
You'll still find the familiar open world aspects, the arsenal of weapons, and questionable behaviour of AI... But my goal was to bring this world to life as much as I could in the time I had... And also playfully make fun of Lannan a little bit.
MOST IMPORTANTLY - Please do not consider this to be anything more than a tech demo for a much larger idea. If a prologue could have a prologue, this would be it. A hint of something bigger.
If I had 12 months and a small team, then maybe this would be something interesting... Instead I had around 21 days of actual development time (3 weeks of bluescreens, Unity crashes, infinite loading bars, slow PC where not even the mouse would move etc, even work being deleted and overwritten...)
So it's not a masterpiece. In fact there's a part of me that wants to call it a Disasterpiece... But I'll leave that down to you.
Thank you for playing this game, 30 days was an extreme challenge - I certainly learned that my 'environment art creating' skills certainly need some work - but I hope this demonstrates the beginning of something fun, exciting, and hopefully engaging.
It's far from perfect, but ultimately? I hope you enjoy this short experience and maybe even see the potential in it.
You can read about some of the features present below.
----------------------------------------------------------------- GAME FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------------ Third person character controller for exploration. The character walks until you hold down the sprint key to run. Features inverse kinematics and other fun controller stuff like resizing of colliders for crouching etc.
- Pseudo first person mode attempting to mimic GTAV's first person mode. Rather than have an additional set of "1st person" arms, GTA seems to use a different set of animations for 1st person. I've tried to replicate this as best I can, given the timeframe. Doesn't support firing of weapon - it breaks.
- Main character called "Rose", voiced by the very talented Kayla. I had a lot of fun writing the voice lines, and overall bringing the character life. Kayla did a fantastic job with the voice and really embodied the essence of how I pictured and heard Rose, so that was awesome.
- 'Open world' city environment. The city used to be a lot bigger (as you can see by the plots of ground), but simply put it was too powerful for my PC and caused a lot of issues and bluescreens. In the end I had to upgrade my RAM from 16GB, to 64GB RAM plus dedicate an entire drive to the pagefile and even now it, it's pretty much at maximum capacity.
(Side note, new PC is going to be an RTX 4090).
The actual environment itself was fun to make, though definitely something I could've spent a LOT longer on and much more optimisation could've gone into it. In my opinion, it's a little hard to believe the layout. I think that is something that certainly needs a lot of work.
- Traffic system that navigates the city rather crudely. Attempts to drive over the grass despite the fact I told them not to. Oh dear.
- Combat AI (such as Drones, police officers, Apex Solutions Soliders) were such a nightmare to integrate and get working. It was incredibly last minute and one of the main thorns in my side. They are very deadly and shoot a pulse of energy that homes in on the player. Some of the AI also (almost) endlessly pursue Rose.
- As of writing this, there is a pistol and an assault rifle. I'm in the progress of adding some melee weapons but they've been at the bottom of the todo list.
- 2 driveable vehicle types. I wished I had time to add more - there was functionality to add additional seats and functional mounted guns, but again ran out of time and wasn't a priority.
This was another feature that was a pain to get working properly. For the longest time there was a huge stuttering issue and other camera issues that made vehicles very unpleasant to drive.
- Mini OST to complement the aesthetic and atmosphere by the very talented Nomyn. Listen to his music on Spotify!
- Procedurally spawned civilian AI (and spawning system). These are passive AI, and are essentially fodder. Guess who forgot to add this...
- Dynamic time of day. Just a bog-standard thing. Needs a lot of love and attention.
- Bespoke advertisements and retail outlets created. The video advertisements leave a lot to be desired. The actual voices were fun to create.
- 3 main easter eggs, 2 environmental. Mainly for amusement and for Lannan's video.
I think overall, despite the huge amounts of stress - I've loved making this project and bringing it to life. It's been nice to work on a new world and away from current projects to focus on this for a while.
It has also been a total ballache.
To have so many issues suddenly occur was just the worst. Even small things like clicking on a button in Unity took sometimes up to 30 minutes.
I know a bad workman blames his tools - but I really felt let down by such trivial issues that shouldn't have existed. I.e clicking on the Unity inspector gave me an loading box that took 30 minutes to clear, or loading the main game scene took an hour to open or load. Yes - even switching between scenes often took around 45 - 60 minutes.
I've never hated Unity so much as I have trying to do this project.
However it's also been an opportunity to showcase some of my own work in front of people, so I'd just like to thank LazarBeam for the opportunity to do this. Can't say that people will actually think I'm any good because honestly I feel embarrassed to put my name on this... but hey, the experience of doing it was good for learning, and if you're reading this and like the game - or even just see the potential - then it was worth it.
I ended up spending £1700 of my own money on the project, (completely unprompted by LazarBeam) to try and improve this project but it ended up being a waste.
If I had 12 months and my own team? I think there would've been something really fun to play here, but sadly all you've got is this.
If you've enjoyed playing this short demo, perhaps see some potential in it and would like to support me, it would be HUGELY appreciated if you wanted to donate. It would also allow me to continue (and encourage me) to make more games and demos like this.
I'm currently saving for a £3700 workstation PC that will be able to handle the much heavier requirements of photorealistic games and hopefully save me from such a nightmare scenario again.
DONATIONS LINK:
If you would like to donate, please do so here.
You'll get your name in the credits of my projects, and a unique Discord role.
(Raw link text: https://ko-fi.com/aegisfive)
-----------------------------------------------------------------ART CREDIT:
Background art credit: ArtStation - Alena Aenami