For this retrospective post, we’re gonna talk about how the old top-down build evolved from the very first version all the way to the form shown in the first screenshots released back in 2011.
Obviously, it all started with the prototype. Will Goldstone was able to put this together very quickly in an attempt to give the rest of the team an idea where we should take the project. His influence coupled with the talent of our 3D artists was essential in choosing Unity.
The build evolved relatively quickly. Pretty soon, it started to look more and more like a game rather than a blueprint, with the addition of different weapons, throwing and enemy AI. Speaking of enemies, there were no models at the time, so capsules wearing a camo pattern were used as a placeholder, and as shown in the screenshot below the enemy count rapidly got quite large. A placeholder soldier wearing blue attire was also used for Dudebro, for the same reason.
Environment models were then imported into the build, and the placeholders got a slight upgrade among the other improvements. Around this time, real life started preventing Will from contributing further, so Spoo took over as coding lead and development had to continue on the free version of Unity. This meant we could not implement realtime shadows, and things looked a bit “up in the air”.
We later upgraded to the newly released Unity 3. This allowed the addition of lightmaps and pre-baked shadows for the environment. At this point the camera angle was also perfected, and several more elements added.
Because of understaffing, animating Dudebro was taking much longer than expected. This seriously hindered the progress of the game and prevented the model from being fully implemented in the build. While it was indeed added for some tests, its lack of animations did not make it functional in any presentable form. After much deliberation and a desire to move forward at a reasonable pace, the team decided once and for all to switch to sprites.
The switch seemed to have been the right decision as made apparent by the reception of the screenshots. But this wasn’t the last change the game would have to face.