Hi everyone, I'd like to share with you my Dev Logs. I've been writing them along side my game that I've been working on full time for almost a year now. I've published what I could for now, and I'll continue writing monthly posts.
I'm working on a realistic horror inspired operating system simulation - with a 3D game built inside. This includes all of the expected programs, functionality, and more.
I've had a lot of fun working on this project, so I'd like to start sharing it.
One feature that I know will excite the modding community - I've included a way for developers to write their own programs in Lua - you can access either the command line API, GUI API, or the OpenGL API. - OpenGL is used for the wallpaper system, the command line and GUI are used for actual programs that can be ran within the game.
It's still super early in development, so if this is something you are interested in helping shape, feel free to reach out!
Here's some media of the OS:
Please note, some assets shown are not the final version and will not be included in the release game
Here's some media of the 3D Game Engine:
Please note, some assets shown are not the final version and will not be included in the release game
If you would like to follow my development and read my past Dev Logs, you can follow it here - https://stealthisgame.com/dev/
Top comments (10)
This looks really cool! I've always loved the meta approach of in-game browsers and computer terminals, but allowing modders to write their own programs in the game is a really cool and original concept.
I've actually been working on a similar project in Unreal, but hit some snags with the in-engine browser features. (I was originally trying to allow players to surf the web in-game, but my coding skills are limited).
What engine are you building this in?
@gem_hell Hey Jim, I'd love to hear more about your project! I'm definitely a fan first when it comes to these kind of games, so I always like look at how others tackled similar challenges.
I can relate to you about running into browser snags. One of the biggest challenges I had recently was getting chromium to work. It's still not in a release worthy state yet, so I might end up removing that implementation if I can't fix those bugs.
For the engine for the OS itself, it's just standalone - custom built - I'm targeting Windows 64bit only right now, but I'm going to be focusing on having proton support as much as I can. So that should make it Linux compatible.
I think having the stable API of Windows, then offloading the support to Proton is something that Linux gaming has needed for quite some time. Something I've noticed people talk about with Linux ports, is they tend to break easy. I think proton provides a stable middle ground to where the APIs shouldn't change much between builds. This is coming from someone who has only used Linux for servers, so maybe my take needs more modern user input
For the 3D game inside of the OS - that engine is custom built as well. I'm still working on it, but on the surface it should be able to handle porting to other platforms in the future. The whole game exists within scenes, so as long as I added scene loading support, I figure the 3D games could eventually be ported into Unity or Unreal at some point. I don't have any direct plans for it yet, I'm just trying to focus on the in-game features.
Very cool! As I said, my tech knowledge is limited - I'm primarily a writer and musician, so I'm learning Unreal as I go. The bulk of my build is node based. I built many of the 3D assets in Maya and then had the idea to build a game with them after. It's been a very touch-and-go process.
The other struggle is I'm working on a Mac, which Unreal is not optimized for at all. Unreal has an in game browser function which theoretically should allow players to connect to the internet and actually surf the web. I built real web pages that the game would link you to - a playful way to break the 4th wall. It worked in-engine, but when I tried to package a demo for play testing it kept crashing. The crash reports kept signalling that the in-game browser function was the cause. It's been a minute since I've been able to work on the project, but my plan is just to rebuild the sites in game when I get back to it.
As for the game concept, it has semi-futuristic, vaguely distopian sci-fi vibes. It's an expansion of some of the themes in this interactive fiction game I build a few years back: gemhell.itch.io/omniscient-eye
Have you worked on any other games in the past?
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