Defnite - Development Review

Hello everyone

Even though this post is marked as Postmortem, Defnite is still in active development. It is more a post about what happened since I started this project in October 2019. 

It all started as a dream

My personal story started even earlier, in late 2018, when I had the idea to make a game for a project in school (I did an apprenticeship as an IT system specialist). In retrospective it was very badly optimized, there weren't any good mechanics in it, but the teachers were impressed and I was given a great mark for it. This was in early 2019 and I already knew at this point that I want to get better, do better and make it better. Unity also released newer versions of the their editor and introduced the scriptable render pipelines (HDRP and LWRP) during the next months. The visuals looked amazing in the promo videos, but there was one big shock. Everything was pink when I first upgraded my existing "game", which means the shaders were not compatible and threw errors. I began everything from scratch, searched for compatible assets to use and in the end, I found an asset publisher with impressive looking nature. They also support HDRP and release tutorials on how to use their assets with HDRP and building an environment. I followed the tutorials and quickly realized how much fun it was. When I then added a soldier as a character, it looked like he was designed to be there. This was the moment everything started...

The dream gets more real

I first showed the environment to friends and colleagues from work who told me that it looks amazing. As soon as I added the character, they asked me when it will be completed. I had no answer for that back then... At the end of 2019 I had a working character and a good looking environment (even though only 100x100 meters in size) but I was on a good path. I have also upgraded to newer versions of HDRP and Unity to further improve the compatibility and performance. More and more asset developers started working on updates to support HDRP and LWRP (later renamed to URP). But I had to take a break from working on my dream because of military service. You all know what happened in and after January 2020 to the world... Finally I was back home and could work again. I have implemented many features since then (as you can see in the devlogs). 

The future of Defnite

There is constant progress, but I also enter the university of applied sciences in September 2020. I have to reduce and better schedule the work I want to do on Defnite. I promise to give my best during all this time. But there will be no more regular updates like before (an update every month). Updates will still be released, but maybe in a two-month schedule, I don't know yet. I have also experienced some problems with the update system in the last few updates, the longer break also gives me more time to work on that if they occur. Here is a list of features and things I want to implement (many more work is also being done) for the alpha:

• Weapon system extension (support for primary and secondary weapon)
• Different damage calculation system
• Map extending (maybe even a completely new map with a city)
• Enemy AI
• Story (only partly playable)

The plan is to have an alpha in late 2021 for you to play. 

Closing words

I want to thank everyone here and on the other platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Patreon, Discord) for the support. You are awesome and I enjoy being with you. 

Cheers

MiTschMR