Overview

The past month has been a mix of a little technical work and a lot of pitch deck work, planning, and legal compliance. I am not in a place where too much can be said yet, but work is being done here.

So while I have less to show than usual, a lot of underlying work has been done. I do have two cool things to show off though. This month I added a new building animation when placing buildings, and put together a new more gameplay focused trailer.

If you are interested in the game I would encourage you to consider wishlisting it on Steam.

Wishlist on Steam

New Building Animation

I really wanted to have a "building" animation that reflected the digital nature of the AI you play as. I had considered a few things including pixelation, "spawning from the void", and a matrix inspired approach. Ultimately, I went with something partially inspired from the Revelation Space sci-fi series, particularly my interpretation of how the "Inhibitors" (spoiler warning) might have looked. That mixed with some of the skin shader logic I have been playing around with led me to an effect that I think is quite cool, and uniquely Exofactory.

Larger buildings take longer to spawn and smaller ones take less time. It ends up being a pretty elegant shader/loading system.

The effect scales really well to belts too. Pretty happy with it. The good news is that shorter belt segments do not need any loading animation, so worry not.

Trailer

As part of the pitch deck work, my partner helped me put together a new faster paced trailer that shows off gameplay and highlights the narrative elements in a more clear way. Much better I think, and definitely needed for the pitch deck.

Publishing & Resource Management

Most of the past month was dedicated to working on what I will call "pitch deck stuff". Definitely not an area of my specialty, but I think I now have something that reflects Exofactory in a fair way.

Also I have started a bit of work around legal compliance. Not too exciting, but a necessity, particularly in Germany. Hopefully soon we should have a small GmbH that will become the indie studio.

Conclusion

Not too much to be said in terms of technical advancement beyond the cool shader, but a lot of important background work is now in motion.