July has been a mixed month. I didn’t have a lot of other work to do but I spent a lot of time with the family, as we currently have public summer holidays. Also, about half of the days were quite hot. While I enjoy the sunny weather much more than rain and cold, sleep quality is often worse on very hot days and that affects my productivity on the desk.

On a day to day basis, I didn’t feel like I got a lot done. But looking back now, it’s still a lot to write about!

World Building

I continued fleshing out the lower area of the Aegis. I won’t show everything just yet, but I added more housing areas (including a “trailer park”) and amenities, big Vitae pipes running across the walls, and two more mines, leading to three mines in total:

“Remnant Hollow” is an inactive mine which is used as storage space nowadays. It was shut down after a terrible accident which killed dozens of workers. The story of the accident is told in the game by an NPC and is used to prepare the player for their role.

“Deep Vein” is the largest site where Vitae is extracted from several mineral veins. It’s located in an underwater lake with green glowing water. This mine will challenge the player’s skills through swimming, climbing and exploration elements.

“Green Abyss” was the first mine I added, visible in the earlier devlogs. It has a barricaded tunnel where mining was aborted once signs of Rots were found…

I also laid out parts of the upper part of the Aegis. For now, the player is only going to see this from below, but this is where the powerful rulers of the Aegis, the Eminents, reside. There are only two connections, the huge Vitae pipe delivering the vital material upwards, and an elevator. The player will get to make use of both during the game, one way or another.

Black Guard, Reworked

I shared the first Black Guard design on some Discord servers and the unanimous feedback was that the uniform would always remind people of WW2, even without any symbols. I didn’t want to open this can of worms.

Around the same time, Jyve – known as one of the most prolific kit bashers on the Synty Studios server – showed some characters which had their heads replaced with drone models. I knew I had to steal this idea, and Jyve luckily gave his okay.

So here’s the new Black Guard, approaching a location with a Hover Sentinal and its screaming siren turned on. It’s still janky but I like the outcome so far.

Rots

While I was working on melee, I continued working on the Rots. They now have two different attacks, some sound effects, and can be killed.

I’ll leave another visual update for a later post when I’m going to show them in the game. They will have their debut quite early.

Critters

I had shown this creature already in an earlier blog post, but this is also one of the things I built last month.

Mine Workers

You may have noticed them already in my earlier video about the critter: I’ve got a mine worker animated. These folks are currently no more than decoration but I plan to give them a couple of basic dialogue lines or some barks at least so that players can interact with them.

Also, like every other NPC in the game, I want them to react to the player attacking them, but I’m not there yet.

Computer Terminals

There’s no currency in the Aegis. Instead, the Subsumed need to acquire work credits by taking over tasks, and then use these work credits to buy food and amenities.

Their current balance and the available tasks can be queried from terminals scattered throughout the Aegis, managed by “CAB”, the Central Allocation Bureau of the Aegis, and balance can be transferred to other residents if necessary.

Another function of the terminals is a “Request For Release”: since the Subsumed are obedient workers, they come to ask for “release” once their performance depletes. One should never try this function just for fun, the effect is irreversible.

The terminals are activated through a hand scanner. Imagine the possibilities if you got “hold” of someone else’s hand…

The Fallen’s Monument

The monument is a place close to the Remnant Hollow mine and was built to commemorate the miners who died in the Remnant Hollow accident. Compared to the rest of the lower parts of the Aegis, it’s a quiet place. In the game, it acts as a meeting point.

Dialogue

I reworked the looks of the dialogue which could be seen in the first devlog. Since I moved to the new, dark style, I felt like comic-like speech bubbles would be great fit. So I acquired some speech bubble templates and changed them to work as nine patch sprites in Unity.

I will stick to ElevenLabs AI generated speech, as it gives me the greatest flexibility in moving forward as a solo developer.

Homepage and Blog

I nearly forgot that this homepage and blog were also created in July! I did the first commit for the Docker compose project the whole blog runs in on July 8th and then retrospectively created blog posts for the progress so far.

Feedback?

If you have feedback, please feel free to comment (needs approval) or hit me up on X or Bluesky.