The development of the pre alpha, although the game being barebones, was a big adventure for me! I learned endless things about all the aspects of developing games in UE5 and im proud I learned everything by myself. I made the coding, the textures, the models, the animations all by myself and it feels like such a big accomplishment for being my first game. 

Anyway! :) Let's put all this personal fanfare away and discuss what's actually interesting! 

The next build of the game will carry the phenomenal name of... Alpha 1.0!

In Alpha 1.0 I will add following features, which will take a lot of time because I will have to rework a major part of the main codebase of the game but you can be ready for: 

• Loadout System with the addition of a new gun in your arsenal! Up and at them.
• A new bulky enemy type... 
• Better layout of the Plaza map!
• Particles, including muzzleflash and particles covering the head of anomalies

The Loadout System.

I'm working to make a loadout system where you can customize your main and secondary weapon, likely later in development you will also have grenades and all that ferocious weaponry you will need to erradicate anomalies. I will make sure to make new weapon additions fun and satisfying to play, don,t worry about balancing, the Agency provides you with the finest equipment.

The New Enemy.

It seems like that the anomalies are evolving in to something more threatening and giant. According to the agents on the field, they take in a lot of ammunition but carry the mother load! While the name of the new anomaly is undecided, the new anomaly will be a slow and big hunk of corrupted flesh taking in heavy bullet fire. That's where you will be able to test your fresh new weapon! 

Refurbished Plaza Layout.

During the development of the pre alpha, I tested out a lot of map themes, layouts and designs but I was never satisfied. I liked the theme of the Plaza, it seemed to me like a great starting map to me. I like the idea of running away from the anomalies through cafes, shops and dimly lit apartment complexes (fun fact! an apartment section was planned for the pre alpha but it wouldn't work with the current layout well, it's still planned though.). With the new enemy type, I will face the challenge of also making the layout work with the new enemy type, so expect 80% of the map to be remade from scratch. Here is a very low res picture I found of the very first version of the Plaza, sometime around the third week of development. 

Yeah there isn't really much to show but I still think it's cool to show I guess.

New Particle Effects!

There isn't much to talk about this actually, your weapons will actually have a muzzleflash now. The anomalies will also get white particles covering their head. Yes, yes there will be a lore reason for it. Here is the concept of the anomaly with mock-up drawn particles.

The Blog Post Fun Fact #1! 

During the first week of development I actually tried to replicate gm_construct from Garry's Mod for debug things. I have tons of videos from it but somehow Itch.IO won't let me upload it. Have this picture of when it first started being worked on.