▊ Duality (2018 - present)

Solo development of an original FPS game created using the Godot Engine

• Game design (original mechanics/concepts that I’ll write about soon!)
• Gameplay and netcode programming
• Shaders, models, maps and sounds

Elevator pitch: round-based Quake-style duel gameplay split between two parallel worlds. Trying to bring the bite-size time commitment of fighting games to the arena FPS genre without boring everyone to tears.

Yes, there’s another game called Spectre Divide with a mechanic named Duality. I started work on my project in 2018 long before that was announced. This is still slowly progressing even though there’s a big risk of looking like a copycat!

With this project, I’ve taken what I learned from working on si and blended it with my software engineering and DevOps skills developed in the workplace.

• The technical side of this involved learning Godot and GDScript, along with dabbling in many game development topics such as shader programming and netcode.
• The majority of the work has been to think really hard about the game’s design. The “arena FPS” genre has been oversaturated for a few years now with a large number of games that are a bit too similar to Quake 3.
  • I created several original item, weapon and movement mechanics, and tried to develop an original (if a bit abrasive) art style.
• I created the game’s art assets as well
  • The initial 3D models (for items, weapons and projectiles) were made using the Spaceship Generator tool which drives Blender via python.
    • Later, I moved to using Dilay instead
  • I did a lot of prototyping using imported Quakeworld maps (bsp-to-Godot mesh conversion)
    • Later, I moved to making my own (bad) maps in Trenchbroom and bringing them into the Godot side using Qodot
  • The sound side of the game has not received as much attention. Frankly, I used a bunch of freely available clips from sites like freesound, short snippets made with DAWs like LMMS and placeholder sounds taken from Quake and Half-Life.