What is Wastelanders? Is it a Wasteland? Is it a movie?(Short answer yes there was a movie made after the game has been released) . Wastelanders is a first person shooter franchise created during my time learning game development.
Once upon a time a channel called Notchmods was created and it was a gaming channel. Fast forward a year, when I have received my first laptop, I decided to learn game development and decided to pick Unity as the game engine of choice. The first thing that I had created that resembles Wastelanders is a third person camera looking at a ball in a map that is filled with crazy items.
Although it was not much it was my first attempt at making playable game mechanic. I’ve created a mini map, a camera that is able to be panned around and moving objects. After a month of development, I have managed to make it into a decently polished First Person game and called it “Wastelander” without a “S” and I made a video called “Wastelander Trailer” in 29th of May 2018.
In this video it showcases a mini map, the shooting feature which is just balls moving away and a First Person Controller. To be fair the Wastelander game or “Wastelander original” has had 30 downloads which is not bad. Throughout the three months I spent my time learning the Engine and releasing weird and quirky games, some of the games have features that has been integrated into “Wastelanders Remastered” which is the next Wastelanders game that I have released. Wastelanders at this point. This game has an even more refined game mechanics than the previous game “Wastelander(original)”. In 19th of August 2018, I released a trailer for Wastelanders Remastered.
In the trailer I have showcased several game mechanics such as:
- A more refined shooting system that instantly kills your enemy.
- Gun is able to be swayed
- Gun switching system
- Gun blazing effects
- Level obstacles, such as walls closing in or floors shrinking.
- Multiplayer mode(partially worked)
As for the multiplayer mode, it did work a bit, you can join your friends game through LAN, but you controlled the same character as everyone. Aside from the mechanics the game has featured a wide variety of terrain such as the forest terrain, desert terrain, urban and space terrain.
After I have released Wastelanders Remastered, I have been focused on honing my C#(C-sharp) skills. But I had tried to create a mobile version of Wastelanders Remastered. Spoiler: I didn’t succeed until the next 2 years due to obstacles like terrible programming skills such as not understanding how to install JDK and SDK to run mobile games in Unity and not having an Android phone is another obstacles that I have faced in creating a mobile game. After 5 months of practicing my C# skills and creating interesting game and discussing the newest game to create with Digthepigmic(Digthepig). I have decided that it was time to create another Wastelanders game. In 31st of March 2019, I created a video called “WASTELANDERS 2 is COMING OUT soon ft Digthepig mic” .
In that video I had stated that I will be collaborating with Digthepig and I had stated that I will be posting dev logs to document my progress. In the first 3 weeks of my development I did post a dev log and during the middle of the second week I have uploaded a Wastelanders 2 teaser which was created by Digthepig. Aside from making dev logs during that time I have created a basic sandbox of the game. It contained a terrain and a newly working AI robot with animations and the shooting mechanics.
After the third week of working on the game, I decided that a dev log was a burden to the development and decided to cut it back to a dev log per month. In the video titled “Wastelanders 2 Dev log quick update” I stated that there are less and less progress to cover so I have decided to downscale the weekly dev logs. After 3 months of developing the game, on 28th of Jun 2019 I decided to release the Beta version of the Wastelanders 2
Wastelanders 2 game play is far from perfect, but it is also more advanced than Wastelanders Remastered or all of my previous game. There is a save system, ammo system, inventory system all of the system that will probably make up the foundation of the future first person shooter game that I am going to create. The game contained a scene with 3 levels and a boss level. The boss scene of the first level was done, I decided to work on the start of the 2nd level which is the forest scene. I worked on the patrolling system and Digthepig did the level designing and in 2020 I have decided to released another beta. But during 2020 I have loss passion in working on Wastelanders 2 and decided to stray away and worked on a mobile game called “Wastelanders 2 mobile demo”. Fun fact:This was the second mobile game/software that I have ever created but that is not the last or recent mobile game I have ever created.
After April, I have got a huge burnout and stopped working on Wastelanders 2 or any other game. But in December 2020 I started to get back into game development and work on a game called “Forest Goblin” . I digress what I have meant to say was that the game helped me to start working on Wastelanders again. I released the last cycle of Wastelanders 2 on both Windows and Linux as me and Digthepig discussed that Wastelanders 2 should be completed in Unreal Engine. I decided to learn Unreal Engine, but I eventually got bored of it and reverted back to Unity. Eventually I created an interesting Wastelanders game with Fearlessmuffins(another friend who’s interested in joining the game dev crew). It was not only the first Wastelanders game directed by someone else but also the first game directed by someone else. He came up with the idea by drawing a maze and decided that a Soyjak should chase the person. I decided that was a good idea and went to help him to code the game. The game is called Wastelanders Soyjak and it is a horror game that strayed away from the original Wastelanders game play mechanics.
I spent 2 days creating the first level. The Maze level was released as a BETA. After the game became popular, I decided to work on the Hospital and Urban level for a week, and released the game on 15th August 2021. The trailer got 492 views as of 27/10/21. In September I decided to learn Unreal Engine for the 3rd time and this time I managed to not revert back to Unity. The crew: Me, Digthepig, ExcellentChessBlunderer 24 and Fearlessmuffins decided to work on a new Wastelanders game called Wastelanders Remastered Remastered.
This game was Notchmods first Unreal Engine and it was the foundation and the base for Wastelanders 2 which is going to be created with Unreal Engine. In 22nd of October 2021, Wastelanders Remastered Remastered was released to itch.io.
Source:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrrS4zCC4zXeQenoSi6uXA
