Drizz here, the lead developer of Overbots – welcome!
I’m extremely glad for everyone that visits and takes an interest in this project, and I am especially glad for those that take the time to read these devblog posts – so first and foremost, thank you – truly!
This first post is, more than anything else, a test run of the overbotsgame.com website, but I will also use it to share a little bit about myself and Overbots.
The Beginnings
The building blocks for Overbots began to form during my time working with the extremely talented team over at Radical Forge. I was never a part of the developer team myself – I mainly handled the Systems side of things. In fact, one of my biggest regrets in life is not pursuing a Game Dev career much earlier. But sometimes you just need that inspiration or spark to kick start your big project – and for me it was definitely working with such an inspirational studio.
My passion for gaming came from an early age, much like most developers out there, where I discovered the fast paced delights of Sonic The Hedgehog on my cousin’s Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. The earliest childhood aspirations I remember having were to become a cartoonist – this lasted through much of my early teens and I very much enjoyed traditional art and playing video games outside of school, but it eventually faded as my focus shifted towards a more technical career. The creative spark never left, but over the course of the next decade or so I became very rusty.
My time with Radical Forge reignited that passion from my early years and showed me exactly what could be achieved if you follow your dreams – and thus Overbots came to light.
Progress So Far
The game itself is most definitely still in the early stages of development. So far the game looks like this:
- Gameplay Loop – complete
- Levels / events – ideas complete, need to draft concept art, lots of modelling and asset production to be done
- Characters – concepts, models, rigs all complete, most animations complete
- UX/UI – main menu around 50% complete, HUD concepts complete
- Music – A handful of tracks complete, need to make at least 4-5 more
- SFX – not started
- Gameplay in-engine – lots of individual moving parts, missing a lot of multiplayer to bring it together
- Server and Infrastructure – work in progress, the core infrastructure backbone is coming together – this website is part of it! Lots still to be done here.
A Long Journey Ahead
There is a lot to accomplish – Game Development, especially for a solo dev is an absolute mountain of tasks to complete. But this is my dream, and I will continue until this game is finished and you can all enjoy playing with your friends!
The next steps are to finish the infrastructure backbone and begin the arduous task of Multiplayer implementation. This is a step I want to make sure is done right – as a dedicated gamer myself I know just how rough multiplayer synchronization issues can be.
Contributions to the Project
As of this moment I am not hiring for the project, and nor am I accepting monetary donations – at least not until I have something to show for it. Later down the line once there is more of a solid foundation to show off and development costs rise, I might consider starting a kickstarter or something similar, but for now I will continue to hammer away at the project and provide updates as often as I can on here.
Thanks again to everyone interested in the project!
-Drizz
