Here's a progress blog about what we've been working on, and what we plan on shipping to you soon.

We've been in and out working on Nicked, slowly improving it over time. We've had some game instability, which we're working on resolving in the coming weeks. So you'll see the game will get better over that time.

We're still working on maps - Refinery will be our primary focus for now, but we're also looking at finishing up Edinburgh for a TDM/DM experience.

From developers, I think the biggest form of feedback has been that the code's a behemoth. And it is.

I'm working to clean up as much as I can. There's a lot of systems that exist to keep things modular. From afar it can look like unneeded complexity. We've got interfaces everywhere for game events, so other systems can listen in to stuff, instead of just hardwiring links everywhere.. We've also got a lot of components for weapons. A lot of this isn't necessary if you're making a simple game. I'm going to work on cutting out as much as I can.

And then we've got loads of experiments like our Conquest gamemode and Vehicles that I believe are out of scope for the game as a whole - they've been removed. We're going to focus on boots on the ground for now.

Another form of feedback has been jank - I think a lot of it spans from our pawn and spectator system. There's a lot of holes there that need filling up. We want to keep that pawn system there, because we'd like to add drones, and possible other controllables in the future - so we'll make that work.

We're doing alright on errors, it's pretty low now. It used to be a lot higher.

My end goal for this game is to be able to split out a bunch of modules that we can use for a Sample FPS game. It's not a template, but a starting point where people can make complex shooter games.

I've recently picked up our Refinery map again to push it through from greybox to an initial art pass.

This is proving very useful in highlighting typical assets we're missing when it comes to dressing realistic environments - stuff like debris piles, dirt mounds, generic industrial assets, etc.
As such, I'm tackling these as they come, with a lot of assets/materials already being available in our sbox-assets collection.

Here are some updates of Bombsite A - still a WIP

So as you can see, I've been messing around with a night version of Refinery, which I think will be a fun spin on things as we eventually start experimenting with our gameplay loop more. There'll be a lot of care and playtests with this, as naturally when you think competitive shooter, there's usually a heavy emphasis on clear visuals and lighting for the sake of gunplay and avoiding 'cheese spots'. We'll see what sticks - for now, it's been nice to see the map in a new light. 🥁

I've been chipping away at allowing for weapon customization - similarly to every other first-person shooter out there.

I probably won't ship this for a while, but it's a fun experiment.

Been working on supporting weapon camos and charms to directly support Gunsmith.
It may be a while before this is implemented as we're still proving the workflow, and only the M4A1 has skin options. Here is an example of what it could look like.

We're also working on weapon charms. These attach to the side of a gun and move in line with the weapons movements. Again, early stages but fun to see.

These cosmetics will be unlocked through using the weapon or through achievements.

I've added tons of stats that we can parse and tell you how shit you are.

Also have started adding achievements to further solidify that.

In the main menu, I've added a Career screen that shows you your kills and headshots per weapon - but I've also exposed the ability to show all of this per map, it's just not in-game yet.