Steelpunk is a co-op FPS that is a unique combination of roguelike, RPG, and strategy elements. Here we intend just to introduce the concept and kick off a development log that will continue up to and beyond release.

It is important to note that we truly see design as a search problem, not pure execution of a pre-existing plan - thus, many or even all of these details may change as development progresses.

In Steelpunk, all of humanity is pitted against a single adversary: Earth itself, which has been converted into an endless factory by a rogue AI.

Players must deploy from the moon to Earth as a squad, extract important resources and wreak what havoc they can on earth's interior systems, and escape before the planet's immune system responds in full force.

Access to humanity's orbital system of trade means player actions can have real impacts on the world around them, and with enough grit players even be able to restore substantial sections of the earth from the AI's grasp, creating real progress for humanity and immortalizing themselves in history.

We approached this with the goal of making an immersive yet approachable experience that actually feels like a living world, where we feel that our actions and the actions of others have real consequences, and that the world goes on without us in it.

Steelpunk's core design principles are as follows:

1. Steelpunk should provide a fun and varied co-op experience that is challenging enough to force players to approach with real strategy. Players should tell stories about what happens over the course of a raid.
2. The development team should play a role similar to that of a Dungeon Master, encouraging interesting events and dynamics throughout raids. Players should tell stories about what happens over the course of a raid.
3. There should be an exciting feeling of progression both within raids and across raids as players find new equipment and develop relationships with the world and upgrade their facilities.
4. The Steelpunk world should feel realistic and entirely unique. The heart of Steelpunk combines questions of humanity’s role in the universe, our relationship with religion, and the glory of sacrificing oneself for the greater good.

It is an extremely ambitious project, especially for a studio of this size, but we think we have what it takes to make it, and bring something really unique to market within the next year.

Already some of our larger milestones are within striking distance, and soon enough we'll be ready to start closed playtests. If you are interested in playtesting, join our public discord!

Below is a high level idea of where we are going:

Robust Inventory System

We have worked hard in this early stage to design an extremely efficient and extensible system for managing inventory and item state, as managing resources will be a critical element of Steelpunk both at the level of an individual player and the economy at large.

We can stack items, put items inside items, and very quickly iterate on and design new items and item types.

A unified inventory model allows us to easily implement trading between players and AI, as well as generate unique variations of items and expand them with upgrades.

Tiles and World Generation

Each raid players will embark on is made up of many tiles that each has its own state. Players must plan around resources as they fight through facilities with a tile, but also make navigational and strategic choices as they move through the map.

Efficient Animation Pipeline

With a game that has this much content, with both an internal (viewmodel) and external perspective for each weapon and animation, making sure the pipeline from art to game is as efficient as possible is paramount to seeing the game finished.

We use a careful combination of animation masking, blending, and layering to make sure we put the smallest possible burden on artists and engineers to get assets into production. Here you can see our layered emote system - each emote is its own animation which can be layered on top of any weapon the character is holding.

We also leverage procedural animations for both gunplay and damage reactions as another way to minimize the burden on our animation resources.

World Generation

While still very WIP, our current system uses WFC to build out rooms and hallways in a way that is unique for each tile.

This works great for now, but we definitely see a future overhaul of this system that uses smaller elements with Wave Function Collapse (using Unity's ECS system to efficiently manage these elements), along with an initial 'smart' pass that places functional factory elements in an intelligent manner. Stay tuned for future devlogs on this topic.

This is just a small glimpse into what we are working on - things are likely to shift and change course rapidly over time.

Look forward to updates as we progress!

-Thomas