Hi everyone!
It’s time for another monthly Dev Report. August was mainly focused on the new level streaming system and reworking story cutscenes — though I also made progress in several other areas as well.
Updated Living Quarters
While reworking the level design, I took the opportunity to improve the look of the crew corridors and living areas. Previously, they felt too repetitive and lacked character. Now, the updated walls, floors, and shower rooms better reflect their purpose and enhance the overall atmosphere.
Custom Level Streaming System
Most players might not notice it, but from a development perspective, the previous plugin I used for loading levels was quite limiting — especially with how I handle streaming levels.I’ve now built a custom system that should eliminate things like micro-freezes and visible texture pop-ins.Levels now load in the background during transitional cutscenes or inside elevators — where potential delays won’t interrupt gameplay. It still needs testing, but so far the results are promising.
New Cutscene System
Because of the level streaming overhaul, I had to completely rebuild how cutscenes work.Previously, each cutscene had its own actor scattered across different levels. Now, a single manager handles all scenes, making them much easier to organize and reuse.I also added a pause function, allowing players to stop a scene at any moment (helpful if someone enters the room IRL), and the blur effect during pause can be turned off — useful if English isn’t your native language and you need more time to read subtitles.
Upgraded COLOS-8
COLOS-8, the spaceship where the game takes place, finally got a major visual upgrade!The visual quality has increased dramatically, but optimization improved as well:
Polycount reduced from 89,203 to 38,941
Old 8K textures replaced with tiling textures, reducing memory use from 135 MB to just 2.3 MB
I also bought and integrated new VFX assets to make it feel more alive in space
New Dialogues & Cutscene Updates
Editing voice lines, adding effects, and balancing sound levels is still one of the hardest tasks for me — but it's a necessary part of integrating character dialogue.Some of you may have seen the new intro I shared on Discord, featuring updated animations and fresh voice lines. Not all cutscenes will be reworked so drastically, but wherever I can make solid improvements with minimal time cost, I’ll do it.
The biggest challenge is the difference in line lengths — if a new line is significantly longer than the old one, the whole cutscene (and its animations) has to be rebuilt from scratch.This month, I finished updating all Act 1 cutscenes (up to the Nightmare sequence).
Creating Control Rigs for the Animator
Finding a good gameplay animator was already tricky — but it turned out that the bigger challenge was preparing the character with a fully functional Control Rig for Blender.After researching rigging specialists, I was shocked by the prices — from $150 for basic setups to $800+ for what I needed. So… I decided to save my kidneys and build the rigs myself. 😅It’s time-consuming, but now the rigs have all the necessary features, and animations transfer easily to Unreal Engine.
Collaboration with SFW animator
The first results of our collaboration with an animator who creates gameplay animations for the game have begun to appear. Although it is quite expensive ($8-25 per second of animation), your support allows me to finance this part of the development, which would otherwise take me a lot of time. Here are some examples of the animations that have been created.
Updated Door Meshes and Textures
To keep the visual design consistent, I’ve also reworked the door meshes and materials.The control panels were moved to the center, making them easier to spot and interact with.
New Artwork for Collectible Cards
As has become tradition, here are a few sketches of trading cards from the artist.
I know many of you are waiting for new content and story, and I truly appreciate your patience.As you can see, every change in one part of the game tends to affect several others. That’s why this update is taking longer than expected — but it’s also laying the critical groundwork for the game’s future growth.
Next month, I’ll focus on reworking more cutscenes and replacing the old voice lines, plus I plan to begin work on the new enemy systems.
Thank you for sticking with me and for reading these Dev Reports — your support means the world. 💙
With respect,Kodman