Stranded With a Spider

'Stranded With a Spider' is a small learning project I built in about a month to explore learning a few new game dev skills I was interested in.  Including FMOD for dynamic audio, mixing some of my own sfx, 3d as 2d pixel rendering (ProPixelizer asset), other shader-related shenanigans, procedural IK movement, a proper 3rd person character controller, Blender modeling and animation rigging (most models are synty), and some code architecture I wanted to have a play with.  I even bought a MIDI keyboard and made my own background music with no prior experience!   

Was primarily a learning project, so a few niceties like a main or pause menu are omitted.  

Expected play through should be about 5-20 min on your first go around. 

NOTE:  I've uploaded a full play-through of the game as an embedded video on this page, showing more or less all the features as well as spoilers.  I couldn't get a couple of the shaders I'm using to work on a Web GL build, so you'll have to download the executable if you'd like to play yourself!  But I think just watching the gameplay video does justice if someone wants to get the gist of it.  

Mouse and Keyboard are recommended for aiming purposes.  But you can technically use a gamepad.  Just note that aiming is a bit tricky with a gamepad.  

Movement: WASD / Left Joystick

Aim: Mouse / Right Joystick

Shoot: Left Mouse Click / Right Trigger

Reload: R / Right Trigger Button

Interact: E / Top Gamepad button (ui will still show 'E'). 

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Developer notes: 

Quite proud of what I was able to accomplish in a relatively short time frame!  Especially since the first few weeks were pretty much all spent on learning some tech I wasn't familiar with.  Mainly, some tech-art-related things like the dithered terrain or the water shader were particulary tricky.  But like many things in game dev, once I figured it out, it didn't seem so scary anymore!  

I even modeled and rigged the main character for this project as a bit of learning.  The model itself looks super silly, but because of the pixel art shader doing some heavy lifting, I'd say it doesn't look half bad!

I even started taking some online piano courses a couple of weeks ago to better understand music theory and how I can go about making more of my own video game music, which I am really enjoying!  Really went down the audio rabbit hole the last few weeks.  A whole new world I've been putting off!  I'm using FL Studio as my DAW, and since I'm two weeks into my music-making journey, I'm practically Avicii.  

Onwards!

-Stephen