The Depths!

This was my first ever game jam, and I wanted to use my own game engine to make a 3D physics game, so I took the theme very literally, and made the first thing that came to mind. A deep sea exploration game. Despite, the straightforward take on the theme, I had a lot of fun building this game, and you'll hopefully have a great time exploring and playing with the ragdoll submarine and character physics!

What was planned vs completed:

The Initial Sketch

I actually got basically everything in the sketch completed! See top pic for reference! The only thing that changed is I pivoted away from the sub having claws, I was originally thinking there would be a crane-game aspect to it. Probably I'll still add that because it sounds fun, but I spent so long building the submarine that I didn't want to mess with it anymore and didn't figure out a good way to get the treasure from the crane to the trunk, so I decided to make the character grabbing the treasure the main way to get it.

Features Completed

• basic underwater environment
  • underwater shader
  • neutral buoyancy physics (hacked the gravity system)
• seeded world generation
  • procedural rock and ground placement
  • spawn treasure on the sea floor and 'burried' deeeep in the depths
  • creature spawners
• creatures
  • octopus
  • fish
  • models + rigging
• creature behavior
  • peaceful wandering
  • aggressive targeting
• swimming
• grabbing treasure
• submarine
  • models and rigging
  • vehicle controller
  • doors
  • headlights with shadows
  • engine and turbine sounds
  • bubbles (freaking spent way too much time on this lol)
• interactables
  • sub repair station
  • treasure counter
  • unloader station
• saves
  • autosave
  • profile select

Features Unfinished

• variable world seed
  • no time to test every seed in a game jam, everyone is getting "my lol seed" as the seed XD
• ancient ruins with lore
• stealth
  • creatures care about noise
  • creatures have line of sight
• creature behavior
  • better flocking
  • better wall avoidance
  • take damage
  • fix fin animation
• sub customization
  • there's code to grab the sub parts and be able to swap parts out for upgrades (more powerful engine, etc) but I ran out of time to make the upgrades
• traders
  • originally you were going to spend treasure to buy upgrades from traders but that whole system was taking too long
• competing explorers
• multiplayer
  • most things in the game are actually wired into the engine's multiplayer system but I did not want to deal with testing that for a game jam lol
• items and inventory
  • harpoon to reel treasure
  • sub crane
• wetsuit / air supply

Overall I'm really proud of how the game turned out and I'm definitely going to put more time into it for a 'full' release! https://katastudios.itch.io/ludum-dare-57