Subnautica

[dux]

[Vilham]

Started last night, getting all the same great vibes from the first one. Really appreciate all the new enemies.

[Vilham]

Well that's a shame, was loving it until it stopped loading anything, wouldn't save and I lost 3 and a half hours of progress

[dux]

Patches coming out to fix that. Joys of developing for 100 different platforms.

[blackdog]

@dux I never played the game and haven’t really seen anything other than the trailers… I was wondering (started listening to a podcast with Charlie as a guest yday) how’s the level design for a game like this (cos I understand it’s a sandbox)… is it more like world building? Are you doing more scripting of missions? A mix of things?

[dux]

It's basically what the new UE5 level tools do. We have the whole world marked out on a 2d image graph which is then split up into 3d boxes which you can individually select or as a group and open them up to edit sections of the world. I was responsible for crafting biomes and their overall look while the leads oversaw the story/scripting sides of things.

[Vilham]

Blackdog if you are referring to the level design principles, basically 02 and heat act as gates. So you have access to certain areas and within those areas you will find upgrades that will allow you to access deeper or stay in the cold for longer. So basically the world is gated by the upgrades/resources in different areas. Its a really good mechanic. Wish more open world was like this. 

Gothic 3 is still great in regards to that, enemy level gates you from areas. I really hate the modern trend of dynamic level scaling.

[Radu]

20 hours ago, Vilham said:

Blackdog if you are referring to the level design principles, basically 02 and heat act as gates. So you have access to certain areas and within those areas you will find upgrades that will allow you to access deeper or stay in the cold for longer. So basically the world is gated by the upgrades/resources in different areas. Its a really good mechanic. Wish more open world was like this. 

Gothic 3 is still great in regards to that, enemy level gates you from areas. I really hate the modern trend of dynamic level scaling.

Wow I can't believe there's someone mentioning Gothic 

[blackdog]

On 5/27/2021 at 2:46 PM, Vilham said:

Gothic 3 is still great in regards to that, enemy level gates you from areas. I really hate the modern trend of dynamic level scaling.

Cheers guys, so basically it’s a metroidvania mechanic. Makes lot of sense here.

@Vilham I just wanted to ask you about the level scaling, I’m not sure what you mean, if I’ve played games that have it… I don’t think I’ve seen that description/naming before.

[Vilham]

10 minutes ago, blackdog said:

Cheers guys, so basically it’s a metroidvania mechanic. Makes lot of sense here.

@Vilham I just wanted to ask you about the level scaling, I’m not sure what you mean, if I’ve played games that have it… I don’t think I’ve seen that description/naming before.

Sorry, I'm referring to enemy level scaling. Where enemies just level to whatever level you are, meaning you don't really get gated from areas by enemies that are too hard. Personally really dislike it. I like my games to gate me from areas in natural ways that if I am good enough I can get past and find really overly powerful stuff for my level.

The nice thing about subnautica is that isnt not really metrovania as there is no key/ability gating its purely how long you can swim underwater for and the crush depth for vehicles. Technically you can go deeper, you just would need to be super prepared ie having an emergency bouy system to get you back up quicker or resources to quickly build a little base with power to make oxygen.

Edited May 28, 2021 by Vilham

[WD]

Just finished it the other day. Its definitely a upgrade on all aspects from the previous game. Here's what I think about it.

pros:

• World & biomes definitely the highlight of the game, I liked the variety and the challenges each biome gives.
  • Felt like a gigantic world to explore, the "hotspots" or POIs were much dense with less void between them. In retrospect they are like, really packed together. But for a person exploring the world for the first time, feels a lot more bigger than it really is
  • More surface exploration was both refreshing from being underwater and I liked the challenge of keeping warm until you unlock the snow suit, zooming around with Hover bike was so much fun.
  • I especially enjoyed earlygame, making some oxygen tubes to the northern kelp caves where I got some useful upgrade. I forget what it was but it felt important to make such effort since I didn't have much at that point.
• Story was all round better I liked the voice work and all the banter between the protagonist and Al-AN, not to forget all the voice logs which I found interesting to hear.
  • Instead of finding just derelict stations and ships, finding another survivor was refreshing.
• Both the design and movement of all the life forms. Fish properly look like fish with all the wonderful fins and tentacles and whatever things each fish has attached to their bodies, merrily flopping around.
  • I felt the medium sized hostile creatures frightening! Especially the spiky one thrashing around with its 4 webbed feet when it's coming at you, gets your blood pumping.
• There were less items and upgrades than in the last game but I used almost every item & upgrade in the game and they felt they had some use one way or the other. I ignored quite a bit of some upgrades & items in the last game since they felt unuseful.
  • Flares for instance did not have any use in the last game, they now they repel those furry polar reptiles which are really hard to deal with otherwise.
    • I felt really bad after knifing one to death before I figured that out. I made one nest of orphans out of my ignorance.
  • Seaglide radar! It's a lifesaver.

cons:

• Leviathan creatures, all of them. They felt too agressive, predictable and just plain nuisance. I did not figure out any tactic how to repel them or avoid them in the last section of the game.
  • Leviathan attack just felt like a 5 sec pause of the gameplay resulting of me repairing my seatruck in the end of it.
  • Also the leviathan on top of the ice seemed to lack something and usually felt unfair for me to not be able to avoid getting hit by it.
• Delta station. I did not figure out how to get there. That one cave entrance, seriously. I did three trips to the center island and I did not found a way to get to the radio tower until I searched from wiki where I can find a modification station.
• Cave with red crystals. Again I failed to connect the dots and missed completely how to get there. felt 2 hours just aimlessly looking every place I thought I haven't seached yet until I looked it up.

 

Summing up:

Aside from me being bad at videogames.

Overall better game, in some aspects steps better, in other aspects strides better than the last one which I thought was one of the best games released in 2018.

[blackdog]

Unknown worlds acquired

https://www-eurogamer-net.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.eurogamer.net/amp/2021-10-29-pubg-company-krafton-buys-subnautica-developer-unknown-worlds

[FMPONE]

1 hour ago, blackdog said:

Unknown worlds acquired

https://www-eurogamer-net.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.eurogamer.net/amp/2021-10-29-pubg-company-krafton-buys-subnautica-developer-unknown-worlds

Pretty cool. They deserve all the success

[Dabu]

Natural Selection was total badass, bless the Unknown world's developers I'm looking forward of what are they making next it's understandable that Natural Selection 2 was avoided the Source Engine because they might have financial and limitation/problem budgets I'm also glad that they've developer other cool games such as Subnautica and continue to grow up