Happy birthday, INDEX - 0!

3 years of Index: Purger

Three years ago, i was fooling around in my personal Godot playground in attempt to make some simple First-Person Shooter mechanics, like i did before in Unity. Back then, i didn't even expect what kind of rabbit hole this project is going to be.

Major Milestones

- Steam Page

Of course, Steam is flooded with all games of any kind, to the point when nobody cares. But hey, now we have a page. @ostap_bender, dude, if you wouldn't help me, i'm not sure if this game would ever have one lol. I still owe you this one.

- 1.495 Tasks Annihilated

If i wouldn't have a to-do list, i wouldn't remember what did i do. I have 1.495 untold stories, and... Even if i can tell many of them in detail, i don't think it matters. I just want to tell you that there's a lot of things happening under each little detail of this game. This is labor of my love towards this digital dumpster fire, and i hope i'll make even more *meaningful* tasks next year. I'll try to tell shortly what i did, though.

- Tools

Locational toolset of build 4 was mostly about making static levels. It was fun at first, but the more i was working with game levels for build 4, the more i realized i need more flexible toolset to make more dynamic locations. And... a lot of other things really, such as localization, many other tools to work with this game.

- Optimization Hell and Detailing

Optimization isn't about making existing stuff work better, it is about doing less. You may not fully agree with it, but that was my conclusion when i have added features i wanted to add for a long time, just to find how greedy they can be. That was one of the biggest pitfalls i've encountered in this project. I had to fight literally everything. Fighting for each frame. Fighting loading screen time. Fighting stutters caused by shader compilation. And i'm still not fully sure i've done it well, but at least it runs better now. During this year, i succeeded to add many details, such as particle effects, general-purpose debris on destruction, god knows what else. I don't really want to read through the entire to-do list again, because this application lags when i open my old to-do list with these 1.495 tasks. Just trust me that i had to make a lot of shit to make it into what demo is now, alright?

- The Loadout Rework

Build 4 was the last point when this game had "physical" loadout where you had to interact with props to select weapons. I loved this idea, because it was somewhat original and easy to make. However, it proved to be limiting and i realized i need to add levelling and skills in this game. What's the result? You can now roleplay as meth demigod while playing one of these weird gamemodes introduced by "Mystery" perk. This is one of the biggest changes that turned Purger into what it is now.

- Demo Released

As an actually healthy way to replace "Early Access", i have released demo version. It will represent current state of development. What can i say... I thought this game was well-fixed, but you guys didn't just prove me wrong, you have found the most creepy bugs that were only fixed as soon as 3.6. released. I'm still not sure what kind of anomalies happened, but hey, at least it seems to be stable right now. I'm very, very thankful for all feedback you provided, it was a literal gold mine of it. A lot of conflicting opinions, maybe it all can just burn in hell :)

Thank You

@tipsiey – The OG playtester who brutalized my ego and the game into something better. Your sounds, props, and code are all still here. I hope you'll have fun exploding fire extinguishers whenever you encounter them in future locations.

@ostap_bender – Financial god, playtesting legend, and the reason this project didn’t get into mental hospital. I can't even put into words how much did you help me during this year, even if i fully realize that life is changing for you... I just wanted to thank you again for all these moments we had together while playtesting this game with screensharing.

@thenetherpug – From lightmaps to animation wizardry, you jumped into this mess headfirst and made it shine. At first, when i met you discussing Project-S, i would never tell you'd join this loose collaboration. Despite having a ton of projects to work on, you still managed to do relighting with higher-quality lightmaps, write streaming of resources (and used on lightmaps), write texture quality setting and unlock your viewmodel animation skills to reanimate 4 weapons entirely. You impressed me really much during this year, and i hope i managed to answer all the questions regarding game-dev you might have had.

@dooley_21554 – You came out of nowhere, took my weird English and turned it into poetry while playtesting like a madman. Respect for this, dude, i hope we'll work more together.

@zoltan_szana – The "meth update" joke that turned this game into Silk Road. You deserve to be credited for this.

What’s Next?

The demo’s out, the foundation’s solid(ish), and the vision’s clearer than ever. But Index: Purger isn’t done yet. There’s more to break, more to fix, and more fun to squeeze out of this hellish development project.

Happy birthday, Index-0. Thanks for being here, thanks for reading this.