Derelicts Returns: Catching Up with Romain

It’s been a quiet stretch for Derelicts: about six months of radio silence, to be exact. But Romain recently broke that silence with a Patreon post letting folks know he’s alive, kicking, and deep in dev work again. We figured this Q&A is an excellent warm-up before the next devlog lands! (And, if you want to learn more about Romain, check out his POI article!)

Hashtag: I’ll keep things light to ease you back into the swing of things. First and most important question – how many coffee mugs currently live on your desk, and do any of them still hold liquid?

Romain: 😅 Only one coffee mug and it does hold coffee right now! I’ve been trying to slow down on coffee consumption because at one point, I was probably drinking 10 mugs a day. Maybe this is why my sleep was odd for a while!

Hashtag: What does a ‘good day at work’ look like when the game only barely exists right now?

Romain: I would describe a good day at work when I feel like I either learned something new about the engine, the optimization, coding or when I managed to implement parts of my desired gameplay mechanics. (And when I can get ANY work done and the day isn’t just trying to fix something that isn’t working.) A big part of my work was first to be sure that I could tackle this kind of survival game on my own, by studying a lot what affects performances in a game and what makes the difference between a game that requires a huge rig to run versus a game that is as optimized as possible to run on lower specs.

This definition of “good day at work” will evolve into different things as I progress out of what I called for myself the “pre-production phase” that was revolving around optimizing assets, textures, materials, prefabs and homogenizing them, as well as studying the new techs from Unreal Engine that allows to design levels in a much more efficient ways (like Procedural Content Generation tools).

Hashtag: Sounds reasonable! What’s the biggest ‘oh shit, this is harder than I thought’ revelation so far?

Romain: Working on multiplayer! Multiplayer is one thing I wanted to be sure to include because I love playing games with my friends. Also, Jordan, your work with The Infected has shown me how passionate people can be about requesting the ability to play with others. (Ed note: Omg, it’s never ending!) Dealing with online is basically increasing the development process by tenfold. Everything that is supposed to be easy is made more difficult, especially in term of testing your game and thinking ahead about all the situations you’ll need to deal with when several players are involved. Some features for the base building were also hard to implement (like the log flumes system that I’m still working on because it’s a pain!)

Hashtag: Here’s a muddle of questions, because they all link together in some way. What’s scarier right now – code or player expectations? During this development window where EVERYTHING is on the table, how do you decide when an idea is ‘feature’ versus ‘DLC dream’? How do you keep scope in check when every survival game on Steam screams ‘add fishing!’?

Romain: Player expectation for sure, because it’s the thing I can’t control completely! I can temper expectations by telling people what will or will not be in the game. But there will probably be expectations and projections from players that will not meet the end product for sure, as there always is for any game released out there. And sometimes, like you saw back when I released the work-in-progress clip of the tree chopping, sometimes players can be very passionate about what they think of quality or what is missing or MUST be added.

For the scope, I basically just add what I think will really impact the immersion of the whole experience and how it will fit in the game’s world (size of the map, level design). I keep some ideas for later updates, especially if they are harder to implement. Fishing, for example, is a really good idea because it would be realistic to fish in order to substain yourself in the wild. I like the idea and will probably add it down the road!
But in priority, I’m adding things that will contribute to how threatening and wild it will feel to evolve in the world (weather (snow, tornadoes, fog), foliage interaction and water interaction, footsteps, grass being trampled… 

If I feel like an idea or mechanic will not drastically add to the immersion and atmosphere of the game, I keep it for later. If we take the example of fishing again, I think that the game can totally ship without fishing being added at first, without hurting anything about the immersion and gameplay. It’s a feature that is a great added value but can be kept for later. But overall, it’s mostly about things that I really want in the game at first versus things that I think can be added later. Those will be mainly subjective at first. As time goes on, I’ll listen to the feedback and add things that players really want and that could add credibility and more immersion.

Game Talk

(We saved some long-winded tangents for Patreon. No paywall on those: link at the end.)

Hashtag: Explain the core gameplay loop to a five-year-old – no buzzwords allowed.

Romain: The core loop of the game is to gradually improve your tools and weapons while surviving, in order to reach the end of the game. First, you’ll explore the world and defend yourself, while gathering recipes to craft new tools and weapons by scanning them several times (inspired from the Subnautica system). Along that, the main goal is to reach the end of the story by gathering key elements to progress-artifacts, key cards and so on.

Hashtag: Sounds very much like The Forest!

Romain: A lot of inspiration from The Forest! I really like the way you discovered the story as you explored. With Derelicts, to get these key elements, you’ll need to fight enemies that are aggressive and will force you to increase your firepower and base building. For example, to craft firearms, you’ll need a bench that will require you to explore the world to build it first.

Hashtag: What are you thinking for crafting: tiers? hand-whittled junk? workbench ? factory floor? or something weirder?

Romain: For buildings, it will just about placing blueprints in the world and bringing the right resources- so like most survival games. For tools and weapons, it will be about bringing the right resource to the different specific benches and make a manual interaction to craft them. For example, to make ingots, you’ll need ore and bring it to the furnace and craft them yourself. Overall, there won’t be “tiers” properly speaking because you’ll always craft new things instead of making them evolve.

Hashtag: Fast travel: absolutely not, limited, or lore-friendly weird tech? And, related-ish, can we physically move big items around (log hauling, sleds) or does everything teleport to inventory-town?

Romain: Ideally, I don’t want any fast travel and I prefer to build the world map in an effective and clever way that it will not be needed! I don’t really like stuff like teleports because they remove the need for the players to orient themselves and learn the environment and landmarks. Moving heavy things will require sleds, log flumes and other automated devices. The player will only be able to carry one or two heavy things on him directly, which also influences travel!

Hashtag: Begin with a derpy question – and end with one. What’s the signature enemy behavior you want players to meme about?

Romain: I really would like my enemies to climb and hide in trees (or bushes) before attacking the players. Imagine a meme where you picture a mutant head floating above a bush or various things – I think it would make a great meme!

Hashtag: People always say you need to be ready with an elevator pitch: something you can rattle off without thinking. And then there’s a quick one-liner when someone asks about your project, but they have the attention span of a gnat. Do you have one?

Romain: Uhh! Derelicts is a co-op survival game that will heavily rely on an immersive level design, fear, and environment interaction. What’s yours?

Hashtag: Fear? How spooky. Uh, well, the game Becca and I are working on is way too raw for a pitch. I guess Hashtag would be “a curated hub for true survival game junkies” but that’s mega boring, so maybe more like “Hashtag Survival exists because someone had to say it, half these games suck, and we deserve better.” Nailed it.

Appreciate you taking the time to chat and do another Q&A – looking forward to more game news!

Romain: That definitely sounds a lot more like you, hah! Thanks for having me (again), and I’ll bring more to share next time!

First time here? We’re Hashtag Survival: it’s survival game time, all the time. The good, the bad, and the “still in early access seven years later.” Poke around, hop in the Discord, and sign up for the newsletter if you want the best of it sent your way each week.

Missed the first Derelicts Q&A? [Catch Part One here.]
Got a question of your own? Drop it in the comments – we might sneak it into Part 3.
Want a little more? There were a few extra questions that came out of our usual dev/design ramble sessions: stuff about survival mechanics, shared theories, and where Romain and I see things differently. You can catch those over on Patreon. No paywall on that one, just extra context if you’re into that sort of thing.