I finished the large tasks for Playtest 3 a few weeks ago and since then playtesting and tweaking the build.
Audio - I implemented a rough audio pass to better communicate the status of the ship and flight status and I am getting some help with making better sounds for everything. My intention and hope is to replace the temp-audio with the new sounds in time for PT3, which I hope to do within the next month or so.
Tricks - I originally did not intend to have any tricks in PT3 but as I was playtesting the game I felt it was such a large part missing from the experience that I atleast wanted one trick in the build, so I implemented a first pass on the "wallboost" trick. A big inspiration for T.S.B is Skate and Tony Hawk skateboard games, specifically building momentum, finding lines and executing tricks. Executing a trick results in the ship gaining even more momentum and my intention is that it should encourage the player to explore on how to best utilize the environment to get the best possible time. Wallboost, in conjunction with flying through gaps, is currently the two main elements the player can utilize to fly around the circuit to gain speed, short of burning the main thruster which also provides energy for the engine but is a finite resource. There's an additional 2-3 tricks that are going in for the playtest after PT3 but more on those later.
Gameplay - tweaks and polish here involve slowing down the buildup of engine strength, resulting in the early parts of the circuit being slower. It is not fully there yet and still some tweaking required to reach the final state for PT3. My intention is for the player to gain momentum over the entire 3 laps of each circuit. This, I hope, will also make the game more approachable for the new players and let them learn how to play the game at lower speeds, while still retaining very high speeds when you execute tricks and navigate the circuits in optimal ways using ground effect, flying through gaps and executing the Wallboost. I also lowered the penalty to ship damage when crashing into surfaces but it comes with a slightly higher penalty to overall momentum and engine strength.
Each level is now built using Procedural Content Generation in unreal (PCG) utilizing splines for each track-segment and obstacles. Earlier this year I evaluated PCG and Geometry Nodes in Blender to work out a plan how to approach the level creation and art-workflow for the game. I wanted a fast and flexible pipeline that enabled a quick first pass, quick iteration and that I could swap out entire sections of tracks with different art assets without having to individually place everything. I have some previous experience with Geometry Nodes in blender but I opted to learn and implement PCG rather than relay on Blender and Geometry Nodes in order to keep as much of the pipeline in the engine. I expect to use Geometry nodes in blender to build the assets and then have PCG place everything in the engine. This will enable me to produce levels more rapidly moving forward as I start doing the actual art for the game I can make large scale brush strokes to get most of the way there - or so I hope.
The push for PCG took me about a month all in all as I first had to learn about PCG and then make a plan on how to best utilize it for T.S.B. There's room for improvement and I made some concessions to get a workable tool up and running quickly, but it provides a solid foundation for the future.
I playtest the game every night after work and makes lists of polish and bug fixing. I currently have around 10 things left from a total of 58 items.
The game has started to materialize in a way that I didn't expect to happen yet. I've been involved in the development for quite a few games and there is always a point during that you "see it" - the game, what it can be in its final form. Sometimes it happens quite early and sometimes I've been so shoulder-deep in work that I don't really see it till after release. When it happens it brings with it a renewed sensation of excitement and motivation. On the flip side it also becomes clear the amount of work that is left before the game is finished
It's getting there, but still got a long road ahead.
Edits: 2026-05-25: Small language tweaks, grammar
2026-04-03 - Flight.
Tomas
I have enjoyed flying in videogames for as long as I have played. My first encounter was either a flight simulator on the Amiga called F/A 18 Interceptor or the cargo-hauler Gravity Force. Gravity Force and it's sequel were two of my favorite games back then.
Moving forward to the modern era my vehicle of choice in Grand Theft Auto 5 multiplayer was always airborne - mostly helicopters - and I played in first person for a cockpit view. I loved zipping around in the city and I always volunteered my wings whenever the group I played with needed to cross the map for some mission.
I spent about 2-3000 hours playing Elite Dangerous focusing on trading and exploration. I partook in the community event Distance World II expedition and ventured out into the black with many other players, with only what I brought with me on the ship to survive the many real-World months before returning to habited space. I made several expeditions of my own as well and if I recall my longest time spent in the black was 9 months. As for trading in Elite I found it deeply satisfying to haul cargo while operating my trusty T7 or T9 spaceship. I indulged in my hobby for Elite and purchased a HOTAS Flightstick, TrackIR5 and pedals (and a Vive VR headset, but it proved to uncomfortable to be a daily driver), equipment which I also used in my time in Flight Simulator 2020.
As for real Life experience I fly drones. I purchased a DJI AVATA 2 a few years back when I finally moved to a city not near any major Airports in Sweden. I logged several hours in simulators before daring to go out in real Life and after my very first flight I was hooked. Last summer I took every opportunity I could to go to places around the city with my drone and log some flight time.
The DJI Avata. I started flying with the motion controller pictured above but moved to the Remote Controller 2 after a few months. Image credit to DJI.
I've thought long and hard about what it is that I enjoy with flying, both with real life drones and in videogames and my conclusions as of this writing is that it requires my full focus, I have to be in the moment. There is a sense of peace and clarity. I enjoy the sense of freedom soaring high in the sky, the thrill of descending coming in for landing or flying through gaps and the sense of speed while navigating close to the ground, being a daredevil with near misses and - to be perfectly honest - the learning experience of the occasional crash. And I enjoy the exploration, seeing new things from new perspectives.
For these reasons my focus for Venture Games is creating games that one way or another involves flying.
Edits: 2025-05-25: Grammar, speling
2026-03-07 - History.
Tomas
Development on T.S.B started in 2021, initially with various notes and sketches. It started as an offshoot from a larger project called W.A.S.P. As development on W.A.S.P progressed I realized more and more that the scope of the game would take a long time to develop and that I lacked the knowledge to practically make it in a good way. W.A.S.P development ended, for the time, soon after. I formed a plan to pick features out of W.A.S.P and create smaller games centred around those specific features, to learn, gain experience and release games sooner rather than later.
T.S.B, early silhouette study of the ideas for the ship design.
For T.S.B I am focusing on the basic flight mechanics and the three C’s (Character, Camera, Controls). Once T.S.B is done I intend to pick another feature needed for W.A.S.P and build on top of the foundations of T.S.B and that will form game 2 - rinse and repeat until I have released a few games under my belt as a solo developer, built up experience and feature-sets to be able to take on W.A.S.P. I am writing and sketching on Game 2 when ideas come to me.
Active development on T.S.B started in mid-2024 on weekends and evenings. I wrote a document serving as a G.D.D that let me hone in on the focus of the project and keep the feature set small to give me some foundational ideas to further explore and build upon. The first weeks saw many of these ideas being discarded or changed from the G.D.D as after testing things out I went with what felt right for the project - a gut feeling. I left the G.D.D behind, it had served it's purpose of getting me started and the game itself became the ground truth. Development was agile and fast and I got the basics of the game, with much of the codebase based on a branch of W.A.S.P, up and running within a few weeks.
T.S.B - Early concept of ship gliding, HUD and in-world fuel-gauge.
The largest undertaking was numerous iterations on the flight simulation and controls, which underwent several complete rewrites. I lost my way a bit here and fumbled around, unfocused and without a clear target and relied a bit too much on what felt right, without knowing what "right" was. It was very exploration-oriented design with a side dish of alot of learning the most efficient way of doing it technically. It landed in a happy place and will be carried over to W.A.S.P down the line. What’s a happy place? Responsive, glide-centric, and fast. At first, too fast, so I had to slow it down. It was thrilling for me to fly, but after letting a friend test it, it was clear to me that the max speed achievable in its current form was on the high end. I slowed it down to have controlled flight become a larger focus. It also came with a shift in the design to gradually build up momentum as you navigate the track.
A larger first playtest with friends and family took place just a few months into development, that generated a lot of useful feedback that made me rethink core aspects of the game to simplify and make it more approachable. I want the game to have depth in its flying mechanics but there was needless complexity in how to finish each level, which was removed after the first playtest. I also slowed the game down even further after the test and made the "ground-effect", where the ship "bounces" against surfaces, more pronounced as it was specifically pointed out from player feedback as something that should have a larger effect, "pillowing" the game and enabling long gliding along floors and use for navigation when close to walls and ceilings.
A second playtest took place shortly after with the new simplified approach, which was better received. I used the same playtesters (five or six in total). The playtesters were handpicked, friends and family whose opinion I knew would make the game more solid and strong.
After the second playtest, I started working on what I would refer to as my MVP, and this is where the game currently is at.
2026.02.07 - Liftoff.
Tomas
T.S.B is the project name of my first game. It centers around navigating tracks in a flying machine as quickly as possible. The ship holds limited fuel and the pilot, you, must navigate the track in the most optimal way in order to achieve the fastest circuit possible. Inspirations for the game are the videogames Wipeout and Skate.
Development started 2024 and has gone through it's up and downs, which is something I will write more about in future posts.
The focus is getting the game ready for it's secondthird playtest. I am currently keeping the pool of playtesters limited to a select number of friends and family.
