Heya Vaipu and Kyle (And any future patreons)! I have decided to dedicate some of my free time on a sideproject I (for now) nicknamed “Ether”.

Ether will be a psychological survival horror game where you monitor and maintain a remote signal station on a mysterious archipelago. The region is infamous due to mysterious vessel disappearances which are attributed to bad weather and strange geomagnetic anomalies appearing in the area. Your job is to monitor and maintain instruments located on the island and compile reports on any of those anomalous events.

I was working nearly daily since the last post so its time to post some (very very prototype) images with some explanations:

Your work desk. Currently situated inside of a remote repurposed cold war relay station in the middle of the sea.

Use the SDR (Software Radio) application to tune into various signals (will be ranging from radio broadcasts, general interference or various and possibly spooky anomalies!). Downloading anomalous signals and sending them for research yields you credits which you will use to buy upgrades and items (including food).

Use the composite map to get a grasp on your surroundings, predict weather events, overview your devices or discover signal sources to investigate! (The map is actually sampled in real-time every few seconds. If anything STRANGE and anomalous were to happen (like maybee an island moving), you will see it. >:)

You cant be in your home forever though. There will be plenty incentives to head out and explore! And not just your island, you will have a boat to travel the sea and visit nearby islands, discover new locations, expand your signal coverage… (Yes, there will be plenty of lore scattered around too for those interested like me).

You also have to make sure to maintain your power supply (which is, due to possible signal interference, located in a separate bunker).

The weather should have a huge effect on the gameplay. It makes equipment less efficient and can even cause some to fail. Fog causes the player not to see very far, rain is loud and storm can temporarily take out the signal receivers. Also obviously a day/night cycle is a must (night spooky)! You can advance time faster by sleeping.

Now a more condensed list of whats working/done:

• Basic FPS player actions like movement, jumping, stamina, interaction and flashlight ported from Isolation (Food and Sleep mechanics are wip)
• Tuning into signals thru SDR and downloading them onto your PC
• The system around power: devices which drain it and devices which generate power… blackouts too.
• Various beacons on the map corresponding to actual in-world objects which can be spawned
• Proper Saving/Loading of all of the above
• Beacons can only be seen/positions updated on the map if satellite dishes are facing their direction.
• System which keeps track of time in minutes (sort of a tick system like in minecraft) which updates alot of the underlying mechanics like power consumption etc.
• Some textures are intentionally user editable so that player can swap them in game files (for example for changing computer background, pretty sure all the players will have something nice and wholesome there)

What am I working on RIGHT NOW:

• Sending media (including signals) to your employer and receiving both formal and less formal emails from the research team
• Getting them well-earned CREDITS from your employer for tasks done (currently only sending SDR recordings which are anomalous)
• Ability to preview all downloaded media (rn just SDR recordings)

Needs to be done:

• Boat mechanics
• All the graphical assets + more populated and nice-looking demo map.
• An event system which schedules both random and non-random events/anomalies in the game based on various conditions (I have no idea yet how to do this well but Ill figure something)
• Actual hunger and sleep effects + the ability to advance time
• Weather, Extreme weather events and Day/Night systems + Ability to see weather on Radar
• Shop system where you buy upgrades / items
• The actual events, signals and anomalies/threats which can be found/happen
• All the other stuff which I forgot to list