Unfortunately have to delay the demo a few weeks. Will be out of town and unable to fix bugs and don't want to leave it unattended. (Last time there were some really rough ones, totally unforeseen.)
Good news is that the demo is pretty much ready to go, so I'll drop it ~early April 👍
working on a small demo to release this week. just trying to decide what to put in it, and work out the most obnoxious bugs and art issues. (not part of the nextfest, planning on keeping this up indefinitely and updating pretty regularly)
still trying to get this thing seaworthy. spending lots of time on UX, settings, and making mechanics more intuitive. I know some like opaque games, but I'd prefer for new players to be able to pick up and play. so, lots of informative tooltips, etc. (should also reduce importance of tutorials)
I may add a traditional sort of 'jitter' unstuck option later if I can figure it out (ie nudge the player controller around until it's free), but the teleports work well so not a huge priority
in other news, yesterday I managed to add Unstuck options and generalized hover tooltips (so I can add more detailed info throughout the menus.) a lot of the remaining dev work is this sort of thing: stability and ux - trying to make a smooth new player experience
(the mag-size ramble was partly inspired by me experimenting with adding the Sai- I mean 'Taiga' mag-fed shotgun, and being a little terrified at how strong it feels. I cut the mag from 30->20 and nerfed the fire rate already, so not too broken necessarily though
not that I think my inexperienced dev thoughts are necessarily peak game design advice, but may be interesting to at least force me to organize my thoughts better, and have somewhat of an archive 🤔
(I really should set up some kind of comfortable long-form blog so I can write this rambles in more coherent fashion. I do have a wordpress 'blog' on my site but I dislike the interface so maybe could replace it. maybe after ea release when I have more time..
(there are benefits to real-ish elements ofc, though. those inherited assumptions mean the player can fill in the details w/ their imagination/memory, to make the experience feel more grounded and immersive. ie; drinking 'cocoa' instead of 'void nectar' will likely give stronger feelings of comfort)
also worth noting is that: players come in with expectations if you use something with a real-world equivalent. but, if you make something like a 'void blaster' or an 'anti-matter cannon', you can design more freely w/o worry of player frustration their awp doesn't 1-shot everything, and so on
ofc there are tools to balance this kind of thing, and I'm constantly tweaking them: fire rate, recoil, pen, and so on. I suppose my point is that if you are making greenfield weapons from scratch, you can account for these issues beforehand, rather than inheriting them from the source material
this isn't a huge issue for this game necessarily, but I notice it when I fight bears/heavies. with the bolties/pistols it feels suitably scary: lots of kiting, hiding, often over several minutes. but, w/ an ak you can just mag-dump it in one go; so, that gun class feels very strong situationally
back in my insurgency days I used the mp5 b/c my aim is bad, so it gave me a chance of landing a single kill shot when spraying 30 rds (w/ that games real-esque low ttk). but, in a scenario w/ a high hp mutant/robot/etc, suddenly those 30rds means a 1-mag kill vs a >3-mag kill by a makarov etc.
real-esque guns in unrealistic scenarios is quite tricky to balance. ie; irl, a large mag is for long fights, suppression etc, but every round is deadly. so, a 30-rd mag is not really 6x more lethal than a 5-rd. but, if you have a ~1k hp mob, w/ each shot ~50dmg, the 30-rd will melt them MUCH faster
oh, no plans for one, but thanks for the offer
good point, I'll try to make it a bit forgiving if possible
friendlies also now turn on you if you damage them. (had to add this as I realized that otherwise they can be seen as walking lootboxes.) for the campaign I'll try to add some other penalties to discourage friendly fire as well
may need to experiment with alternate simulation approaches for distant agents to improve perf (ie, pause them, do dice roll fights base on proximity, or something). but, they are actually pretty lightweight now, even while raycasting each other for vision pretty often etc
sorted out the thorniest issues with the faction inter-fighting changes. now possible for 'Contested' levels (infected vs mercs), and a few friendlies regularly spawn. So, now they will fight, even if on the other side of the map, and reinforcements trickle in if their numbers get too low
interesting how there is often tension between systems. For example, survival craves huge landscapes, gun combat craves mid range, melee combat and imsim interactions crave short range. maybe possible to weave them with careful spaced-poi design etc, but still some tension which is a neat conundrum
made some improvements to the bag system; can now place grids side by side, which allows more varied layouts. still experimenting with large slots, which represent placing a single item through an exterior strap/mesh. I like the idea but it's a bit hard to communicate (have a carabiner icon for now)
managed to reuse the gun model system to allow dropped weapons to use their proper model (was previously just a box.) now agents will drop their gun as an object - a bit more immersive than being in their inventory, and also sidesteps the issue of hiding the gun model when looted
the idea was that handcrafted levels could supplement the procgen ones, perhaps as 'boss' areas to gate progression. or, just be fun options for sandbox play. I do want to try my hand at making some big (ie >4km²) maps, but just not yet
built out the logic to spawn into handcrafted levels, but in doing so I realized they need to go on the backburner. building decent and large maps would likely take far too long, so if I add them it will be further down the road.
The theme for #PROCJAM 2025 is:
❄️ ☃️ COLD PLACES ☃️ ❄️
Brr! We selected this theme using a new method: I asked community members to send in theme suggestions, then we turned them into word vectors, found the average, and looked at the words nearest to that! A little bit of unpredictability. 🔮
no sorry lol, this is just a spectating cam on an npc. I guess it could be possible theoretically but no plans
one of the bigger challenges is making the melee enemies smoother while still fulfilling their role. for ex, I have a 'lateral reposition' action they can choose instead of lunging to make them less oppressive, but rn it's very jank. although, it didn't stop this guy from getting a quadra-kill lol
right now though the biggest win is on the dev side: I can watch agents fight and see when they bug out, look janky, and so on. although, watching them with a follow-cam like this is much clearer and damning than in FP. ie; I prob wouldn't notice the stutters here if I was watching him from 50m
worked in generalized targeting, allowing factions to sense and fight each other. should be many benefits: fleeing wildlife hinting at enemy positions, letting the player 'third party' skirmishes, and also the inclusion of friendly survivors like this poor guy (differentiated by their teal lights)
had a few family challenges recently, so may have to push release to ~Q1 2026, but still mulling it over 🤔
