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KickStarter Spy DNA - realistic tactical combat with genetically enhanced agents

Infinitron

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Greenlit!
 

shysnake

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Quick post to let everyone know we have been listening to the feedback and have some UI visual improvements and changes to the map edges as a result.

 

udm

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Make the Codex Great Again!
Pistols
N00B - AVG - GOOD - PRO - ELITE

:lol: Please tell me you're keeping these keywords in the final version.

Back on topic, UI update looks good <3
 

shysnake

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Pistols
N00B - AVG - GOOD - PRO - ELITE

:lol: Please tell me you're keeping these keywords in the final version.

Planning to. Need to update the style of that graphic though before the final version.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


You can now change outfits of your Spy DNA agents, and the wardrobe choices you make will influence gameplay. Jason also shows the recent additions to the "New game" screen, such as pre-made characters. Coming soon: voices for the party members.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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http://www.shysnake.com/blog/2017/10/14/managing-complexity-in-games
October 14, 2017
Managing complexity in games
events


A little while ago, I gave this 5-minute talk about managing complexity in games such as Spy DNA.

The main point of the talk is, that as the computer technology advanced, game mechanics of strategy RPGs and tactical games have not kept pace.

Driving and flight sims do a great job of simulating real-world conditions while keeping the game experience accessible and fun. At the same time, RPGs and even first-person shooters still rely heavily on artificial constructs and arcane rules of combat created in the era of pen-and-paper games.

With Spy DNA, we endeavour to bring this sort of detailed realism to the RPG world: simulating combat on a very detailed and granular level, all the while preserving the approachability and the fun of playing a game.

http://www.shysnake.com/blog/2017/8/1/so-about-that-early-access

August 1, 2017
So about that early access…



It’s still in the works, and we’re getting closer, but while we do that, we wanted to give you a status update.

Why the delay?
We have reviewed our launch plan and decided that the early access game should be as close to the final release as possible, without giving away any of the plot. So we went to work on improving character appearance, mission generation, and map creation. Let’s break that down in some detail.

Character appearance
We switched the characters and clothes from using traditional materials to PBR (physically-based rendering), making them look better in-game. Character rendering performance was another major area of focus for us.

family-portrait-2017-07-02.png


We also improved the fit of clothes, and enabled wardrobe management for playable characters. Now you’ll be able to choose from dozens of items your Commander and the squad members can wear.

In the same vein, we’ve added some more animations and made some improvements to character skinning, again, making them look more realistic.

1499299438320


And finally, the Spy DNA squad is complete, with finished models, and back stories.

Mission generation
Same mission, different map? We don’t think so. That means that we need a way to create unique combinations from some smaller “elementary particles” that make up a mission.

1501646170716

We have created a number of scenarios that are similar from the tactical point of view, and the game will fill in the (compatible) details randomly, whenever a mission is generated. To take a simple example, the generic mission could be “hostage rescue.” The details that would be filled in and used to generate a mission can be: number and appearance of hostages and enemies, skill levels of hostages and enemies, geographic location (rural, suburban, urban, etc.), and any constraints – say, the area is full of civilians and you shouldn’t kill any of them, or cause a panic.

2017-08-01+%281%29.png

Next, we introduced infiltration. Most of the new missions that pop up, will have an infiltration option, and the Commander will decide which of the squad members will go. In the hostage scenario from above, the infiltration options could be: sneaking up to the building and placing a surveillance camera or microphone, hiding a weapons stash, or going in as a commercial hostage negotiator.

If the infiltration succeeds, the mission itself will be somewhat easier to complete, and if it doesn’t, your mission may turn into a rescue operation really quickly.

Map creation
Now of course, we need some maps to match the diverse missions. We’re working on creating landscapes and populating them with trees and buildings, as well as all the other things that go on a map: street signs, cars, fences, etc. both to provide a bit of visual appeal, and cover/line of sight obstruction.

When?
You have been very patient with us so far, so we decided that while we are finishing up the Early Access release, we’ll be shipping another demo version shortly, to show the progress we’ve made. Please stay tuned – we’ll be announcing it here on the blog, and on social media of course.
 

Siveon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
More necromancy.

http://www.shysnake.com/blog/2018/2/23/spy-dna-development-update-2018-02-23
Spy DNA development update 2018-02-23
SPY DNA


By Jason Sams, Lead Developer

It’s been a while since my last update. I’ve had my head down in the game code making some fundamental changes. We have made major changes to the AI system, character customization, hit location and damage system, level designer, asset loading, modding support, and a few other things.

Let’s start with character customization. We put a lot of effort in making the players character fully customizable. Now a few of you gave us a hard time for going overboard here. The reason we put so much effort into this is we unified it with NPC generation. This will let us generate much more unique NPCs for each mission and avoid repeating the same character models over and over.

New game screenshot

NewGame.PNG

New game screenshot

During character creation you will be prompted to choose your commanders frame (skinny, average, or heavy), and condition (pro-fighter, fit, average, nerd). This choice determines which character model you will see in game and will also change your attributes. The condition choice biases your attributes towards physical or mental, while the frame choice is a speed/dexterity vs strength/toughness choice.

Related to this we implemented our appearance reaction model. Each appearance item is rated on several metrics, such as Serious, Classy, Scary, and the ability to conceal weapons or armor. So while you may want to bring the heavy armor to the dinner party, doing so will make it much harder to get people talking, at least by verbal means.

Wardrobe screenshot
Appearance.PNG

Wardrobe screenshot

Speaking of armor, we added the armor options to the wardrobe screen. You can now equip your characters with a variety of armor and storage options. I’ll have some updated screenshots of the overhauled equipment screen soon. Armor in spy dna is now working as intended. Armor resists bullets and other weapons, but for it to work, the weapon needs to hit the armor. This makes your aim point really matter. Unless you have the heavy weapons out, you will want to try to avoid hitting the heavily armored points on a target.

Character status screen

status.PNG

Character status screen

We updated the status screen to show where the shots have hit a character. The length of the marker changes depending on the penetration of the incoming round. The diameter represents the damage level of the shot. The hits are colored based on result.
Green = fully blocked by armor
Yellow = blocked by dermal armor, probably still really hurt though.
Red = call the doctor and make an appointment

Attributes screenshot

attributes2.PNG

Attributes screenshot

We are scanning the shot against the polygon mesh of each piece the characters are wearing. We don’t want near hits/misses being mis-reported by the engine.

We have also been cleaning up the UI. We moved from using pre-drawn icons for the party to using render targets and snapping them in game. This means they will reflect the current state of the character. If you change into a delivery worker outfit to sneak into a building, the portrait will update on the fly.

Skills screenshot

skills2.PNG

Skills screenshot

And the final bit for the update is the changes to the inventory screen. We have moved a few things around and made room on the left, under the item image, for attachments or modifications.

Inventory screenshot

inventory.PNG

Inventory screenshot

We have also put a lot of time and effort into performance work. To give you just one example: The time from a level loading until you can start moving has been reduced from a minute or more it could take in the past, down to about a second. The pathfinding will prepare in the background now, using multiple cpu cores to speed things up if available.

While we basically had Spy DNA up on jackstands with the engine out and all kinds of parts strewn all over the place, it was challenging to really show and explain all the things that we had in-flight. But now that we have put the thing back together, we’ll be sharing updates on a more regular basis.

Stay tuned.

TAGGED: DEVELOPMET, GAME DEVELOPMENT, GAME DEV
 

ushas

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Thanks. Must admit this is probably the first game I've seen featuring fingernails and toenails as equipment slots. :salute:

Heh, they can give away a nail polish as a preorder item:D Though hopefully we can also apply a chip or a nail phone or something.
 

agris

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Thanks. Must admit this is probably the first game I've seen featuring fingernails and toenails as equipment slots. :salute:

Heh, they can give away a nail polish as a preorder item:D Though hopefully we can also apply a chip or a nail phone or something.
9wtiDES.png
 

ushas

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Well, marketing is about catching people's attention somehow. At least in here it seems to have a gameplay effect.
 
Last edited:

udm

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Still looking good*. Can't wait for EA.

except for the prosperian portraits
 

Zombra

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Newsletter update:

a71d14b4-230a-4fcd-9d70-0eb6f8c843f4.png
Spy DNA development updates
Howdy folks! We're still hard at work on Spy DNA, and time flies when you're having fun, so... we totally didn't mean to leave you without an email update for this long. Good news: there are many updates, making this newsletter particularly meaty.

We'll cover procedural mission generation, how we keep the complexity manageable for the player, character creation, status, skills, and attribute screens, and the (final) UI refresh.

By the way, if you're not following us on Twitter, Tumblr, G+, or Facebook, you totally should, because all these updates were posted there as soon as we published them on our blog. Alex is also pretty good at replying on Twitter and Tumblr, if you have any questions for us.

Alrighty, let's dive right in.

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Complexity in Spy DNA
At its core, Spy DNA has a complex combat simulation, which took thousands of lines of code to create. We totally geek out on all the tiny details that lend the game its realism, but we don't expect the player to first have to learn how to play our game. We want you to be able to grasp the underlying mechanics intuitively, and simply focus on playing the game.

When you play Spy DNA, one of the things you will notice is that we have a lot of attributes compared to most RPGs. I’ve heard people give talks saying that six attributes is too many for an RPG, and I consider that silly. I mean, if a console sports game can have 38 attributes (MLB the show), I don’t see why a serious PC RPG shouldn’t have more than 6.

This is where we clearly see the difference between perceived vs. real complexity. By all accounts the simulation in the MLB game is more complex, but because each attribute is clear and easy to understand and relate to in real-life terms, it never feels difficult to understand or play.

By comparison, when you have too few attributes, the attributes have to stand for things that are not obvious from the name, such as using dexterity for speed, strength for hit points, or intelligence for spellcasting. Each game has a slightly different system, making it necessary for the player to learn a new set of artificial rules with each game. Learning abstract rule sets is a thing that humans aren’t very good at, and therefore perceive it as complex. Read the full article
ee1f759d-cfe8-422e-873c-baff94f7576f.png
Procedural mission generation
Ever wondered how we create our generated missions? Have a peek behind the curtain and learn how the missions are built from the ground up, including random NPC generation.

In most cases, unless it’s an NPC that persists throughout the game, we fully randomize gender, skin color, and body type. Military personnel will [...] have fewer choices in the body type department, as we will only allow them to have an “average,” “fit,” or “fighter” fitness level. Civilians get a fourth option in fitness level: “unfit.”

The level of fitness and body type aren’t just for show either, they influence the body owner’s attributes as well, so if you meet someone who looks strong and fit, they very likely are.

To make sure that the spread of different body types is more realistic, we weight the probability of each of them occurring. After all, you don’t see twenty-five MMA-fighter-level-fit people for every hundred you meet. Read the full article
9ae6f74c-2a21-4b39-a68e-e4fcbea097cc.png
Q1 2018 development update
We put a lot of effort in making the players character fully customizable. Now a few of you gave us a hard time for going overboard here. The reason we put so much effort into this is we unified it with NPC generation. This will let us generate much more unique NPCs for each mission and avoid repeating the same character models over and over.

During character creation you will be prompted to choose your commanders frame (skinny, average, or heavy), and condition (pro-fighter, fit, average, nerd). This choice determines which character model you will see in game and will also change your attributes. The condition choice biases your attributes towards physical or mental, while the frame choice is a speed/dexterity vs strength/toughness choice.

Related to this we implemented our appearance reaction model. Each appearance item is rated on several metrics, such as Serious, Classy, Scary, and the ability to conceal weapons or armor. So while you may want to bring the heavy armor to the dinner party, doing so will make it much harder to get people talking, at least by verbal means. Continue reading
707fba0e-8c38-475f-8692-4d4bf6affdfb.png
UI refresh
Earlier this year Alex spent a lot of time catching the UI up to the current style.

What this means is that while many menus such as chat, information/inventory screen, and in-game pop-ups and dialogs have been using the styling that we intend to ship Spy DNA with, other elements were still using outdated graphics. Most noticeably, inventory icons. Visit the blog for before-after comparison
 

Zombra

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Promising devblog entry about character creation. Shades of JA2:

JUNE 27, 2018
Spy DNA Development Update: Character creation
DEVELOPERS, SPY DNA, EVENTS
By Jason Sams, Shy Snake Lead Developer

Let’s talk about that all-important part of an RPG, creating your character. Last month I wrote a post about complexity in games. Character creation process in any RPG is usually the first thing the player does, which affects every aspect of the player’s experience afterward.


Spy+DNA+%2864-bit%2C+PCD3D_SM5%29+6_27_2018+10_53_21+AM.png

In order to get to the character creation, you need to go to a job interview with Dr. Crotalus

This presents some unique challenges to a game creator, or even a DM/GM.

First, you’re asking a player to design the character they want to play, having no knowledge about how your game works. For most people this means taking a guess, playing a bit, and potentially starting over.

Second, the choices made during character creation are typically permanent, and affect gameplay for the full playthrough of the game.

As a GM for a pen-and-paper game this was particularly difficult. The players would make their characters, and usually 3 sessions in, we’d be tweaking them, as players realized that the characters they wanted to play weren’t what they actually created.

So as an experiment, I had everyone make two characters. One was created the traditional way, rolling dice and allocating stats and skills on a character sheet. To create the other character, I gave everyone a list of 23 questions to answer for me before the game. Then I made characters for the players based on their answers, using my knowledge of the game world and rules.

The players could freely pick which character they wanted to use for each mission, given they were alive and well enough to go. You’d expect that the players would favor the characters they made for themselves, but instead they played the characters made by me, the GM, about 80% of the time, only breaking out the other character for special situations. Why?

As a GM you have more knowledge of what lies ahead for the players, what they will need, and typically how the system works. There is much less guessing. So as long as you know what kind of character the player wants to play, you’ve got a much better chance of creating one that will work well for the game.

Based on this experience, we wanted to replicate this character creation process in Spy DNA.

At first, we created a set of 21 questions with about 3 answers each, and then used that to configure the characters. And it was terrible. There simply wasn’t enough detail in the resulting playable character.

So we went back to the drawing board and came up with a new design pattern for the questions that was more suitable to a computer game, i.e. it didn’t require a human to read between the lines in the player’s answers.

Now in Spy DNA the character creation consists of three groups of questions:

1: Self: How you think of your character.
2: Favorite mission: What kinds of missions you prefer.
3: Approach: How do accomplish your goals.


Within each group we now start with a high-level question, and follow up with a refining question depending on the previous choice.


Spy+DNA+%2864-bit%2C+PCD3D_SM5%29+6_27_2018+10_51_57+AM.png

You can make your own character by answering a questionnaire

Under this model, you will see roughly 17 questions as part of character creation. However, there are more than 80 questions in the questionnaire, so any single pass will only see a small part of the whole. At last count, there are more than 230 answers to choose from during the creation process, each with a different effect on your character.

To test whether this system actually works as intended, I have been asking people to think of a character they want to make, then try using the questionnaire to create it. Afterward, we look at how close the resulting character is to what the player intended, and the results have been vastly better than with the old 23-question system.

It being us, we used this opportunity to take things a bit farther. As you go through the character creation questionnaire, we record the choices you make. Those become part of your character’s persona. They will influence how other characters react to you in-game. As an example:

Q: Which type of mission are you the most comfortable with?

1: Assassinations: Neutralize a single target using a variety of means.
2: Counter-terrorism: Aggressive combat tactics designed to neutralize a group of enemies before they can do harm.
3: Breaking and entering: Quietly break into buildings, avoiding detection
4: Asset manipulation: Recruiting and convincing assets to work for you.


You can see how this may both influence the type of missions your team were to receive along with how some characters, including those in your party, may respond to you.


Spy+DNA+%2864-bit%2C+PCD3D_SM5%29+6_27_2018+10_51_14+AM.png

You can select a pre-configured character to play

The character creation system in Spy DNA is designed to help players create a character they will enjoy playing, but you don’t have to use if if you don’t want to. In addition to the questionnaire, you will also have an option to play a pre-made character, or use the traditional system where you can directly assign the points (probably not included in Early Access).
 

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