Sensuki
Arcane
I posted some stuff in the shoutbox chat a week or so ago
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KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
Whalenought_Joe
Whalenought Studios
Hi! Sorry about the blackout, busy working this summer. We'll be ramping up more actual marketing material when we get to the alpha but will likely continue to be quiet until then.
We haven't put a deadline on the incoming Kickstarter update but are finishing some of the art for the world and mechanics to show off for it — getting closer to what backers can give feedback on for the alpha mission.
The post itself will regard mostly design decisions steering from RTS user mechanics to something like UVII. So largely just for prosperity, but we thought it would be interesting to share the change of gameplay to compliment the ruleset and how the two influence one another. There's also a fancier way we're now collapsing the map around characters, new tactical/combat movement with more control and a slew of other changes, so it's getting pretty sizable.
We haven't put a deadline on the incoming Kickstarter update but are finishing some of the art for the world and mechanics to show off for it — getting closer to what backers can give feedback on for the alpha mission.
The post itself will regard mostly design decisions steering from RTS user mechanics to something like UVII. So largely just for prosperity, but we thought it would be interesting to share the change of gameplay to compliment the ruleset and how the two influence one another. There's also a fancier way we're now collapsing the map around characters, new tactical/combat movement with more control and a slew of other changes, so it's getting pretty sizable.
they LIVE!! THEY LIIIIIIIIVE!!!
ArchAngel
Arcane
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Ninjerk
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The Fish
Arcane
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Where's the update Whalenought_Joe? It's been more than a month since the last tweet, I'm struggling here.
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maybe the necromancers arent strong enough to hold him for a long period
Higher Animal
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Hey Whalenought_Joe , my friend has your game and can't optimize it for his 4k resolution laptop screen. Are you planning any optimization updates for those with 4k monitors?
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UPDATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1716283
Adventures in Iterative Design
Hello backers! We've put together some of the work we've been doing on Copper Dreams over the summer. This update got a bit large, so feel free to grab some mead or nice fall stout before diving in. We've been tackling so many things since the Kickstarter campaign ended that we couldn't sensibly fit everything into this update, so we'll have some blog posts on our website talking about some items that didn't make the cut.
A lot of this update is focused around the changes we've made to get the exploration gameplay where we want it. While the ruleset is the foundation of Copper Dreams, we're aiming to have a robust game of adventure and puzzles as well, and this summer we've been iterating on those elements. To make characters more interactive with the environment and more mobile we've integrated some (sort of) action adventure gameplay mechanics, while still retaining easy to use controls and not requiring the reflexes usually needed for them. This update will largely go into detail about how that has influenced gameplay and combat for the better.
First we wanted to address some housekeeping since the Kickstarter ended a few months ago. The alpha is still on track for this year, and our following updates will talk more about that and feature some actual gameplay of it. We'll also be ramping up more marketing material as we get closer to launching the alpha mission with more polished art now that we're settling on something.
We're also happy to announce that Whalenought has a new employee. Her work ethic is abysmal, but at least she was a cheap hire.
Branwen and Ajantis, researching sneaking mechanics
Improvements
When we finished the campaign there were a few major components of gameplay and tech we wanted to continue to iterate on — we found ourselves not entirely happy with how some of the core playing mechanics were being handled and how they were influencing the ruleset and gameplay. We've been very grateful to have the means to do so (thank you!), and the game has vastly improved since.
Many of these issues stemmed from an RTS-like design of movement and gameplay getting in the way of intricate gameplay interactions in the environment and combat. We started with what we came from with Serpent, but as we adapted the ruleset and exploration elements we're focusing on we realized it needed to change. We ended up with a control scheme like Ultima 7 with a centered camera on your character — which fortunately is about as simple as you can get: character(s) follow the cursor as it's held. Your companions still follow you, and will be able to do so in a way to either copy your path exactly — good for stealth or very specific actions — or huddle around you in a small gang-formation. This fit our requirements that the camera is only controlled by the player without it whipping around everywhere, and mechanics don't require reflexes.
Art Style & Lighting System
While the art is still in alpha, we've been adjusting it to look better from our higher-up perspective. We didn't have a style in mind for Copper Dreams when we started with it, the ruleset began everything, but we knew we needed it to be 3d early on due to how combat functioned within the environment and how we wanted exploration to work.
We originally had 2d models on the 3d background which was neat but caused a visual ordering nightmare and looked out of place as we added more tangible lighting. We opted for what we knew and had a low texture pixel art style for the models. This is what we had shown during the Kickstarter campaign.
As we put more levels together we were finding the distance of the camera and the low-texture sizes wasn't working well together. Due to the nature of the unfiltered textures, the distance caused jittery effects as the camera moved, which was disorienting and obnoxious. As a result we moved toward a slightly more smoothed out style that wouldn't be a distraction on gameplay. The pixel art style was also hampering design decisions like how intricate models could be or how effects should look with it — it was essentially creating problems with where we were trying to take the art.
The new style allows us to have the sharp angular design of a more small-scale pixel art style, but soft enough to be easier on the eyes from the distance the game is at, allowing us to zoom and not have the associated graphical flaws. We actually still make all these textures in pixel art before a scaling process to make them look as they are now, which also means we didn't lose any work that we had already completed. As before, this art style is quick for us to make, and also doesn't utilize any intensive graphics to display it.
Undercover Agents from AgroFax
We're starting to get some more characters in as well. Looking forward to doing backer models!
While we're not using a grid, the boundaries of noise indicators, the radio's signal radius, and things like light emission all display with 3D interfaces to be usable by the player. Light radius has been a tricky endeavor, largely because we want the visual to be usable instead of just an emission of light, and we don't want to require expensive realtime lighting. We don't have great computers as it is and lighting for any game is usually the first thing getting turned off to be able to play it. With the more boolean lighting system we have of being in/out of shadow the realtime nature would also make it tedious to get around thin cast lines of light — we wanted lights to retain a chunkiness to them.
As seen in the original Kickstarter, the game uses baked lighting, which is essentially pasting a light image on each object in the environment. We have a few of these per map for different times of days to transition to. This is great because it's super cheap on processing at the expense of a somewhat larger file size to accomodate the pre-recorded lights.
The problem is that this light data can't easily be altered on the go. We can switch light maps for designated areas (for example I believe this is what was done for the Thief games), but we required the light to be dynamic for moving torches/flashlights or spotlights to dodge.
Our solution was to use some magic to cut through the lightmap and show the original textures underneath in realtime. This way a completely black wall or room can be lit up as expected, not just brightened. We have static lights that can be shot out or turned off on walls, and dynamic ones that work a bit differently that can move around. They have the same cutting effect:
Movement
The big change on movement was switching from RTS navigation to a single character, directional movement. That is to say wherever you are clicking to move on the screen, your centralized character will run toward that. As mentioned, any companions selected follow behind either step-by-step or in a gang. You can still select any various groupings of companions and move them, so you still have full party control, whoever is higher in the top in their list is the character leading.
With this system we've removed pathfinding for normal movement to give players complete control with the means of making movement with precision, without stressing your CPM. This also works with WASD, for those that prefer that style. If you want to be even more precise to plan actions, or play completely in a turn-based mode, we have a real neat update to Tactical Mode (and combat movement) that we'll talk about next.
The movement is similar to anything like Ultima 7 or Diablo: click to move in a direction, except in this case you have numerous party members to switch to and the ability to manually rotate your camera. It's really simple to use, and for an isometric 3D game also lets you get precision without having to also wrangle a camera that's spinning around like a turbine. There is still pathfinding behind the scenes, like enemies engaging you or what characters do to re-path around one another if they intersect during combat, but control is largely left up to the player now.
Syncing movement styles for combat and tactical mode
Tactical mode is a mode of gameplay designed to allow you to plan movements while the game is paused. Using your pawns you can move your party around, following or each doing their own thing, and confirming it will have them execute whatever actions you had them do, upon which it will automatically pause again when complete. When the game is paused during tactical mode the world and other NPCs are also paused, and only resume their actions while your party is executing their pre-ordained orders.
Combat and tactical mode now use the same movement mechanics as normal exploration as well, synchronizing the gameplay experience and giving you all the benefits you have with interactions, jumping and careful positioning while exploring and sneaking. This not only makes for a cohesive movement system, but gives you that same precision to dodge narrow line of sights, take the long way around a wall to evade, or jump up onto some rafters and interact with the environment to get around in a dynamic way in combat. You can project your course and confirm or redo it, to make sure you execute on what exactly you want to do.
Since the camera is character-focused, we've also added in a combat-bar pause, so you can tab between different characters at will to get a scope of the environment from their perspective as needed.
Combat Changes
While combat visuals, pacing and usability is still getting tweaked for the alpha, the ruleset hasn't changed from what we've described in the Kickstarter. Since removing the move tiles during combat there were some usability changes, like distance is now a unit of length, rather than a tile, and you can now throw onto any surface, instead of a floor tile.
Alpha combat example:
Initiative rolls:
We'll be looking for feedback on the flow of combat in the alpha dealing with executing time and recovery. It's a balance between pacing and being able to comprehend different character actions that could be happening simultaneously and keeping things flowing in realtime naturally.
One thing we did change on the bar was the idea of the original three states:
1. Wait
2. Turn
3. Execute
To instead be:
1. Turn
2. Recovery
We think this is a bit more intuitive. Functionally it is similar, there is a temporary initiative bar that appears to roll people into combat or add them in later if they engage. Turn encapsulates both the original turn and execute, and when done executing their actions, characters flow into recovery. Post recovery, they pop back to be able to take another turn. Recovery is something we're adding into the ruleset to act as a more dynamic wait time, which was originally a static amount of seconds for everyone. Recovery time is accrued through what type of actions are taken during a turn. Running a long distance with jumping requires more recovery than just tossing a grenade.
To make characters even more mobile in combat we're expanding the original 'quickshot' movement system to be for all actions. A characters turn now always allows a move and action. Moving beyond a quick-move limit allows them only to move that turn for a longer distance.
NPC Senses
The change from tiles also had us rethink how and what to show for enemy senses. We plan for some of this requiring player skill to understand and predict, but we also wanted to display some information that might otherwise be difficult to discern due to how far away the camera is. For instance what way enemies are facing — we have a snub projection cone to give you an idea of that. The rest of info circle displays handy information like if a players projected location if they are in distance, when they roll to hear footsteps, and any indicators for investigating or becoming alarmed.
HUD Functionality
We wanted to streamline the HUD in a few ways, and while we'll continue refining the art for it the functionality is now settling into place. The main interaction panel on the bottom used to consist of a single character's 4 equipped slots on the left, and the persistent action button panel on the right which changed content depending on what item was equipped. When you selected a new character, the left side would switch to them and the right with the corresponding item equipped. While this sufficiently did everything we needed to navigate player load-outs, it was tedious flipping between characters and then equipping specific items, and we were losing out on an opportunity to make those one in the same.
Now character slots can be flipped through with the scroll wheel or a toggle right next to their portrait:
Characters are now automatically associated with the item they are using. This is also handy for getting a constant at-a-glance of the equipment being used by everyone.
The notes and game feed can be toggled on the left hand side of the screen, while the right is currently reserved for the new position of the combat bar.
Items
We went over this in the Kickstarter but wanted to explain where we are at with it. Items equipped are the same models as seen on the ground in-world, as well as in backpacks. It's a what-you-see is what-you-get. We're hand placing all the items in the world itself, there are no containers populating them, and like in Serpent, any items put on the ground or created in-world stay there. Mass looting isn't the focus of the game and picking up items is only really designed for specific uses as you can't really sell most loot (not a lot of wealth floating around in a dystopian slum), you're more likely to just look for certain ammunition/items as needed. The backpack(s) are player managed, and you can toss your items in them as you would in the in-game world, albeit less violently. We like this design for its simplicity and player-management, though we also considered the tetris/grid approach, which while gamey also has some abstract simulation of player-management. This is a game after all, we like to keep things gamey.
We're starting to create chests/lockers to be used to place some of these items in, which is a bit different than how we would have traditionally done so. Normally the object housing the items would have the data saved for what items are 'inside'. Since the items are just actually hanging out in these containers in the world, the only thing you interact with is the lock or door itself to get to them, be that opening, lock picking, or breaking it. We thought this was neat:
Making 3D Isometric Height Work
The general challenge of isometric for us is making its greatest strength of looking attractive and easy to navigate into something more usable and dynamic with height. We're using the term isometric loosely here as a commonly used generalization, this isn't strictly or even near isometric, but more of a top-down angled projection, but you get the idea. Disregarding semantics the principles remain the same which we're talking about, and there's also an interesting reason we didn't use an actual precise orthographic perspective: determining height.
With the turning camera and more rigid perspective, determining really how high things were was difficult, and floating stairs and balconies were almost impossible to determine at-a-glance, instead resembling something like a MC Escher maze of pathways, or the Diablo 2 Arcane Sanctuary map, which can become a mental puzzle when amplified with a 3d camera. The slightly parallaxing of the perspective camera makes a world of difference in determining height variations in a level.
After blocking out maps, we were running across design issues with the way we set up buildings and how inflexible they were becoming with our wall-collapsing system. Our original system was supposed to be quite simple and predictable for the player, which was its strength. It worked by collapsing any 'floor' above you if you were in a building, and any entire building if it was obscuring your character from the camera's perspective. But we ended up needing too many conditional exceptions for things like balconies, high vaulted ceilings, mezzanines, or catwalks moving from building to building. As we designed more free flowing maps that really utilized height it ended up becoming obsolete.
We've changed this system to fade in and out large chunks of the environment that are obscuring your character. This turned out to be intuitive to use, and needs minimal requirement of the camera.
There's a lot of freedom for level design there which is great, we could technically just stack building chunks on top of one another and it would work within the system automatically. Very easy to work with. This allows us to create any maze of pathways of ducts and things without needing to worry about building hierarchy, and allow for any height of a room with mezzanines and balconies without worrying about player vision or how much rotating would be required.
Logo Design
In our spare time we've been taking jabs at the logo, which we felt was serviceable but could be a lot more interesting. Copper Dreams is kind of a groovy cyberpunk world under the heavy hand of a surveillance state, and we're narrowing down how we'd like the logo style to reflective that. The logo we've chosen harkens to popular design elements of the late 70s/early 80s, with a nod to science fiction book covers of that era.
The box art for the game will be in a 80's sci-fi book cover style, which we're still deciding on layouts for so we don't have something to show for that yet, but the logo is designed to be cohesive with it. Should look real neat when it's put together for those of you who are getting the physical copies!
Keeping Technical Requirements Low
Keeping all these systems and the 3d graphics optimized is very important to us. While 3D, the art for the game is meant to just be a representation of the ruleset, however it's also now designated to visualize some complicated mechanics and architecture. We want all players to have the same visual fidelity - besides some AA settings, everyone should be seeing the same game.
We invested in a low-end model PC for our minimum - optimal testing requirements. This isn't to say a lower end model can't run the game, but we're aiming to get results of the same experience on our low-end model as any higher end hardware, they should ideally look and play the same.
Our low-end model is:
Hard Drive Capacity: 1000 gigabytes
Processor Speed 2.1 gigahertz
Processor Model: Intel 5th Generation Core i3
System Memory (RAM): 4 gigabytes
Next
We'll have more persistent updates ramping up to the alpha, and will also be showing more of that off for marketing as it nears completion. If you have any questions or want to see something more in-depth let us know and we can get an update out about it in the interim.
Cheers!
Hannah and Joe
(I assume Kickstarter limits image width to 640px.)
CyberWhale
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That character centered camera means that combat engagement ranges are going to be quite short; I presume.
So no sniping anyone from two screens away from a vantage point.
So no sniping anyone from two screens away from a vantage point.
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Man, reading that update takes longer than playing through most modern games.
A recommendation spun in my Alzheimerian brain would suggest that shorter but more frequent updates perhaps would be the way to go.
That said, I am positively surprised that this project looks the most promising of all the KS campaigns I have backed. Exciting!
A recommendation spun in my Alzheimerian brain would suggest that shorter but more frequent updates perhaps would be the way to go.
That said, I am positively surprised that this project looks the most promising of all the KS campaigns I have backed. Exciting!
Branwen and Ajantis
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