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Depth of Extinction - turn-based roguelike RPG set in a flooded world

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
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Siveon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
This looks like it's taking inspiration from the Shadowrun games by Harebrained Schemes.

You sure this is your thing, Roqua? It could be lacking your oft-clamored "content".
 

markec

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Depth of Extinction is a retro RPG with a modern turn-based, tactical combat system


FFS and the "retro" graphics, its a lazy man excuse to make a ugly game, Laser Squad was made 30 years ago and still looks better then this.

Also "modern" turn based combat is a code word for simplistic dumb down shit.

Unsurprisingly game both visually and gameplay wise looks like shit.
 

mikest

HoF Studios
Developer
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Jan 25, 2017
Messages
12
Hey there. This is the Depth of Extinction dev and I wanted to let you know that the game is getting closer to release. A lot of improvements have been made in the last 6 months and we have started a Greenlight today. If you want to vote, please go here.
 

CryptRat

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They're currently selling a couple of early access versions, for half the release price (you get the full game when released).
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe
About First Access
We are at a point in the development where we need the community's help to balance the gameplay. We are going to begin selling a limited number of First Access copies of Depth of Extinction at a discount over the expected retail price ($19.99) so that you can experience the game as we are making it, have input into the final direction, and help us determine what is working and what is not.

Final Release Plan
The final game is planned to be released on Steam in October 2017. Steam Early Access is TBA.

Anyone who purchases the First Access will also receive a Steam key when the game launches there.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,952
Song in the first video sounds like they've been listening to too much of the Xenogears soundtrack.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Glad it was greenlit. When it comes out of EA I'll prolly purchase this.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/5963/ui-update-is-live-in-build-31

After a long delay (partly due to appearing in the Indie MEGASHOW in Atlanta), we are happy to announce that Build 31 is LIVE on First Access! The main new feature is the updated tactical User Interface (UI) that includes a ton of new features and hopefully looks better too.

fsDAZt.png


Here's the change log:

  • Overall UI update to buttons, menus, etc to go with a more cyber punk feel
  • Updated "Context" flags on characters and cover to give a more pixel look.
  • Total rewrite of the cover system. This is one of the things that delayed Build 31 as cover is obviously a critical system and we wanted to be sure it was ready for prime time. If you see a bug, please snap a screenshot and submit it with a bug report!
  • The cover system rewrite enabled added directional cover indicators everywhere. They also are very transparent except in the mouse area so as not to clutter up the screen
  • Help hovers are in even more places and don't appear immediately. You have to hover over the sport for a second before it appears
  • Keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything (they are labeled) - yes we know this will short circuit the tutorial and we will address that in a future build ;)
  • A lot of minor tweaks and changes that should improve the experience of the game in small ways.
So what's next in Build 32? Here's the plan at the moment:

  • Full reworking on the Status Effect system and adding new effects like Panic, On Fire, Poisoning and Bleeding. This should add even more depth and realism to the game and we are excited about it.
  • "Bleed Out" state rather than immediate death for a character
  • Remove the "walkable area" overlay and replace it with an outline (mockup below)
  • Path drawn on hover instead of click to speed up the game even more by reducing that click to draw the path. We actually had this almost working in Build 31 but had to pull it at the last minute.
vH1VZi.png


Let us know if you have any thoughts or questions!

Anyone here playing this?
How's it shaping up?
 

mikest

HoF Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 25, 2017
Messages
12
Just posted a video showing a portion of a battle to highlight the UI changes in this build.
Our website for the game is http://hofstudios.com/games/doe if anyone is interested in getting on our mailing list or getting the First Access version.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
Just posted a video showing a portion of a battle to highlight the UI changes in this build.
Our website for the game is http://hofstudios.com/games/doe if anyone is interested in getting on our mailing list or getting the First Access version.


I glanced at the video.
Couple questions/observations about it.

Is everybody that is caught in the open without cover 100% to hit? Seems kinda harsh certain death option.
Enemy target prioritisation seemed ... sub-optimal.
 
Last edited:

mikest

HoF Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 25, 2017
Messages
12
Within the range circle it is 100% to hit which is basically an answer to the famous X-Com point blank misses. Characters can also "defend" (ends turn) and there is a dodge check based on stats. Outside of the circle, the to hit drops off until 2X range where it hits 0. We may still balance this down so I'm definitely open to hearing thoughts on that topic.

Yeah, we definitely have some work to do on AI and I think also reworking the cover system might actually be the issue as it is what the AI uses to consider utility of the spaces on the board. Basically what we humans would do by scanning around they do by crunching the numbers and considering how good each spot is based on the player characters position.

We have a revision to AI pretty close to ready but we have not tested it enough to be comfortable with yet. It is planned for Build 33 right now.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/12453/build-35-updated-visuals-and-polish

Build 35: Updated Visuals and Polish
Depth of Extinction First Access » Devlog
23 hours ago by HOF Studios (@hofstudios) · Share this post:


We’ve been pretty quiet recently but are releasing Build 35 out to our First Access customers today and also releasing 100 more keys to the First Access. For those keeping track, that means we skipped 34. There are a few reasons for this but it was mainly because we just wanted to release these builds together as they focus primarily on the increasing the visual quality of the game as we work on getting the release trailer created and updating screenshots and marketing materials across all our launch platforms.

KefjXO.png


Also, we were at SIEGE in Atlanta last weekend and Depth of Extinction won the Best Design award! Huge honor to get an award, especially one recognizing the game in this way.

Build 34 focused on making big improvements to the mission screen UI. This is the screen you interact with between missions.

Mm2sfy.gif


  • Major UI overhaul. We’ve changed the theme of the mission selection screen to make it darker and changing the menu styling somewhat while adding a lot of cool new things to look at and hopefully improve the experience. There are definitely areas that we need to improve, including the merchant screen.
  • Procedural missions that will add a lot of new variables to the game and increase replayability since you are unlikely to take the same mission twice.
  • Subs will alter your team’s starting equipment, influence your initial budget and determine initial amount of fuel available. They also have different amounts of health. Yes, we said health. The sub can also take damage and be repaired which is another variable to watch as you navigate the seas toward your mission goal.
  • Out of Fuel Encounters will now add some new options if you run out of fuel. I don’t want to spoil anything except to say you are in a pretty vulnerable position when out of fuel and people will try to take advantage of that.
  • Enemies now drop loot that can include some credits or any of their equipment, For now they only drop one thing. We are still going to work on making that loot more visible but it will appear on the mini map.
  • Some balancing changes including lowering enemy damage and removing enemy critical hits in the first 1-2 areas to reduce that initial difficulty curve some players have experienced.
Build 35 focused on improving the mission visual themselves.

pYDv0H.gif

  • Mission backgrounds updated so that there are now 7 different themes (and we will be adding more) that will hopefully increase the contrast between the floor and the walls to make understanding the level easier. Also, we added a lot more interesting details that our artist had created.
  • Dynamic windows that will show a bit more of the undersea world and add some interesting visuals.
  • Minimap improvements including better color coding of mission objectives, a crisper look, more visible map indicators, expanding rather than opening in a window and clicking an area will move the camera. Future improvements will be some additional icons and dragging the camera.
  • Tutorial update to teach loot pickups and rework the tutorial level.
  • New Sub sprites that spawn in the levels, including the “pirate” themed sub in the GIF above. An improvement at some point will be a docking animation.
So what is the plan for the future? We are moving the release date from November to early next year so we can avoid the AAA game releases and the Steam winter sale. This will also give us more time to continue refining and promoting the game. The officially trailer should be ready by the end of October or early November.

Once the visuals are solid, the trailer is done and the screenshots and marketing images are updated, we can get back to improved the tactical areas of the game. We’ve got a number of improvements in mind, including:

  • More encounter options to weave an emergent story and make the game have a lot more variety.
  • More mission types that will add some additional variety to the game. All the missions are essentially the same right now: find the loot and escape to the sub. We have some great ideas on this front and hope to be able to implement some of them in an upcoming build.
  • Stopping movement on enemy sighting. The plan is to allow you to have an extra action that is “move only” if you have less than an action remaining and if you have more than one remaining, then any action will be allowed.
  • Refining the rules for how you can switch team members. Basically this will replace the new “Defer Turn” action with a more robust system to allow for freely switching between team members that are at the same initiative level
  • Custom cursors to show the action that will take place with a click. This should allow us to remove some extra clicks from the game, especially on movement.
  • Controller support which is really a necessity for releasing a game
  • Updated Enemy AI that makes each faction even more unique and allows them to use items and skills
  • Even more small improvements, polishing and bug fixes!
We don’t want to announce when all of this will be available but rest assured there will be more blog posts in the future, so stay tuned!
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/16311/build-36-new-ai-weapon-effects-and-tactical-polish

Build 36: New AI, Weapon Effects and Tactical Polish

Build 36 of Depth of Extinction is finally here! What’s included? Glad you asked!

  • New Enemy AI
  • Updated weapon effects and explosions
  • More work on loot drops
  • Enemy spotted movement interruption
  • Alert Level indicator
  • Blood on environment and walls
  • Removing Androids as playable characters
  • Lots of bug fixes and UX improvements

hat can we expect in future builds?
  • More tactical encounter types and level layouts
  • Initiative Groupings and Character Switching
  • New enemy type
  • Complete rework of character classes
  • Cutscenes
  • Rework of the HUD
Build 36 Release Notes

If you are the type that likes to know the details on the changes then read on for the Build 36 release notes...

New Enemy AI. This change has been in the works for a while now and makes our enemies significantly smarter while also introducing a few things for us to work with in balancing the game difficulty. The main upgrade is that enemies can now use skills and items. For instance, many enemies now carry grenades and will use them! We’re also excited to work on enemy classes (that are unlockable) for an upcoming release. These will create the skill trees that enemies will use. Enemies also have some attributes to make them each have unique behaviors. There should be a lot of cool area to cover here.

Updated weapon effects and explosions. There was a lot of work put into refining the effects in the game and making them more consistent. A few of the current weapons were slightly reworked and we added two new weapons, the plasma sniper and the plasma grenade launcher to this release. We’ve got at least 8 more weapon types (each with unique effects) to add in the game. We are working on ideas for a few more as well. Explosion effects also received an update, and now each grenade or explosion type is unique. We have smoke grenades (cause blindness), frag grenades (cripple), stun grenades (umm, stun?) and plasma grenades (burning).

dUxxU2.gif


More work on loot drops. Loot that enemies drop will now be picked up if you walk over it, either by stopping on the space or even while moving toward another destination. Loot will also have a “flickering” animation that will hopefully make it stand out a little better than in the last build. Loot boxes are still collected by opening and actively collecting them.

Enemy spotted movement interruption. If you run into a hidden enemy while moving, your character will stop and get an extra action. The action will be “move only” if you have less than an action remaining. If you have more than one remaining, then any action will be allowed. There’s still some refining needed on this one we think so looking forward to feedback.

gZNIyu.gif


Alert Level Indicator. Instead of just two modes (explore and battle) that we have now, we want to introduce a more nuanced system to determine how far characters can move and make it more clear which mode the player is in currently. We’re introducing a “Medium” alert level where you can move 1.5x your current movement rate. This is when enemies are alerted to your presence but not in the immediate area.

Blood on environment and walls. Hitting an enemy near a wall or a piece of cover will now splatter it with blood.

%2Ba4qsL.gif


Removing Androids as playable characters. The android armor sprites have just not kept pace with the quality of the human armors, which will need to happen if we are to use them in the game. We might bring them back as an unlockable Faction in a future build but to keep the visual quality high we decided to remove them for now.

A lot of bug fixes. Including some inconsistency with characters using cover, a problem with overwatch, and game locks when an enemy dies of a status effect or when your whole team dies.

UX improvements. Including double clicking on the recruit screen and store, more readable text that appears over characters heads, character and cover damage and flags now have a staggered display plus a lot more stuff.

Coming in Build 37
We are getting started on Build 37 and for right now, here is the plan:

More tactical encounter types. Currently, we only have “find the loot” encounters but are planning to spice that up with quite a few more. Initially, we’re going for 2 new types: “sub to sub” battles and reactor disarm.

More interesting and tactical level layouts. We want to introduce more varied map layouts and add in more interesting environments with tactical elements to make the battles more interesting.

Initiative Character Switching. This system will allow you to freely switch between team members at the same (or similar) initiative level. It should replace the slightly more clumsy “Defer Turn” action that is currently in the game. An initial version and more details on the final system will be available in our next Dev Log.

New enemy type. We will be introducing some “built in” defenses to the undersea habitats build by the Creators. The first one will be Turrets. Should be a good variety of weapons and ways we can use these. Expect to see a tight integration with the Alert system. Turrets will not necessarily be your enemy either and will introduce another tactical variable.

Some work on the camera. One of the most requested changes is to “fix” the right click and drag mechanic and offer an option for manual control of the camera.

More upcoming stuff that we haven’t mentioned before:
Complete rework of character classes. Thanks to all our First Access players that have given us a ton of data on the classes. Armed with that information, plus a lot of feedback and ideas from conventions, message board posts and within the team, we are ready to rework the in game classes. Expect a more detailed post on that in the future but we think you’ll be excited about what we have planned. This is looking like it will be in Build 38 for right now.

Cutscenes. We’ve already made some progress on this one since we wanted to get a few of these together for use in our teaser videos and trailer (coming soon-ish!) but they are not in the game just yet. Cutscenes will mostly be seen as part of boss fights but we have ideas for some interesting encounters that can be unlocked as you explore the world of DoE. No definite plan on which build this will be in yet though.

o1hLHp.gif


HUD Overhaul. Now that we are close to finalizing the elements that will appear in the HUD, we will be doing a visual overhaul similar to what we did on the mission navigation screens. We’ll probably post some mockups and in-progress screenshots soon. It’s unclear when this will release for now.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/20564/build-37-platform-environments-and-pirates-arrrgh

Build 37 - Platform Environments and Pirates! Arrrgh!

Finally! Build 37 is here. Save files *should* be compatible but for best experience, i would start a new game.

The biggest (and maybe most interesting change) are the new “Platform” environments. These battles take place on the surface of the ocean on top of the remains of some ruined facilities. These should make for some different combat situations as the levels are laid out in a completely different way than the current interior levels and will require different tactics in order to succeed.

3FSQSH.gif


Platform missions are on the remains of old and ruined facilities that have been retrofitted as homes. Some may have secrets to find!
Camera controls have also been tweaked, especially the right click and drag camera movement (try it or reverse it in settings!). We also reversed the drag direction since I am assured that the old “reverse” drag is what most people consider the regular drag. I guess I’m not most people. I also realized that screen shake had been disabled prior to this build, so that’s back and improved (from before?). Also, a bug that did not actually give full control of the camera to the player when the “manual control” setting was enables has now been fixed. I hope.

A new faction makes an appearance in this build: Pirate! Argh! Avast! Swashbuckle! You’ll have sub to sub combat when things go south in a Pirate encounter. These should be a fun change of pace as they are short and only require you to eliminate the enemies for now. We have some more things planned for pirates in a future build.

Uc5ARH.png


Pirate missions are short and sweet
“Mini Boss” missions will now appear on your map and give you a bit of an extra challenge (if you want it). These missions (and the regular Boss missions) now take place in a special Arena style map that is not procedurally generated and has no Fog of War. Just beat the boss and get the heck out of there.

Some “cinematic” style text has been added to the beginning of the Boss and Pirate missions. Our long term plan is to replace all the spoken dialog in the game with this style of text. It just makes more sense from a budget perspective than voice over. We’ve got a lot of plans to make this a nice system to help develop the characters and give each one a specific personality.

Smaller Changes in Build 37:

  • Refactored how missions get created/allocated to make them less random such that you won’t see a lot of the same mission type in a given area.
  • Each interior station you visit will now have a more distinct theme related to the original purpose that the creators gave it. We call this the “facility” type. Some facilities we have in this build are the Computing Station, Medical Facility and the Robot Assembly area.
  • The cover that you see in facilities now has some connection to the enemy faction living there
  • UI work to update the loading screen and some of the modals to have a better style and more cohesion between them
I9SMtA.gif


Some of the new cover formations you will see in different types of facilities
nTPHwl.gif


Raiders don't have the best living conditions

Build 37 Bug fixes

  • A lot of soft locks should be resolved now
  • Some camera bugs
  • Skill bugs (like enemies using covering fire on themselves)
  • Weapon Bugs (notably the grenades not damaging cover)
  • Boss not spawning on final level
What’s coming next in Build 38?

We’ll make a blog post next week about the major Character Class Refactoring we have been planning for a few months now. We’ve got 8 different main classes planned out, plus there will be 4 enemy faction classes that can be unlocked. It’s possible not all of the character classes will make the cut and at least 1 or 2 will have to be unlocked.

We’ll be working on another set of new maps and some more Facility types to keep things interesting. Farms and Power generation are the plan for facilities and some new “cramped” interior spaces for the maps.

Another big change will be that the text encounter outcomes will start affecting the missions. This feels like another good future blog post topic. Picture events like “It’s a trap!” resulting in your characters being deep in an enemy installation and having to get back to the sub. For larger teams, we might even split you up, increasing the challenge.

We will also be looking for some volunteers to help us test out new Steam specific stuff like Achievements and Cloud saves. Keep an eye out for an email!

 

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