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Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
Okay. Short andswer: No

Long answer: No, but you can bet your ass we're going to announce it with all the bells and whistles so you'll definitely know it's on
 
Last edited:

daveyd

Savant
Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Messages
287
Kasparov I just noticed on your site that the game is now planned for mobile devices. While I understand how this kind of RPG (with no traditonal combat system) could function fine on tablets, I can't help but be a bit concerned. Could you dispel any fears that this game will feature shitty mobile UI or technical limitations to accommodate tablets? Micro-transactions / in-app purchases? I'd like to assume not but I was previously excited this was an actual PC-exclusive CRPG.
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
Kasparov I just noticed on your site that the game is now planned for mobile devices. While I understand how this kind of RPG (with no traditional combat system) could function fine on tablets, I can't help but be a bit concerned. Could you dispel any fears that this game will feature shitty mobile UI or technical limitations to accommodate tablets? Micro-transactions / in-app purchases? I'd like to assume not but I was previously excited this was an actual PC-exclusive cRPG.
Haha. Oh that. No-no-no. Rest assured the game is for mouse and keyboard first and foremost, everything else second. So no need for worries on that front. My machine with Windows 8 on it still has days it fancies itself a fucking tablet, so I sympathize with your concerns.
 

Expon

Scholar
Joined
Sep 26, 2015
Messages
169
Kasparov I just noticed on your site that the game is now planned for mobile devices. While I understand how this kind of RPG (with no traditonal combat system) could function fine on tablets, I can't help but be a bit concerned. Could you dispel any fears that this game will feature shitty mobile UI or technical limitations to accommodate tablets? Micro-transactions / in-app purchases? I'd like to assume not but I was previously excited this was an actual PC-exclusive CRPG.
Trust me when i say i haven't played one isometric on mobile that felt like it had awkward controls, developers tend to make the game for pc then port it to mobile without changing the ui at all, as mostly you just use the right and left mouse. Heck even rtwp rpgs like baldurs gate and kotor have nice touch controls
 

daveyd

Savant
Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Messages
287
Kasparov I just noticed on your site that the game is now planned for mobile devices. While I understand how this kind of RPG (with no traditonal combat system) could function fine on tablets, I can't help but be a bit concerned. Could you dispel any fears that this game will feature shitty mobile UI or technical limitations to accommodate tablets? Micro-transactions / in-app purchases? I'd like to assume not but I was previously excited this was an actual PC-exclusive CRPG.
Trust me when i say i haven't played one isometric on mobile that felt like it had awkward controls, developers tend to make the game for pc then port it to mobile without changing the ui at all, as mostly you just use the right and left mouse. Heck even rtwp rpgs like baldurs gate and kotor have nice touch controls

I'm not worried about the touch controls brah, I want to play this game on PC. BG and KOTOR were made without consideration for how they might play on tablets. It's the PC games which are planned to be ported to mobile OS from the beginning that suffer. See: Shadowrun Returns (Which I still really love but I can't help but think it would've been better if HBS had realized their new focus = quality mantra from the beginning).
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
"BURY MY HEART IN ICEWIND DALE (A REVIEW OF HEART OF WINTER)"

kinematroopika-150x150.jpg

Robert Kurvitz
Game Designer

This morning I want to talk about Heart of Winter – the little known and seldom played expansion pack of the first Icewind Dale game. It’s an unlikely reference point for the location design of No Truce With The Furies’ district of Martinaise.

Why? Because of Lonelywood, Heart of Winter’s central hub. It’s the best late game standalone village I’ve ever played. Late game what? Yeah, you know – like Umar Hills in Baldur’s Gate 2, Dyrford in Pillars of Eternity, Tuchanka in Mass Effect 2, or even the (not equally well executed) Curst in Planescape: Torment.

The late game standalone village is a sweet spot for 10+ level characters. A moments respite, usually a backwater. This allows the story to reboot on a smaller scale. Both the “late game” and “standalone” parts make the village a perfect vertical slice for the main game. It also means they’re in development longer, which gives them extra polish time. The writing tightens up, minor characters become more detailed. Developers like to show these locations to journalists – to avoid spoilers the local mystery is connected to the main story in an easygoing, slightly tangential way.

Of all the late game villages I’ve seen Lonelywood certainly takes the prize. This gem is doomed to obscurity by being hidden in Icewind Dale’s expansion. Personally, I made it to Lonelywood two years ago. Back when Heart or Winter was first released I ignored it. Few played it, or have since.

Coming off Icewind Dale – oh boy is there a change of pace. The hubs in the main game are raw, minimal affairs. The first thing you need to know about Lonelywood is that it’s written by Chris Avellone. And not just “some of it” or “features some MCA writing” like Pillars. No. It’s full speed ahead Avellone mode with inventively structured dialogues, great thigh slapping material, ambitious side quests, level design that fills your path with little nuggets of interconnectedness, you name it! HoW features most, if not all, avellonian tropes. Like: the mysterious simpleton (or is he?) who says weird stuff in an otherwise unremarkable shack; the strikingly well written side character who steals the show in an Inn; an old “woman scorned” with an idiosyncratic speech pattern. Especially her! I found the Seer endearingly formulaic among these types of Avellone characters. It really shows you the nuts and bolts of how he writes his famous women.

It’s all of jarringly high quality after Icewind Dale’s spartan writing. There is this lovely moment where the old lady, in typically inter-connected MCA fashion, comments on all the other female characters in Icewind Dale. One by one. These gals are one note, one line baddies who had an inventory and a name. Now all of a sudden she’s getting all Ravel about them. Exhuding to them in riddles, decrying the fate of the woman in the middle ages.

It’s out of place in the context of the main game, but it fits Heart of Winter’s separate narrative very well. I think it’s the third best thing MCA has written. (After Torment and the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs.)

I played it two months before we began pre-production. Lonelywood prepared me for No Truce With The Furies in a lot of ways. Mainly, it inspired me to write an RPG that’s only the late game standalone village. (Although our Martinaise district is, techically, a city district. But still.)

Heart of Winter itself has it’s flaws – although few – but it’s central hub shares none of them. The best thing about it is how the sidequests are rolled out, foreshadowed, branched into. The guide character – a bored little girl – has some very nifty dialogue. The player gets to exhibit unexpected amounts of character (our main goal with No Truce). The scene with the kid is set up superbly: she lies, you may lie in return, her character slowly reveals. The village also sports a side quest that fakes the passage of time by taking it’s cues from your progression in the main quest. This lets them give the impression of a serial killer on the loose. Events happen that you feel you could have stopped. There’s a ticking clock feeling that I’m dying to emulate in a more complex manner. How the girl introduces the player to the Inn and her bored mother – and how you get to resolve both later – should be systematic touchstones for location design.

And there’s a good poetry moment in there too! I know it’s hard to believe, but there really is. The bard in the Inn conveys his back story in verse and by god I don’t know how, but it doesn’t suck. On the whole the Inn is brilliant. We’ve outright stolen and expanded upon many of it’s tricks. There’s another event cued to coincide with the main quest – an attack on the Inn. This finishes the inn keepers’ story. Lovely stuff.

Anyway, it’s all impeccable really. A shiny little pearl of sunlit snow and creaky log houses, one final parting gift from the Infinity engine. The opaque packaging kept me from opening it for 13 years. Once I did it inspired me to go through with the insanities of game production and financing.

I hope I didn’t waste your time talking about it on this winter’s morning. And I hope I get to outdo it.


Teaser screenshot of our snow tech​
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
Always interestin wi hubs in crpgs, to me at least, how little love they're given along with worldbuilding in general. I mean sometimes you may as well just have a sell loot an buy more shit screen, cos locations are that dumbed down, an they miss so many fuckin opportunities to expand an detail the gameworld an players through gameplay. I think its nature o crpgs as they stand now, relentlessly an unimaginatively following tropes that demand travel to big bad, that demand new areas to grind xp in an make players feel like they're in an epic. Its like a novice GM, inventing massive worlds an cultures full o weird history, while experienced GM slaves over a single village, and lands around it to create a detailed masterpiece of reactivity and interconnectedness. Big fat howitzer novel versus sniper focused short story.

Thats what I always strive to create as a GM now, little locations that are so interesting an well built they can hold the attention of and satisfy my players. Its whaqt I look for in crpgs an all, but fuckin hard to find as most players regards worldbuilding, detail an reactivity as not part of the "core" experience of crpgs, an cheer on all streamlining an feature strippin that goes on, claiming that anything but grindin xp an recyclin loot is "busywork" so may as well be jettisoned. An then they wonder where decline came from.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,885
I didn't know that MCA wrote Lonelywood but it makes sense. It really was a nicely done place. I played it originally but forgot all about it but I "recently" replayed it with IWDEE version and noticed all these cool stuff that you rarely see in RPGs. I am very happy you are taking that as inspiration, we need more Lonelywoods in our games.
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
OKAY! Finally, what you´ve all been waiting for - a wall of code :) We´re this close to coming out with an actual announcement, though. It could be later today. Fingers crossed. Until then, our Code Archwizard Veljo:

(Part 2 can be found here.)

Last time, I left you hanging a bit – not only was InputManager.cs quite long, it also used attributes and classes I haven’t even shown yet. Props to those of you who still understood the idea; maybe my code isn’t quite as arcane and hard to follow as I sometimes fear.

Still, better late than never (or so they say). Here are the missing puzzle pieces:

PersistentAttribute.cs
/// <summary>Mark the SingletonComponent as Persistent (it will call DontDestroyOnLoad(this) on Awake).</summary>
[System.AttributeUsage(System.AttributeTargets.Class)]
public class PersistentAttribute : System.Attribute {}
SelfSpawningAttribute.cs
/// <summary>Mark the SingletonComponent as Self-Spawning (it will create a new GameObject with this component if one is not present).</summary>
[System.AttributeUsage(System.AttributeTargets.Class)]
public class SelfSpawningAttribute : System.Attribute {

public UnityEngine.HideFlags hideFlags { get; set; }
public string name { get; set; }

public SelfSpawningAttribute() { hideFlags = UnityEngine.HideFlags.None; name = string.Empty; }
}
SingletonComponent.cs
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public abstract class SingletonComponent<T> : BaseComponent where T : MonoBehaviour {

protected static T singleton;
protected static bool isReadonly = false;

protected static A GetAttribute<A>() where A : System.Attribute {
return System.Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(typeof(T), typeof(A)) as A;
}

/// <summary>
/// Use this instead of GameObject.Find to get a reference to the persistent object.
/// </summary>
public static T Singleton {
get {
if (singleton==null && !isReadonly) {
T res = FindObjectOfType<T>();
if (!res) {
SelfSpawningAttribute ssa = GetAttribute<SelfSpawningAttribute>();
if (ssa!=null) {
string n = string.IsNullOrEmpty(ssa.name) ? string.Format("{0} (selfspawned)", typeof(T).Name) : ssa.name;
res = (new GameObject(n)).AddComponent<T>();
res.hideFlags = ssa.hideFlags;
}
}
Singleton = res;
}
return singleton;
}
protected set {
if (isReadonly || singleton==value) {} // already set to this value
else if (singleton && value) { // violation of singleton pattern
Debug.LogWarning(typeof(T).Name + " Singleton already set to different object!");
Destroy(singleton.gameObject);
}
singleton = value;
}
}

protected override void Awake() {
base.Awake();
Singleton = this as T;
}

protected virtual void OnDestroy() {
if (singleton==(this as T)) Singleton = null;
//base.OnDestroy();
}

protected virtual void OnApplicationQuit() { isReadonly = true; }
}
You might have seen similar solutions elsewhere. It is a nice implementation of singleton pattern for Unity C#, also handling some “gotcha” moments you might stumble upon.

Agent.cs
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Agent : System.IDisposable {

protected bool _isFinished;
protected Behaviour parent;

public Agent(Behaviour parent) {
this.parent = parent;
}

public virtual void Dispose() {
_isFinished = true;
}

public bool IsFinished {
get {
// Make IsFinished verify parent status on each read
if (!_isFinished && !parent) Dispose();
return _isFinished;
}
}
}

public class AgentCollection {

protected HashSet<Agent> agents;
protected float time;
protected float interval;

public AgentCollection(float cleanupInterval = 10f) {
interval = cleanupInterval;
}

public bool Add(Agent item) { return agents.Add(item); }

public void Clear() {
foreach (Agent a in agents) a.Dispose();
agents.Clear();
}

public void Update(float deltaTime) {
time += deltaTime;
if (time>=interval) {
agents.RemoveWhere(a => a.IsFinished);
time = 0f;
}
}
}
Agent is a light-weight entity charged with an ongoing or recurring task. InputManager internally implements specialized agents for delivering input events to subscribers (that is, scripts), on the condition that the script is active and enabled at the time. This is certainly not the only way to solve this, nor might it be the best solution. Still, it works and made implementation easier.

Wrap-up (for now)
This is not the final solution by any means. It currently lacks runtime customization (keycodes and axes are hard-coded as attribute parameters), and it doesn’t mesh with UI event system. I have designs on how to tackle these, but for now it will have to wait it’s turn in the big ol’ TO DO list.

Thank you for reading!
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Looks interesting as fuck. Also, I love how you guys are incorporating certain PnP mechanics that we don't often see. For instance, red checks remind me of the "fail forward" concept in tabletop RPGs, meaning a failure actually advances the story instead of merely being the absence of success.

:incline:
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
whoa this is now a police procedural RPG?
Yeah, didn´t you check the trailer?



There´s some blurb attached too:

We’ve been really really busy – and oh boy are we ready to show you what we’ve worked on! This is the first taste of our game: the world, the music, the voice acting. It’s a teaser trailer, an honest to god depiction of what to expect from No Truce With The Furies. And we’re proud like hell of it.

The company is now called ZA/UM.

There will be a new site in January, showing off more features.

We would like to thank British Sea Power for the music and Mikee Goodman for the delivery of those lines. And you for tuning in – expect a lot more from us in the coming months. We adore role-playing games and No Truce With The Furies is what we always dreamed RPG’s could be.
is it for us to judge code quality? StyleCop would flag few things...

Since you brought this topic, for a small studio do you implement any processes to ensure code quality(code reviews for example)?
yeah, sure
Looks interesting as fuck. Also, I love how you guys are incorporating certain PnP mechanics that we don't often see. For instance, red checks remind me of the "fail forward" concept in tabletop RPGs, meaning a failure actually advances the story instead of merely being the absence of success.

:incline:
Cheers, man
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
Finally, a video!

P.S. Marat Sar Kasparov You can change the company title under your names: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?account/personal-details
Sweet; do, did, done and gave Marat Sar the heads up as well. Thanks.

Forgive me if someone already inquired about this earlier in this thread, but are there any plans for English translation of that novel that apparently shares this game's setting?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kurvitz#Literature

Hey. YOU ARE NOT FORGIVEN. REPENT! And you may be. But the book? Translating a book is a can of worms we´re keeping in the cupboard under lock and key - the game is the main focus right now and there are no plans for any translations until No Truce is released. After? We sure hope so.

EDIT: oh, no! new page. don´t miss the trailer:
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
6,207
Location
The island of misfit mascots
I have no modding skills, but am likely to have some free time over christmas, and am willing to abandon all personal and familial responsibilities, and mainline dexamphetamine, so as to spend every single minute of it harassing modders under multiple accounts until they cave under perceived peer pressure - so long as I have a sufficient incentive.

So in that context, what is the developer's position on someone creating a mod that maintains your core gameplay, but changes all the enemy types, and alters the title to what everyone here first read it as: "No Truce with the Furries"?
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
I have no modding skills, but am likely to have some free time over christmas, and am willing to abandon all personal and familial responsibilities, and mainline dexamphetamine, so as to spend every single minute of it harassing modders under multiple accounts until they cave under perceived peer pressure - so long as I have a sufficient incentive.

So in that context, what is the developer's position on someone creating a mod that maintains your core gameplay, but changes all the enemy types, and alters the title to what everyone here first read it as: "No Truce with the Furries"?

I hereby grant you permission to mod any lesser beings to clearly superior anthropomorphic equivalents. None other than the great and terrible Marat Sar himself can revoke this edict.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,175
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
anyway i hope you guys have enough ammo to shoot down "this is not fucking RPG" argument
 

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