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Risk of Rain 2

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
http://hopooo.tumblr.com/post/160452455554/devblog-1-our-next-project-weve-been-working
Hopoo Games DevBlog
Blog of Hopoo Games, developer of Risk of Rain and DEADBOLT.


DevBlog #1 - Our Next Project

We’ve been working on a new game for about 6 months, and we’ve been shooting ideas back and forth on how the best way to announce it is. When’s the best timing? At what point in development? Announcing a game is a delicate process.

But… we really want to share with people what we’ve been working so hard on, and we really can’t keep our lips sealed much longer, so we’re just gonna throw it out there with a devblog. So here it is: DevBlog #1 for Risk of Rain 2.

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Fullscreen

As a preface, I reaaaaally want to stress this: the game is still very VERY early in development.

None of the systems, artstyles, assets, or game design choices will necessarily translate to the final game. We’re learning as we go along - I hope that you guys find it as interesting to read as we do to develop.

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Risk of Rain 2 is our first fully 3D project! We think that 3D allows for much deeper design spaces and more possibilities for cool gameplay. Feelings of scale and atmosphere are also much stronger. We are really happy with the core of Risk of Rain - and we’re finding it plays even better in 3D. It just won’t crash anymore.

There’s a bunch of other things I want to talk about, but I’m anxious and nervous about writing this so they’re all escaping my mind. So uh, yeah. There you go. We’ll be spending the next few devblogs talking about all the awesome systems we have in place (unified character system, item proc chains, etc) with future ones talking about our progress through development. I promise that we’re doing all these things because we think it’ll make the coolest game. And to all our fans - thanks for sticking with us. We hope you’re all as excited as we are.

- Hopoo Games Team

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tumblr_opngw2SgNq1s1t3oyo2_540.gif
 

Zenith

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Apr 26, 2017
Messages
296
I'm getting a deja vu. What was that other dev studio who made a great 2D platformer and then took on a 3D procedural stylized project, never to be heard from again? Like 5+ years ago?

[edit] I remembered, it was Hitbox, the Dustforce devs. Still working, and apparently selling pieces of their code on Unity Store.
 
Last edited:

Latmey

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Dec 22, 2015
Messages
6
Reminds me of the recently announced Momodora sequel. While I have my doubts on whether or not the transition from 2D to 3D will go well, I'm glad to see indie devs being ambitious and trying new things.
 

Siobhan

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Risk of Rain 2 is our first fully 3D project! We think that 3D allows for much deeper design spaces and more possibilities for cool gameplay. Feelings of scale and atmosphere are also much stronger. We are really happy with the core of Risk of Rain - and we’re finding it plays even better in 3D.
What a substantive and insightful analysis. I read the same kind of vague claims 20 years ago, when everything suddenly had to be 3D and 2D was just too limited. The result: tons of turds and entire genres going the way of the dodo. If Risk of Rain 2 should turn out well, one can only hope that transitioning to 3D won't become the next big fad in the indie scene. Although it does make historical sense: if you're stuck reliving the glory days of the 80s and early 90s, it's only logical that you'd eventually move on to the mid-late 90s.
 

Arnust

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Huh, the thread's a bit out of date. I'll list the last devblog if you won't mind.
http://hopooo.tumblr.com/post/166010258719/devblog-7-deferred-rendering-hi-this-last
  • DevBlog #7 - Deferred Rendering

    hi

    This last month we’ve been spending a lot of our time on internal stuff that probably isn’t that entertaining to read about (optimizations and restructuring). However, one of the more interesting things was switching our rendering pipeline from “forward” rendering to “deferred” rendering.

    In short, we get lights for much cheaper than if we were in forward rendering, allowing us to attach lights to stuff like projectiles, monsters, and item displays - which is fantastic for a game like Risk of Rain 2, which is full of projectiles. We also get access to a few post-process options like decals and sobel outlines for much cheaper. However, anyone who’s done a similar process knows its very difficult to get Unity to work with non-PBR(physically based rendering) lighting models in deferred rendering.

    For the nitty-gritty for what that actually means, check out this link (https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/forward-rendering-vs-deferred-rendering–gamedev-12342). For those using Unity and wanting to know where to begin for their own custom deferred pipeline, start with (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidLeon/20170519/298374/NextGen_Cel_Shading_in_Unity_56.php). If you’re comfortable with the built-in Standard shader material setup, you can stop at the end of the article. However, we wanted custom control over the information sent to our gbuffers (so we could have a more stylized rendering model), so we went a bit farther. In result, our gbuffer setup at the moment is:

    RT0: Diffuse color (rgb), Occlusion/Unused (a)

    RT1: Phong Strength ®, Phong Exponent (b), Ramp Information (g), Smoothness (a)

    RT2: Normal (rgb), outline strength (a)

    So we get lots of lights now, at a huge performance boost.

    tumblr_inline_ox99sldgv81rcwq50_400.gif

    In the next weeks we’re planning on working more on the game outside of the run - things like custom input systems, pausing, menus, splitscreen, monster logs, and user profiles. Also, just so this devblog isn’t super stale, here’s a few more random .gifs. Cheers!

    tumblr_inline_ox99ooItAK1rcwq50_400.gif

    tumblr_inline_ox99paUamx1rcwq50_400.gif

Just as a prototype already looks quite good!
 

Arnust

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Not much to dig from here, but here it is regardless:

http://hopooo.tumblr.com/post/168126418719/ror2-qa-12217
  • RoR2 Q&A 12/2/17


    Since we got a million asks, I’ll collapse all the answers periodically into one giant QA so it doesn’t ruin your tumblr feed. I tried to answer every question - if yours isnt there, someone else might’ve asked the same question. Expand below to read!

    Q: Are you thinking about putting out a beta version to test or are you just waiting for the game to be fully released
    A: Not sure exactly how we want to do it – we HAVE to have some way of getting the game out to testers, especially for networking/matchmaking testing. It will most likely be some form of closed/limited beta, but we really haven’t though too much about it.

    Q: Any ideas on what the system requirements could be? Will they be high or playable on most machines? Also will it work with integrated graphics?
    A: Most likely the game will be pretty light for GPU with our graphical style, but CPU intensive. What that actually translates to won’t be until the game is closer to launch, where we start optimizing.

    Q: ROR1 most loved thing me and my friends liked to do is ruining the framerate with all the items that we had. we had lots of fun crashing the game for whoever hosted the game. might this still be able to happen? I’m looking forward to the release anyway and so are my friends especialy with peer to peer now we can connect better.
    A: Uhh hopefuly you won’t be able to crash the game, but the game will still scale infinitely like it did previously

    Q: Could you make it so that when you use Unstable Watch and timestop, all colors in the game become inverted for the duration? And if you want to go all the way with a certain reference, have only Chef’s cleavers stop in midair at the edge of a radius from an enemy, and when the timestop ends the cleavers hit at the same time.
    A: No memes

    Q: Super excites for risk of rain 2. Im real glad i found it in a steam summer sale, bought then and after that bought it for my ps4. Are we going to see any new characters? (Bandit will always be fav so as long as hes good im happy)
    A: Yes, definitely new characters!

    Q: can you make one of the new death messages be “HOST WHEN?”
    A: No memes!!!!

    Q: While Vita’s out of the question, what about the Switch, which basically seems to have slotted itself in the ‘more powerful handheld device’ niche?
    A: We’d obviously love to be on the switch, but that ultimately depends on A. can we optimize the game to run on the Switch, and B. do we have the technical know-how to actually get it running? Porting to consoles tends to be a much more dramatic change than people expect, even if the engine natively exports to it.

    Q: Hi. I’ve been a fan of risk of rain for the past few years. I just want to ask: in risk of rain, some mechanics like heaven cracker can pierce a line of enemies and the huntress’ ability to hit and run. With the change from 2D to 3D environment, how will they work? There are many other abilities and mechanics that i also want to ask about, but these two were the first ones that i could remember immediately.
    A: We’re not going to bring back any mechanics that don’t fit just for the sake of continuity – however, the Heaven Cracker I can see being actually more fun in 3D since you have to actually align yourself with the enemies. Since everyone can shoot and run in the 3D version, Huntress’ niche is sorta gone, but we have some clever ideas to make that back

    Q: In DevBlog #8 you explain some of the steam integration going into Risk of Rain 2 which will make a lot of people happy but will RoR2 also be available without steam for those who prefer? For example will I be able to buy it on GOG like I did RoR1, and play LAN games without steam?
    A: Right now we’re focusing on making it work via Steam P2P, but (I believe) that we haven’t done anything to explicity lock out connections via IP. You just won’t get the same Nat punchthrough benefits (I’ll have to ask Jeff, our network dude about it to make sure this is correct, but afaik I think that’s right)

    Q: Would you guys happen to have an idea of when you think the game would be realeased?
    A: Nope! Hopefully not too long!

    Q: Hello! I loved Risk of Rain 1 and it is great to play with friends. I have two questions (technically three, I’m cheating). 1. I am assuming you’re going to release it on steam, so that said will there be steam multiplayer integration? Like… Invite via steam, games are created with the help of steam peer-to-peer. It was a pain to get 4 people playing on one server without port forwarding. 2. Will there be a better way to keep track of items? 3. Can you add a menu to see what items you have?
    A: Yes, steam invites and all that are the goal. I know we talked about holding TAB to expand the item menu so you could see more at once, but we haven’t actually done that yet. I know it was a bit silly for it to be uncropped and expanding off the screen.

    Q: Is this still in development?
    A: No we’re just pretending

    Q: Are you gonna have the same soundtrack from the first game? A different soundtrack? A mix of both? (Don’t get rid of the Dried Lake or Sunken Tombs songs).
    A: That’ll ultimately be up to Chris, but I’m sure he’s in the same boat as us and doesn’t want to cover the same ground that we did previously.

    Q: I was telling a friend how excited I was for this, and he expressed a concern I’d like to ask you guys about. He said that, being 3D, the game might end up either not as hectic as the first, or too hectic, what with the hoards coming from all around you. What’s your take on this? (I’m not actually too worried about it, but I still wanna hear your take on the matter.)
    A: Currently, we’re using SFX as a tool to present not only how close an enemy is, but what state they’re in and how many there are. Since I’ve also been playing the game for like a million hours I’ve also developed the ability to recognize which enemy by the frequency of their screenshake… but that won’t be relevant to most players. We’re really hoping to avoid radars or anything like that for awareness.

    Q: Just wanted to say, RoR2 is looking to be coming along fantastically. I really love that you are constantly taking things in unexpected directions– I never expected to see the game translated to 3D but you have done it and I can imagine many hundreds of hours spent playing. Will Chris Christodoulou be working on the music this game as well?
    A: Yes, he will be back!

    Q: Have you considered calling the second Risk of Rain “Risk of Twain”?
    A: Not until now

    Q: This is kind of a question and a half. How big will the RoR2 maps be and will all the RoR1 maps return in 3D with the additions of new maps or just overall new maps?
    A: Overall we’re not really looking at the previous maps for the inspiration for our new ones – we’re not making RoR 3D, but a sequel, so we don’t really want to recreate too much old stuff!

    Q: Since RoR2 is moving to more dynamic network model, how will people with screwy NATs be affected? NAT Punchthrough is great and all, but if implemented incorrectly can lead to multiple users on the same NAT being unable to join servers outside of the NAT (See Rainbow Six Siege). Will users still be able to host dedicated servers like the old game? What does this mean for users buying the game through GOG/Humble Bundle? Really hope everything goes swimmingly because port forwarding sucks.
    A: This is the exact reason that we will have to have some form of limited beta, because this is something that we can’t recreate in office. I honestly don’t know enough to respond accurately on what would happen in that particular situation, but thanks for the heads up

    Q: Relative to the first one, will Risk of Rain 2 be a sequel, prequel, completely unrelated, or even have story at all?
    A: Sequel!

    Q: How were you going to implement artifacts this time around? Is it going to be based around areas that are randomly generated and you sometimes have access, or multiple spawn locations, etc.
    A: Dunno, we haven’t implemented really any form of map permutations yet. The artifacts also ended up taking a much more important role in the game than we initially expected – not sure if the old way of unlocking is strange if it’s to be a core feature.

    Q: (Big fan) I just had some curious questions; How many characters do you intend there to be in RoR2?, How differently do you plan on changing the previous characters?, Any hints on the final boss? pls, What is the estimated price of the game? and will their be any chance of PvP? Cannot wait, super hyped and keep up the great work :D
    A: We’re aiming for 10 characters on launch. No spoilers or hints! Definitely not PvP in any official capacity since the networking structure wasn’t designed for a good PvP experience.

    Q: I’ve got three questions : 1) Will it be called RoR2 or will you find / have you found something else ? 2) Why the hell is there one more 'o’ in the tumblr URL than in the actual 'Hopoo’ name ? 3) What’s the average of the team’s favorite meals ? thx xoxo <3
    A: I think it’ll just be RoR2. The hopoo tumblr was taken on creation of this tumblr, so we had to make it hopooo instead ☹

    Q: Will RoR2 reveal why the Contact Light was carrying a teleporter linked to a planet crammed with hostile lifeforms?
    A: I’d like to explore what the heck is up with the humans in this game, but I sorta wish I had a better avenue that’s not just item logs and monster logs.

    Q: I’m going to ask the real questions, is Sniper a man or woman? This is important because reasons.
    A:

    Q: Theres something that confuses me alot about risk of rain 2. It’s the lore. If the characters have left the planet, why would they come back?
    A: Canonically, the returning characters were never on the Contact Light to begin with (and presumably there could totally be like, a bunch of engineers and commando suits.)

Q: I’m going to ask the real questions, is Sniper a man or woman? This is important because reasons.
A:

:argh:
 

Arnust

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http://www.pcgamer.com/we-finally-get-our-first-look-at-risk-of-rain-2/

We finally get our first look at Risk of Rain 2


By Austin Wood 3 hours ago

We sit down with Hopoo Games to check in on the long-awaited sequel.

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Duncan "Hopoo" Drummond and Paul "PaulTheGoat" Morse started development on hit 2D roguelike Risk of Rain in their sophomore year at the University of Washington. It took them a year to finish Risk of Rain while going to school full-time. They've long since graduated and doubled down on their studio, Hopoo Games, but even so, Risk of Rain 2, already a year in development, is nowhere near done. It was announced as a 3D shooter earlier this year, but Hopoo has been tight-lipped ever since. So, when I got in touch with Drummond and Morse to get a much-needed status report, I had plenty of questions.

Responses edited for clarity and length.



It seems like Risk of Rain 2 was announced pretty quietly.

Paul Morse: We waited a long time to announce anything. If we were doing a traditional sequel in 2D, it would have been much easier. Since we were switching to 3D it was kind of scary, never having done a 3D game and it being such a dramatic shift. We didn't want to give this half-assed "we're doing 3D, it might work." We wanted to make sure it was a solid idea before showing anything, and it took quite a while to get to the point where we were even comfortable showing a screenshot or any assets.

Duncan Drummond: Our team is really small. We don't have the luxury of having someone dedicated to keeping the hype going. We're working with a development blog because it's easiest for us. Hopefully as we get closer to launch, we'll start putting out trailers, putting out press kits. This is more of an announcement to the fans, "we're working on this game, we didn't stop making games."

And it is coming into some form now?

PM: We've got it to a point where it's not super scary for us. We've gotten to a rhythm of creating characters, creating items.

DD: I would say we've definitely hit a stride at this point where we're less about "what direction are we going?" and more "what kind of content can we create?"

PM: Getting everything to that point took quite a while, but I think now that we're there we feel a little more comfortable showing things off.

Why the shift to 3D?

DD: Risk of Rain 2 didn't start off in 3D. We had a 2D prototype. The twist for that one was you played as the monsters in the previous game. We didn't want to make Risk of Rain but again. Something I personally really wanted was to be able to display items on your body. This was a key part of a lot of fan art that I saw, and also the cover art. Doing that in 2D was actually fairly difficult. It's just sprites. So we went from 2D to 2.5D just for the sake of being able to place these items on your body more easily. And by the time we were at 2.5D, we were like "we're almost at 3D at this point, should we just give it a shot?"

PM: We had this 2D prototype for quite a while. But once we started talking about showing items and moving to 2.5D and then to 3D, it was pretty rapid.

DD: Less than a month, I want to say.

PM: Yeah, one week it was 2D, the next it was 2.5, and the next week it was 3D. And we were pretty much making the assets in 3D and showing them as a 2D thing, so it was kind of a waste. Once we transitioned to 3D, it was like, "OK, we can actually do this if we want to." That's where it took off.

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DD: I would also say we hit our stride purely from experience. We just are not familiar with Unity. I've never modelled before this project, I purely used Paint for the previous game. It was a big jump for me to learn all the rules and how to actually do it. It was a mix of a lot of technical details along with skill level.

PM: Our 2D games were our first 2D games, and with this transition to 3D, we've never worked in Unity or things like that. We've got to relearn everything before we start making games again. It's a pretty strange place to be but it's definitely paying off.

What features were hardest to translate from 2D to 3D?

PM: I would say the level design. In 2D it's pretty simple to go from a prototype of a level to making the tiles and putting them together and creating assets. But in 3D, it feels like you have one shot once you get into designing the level. And then prototyping in 3D is much more difficult. Do you use Lego? Do you use clay? Do you use other programs like SketchUp? Do you fully make this world in detail and then just make it again? That's been one of our harder points than a 2D version.

DD: The cost of time per asset has gone up a lot. With our previous projects, we did a lot of our design via iteration. We would do a very rapid prototype and then refine it. But in 3D it doesn't work that way. A lot of times, if you want to change step two, you ruin every step afterward. You have to start over from scratch. You can't refine and iterate in the same way.

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I've seen some familiar enemies in your blog posts, but also new abilities.

DD: We can't translate anything directly from 2D to 3D in terms of actual gameplay because it's so different. We've been reworking every monster that we've brought back. We found out melee monsters are actually much easier to beat in 3D because you have an entire dimension to kite them. So the golem, which was entirely melee, now has a laser attack. And the lemurian can now shoot fireballs. We also want to explore flying monsters. Now the wisps are actually flying. While they're still the same characters, they behave entirely differently.

PM: Another reason we did this is because, early on, we wanted to make sure 3D is something viable and fun to play. That's always our main focus: is this going to be fun to play? We had the commando, the lemurian, the golem, these assets that were easy to create. We wanted to make sure that if this was Risk of Rain using those same assets, would it still be fun? And those base monsters were super important to solidifying the whole idea for us.

DD: We were nervous about announcing the 3D project. We wanted to show players this is still Risk of Rain. Our first four monsters were from the original game because we wanted it to be recognizable. Since then, we've made some new ones, and I would say about half the current items are entirely new.

PM: We wanted to make sure the fan base was comfortable after such a drastic change. We had to carefully mix in this familiar content while showing it's completely different.

missing-image.svg


How were new and returning heroes affected by the jump to 3D?

DD: A lot of abilities are suddenly useless or much more powerful because of range. You could only shoot within the screen in the original, but now that you can see off into the distance, a lot of abilities are a lot stronger because you can target different monsters, where before you were stuck shooting the front guy. Some abilities are also naturally more interesting in 3D. The Commando's FMJ, which shot in a straight line, would always hit everything in the line in 2D. But now you have to orient yourself in a line along the monsters to do that kind of damage.

PM: In the first one it was kind of a free ability that would hit everything on the screen. In this one, it can be amazing if you line it up and use it right.

DD: On the flip side, AoE abilities aren't as good in 3D because monsters can't occupy the same space. We found AoE has to have a large radius, or the AoE portion has to be about doing damage even if you miss rather than hitting multiple enemies at once.

PM: We want to make sure this isn't a super precision-based game. The ability to just shoot and get all these items going is important. We aren't making the player focus on headshots 24/7.

DD: We've also found a lot of movement abilities are more interesting with more freedom of movement. We have Huntress in a working state, and her blink is a lot more fun than in 3D because you can blink up ledges. You couldn't really aim that in 2D.

PM: It creates a whole new kind of—

DD: Dimension!

PM: Dimension! With the Huntress being able to blink up and use abilities in the air. It's very dynamic based on where the enemies are, what attacks they're using.

missing-image.svg


Is it still about fighting enemies, collecting items and finding the portal to the next level?

DD: That loop is definitely the same. In the previous game we had permutations of the same stages. We're not sure how we're going to do that in 3D, or if it's even needed with the scale we have. One thing we've been focusing on is positional relevance. We're hoping we can make the random purchasable things more interesting based on where they spawn.

PM: We have one fully complete map. It's big, it's a good scale. You can explore and go on for a while. If you're just looking for the teleporter, you can do that, but in 3D you can make the environment so much grander that it doesn't exactly need these permutations. If it starts to feel stale, we can add permutations. We have some ideas for that, we just aren't sure it's 100 percent necessary.

One of the biggest hurdles with Risk of Rain was the multiplayer. You've said you're making improvements there, including Steam peer-to-peer.

DD: We have it where you hit this matchmaking button and it will match you with four people. You can do private games as well. We don't know exactly how much more we're going to expand because this is new territory for us. We do have reconnecting working, but maybe there's some weird conflict down the line. The only feature I can say for sure is going to be there is Steam peer-to-peer.

PM: You don't have to port forward. Anyone can be a host now. Risk of Rain definitely didn't make it easy to get online with your friends. Being a small team in college of two people, we wanted the online portion to be there, but it was the best we could technically do at that point. Now we've got more knowledge of the idea, what we want, what people want. This is one of the features we really want to focus on with this one. Hit play and join with people, hit play and join your friends. Super simple and streamlined. We also have the private games where you can invite friends from your Steam friends list. And these are all working internally, but…

missing-image.svg


DD: [laughs] We also have split-screen working online as well, so you can have two people on one PC quickplay to another person on another PC. We have to make sure there's no issues with that, like two people on split-screen join three people on split-screen and now you're at five out of four in a match. Internally it works. We want to keep split-screen because we know a lot of players liked the couch co-op. Getting the multiplayer to "one button and you can play with your friend" was our focus from the beginning, before even moving to 3D.

PM: It was the number-one thing we can fix.

DD: Yeah, we had to improve the multiplayer if we were going to make a sequel.

Are artifacts returning?

DD: We're planning on launching with artifacts. Artifacts became a lot more important to the community than we expected. We always considered them as fun options. Once you've played the game a lot, you can extend the lifetime. But a lot of people used them as the only way they play Risk of Rain. So we're keeping the concept of artifacts and bringing that back.

A lot of the storytelling in Risk of Rain was hidden in item and monster logs. Are we going to see that same writing style again?

DD: We have a better idea of the story that's going to be present throughout the game, but I'd still say it's not a narrative-driven game. We'll definitely still do the item log, monster log thing. I want another outlet of presenting more of a direct reference to what's going on the world. We talked about character logs for the characters you play.

PM: That's kind of what we did with the first one. We wanted to focus on gameplay, then if you cared about the story, you could read through the logs. We want that same experience. We don't want to interrupt your run with a cutscene where you're smashing space like "get this out of here." That's how we like to build games.

DD: Gameplay first.

You said you hope to launch in 2018. Does that still look feasible?

DD: I have no idea, to be honest.

PM: We hope we do! It's just…

DD: We've never made a 3D game.

PM: It's a much bigger, fleshed out game. Risk of Rain was pretty barebones. It was very fun, but it wasn't as fleshed out as we would have liked. With this one, we want to make sure we've got language support, controller support, everything that makes a proper game. 2018 would be awesome. We don't know what we're going to do with testing or beta, but something in 2018. Maybe not the final release, but something.
 

Arnust

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http://hopooo.tumblr.com/post/170840621408/devblog-9-runnin-around-as-we-get-deeper-into

  • DevBlog #9 - Runnin’ Around

    As we get deeper into the design of RoR2, we are encountering more and more design decisions that were passable in 2D, but unacceptable in 3D. The one we encountered this month was the feeling of travel and movement.

    In 2D, if you saw something on your screen, you were always about 7 seconds away from being able to access it. Chests, monsters, and most importantly the teleporter was only relevant once it came into your screen.

    tumblr_inline_p43okx7Bvk1rcwq50_500.jpg

    In 3D, you can spot points of interests that are a solid 30 seconds away. When you are traveling to get to a specific location that’s visible, it feels way worse than traveling to get around. It feels like a chore. The feeling of ‘speed’ in travel in a 3D game tends to be proportional to how close the camera is to the ground, and since we have a zoomed out third person camera, traveling felt even slower, even if you were actually running at 20mph. This tiresome travel was especially relevant in the post-teleporter clean up phase of the original game.

    While we started cranking up the movement speed of players, this was unsustainable because movement is also defensive in dodging projectiles. To help with this, we’ve added sprinting to the game as something that every class can do(!). This allows you to be able to choose between moving to travel vs moving to dodge and fight in combat. It also gives you a decision as a player to choose to sprint rather than fight (and we also get to cheat a little bit by messing with the FOV to make it feel like you’re moving even faster.) This also gives us a cute avenue for new proc conditions and skills - currently, to keep the feeling of the huntress from RoR1, she is the only class who can attack while sprinting.

    tumblr_inline_p43olbAs2Q1rcwq50_500.png

    We’re also experimenting a bit with the way the teleporter event works. Currently, you do not have to kill every monster on the map to progress to the next stage - you only have to kill the boss. The cleanup phase of the teleporter event was annoying at best and insanely tedious at worst. As a tradeoff, we are experimenting with a charging mechanic to the teleporter - you (and your teammates) must remain in a certain radius of the teleporter to advance the timer. This also has the benefit of making the spawn position of the teleporter more relevant in gameplay - a teleporter that spawns on the middle of a bridge is suddenly much more challenging, and bosses can have a higher focus on area control that actually matters.

    tumblr_inline_p43oucty491rcwq50_500.png

    This also leads into another topic, which is the feeling of an actual multiplayer experience. In RoR1, there was very little you had to rely on your teammates to do - you were actually encouraged to split up and go different ways. Because the game is 2D, however, you would still end up fighting monsters with your buddies, because you either went left or right. In 3D, it was very common that you never saw your allies at all. The charging mechanic for the teleporter has been a great way for us to encourage players to come together at least once a stage and experience the game together. This also translates directly back into single player without adding any multiplayer specific tricks or requirements. We want to make sure that single player is not a shadow of multiplayer, but that they are both fulfilling on their own.

    SpectacularFatherlyGossamerwingedbutterfly-size_restricted.gif

    Our plans for the upcoming months is to get the game to a state where we can have playtesters, since currently there are still many features missing like the Logbook and a polished Character Select. We want to make sure that we can get feedback early enough in development so we can find out if we are taking the overall gameplay in the right direction.

    Thanks for reading!

    Full res screenshots here

    P.S.

    We have also been hard at work getting DEADBOLT, our second game, ready for launch on Sony platforms. DEADBOLT is launching on February 20th 2018 for PSVita and PS4. We recently posted a blog post with Sony where you can find out more and check out the new trailer!

    Read about it here!
I'm really digging these new and remade enemy designs myself. But yeah I really hope Hopoo gets it right. Play testing is going to be a must.
 
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PulsatingBrain

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
This also leads into another topic, which is the feeling of an actual multiplayer experience. In RoR1, there was very little you had to rely on your teammates to do - you were actually encouraged to split up and go different ways. Because the game is 2D, however, you would still end up fighting monsters with your buddies, because you either went left or right. In 3D, it was very common that you never saw your allies at all. The charging mechanic for the teleporter has been a great way for us to encourage players to come together at least once a stage and experience the game together. This also translates directly back into single player without adding any multiplayer specific tricks or requirements. We want to make sure that single player is not a shadow of multiplayer, but that they are both fulfilling on their own.

I don't remember, in RoR1 could you enter the game as a squad with your friends, or did it just throw you into multiplayer with some people? Because this game looks amazing for playing with a few friends and just chatting away while we deal with the level
 

Arnust

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This also leads into another topic, which is the feeling of an actual multiplayer experience. In RoR1, there was very little you had to rely on your teammates to do - you were actually encouraged to split up and go different ways. Because the game is 2D, however, you would still end up fighting monsters with your buddies, because you either went left or right. In 3D, it was very common that you never saw your allies at all. The charging mechanic for the teleporter has been a great way for us to encourage players to come together at least once a stage and experience the game together. This also translates directly back into single player without adding any multiplayer specific tricks or requirements. We want to make sure that single player is not a shadow of multiplayer, but that they are both fulfilling on their own.

I don't remember, in RoR1 could you enter the game as a squad with your friends, or did it just throw you into multiplayer with some people? Because this game looks amazing for playing with a few friends and just chatting away while we deal with the level
ROR1 had you mandatorily port forwarding via the Hamachis and Tunngles of the world so unless you joined some randy's hosted server, there is no matchmaking. When a game is starting all players (cpped at 4 but editing a .txt you can go further past that) get on a similar version of the game start screen, the Artifacts, Difficulty and Characters are picked and it's go time once everyone hits Ready. I haven't experienced ROR1 multiplayer much myself and it's a bit clumsy more often than not, as it wasn't taken in mind initially and it was added later on after release.
 

Arnust

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DevBlog #10 - Year One

Hi
It has been exactly 1 year (and 1 day) since we announced we were working on Risk of Rain 2.This update isn’t going to be about specific new systems or content, but about the overall cadence of development and what our goals are going forward.

Where are we in development?

A majority of the time spent in the last year was working on backend systems to better support the full game, and we feel that that is finally coming to completion. We are hoping to focus on content and polish throughout the next year, and prepping the game so it’s presentable to people, not just us internally.

New classes, levels, items, monsters, bosses, and of course original ones from Risk of Rain have been added. With the core systems in place we are able to start designing new content that adds new layers on top of the existing loop for RoR1. We want to make sure that there is a lot of fresh new content that adds to the fun, and we are holding ourselves to a higher standard of game design than in our previous games. We are trying our best to make sure there isn’t a lot of filler items or monsters.

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Beta Plans

Since announcing RoR2 we haven’t stopped getting emails or tweets asking about alpha/beta testing and how that is going to work. Because RoR2 is quite a complicated game, we will need to do a lot of testing for networking, progression, balance, and overall game feel.

We are getting to a point in development where we are starting to plan out how we want to invite people to start testing RoR2 and help us build a community for the long term. This will most likely start off with a small/private closed alpha that people can sign up for via a website (that doesnt exist yet). We will also launch an official RoR2 discord once that time arrives, so people can talk about the game and give feedback directly.

Based on the feedback of the closed alpha we will then plan our next steps depending on what requires more testing and feedback. Things like matchmaking require a large volume of people to properly test. We also have a couple new design directions that we want to hear lots of feedback for.

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Moving Forward

Now that we have a few games under our belts, we want to make sure Risk of Rain 2 is the best game we can possibly make and sustain. We want to include as many features as possible to build a growing community and continue to update the game into the future. Local co-op, online multiplayer with matchmaking, localization, discord servers and free updates are all things we think will help foster a community, but we would love to hear feedback on how we can keep the game active for the long haul. One of the most important things going forward is community engagement – and we will be opening up avenues for discussion later in development.

We’ve posted a RAW JUICY video from one of our playtests, bugs and all, as a milestone of where we are in development. While it’s obviously still a work in progress, it is representative of the direction we are taking the game. Please let us know how you feel - it’s really important that we begin to collect community feedback as early as possible.

Overall this has been a fantastic year of development for us, and I really feel like we’ve begun to make a game that everyone will have a great time playing. I’m sure that we will exceed everyone’s expectations by the time we are done :)

thx nerds

tumblr_inline_p8gyxnBOpm1rcwq50_400.png

It's headed by some playtest footage and it didn't copy somehow:


Generally just looking plain great. There's a lot to do.
 

Arnust

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You know, it is a bit weird when the interviewer is or at least seems as old as the age of the other two combined :D



The guy's also going on about it a bit as well.
 
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oldbonebrown

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First RoR was heavy gonk, the videos of this one makes it look like a worthy sequel. I'm going to allow myself to be hopeful about this one :bounce:
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Wow, just heard about this. Absolutely loved the first Risk of Rain, over 120 hours. I don't know what to think about this new format but I'll at least give it a try.

In case anyone cares, Deadbolt is also excellent as Ivan says.
 

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Deadbolt isn't in the same genre as Risk of Rain but it's a great... stealth action game (hard to pinpoint the exact genre). Similar to Gunpoint but more action and less puzzle orientated. I highly recommend both.
 

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Devblog #11 - Moving Forward


With a very heavy heart, I’m sad to announce that RoR2 has been officially discontinued.

..

hahahaha jk

Birthday
Today marks Risk of Rain’s 5th Birthday (+1 day)! In celebration, we have a few fun announcements lined up along with a large devblog! Also, Risk of Rain is off 80% today - if anyone doesn’t happen to have the game already, come check it out here!

RoR2 Development
It’s been quite a while since the last blogpost, and we’ve progressed quite a lot since then. A question we get very frequently is “are melee classes in the game? How will they work?”

Melee classes will be in RoR2. The major challenges that each melee character faces is that in RoR2, there are a lot of flying monsters. While most bosses are on the ground, there are also still flying bosses. We want to absolutely make sure that we avoid any scenario where a melee class is softlocked from completing the stage because the boss is too high in the air.

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Full

Our first venture into melee is a classic from RoR1 - the Mercenary. He was an easy fit because his mobility and dashes are:

  1. Fun in 3D, and
  2. Guarantee that he can always reach air monsters.
His kit has been also updated a small bit, with 3-hit combos for his basic ability and conditional behaviors depending on whether or not he executes his skill on the ground or in the air.

Every melee character will require a bit more love in RoR2 to make sure that they can function in this new environment, but we are very excited to have them in the game :)

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We have also been (obviously) working on a ton of new stages, monsters, items, etc. An exciting NEW addition to RoR2 is a brand new tier of items, called Lunar items. These items come not from this planet, but somewhere much stranger…

Lunar items are different from standard items because they have extremely powerful positives at the cost of drawbacks. Classic RoR1 items were always net positive - and therefore items with considerable downsides open s up a ton of design space for us to explore. Some lunar items may be situational, some may be playstyle dependent, and some may be much more synergy dependent than classic RoR1 items.

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Full

The Lunar concept is something that is unique to Risk of Rain 2 - and these strange Lunar creations may also extend to more than just items…

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Full

Beta /Early Access
Another frequent question we received while presenting PAX was “when can I buy this game?”.

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We are planning on launching in Early Access in Q1 next year. We’ve spent a lot of time researching recent EA successes, and as a multiplayer roguelite title, we think RoR2 would be the perfect candidate for Early Access.

However, we want to make sure that we have a plan going into EA - and that we stick to it. Specifically, we are focusing on 3 goals for EA:

  1. Building a community - We want to support Risk of Rain 2 for as long as possible. Having a solid community of players that we can actively communicate with would be critical for feedback.
  2. Being able to stay on top of development and avoiding content drought. We have experience as developers for supporting Betas, so regular patches is an expectation we understand. We also hope that as a multiplayer roguelite title, the time between content updates feel less painful compared to other EA titles.
  3. Gathering feedback from the players and making sure the game continues to shape into the game we want to develop. While we always have a vision for the game, a lot of times players have fantastic ideas that can help propel the game from being good to fantastic. This is also our first ever 3D title, so we really need to collect feedback to make sure it matches everyone’s expectations of the game.
As of right now, we have made our Steam Page public for people interested in wishlisting, available here. As we get closer to the EA date, we will update everyone with an expected development timeline.

We want to be as transparent as possible with what we’re working on and what we will work on - and if you have concerns about our venture into Early Access, please let us know!

Plushies
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Fans who saw us at PAX may have seen some of these bois available for purchase. We have teamed up with IndieBox to create a limited set of Rock Plushies, and the reception at was fantastic! In fact, it was so good that we made another set of them - available online now.!

Thank you again to all our fans who have been interested in the development of this game - we have a very exciting future ahead of us, and I hope that everything turns out like everyone hoped.

Cheers!

hopoo
 

Arnust

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Devblog #12 – Somewhere, Over the Double Fucking Rainbow


Hello there! This is Chris, hijacking the RoR2 devblog to share a few notes on music.

Tl;dr:

  • Yes, I am writing the music for RoR2
  • No, there won’t be a Coalescence 2
Chanson à nouveau..
The day I would start composing for RoR2 was a day I looked forward to with equal amounts of excitement and fear. The score to the original RoR is one I hold very dearly. It is music I loved writing, created during a very special time of my life, infused by each and every musical influence of my childhood and adulthood. It’s a perfect capture of me at that particular space and time. It also happens to be my most successful soundtrack to date, primarily because it’s part of a great game that people love to play, but also—if people’s feedback is to be believed—because it’s not too bad in its own right.

Now I find myself exploring the musical world or RoR once again and I can assure you it’s an awe-inspiring place! It’s also immense, savage and untrodden… You can witness this for yourself in the wonderful images posted on this blog and all over the internet, but let me tell you, it’s one thing looking at it and a whole different thing experiencing it first-hand.

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The move to 3D was a bold one and I’m its biggest supporter. Honestly, even if it didn’t offer this amazing opportunity to expand the game’s universe into this whole new level of detail and immersion, I would still embrace it only because it gives me the perfect excuse—the obligation, even—to avoid repeating myself. The thing I feared most starting this project was writing the same music all over again. Not because I don’t like the existing music (I love it) but because the existing music already… exists. What would be the point of Coalescence 2 (some people have actually asked for it)? If anyone wants to listen to Coalescence it’s right there for the listening. The RoR OST is a product of very specific, irreplicable circumstances. Even if I wanted to write sequels to these tracks, I couldn’t. They would be mere parodies.

So, I’m writing new music for a new game. Hopefully it will be better music for a better game, but I’m going to be satisfied if turns out being good music for a good game. I know many of you will not be happy reading this but I ask you to be open minded and trust me. If you liked the music for the first game chances are, you’ll like this one too. It’s the same person doing the writing (and performing, and producing, and mixing, and mastering) after all. It will be different, but it won’t be that different.

Paying my Dews
Let’s make sure we avoid any misunderstanding here: I don’t take the RoR musical legacy lightly. Rest assured that many things will carry over, not least of which the RoR motif. The usual odd meter and various polyrhythms will be featured prominently too. There’s drumming, lots of drumming, way too much drumming…. Several cameos of familiar instruments and even entire sections that will sound very reminiscent to old players. And then, there’s the unsung (pun intended) hero: form. Even though you can’t literally hear it you can certainly feel it. Form is the glue holding the music together. Just like with the first game, I’m working my ass off to fit these new tracks into meticulously woven forms.

As such, all the above elements that are part and parcel to the RoR sound will not be let behind. As previously mentioned, this is terra incognita we’re heading into and only a fool would go into the unknown without a flashlight. I plan to use the original music to illuminate all the new one hidden in the darkness beyond.

Forecast
It’s still too early to tell what the new soundtrack will actually sound like. I guess it will sound more like the original RoR than anything else—a definition as intentionally vague as can be. A word I liked using to describe the first soundtrack was “monolithic”. I feel the RoR2 OST will be even more so. To use a classical music analogy, if RoR1 was a suite, RoR2 will be more like a symphony. Don’t worry though, I’m still delivering discreet pieces of music that you will be able to tell apart (and prefer over others). Let’s just say I’ve set up my sessions like communication vessels of sorts.

For the time being, you can sample some new music in the game’s teaser and this SoundCloud playlist(which I plan to sparsely update). There’s a lot of material already written but most of it is still being forged into shape. There are also new things we’re testing to make the in-game music more dynamic and meaningful to the player, which have directly impacted my workflow. For the moment, all I can say I’m working on it steadily but slowly—slower than usual (sorry, Duncan & Paul!). As I said, while I’m very excited I’m also quite fearful. There’s plenty of pressure to satisfy the many fans of the music from the original game (thank you all so much, btw!!!) and even more self-imposed pressure to write music that I feel proud of and enjoy listening to for years to come. You see, I’m trying to uncover music I’ve not written before and I need to make sure my excavation brings to surface more than just petrified feces…

FAQ
When? When the great Magma Worm in the sky deems us worthy.

Where? All over the place, starting with Bandcamp.

Vinyl? Probably. Hopefully in a nice boxset with an RoR1 re-print.

Engineer Edition 2? Yes, but no sheet music this time around. Too many arpeggiators and modular patches for it to make any sense.

DEADBOLT 2? I sure damn hope so!

“It Can’t Rain All the Time”
That will be all for now! If you made it this far, thank you for reading and see you next time! If you want to keep the conversation going you can find me in the social media outlets below, where I will post the occasional RoR2 update, answer all your questions and share pictures of my cats:

Twitter | Facebook | Instagram |YouTube |SoundCloud

Take care,
Chris
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
:necro:

Out now on Early Access, without turning into an Epic exclusive (this is a feat these days you know). Purchases until March 30th gives you two copies:

 

Ent

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Thanks for the head up. Just split with a friend.
 

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