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Underrail [PRE-RELEASE THREAD, GO TO NEW THREAD]

shihonage

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This game looks painstakingly polished - a product of love.
 

curry

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ookrish said:
The game is set in a distant future, when the life on the Earth’s surface has long since been made impossible and the remnants of humanity now dwell in the Underrail, a vast system of metro station-states that, it seems, are the last bastions of a fading race.

The player takes control of one of the denizens of such a station-state whose life is about to become all that much more interesting and dangerous, as our protagonist is caught amidst the conflicting factions of the Underrail as they secretly but violently struggle for the Humanity’s last gem of hope.

Tbh I like the setting but why the hell ruin it with rtwp and ugly as fuck graphics? :rpgcodex:
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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Trading

When trying to decide how to implement trading on one side I thought of what would make the most sense in the given social settings, while on the other hand I didn't want to make it too complicated or tedious to manage.

Underrail is basically a loose network of station-states (there are plenty of them, more than the player will be able to visit in this game). Though they share some common infrastructure of the metro system, most of these stations are self-governed and independent from one another.

In this environment simple exchange of items is the most natural form of trading. But also there is a place for commodity money here – such as pure water and quality food, which are no longer abundant. Growing food underground is hard work and contaminants are plentiful.

However, a number of stations have made a security/economic alliance which allows for more advanced forms of trading, such as the use of fiat money. The value of this money is guaranteed by the abovementioned alliance, but not all merchants are willing to accept it yet.

So the economy in Underrail is mixed of all three methods of trading mentioned above.

value.gif


Because then there are number of ways to measure item value, each item (or stack of items) will have its value listed in the tooltip in a form of fiat money it is objectively worth. This will allow the player to know which items relative worth to one another, for example.

trading1.gif


On the trading interfaces, however, I decided not to put the sum of these values for offered and requested items, but instead use a slider (the break-even point that separates the acceptable and unacceptable trade can shift to one or the other side to indicate the merchant's reaction, the middle is the default reaction). The main reasons for this are that I don't want to clog up the interface and (back to what I said at the start of this post) I don't want to make it look complicated. It's not set in stone, though, so I might change my mind later.
 

zenbitz

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All you RTwP bashers... exactly how is this different from turn-based as long as there is an auto pause??

(By my counting FO 1/2 was RTw(auto)P, technically)
 

7hm

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Styg said:

Nice idea.

Would there be consequences either negative or positive for making trades that are heavily in favour of the person you're trading with, or making offers that will be refused for being grossly out of line with item values?

Do you allow for a bartering system or is the decision of whether or not to accept the trade a binary one?
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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7hm said:
Styg said:

Nice idea.

Would there be consequences either negative or positive for making trades that are heavily in favour of the person you're trading with, or making offers that will be refused for being grossly out of line with item values?

Do you allow for a bartering system or is the decision of whether or not to accept the trade a binary one?

There's no bartering beyond what the system automatically calculates (which takes into account merchant's disposition and your mercentile skill). The final decision is binary - you are not even allowed to click Trade at all if the result would be negative.

I might implement a way to increase merchant disposition by offering them good deals, but that's low on the priority list right now.
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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Mixed Update

Hey guys, been a while since the last update. In the mean time I've got a lot of things done. Unfortunately, a lot of those things are under the hood of the engine and have no shinies for display, but there are some that do.


New Toolbar icons

NewToolbar.gif


I actually call it System Bar. Whatever the common term is, it's updated with new icons, so let me know what you think. If you want to compare it to the old one, check out this image.


Crossbows.gif
Crossbows!

Crossbows have been added to the game. So how do they fit into the future that is TLV? Well, while they do not do as much damage as firearms and energy weapons (and are particularly ineffective against heavily armored targets), their bolts travel at a relatively low speed which allows them to penetrate energy shields more easily. You will be able to coat their bolts with poisons or rig them with explosives which makes the crossbow a versatile weapon. Also, there will be feats that will make the crossbow an attractive weapon for a stealthy character.


Sound effects

Another thing I've been up to is mapping sound effects for all the stuff I implemented so far, so the game is no longer mute. It was somewhat tedious process, mapping them retroactively like that, but it's done now. No interface sounds or music yet though, I'm holding that off until I get more content in.


* * * *


This was by no means an extensive list of everything I've done in the mean time so expect more (short) updates to follow soon.

I've started working on a new area. It includes an underground lake. This will be my focus in the coming month and I'll be sure to post screenshots of it as soon as I have something presentable.

By the way, I changed the RSS feed. The old one was spawning duplicate entries in Google Reader, so if any of you were subscribed to the old one (or even if you weren't :) ) visit my website and resubscribe.
 

Zed

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Thanks for the update!

The toolbar looks much better indeed.

If you ever need testers I'd love to try it. :)
 
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Davaris

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That's some slick coding, you must be a pro.

I like where you are going with the art direction. All you need is a AAA artist to take that comic book look you've established to its logical conclusion. Its a pity art is so damn expensive, so I assume there isn't much chance of that. But anyway keep on doing what you're doing, because what you have so far is good.

As others have said above, I think its a bummer its not turn based. It reminds me so much of Fallout and I want it to be another Fallout.
 

Styg

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Davaris said:
I like where you are going with the art direction. All you need is a AAA artist to take that comic book look you've established to its logical conclusion. Its a pity art is so damn expensive, so I assume there isn't much chance of that. But anyway keep on doing what you're doing, because what you have so far is good.

Hiring a good artist for a project of this scope is way beyond my budget, and finding one that is willing to work for a profit share is next to impossible (not to mention risks it involves).

One thing that is certain to improve over time is the amount of detail in the game world as I create more and more objects and retrofit them where it makes sense. (In other words, I'll make up for my bad graphics by making lots of it! :))

Zed said:
If you ever need testers I'd love to try it. :)

Because of the scale of the game, I'm sure to need some help with testing at some point, if not earlier then in beta stage. Also there might be a playable demo earlier at some point when I feel the game is of sufficient quality. So keep updated. (Hint: there's an RSS feed ;))
 

Zed

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Just spicing up the tiles with some variety like cracked floor, rust, trash and other details would make a huge difference.
 
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Davaris

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Styg said:
Hiring a good artist for a project of this scope is way beyond my budget, and finding one that is willing to work for a profit share is next to impossible (not to mention risks it involves).

So you are doing the art as well? If thats the case, its pretty good for coder art.

I really like what you did with the spitter creatures. They have a nice comic book look to them. The player character I don't like as he looks boxy. If you could do what you did with that spitter critter for everything else, I think you'd really have something. The only other thing I'd look at is scaling everything down in the levels by 1/3, as it all looks kind of big. IMO, things look nicer when they are smaller. Just my opinion though, everyone's got one.
 
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Looks very nice. It reminds me a bit of Omega Syndrome but is actually better looking.

I'm open to help with any kind of testing :)
 

Styg

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Davaris said:
I really like what you did with the spitter creatures. They have a nice comic book look to them. The player character I don't like as he looks boxy.

Both of those are just placeholders. They will look much better by the release time.
 
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Davaris

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Cool. One of my favorite poser artists is a guy called Mikeall over at Renderosity. As far as I can tell he renders stuff out in Poser, or Daz Studio 3D and then paints over it, to get that comic book style I was talking about. I don't know if that would work in your case. It could be too much work with the animations.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/ ... &member&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/ ... &member&np

At any rate if you can't afford an pro artist, you don't want to get obsessed with art as an indie, because it eats up too much time. Just make the game part as good as you can do it and then make more games.
 

mangsy

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Glad I clicked this topic. The game looks interesting, and I will def keep tabs on it/check it out when it's released.
 

Surf Solar

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Nice! Glad I clicked on the link, I really dig the style of your interface. The choice of RTwP is a bit a breaker though, but that's maybe just for me.
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions - noted and much appreciated.
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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Grenades and Explosives

Grenades are the primary source of area of effect damage in the game. They can be used to their full damage by any character, but those that specialize (invest skills and feats) receive certain benefits such as shorter cooldowns, extended range and quicker throwing action. Currently there are three types of hand grenades:

grenade_frag.gif
Frag grenade

High damage output against unarmored target; not very effective against heavily armored targets. The closer the target is to the center of detonation, the more shrapnel damage it takes.


grenade_he.gif
High explosive grenade

Good damage output; not affected by armor as much.


grenade_flashbang.gif
Flashbang
Incapacitates everyone caught in the blast for a few seconds allowing you to restealth.


Frag and HE grenades have multiple "power levels", so their damage scales up. You will be able to find them in many areas throughout the game or create them yourself by mixing different explosives you obtain. Primary skill for crafting any type of explosives is Chemistry.


I intend to implement at least one more grenade type: EMP, which will do some or all of the following: electrical damage, burn shields, stun robots. Other stuff that I might implement includes: smoke grenades (reduces visibility which causes ranged weapons to miss a lot), nerve gas grenades (endless possibilities!) and Molotov cocktail (sets stuff on fire).


Time bombs

These deal massive amounts of damage in a wide radius. They detonate 10 seconds after being deployed and will be mostly used to clearing up passages on the map or sabotage. Though I guess they you could also trap enemies and blow them up in some situations.
 

quasimodo

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Oct 11, 2006
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This looks quite good. Like many of the other posters I would prefer TB combat. I truly hate RTwP for party based games, but it might just work with a single character.
 

Styg

Stygian Software
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Scrolling Combat Text

Or the floating combat text, if you will. Added this feature a while back. I'm aware that there are people who will dislike this sort of stuff, but I find it useful when I want to track effects on a specific target, since the combat log tracks everything going on in the vicinity and can get bit crowded. Anyway, it will be fully configurable so you can turn it completely off or enable it for just some events such as damage, periodic damage, healing, shield gains, special attacks, etc.

I won't be showing a screenshot of it as it's hard to capture a good one and it won't really testify to the quality of implementation. You'll be able to see this in the next video.

Just so that this update is not completely dry, here's a random item:

ShieldRecharger.gif
 

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