Πέμπτη 28 Αυγούστου 2014

Game Mechanics

I'm giving it extra work on the AI that's why it takes so god damn long, what I'm going for as a game mechanic is that the player won't have a way to show him the level of the enemies, so he would have to figure it out by observing their AI if he doesn't he would be too outmatched in a fight. For every enemy there is a rank and a bravery level, if an enemy bosses other enemies around, he is of higher level, low rank enemies kneel to high ranking enemies, better clothing, the presence of armor, what kind of weapon does he hold, how many swords does he carry etc. But high rank doesn't always mean bravery, so the player would have to watch for signs to also figure out the level of bravery, while high levels of bravery fight harder and won't give up easily, the player should watch for the cowards also, because nothings cuts short a sword fight more than a concealed firearm! This is were the bird's eye view comes to play (among other things). I believe that in stealth games observation is the key mechanic, in contrast to games like AC where every enemy is just an enemy and you know that if he sees you, he would just attack you, here enemies might retreat and call for backup, they might surrender and when you come close attack, they might challenge you without calling for backup and lot's of other stuff. If somebody approached the game without taking the time to observe it, it would seem to him that everything is random but that's not the case, for every enemy there would always be clues for them, you can even make your character give you feedback on them, but every character has a different personality so you would have to know them pretty well, an arrogant character might feel that is superior from another enemy and that could lead to problems.

That's only for combat, for normal behaviours is another big talk :P . I have most of this things working but they need a lot of polish at the moment, on my next dev vlog I would explained all of this in even more detail or at least the parts that I have polished enough till then.

Basically the main idea for it was taken from Monty Pythons quest for the holy grail. When King Arthur passed two villagers and one says to another "He looks like a King" the other one asks why so he replies "Well he doesn't have feces all over him" :P . In every modern game now there's just too much information on the screen, they don't let the player explore the world around him, I remember memorising the map of GTA 3 and Mafia and I always knew exactly where to turn and where to go, just because there was no way of guiding you, now with all that GPS added into them that's a feature missing, it might be more easier now to find your way around but I believe that makes the game more remote from the player and doesn't let him invest so much as they used to.

With the addition of a campaign map in the game where the player would have to face "searching parties" I want him to be at the position where he would say "You know I should retreat to that level because if I'm attacked here the plain terrain won't give me much choices to hide if I can't beat them" kinda like the total war series but without the random levels, so memorising almost everything would be crucial.

I'm also expirimenting more with the cutscenes and their art style so here is a quick scene I've made, tell me what you think!


Τρίτη 26 Αυγούστου 2014

Experimenting with some cutscenes, I like the manga-esq appeal with this one and the use of sequential panels means I won't have to waste hours animating full cutscenes rather than focus on Key Animations and poses.



Πέμπτη 21 Αυγούστου 2014

Hi Yo Silver!!



Been busy the last couple of weeks, creating the campaign map, creating a database for all the levels and their stats/states and finally coding the enemy AI (around 3000 lines of code and still growing). So as a break from all this I decided to add even more flair to the game with mounts! Still a work in progress but it turns out pretty good!! Check the videos below

This is an intro scene for the game.
Take it also as an announcement for mounts to the game!


Here you can see them on action, keep in mind they are still WIP


I haven't found out yet how to do the mounted combat, except from ranged combat that is, but I'm working on it. As for the ranged combat on horseback, be prepared to face some tough and mean sobs, unfortunately you won't see them in this update though, they still need some nitpicking...

Other Features added:

1.You can pick up any weapon from the ground and the character would change his style

2.Breakable Items and Weapons

3.Enemy makes morale checks and acts accordingly (currently 5 states of actions for them)

4.Enemy communication and Character responses (Everyone has a response according to their personality)

5.Day/Night time cycle in the campaign map and on certain levels.


I'll be adding and some wallpapers to download soon, so you'll be able to spread the love around!




If all goes well we might be talking about an alpha pretty soon(a couple of months perhaps) I'm working furiously to bring a playable demo that's not bug ridden and it's a good taste of the whole pie till the end of the year.


Cheers!

Πέμπτη 14 Αυγούστου 2014

Eye Candy

I've added the ability to pick up any weapon lying around and the player would change his style accordingly.
Enemies also search for weapons if their basic weapons break.

Katana at work


Death lurks in the shade


You can't touch the genre of samurai without a battle in tall grass


Δευτέρα 11 Αυγούστου 2014

This game has just scaled up to 10!

After a long meeting with the head of the studio, which is me talking to myself, I came to the conclusion that i want to expand the game even further. Instead of having just simple levels loading one after another I wanted to give the player the ability to choose what would be his next move and to have more weight on his options, instead of boring dialogues and choices. I wanted the consequences to derive from what he is actually doing and not by what he just selects on a dialog. And instead of just a typical map to just move around, now this is going to play a major part in the game, strategic positioning of characters would play a significant role to how levels progress and how difficult the levels themselves are. On what the player would give priorities would also effect the progress of the story with unforgiving results, you could even lose main characters to defection according to your choices. This game started as a Commandos clone, now it's growing to be a mix of Commandos with Jagged Alliance and Total War games. That's all i'm saying for now, big things are coming in the future, stay tuned!

Here's a timelapse of creating the map of Japan:


Here is an overview of the demo level WIP

Here is an overview of a level that is going to be in the final game, the brown buildings near the top are the same models in both pictures, for scale references.


The player's scale with the buildings


Τετάρτη 6 Αυγούστου 2014

Quick Update: OffMeshLinks, Pickable Objects

Finally i made offmeshlinks to work properly with animations, i used a curve to control the agents speed for more realistic velocity of the jumps. Pickable objects are still at a testing phase


since people asked  for more explanation i'm pasting my answer from reddit for others to see

all animations have curves in it and i linked the speed of the agent with them,so the velocity of the agent is not always the same and is more realistic, for example when you are going downwards you should move at a higher speed than when you are jumping upwards etc.
I don't use bi directional off mesh links because they tend not to work as expected, i had some problems with them in the past, so you will have to make one for every each one direction, then have every direction with a tag to play the animation you want.
Now my real problem was that most animations are heavily unoptimized (thus the name Raw MoCap i guess) so the root sometimes flies away, to tackle this i chopped most animations to 2-3 parts and have the root to the apropriate place, always leaving the transition to the final part (the landing) to be decided from a boolean which is turned on when the agent reaches the end transform.
Curves are pro only though, or you can use only one in the free version i don't really know. So if you don't have them you can fake them by adjusting the speed overtime, but this would mean that you will need to have every offmeshlink of the same type at the same length (it's easier than it sounds but it's not easier than using curves).
I hope i was clear enough, if not tell me and i'll paste a sample code