#next playthrough can be a ‘we’re fixing each other’ type deal but for now I crave the hurt

[anto-pops]

foaming at the mouth waiting for the Astarion fic queen ❤️

Oh god you and me both 👀 I’m replaying and romancing him AGAIN as Dark Urge to take more notes for what will eventually be an angsty piece of smutty literature

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon Black 2 Randomized Nuzlocke Run [Part 9]

All eight badges earned, so what does that leave?

Pirates.

Team for the task?

Vertex (Luxray)

Caspet (Gengar)

Stormy (Metagross)

Photon (Rayquaza)

Nessy (Milotic)

Diego (Gardevoir)

...Those who did not participate in the last Gym, raise hands or whatever you have in place of hands for grinding.

#LET ME LEAVE THE GYM WITHOUT A CONVERSATION GEN 5 CHALLENGE.

Colress, I swear, if you pull a Euicine and make me fight you for the honor of not fighting the Terrakion...

He does not. He gives us a toy and basically says to check out the cave that I need Strength to go through more thoroughly. The Giant Chasm pirates are still blocking my way, so.

Siiiiiigh.

Box crew! What have you got for me!

I will take out Bessy, the level 33 Miltank, and teach her Strength.

Bessy is Modest and somewhat vain, but that doesn’t matter because she’s just here for HMs. She’s temporarily taking Vertex’s place, since Vertex isn’t in need of more experience.

Ah. Actually, Strength just lets you get Toxic. Which is fine, but sorry Vertex, guess I threw you out of the squad for nothing.

Hey we found the boat!

Marlon lets us aboard. Thought: I should go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex in case something goes wrong. Except that would take time.

...I am going to go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex.

After shifting a boulder on Route 22. And grinding for a bit.

Okay. A few hours later, I am more comfortable entering the pirate ship. Team levels are now 56-60. That is absolutely a balanced assessment of my current team. It is in no way misleading.

Me!

...This is the greatest grunt ever. He calls Marlon Smiley Swimsuit. Yes. You have perfectly boiled down his character essentials.

Oh wait, he has a Watchdog.

Sorry pirate friend. We can’t be friends.

Russell, my actual friend, is trying to go on his roaring rampage of revenge. Only as a responsible big brother, not a Sasuke.

I used to have a Sasuke. No more.

...I should have named Russell Itachi. If there’s ever a next time...

I continue to find it delightful that after N leaves, Team Plasma ditches their knight theme for a pirate one. I don’t even know why, I just love it. I love knight aesthetic, I love pirate aesthetic. My castle was right next to my pirate ship for most of my childhood, and it rocked.

Though my pirates wouldn’t steal people’s pets. A key difference. Pirate in name only. Well. And clothing. Pirate is just a more fun word than sailor, and pirates have looser fashion.

Mook time over?

Technically this one isn’t stealing.

Just animal abuse.

The villain of this game is just a salty old man who spent so much time in a refrigerator he decided the rest of the world should spend time in a refrigerator, too. Then he found out his region has a legendary Dragon/Ice type, and the rest is history.

Only history I have to repeat.

Because the villain of a Pokemon game decided his winning strategy would be shooting bolts of ice down at the world below.

Video games are the greatest.

...Wait. How did me and Russell get down here? Did Team Plasma just throw us off?

Also, yes Cheren. They use everything for evil. They’re the bad guys.

And then Cheren asks where the people Zekrom and Reshiram recognized are and. I wonder if he misses his friend. his best friend, [last game protagonist]. How much does it suck that he spent a full game with [person], and now they’ll never see each other again because [person] is bound to a different dimension. A world Cheren can’t touch.

Canon has, what. Red who comes back? Every other protagonist kind of just. vanishes as far as future references to that world are concerned. And Red spends quite some time up on a mountain. Alone.

These games are all about people who swoop in and birth legends, then vanish.

I made myself sad.

Anyway, to the Giant Chasm!

Totally bro.

Aw crud. Do I need Strength? I think I might need Strength. Can I mayhaps avoid that?

Oh. I could just go down the giant stairs.

Wow. Talk about your parties.

ONE MORE TIME ON THE BOAT.

I hate password games. At least the ship supplies a doctor early on. I wasn’t to the point of active concern, but I was feeling a bit itchy about using up healing items. I haven’t grown out of my usual standard in these games where I just let everything in my party die to avoid spending money.

Agreed, let’s roll you.

This guy just keeps throwing Cryogonal at me.

You know, I don’t have a lot to complain about regarding these games and their choices. I whine about everything, but all in all, I find all of them very solid and enjoyable. Even if gen 4 has too many HM requirements wtf just stop.

This isn’t really a complaint, but it is a confusion. Zinzolin is fought multiple times in a relatively small window, and his team never changes. We just keep beating him. I get the sense that they wanted a villain, but as a sequel game to a gen that went all out on that, they didn’t really have anything they were willing to turn into a threat.

Really, I feel like a better path to pick would have been giving one of the Plasma grunts a different hat and having them be the captain of a very confused and angry crew. But eh, whatever.

....Oh. You.

Why is the most anime hair dude in the game so gosh darn forgettable?

For the sake of my flawed memory, he wants to bring out the full potential of pokemon, and is willing to us whatever means are necessary. The only question is which approach actually yields results.

I like you, Colress. I am never going to remember you, but I like you.

Good grief his theme sounds like it came out of Phantasy Star.

First up is a level 50 Magneton. Caspet’s an okay choice, so I’ll just Shadow Ball it. Magneton Thunder Waves Caspet, then uses Volt Switch to swap in Beheeyem (also level 50), who takes a Shadow Ball and dies instantly.

Sorry, ‘faints.’

A level 50 Metang is switched in next. Out of twitchiness over Caspet’s paralyzed state, I put Nessy in and go with Surf. Metang uses Agility from the red. Colress uses a Full Restore. Metang hits a Zen Headbutt, but Nessy has the last laugh.

Ugh. Colress is going to send in a Magnezone. Stormy’s the best answer to that, I think. Stormy knows Hammer Arm. It hits, but like everything I hate, Magnezone has Sturdy. A Bullet Punch handles that.

A level 52 Klinklang is next. His only thing over 50. Stormy is paralyzed thanks to Magnezone, but a Hammer Arm that hits should end it, and I don’t think Klinklang knows anything that’s a threat.

Even if Stormy feels like being paralyzed.

Only once, though. Hammer Arm + Bullet Punch does the job, and we only have that pesky Magneton left.

Hammer Arm and we are done.

Please don’t make me fight another one of these clowns. I don’t wanna.

Aw heck, Russell’s having his moment with Purrloin drama. And I guess I’m not fighting robe dude. It’s all ninja for now. With my four pokemon who aren’t paralyzed. Maybe I should have fixed that.

:(

For real though, our rival’s plotline here is pretty dang sad. He wants his little sister’s pokemon back, and by the time he finds it, it isn’t hers anymore. It’s had an entirely different life without them, probably committing crime. Because it’s been told to.

This is why you get the pirate Plasmas and the knight Plasmas. It’s fantastic that you, the protagonist, has a crew of pokemon perfectly happy fighting and doing whatever you want. But living things being forced to do whatever you want them to because you happened to throw a ball at them is pretty screwed up.

There’s not really a satisfactory conclusion to all of this, since critique of a game mechanic that is never going to stop being a game mechanic doesn’t get to start dramatic revolutions regarding that mechanic, but it’s all very sad and sobering.

That pretty ice tho.

BUT WHERE IS THE PROTAGONIST FROM THE LAST GAME.

No, but thank you N. I was not ready to die at the hands of Kyurem. Your assistance is much appreciated, and pretty great in your sequel. Props.

Gee, that looks bad.

Cue dramatic anime battle sequence.

Followed by anime transformation sequence.

Welp. Time to kill you. Let’s just hope I can.

...Stormy. I think I might want you to tackle this. To the front you go.

But really.

So damn cool.

It’s dead now, but so. cool.

There are too many fights going on. I think I wouldn’t mind in a normaly playthrough, but for a Nuzlocke, this is needlessly stressful and I am not a fan also I beat Ghetsis in the last game and it wasn’t fun then, either.

He has six pokemon, and he opens with a level 50 Cofagrigus. That is not Stormy’s friend. Nessy, if you would. Hydro Pump hits. Toxic hits from the other side, and I will deal with that in a moment, after the Cofagrigus is gone.

Ghetsis, naturally, uses a Full Restore.

Nessy handles it in the end, but is down to 73 health. Eelektross is coming out next. Time to switch. To... uh. I’ll give Photon a whirl. Feeling lucky, I use Outrage, and Eelektross faints.

Ah. Hydreigon is out next.

That is a nasty type combo for my team to deal with. I think. Geez, mark this where I have all the regrets, but Photon’s staying in to murder the Hydreigon with Outrage. Ganbatte.

IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE AND A CRITICAL HIT, GOOD JOB PHOTON.

Seismitoad is next. Diego, time for you and your Magical Leaf to shine. Shine they do, and we’re on to Drapion, which I will leave to Photon. Two Air Slashes make their mark, and all that’s left is Toxicroak, so in you stay Photon.

AND WE’RE DONE HERE, SCREW YOU GHETSIS!

But where is that certain Trainer, N????

Anyway, with that, it looks like the plot portion of this Nuzlocke is over. All that’s left is heading up to challenge the Elite Four.

I think a battle like that can have its own part.

[crystalelemental]

Alright, now that I’ve beaten the League, a few thoughts on the game overall.

I really like it, but I’m not sure I like it more than Sun/Moon, which is a damned shame considering the next part in a generation is almost always better in my eyes.  I think the only other time this might have been the case was Black/White 2.  Which is...oddly fitting.

I think my big issues come down to two things: Necrozma and Lusamine.  Combined, they adequately sum up all of my problems with the game.  I’ll get to them, but positives first.

Love the new UBs.  They’re all excellent, I can’t wait to get my Stakataka, Blacephalon is still cool, and while Naganadel cannot be my favorite because Nihilego is way better, it’s a neat design for a Dragon thing so I’ll let it go.  I’m a huge fan of the expanded island dex, and I’m sure that Nuzlock-esque rules would be fantastic with the new spread.  That said, I cannot imagine a horror greater than a Nuzlock in these games.  Totem Pokemon are hard as shit, and while that’s been fun for a normal playthrough, you’re basically asking for half your team to get wiped if you run a Nuzlock.  Marowak in particular is a fucking asshole, with Detect and, if memory serves, Ground and Fighting coverage on a Fire type.  Callie hated this fight, and had a really good point: it’s not entirely fair that you have two things, both now super fast, hitting for most if not all of your life in one turn.  You don’t really get breathing room in a 2-v-1, and without a chance to really switch out, a Nuzlock may as well be impossible, I feel.

I ADORE Mantine Surf.  The ability to accrue a reasonable amount of BP per session is spectacular, and I sincerely hope this mechanic stays forever.  Not even necessarily in this form, but in some kind of easy minigame that permits you to get a ton of BP per run.  Two runs gets you any move you want, and that takes all of 5 minutes.  Easily the best mechanic.  The move tutor options are also great, and a lot of additions really help a lot of Pokemon.

On a more neutral note, I think the Ultra Wormhole travel is interesting, and I don’t have that they put it in the game, but I really wish it wasn’t so random.  Going through the White Wormholes was a nightmare.  I found my first Celesteela on accident before getting Nihilego, but once I tried looking for another I couldn’t find it for an hour.  I really, really hate random chance, and think there should’ve been a way to make sure you know what you’re getting in to with those.  But, they also allow me to get an infinite number of UBs and shiny hunt forever, so I guess I can’t be too mad?

Now, the complaints.  The real ones.  I’ll start with Necrozma, because it kinda ties in with the other, but indirectly.  Necrozma, as a force you need to subdue, is great.  It does seem intimidating, and it’s new forms are great.  But it’s a force that...literally was already kept in check.  And was only a threat because some assholes pissed it off in their dimension.  They don’t really get into this, but it was apparently used to power the technology of Ultra Megaopolis.  Which, by the way?  Super disappointing area.  You don’t get to explore it!  It was just the tower!  Laaaame.  But getting back to Necrozma: I think what bugs me is that it’s a Dragon.  I know that’s petty, but another major super legend being Dragon type sucks.  I really was hoping we’d move away from that, but instead here’s yet another Dragon.  So now it’s a slower, weaker Deoxys-attack with better defenses, and an ability that lets super-effective hits deal more damage.  No idea how much more.

From a story angle, what really bugs me is that it doesn’t feel like an immediate threat.  I can definitely get behind the concept of a force of nature as the antagonist, in the sense that there is no villain and the real thing we’re struggling against is a force of nature or some conceptual threat.  It’s the entire reason I loved the Atelier Dusk trilogy so much.  But...well...that only works in the absence of a villain.  But we do not have the absence of a villain.  We definitely have one, and she was great once, but just...god, okay, get it together me.

Lusamine’s arc in this game weirds me out.  And not in the good way.  I knew some people who were looking at the anime trends and some of the promo stuff for this game, and going “Oh god, please don’t make Lusamine a good person, that’s really not okay.”  And I didn’t really agree entirely.  I think a redemption arc is fine.  I think that, given sufficient motivation and self-reflection, any villain becoming a good person is possible.  But with Lusamine...her actions are severely fucked up, especially toward her kids, and if you’re gonna have that redemption, it’s gonna have to be big, and it’s gonna have to mean going through a lot.  My biggest worry was the return of Mohn.  I saw that spoiler, and was worried they were gonna go the route of “well Mohn’s back, so Lusamine’s stable.  See?  She just needed her husband, and when he left bitch just lost it.”  Basically, I was worried about an invalidation of her entire character and agency as a person by having everything hinge on her husband.  Thankfully, that did not happen, and initially I was very pleased with the direction.  I have since changed my mind.

Lusamine goes off and awakens Necrozma, attempting to capture it for herself, fucks up, and Necrozma almost ruins the world or Alola, as well as Ultra Megaopolis.  She does this because, guess what, she still has that collection of Pokemon frozen in time.  She also still has the scene where she talks down to Lillie and proclaims she has no children.  So all the stuff that showcased her definitely being a villain?  Still there.  My problem isn’t what, it’s how.  A sufficient struggle and showcasing of Lusamine making an effort and dealing with ramifications for her actions would be good.  That I would appreciate.  But they didn’t do that.  Any possible changes occurred off-screen and we’re just told about them, and worst of all, the main takeaway they try to push is that Lillie and Lusamine talked to each other, and suddenly it was fine.  No.  That is not acceptable.  Communication is good, but do you know what Lillie tried to do, in both games, after the third island?  TALK.  Lillie tried to talk with Lusamine, tried to talk sense into her, and nothing came of it.  Communication only works if both parties are listening, and the entire point of Lusamine’s character is that she’s controlling and not willing to listen, but suddenly we’re gone to Ultra Space for a few hours and she’s completely changed as a person?  Nothing adds up, and it’s entirely because there’s no focus on characters anymore.

It was kinda like this with Delta Episode.  Instead of focusing on any human element, it’s just “Here’s this big cool super legendary Pokemon.”  And sure, Necrozma is cool and all.  But you know what was better?  The dynamics of a broken family, and the development of an abused child coming to terms with her history, calling out her abuser’s actions as awful, and moving forward.  But we don’t focus on that.  Instead, we sideline that entire family’s story.  You give a few more details initially, talking about the history and the loss of Mohn, and hinting at more complex motivations for Lusamine, then immediately toss all of that away in favor of...what, exactly?  Big space monster dragon?  Yeah, it looks cool, but it’s not as engaging as their story.  You focused on the wrong thing, and sidelined what made the initial games so good.

I mentioned Atelier earlier, and I feel like this is the perfect comparison, because Atelier Shallie did this too.  “This series is supposed to be light-hearted, so we have to have a positive and upbeat ending!”  Fine, great.  But the basis you set is heavy material and incredibly sobering, and you can’t just hand-wave that and insist that things got better off-screen or with minimal effort.  These things take time and effort to resolve effectively, and it’s almost better to imply that parties are willing to work toward a solution and not reveal the means, than insist that the means was a simple 5-minute conversation and easy fix.  Acknowledging the gravity of human struggles and showing only that parties are willing to work toward a fix without needing to show the fix is perfectly valid, and trying to undermine severity for the sake of remaining “light-hearted” becomes a massive problem for a story that is otherwise gripping.

Ultimately, I strongly feel like the bad outweighs the good here.  As a cap-off to the series on handhelds, it’s almost disappointing to know that their idea of an appropriate culmination was a bunch of flashiness and “Look at this cool big Pokemon thing!” while sidelining the story and characters as hard as humanly possible.  I was really hoping for an improvement and a deeper analysis of the family dynamics within the context of the original story.  But instead, all of that is sidelined in favor of this “alternate telling” that changes nothing about the history of their dynamics, but ends on a note where everything is immediately and casually resolved with no effort, off-screen.  It’s bad, and I really, really wish that we’d stop getting these stories that have such a powerful start to work with, and just fuck up the ending beyond belief.  I know I have a tendency to complain, but I do not ask for much to be generally satisfied.  To miss that entire mark is, quite frankly, unbelievable. 

[offgridthegame]

Sprint Update - 20.09.17 - Straight Outta Leftfield!

Phew!  We’re just about to pack up and head for Birmingham, as Off Grid has been selected as part of the Leftfield Collection at EGX!  We’re SO excited to be showing Off Grid at EGX and are looking forward to players responses to the game so far.  If you’re at the show, please come along and say hi! Also at EGX, we will be livestreaming a playthrough of Off Grid from the Twitch Stage on Thursday at 11:30am (BST).  Follow along online at:  twitch.tv/twitch. We’ve been toying with the idea of starting a twitch account for some time - and with the invitation to livestream from EGX, we finally have.  Very soon, we’ll be streaming live from twitch.tv/semaeopus!  Follow us as we chat through our monthly sprint updates, play through some of the games that inspire us, and bring in other indie devs to talk about game dev life. 

In case you haven’t heard (we hope you have!) we are still looking for a C# Unity Programmer to join the team.  We’ve extended the application deadline to Monday 25th September, so if you’re a UK-based games programmer looking for a change, we want to hear from you.  If you’re at EGX, stop by our stand in Leftfield to say hi, talk to us about the position, and play Off Grid for yourself before you get that application in! 

Now onto the sprint!

Rebuilding the harbour

Just a day after we began this sprint, we heard that we'd have a place at the Leftfield Collection at EGX.  So we sat down to re-plan our work for the sprint with that in mind.  One of the things we wanted to get working for EGX was the harbour level.

We've had some bare bones prototypes of what the harbour would be for a long time now, and a more complete, but still mostly unplayable whiteboxed version of the level for a while.  So it was time to start cleaning and refining that version into something with a bit more gameplay.

First task was to deal with the player path though the level, so we could guide the player from one objective to the next and make sure we can also place a few obstacles on the way.  The draft level was pretty much just open space, with some late-level locations close to the start, and very little for the player to do around the rest of the level.  Cue moving a few buildings around and erecting more fences to gate the player's path to different locations!

Add a couple of passes of lighting (with a few issues of lightmaps not loading correctly from AssetBundles sorted out); a few hours of placing colliders on objects to block the player from falling off the map; and a few days of writing mission objectives, devices, setting up triggers and so on, it's starting to resemble an actual mission!

There were a few additional problems we needed to sort out for this level as well.  Nothing too complicated, we just needed to create an ocean, and the sky...

It's a harbour, so we expect to see some water.  Which means we had to create some low-polygon style animated water in the level.  With a bit of modelling, a bit of C# and a custom shader to go with it, it's now working reasonably well.  We'll likely want to refine things later, especially if there's ever going to be a daytime level, and just to move more of the water animation to shader code.

When it comes to sky, we obviously couldn't use the same city skyline skybox we use for the newspaper office level, as half of the sky is supposed to be over ocean.  This was a fairly quick fix - we have a Blender project for rendering HDR panoramic skyboxes quickly - we just had to remove some buildings and add a lighthouse.  Lastly, we needed to change our fog setup a bit to fade out the ocean at the skyline nicely without making any far-away geometry stand out from the background too much.  That pretty much just meant having to use a black fog at far distance.  This works great for the city sky with black ground and buildings around, and looks still reasonable over the ocean as well (even if not completely realistic).

Drones and navigation

A big part of our plans for the harbour level is using drones to patrol around the area.  The plan was to get our old drone prefabs, make sure everything is up-to-date and works with everything that has changed in the game since the last time we've used them, and drop a few in the harbour.  Well, of course things don't always go as planned!  The drone AI's patrol behaviour is still a bit unreliable, but we still got something out of it in the end.  The patrol issue doesn't seem too complicated either, so we'll surely figure the problem out after EGX.

Apart from the drone itself and the AI, we needed to set things up so the drones could be restricted to certain parts of the level.  Basically, only in places where there's enough room for them to fly.  That called for some more navigation areas to separate "walkable" areas from "flyable", and of course the "walkable+flyable" which is fine for both humans and drones.  As the drone patrol routes are planned on the fly-based on data points in the level, and the player is able to add, remove and move those around, we needed to add few checks for the AI to figure out which patrol locations it can actually reach, and which ones should be ignored.

A nice extra from all this was, believe or not, it all helped improve our lighting in the levels as well!

We are using an automatic script that places LightProbes around the level to provide lighting for any moving characters etc, and also to provide the light level data around the level for our shadow/light stealth mechanic. And that script uses the navigation mesh as starting point. So now that we had some areas marked as flyable, and thus with more vertical space, we could easily use that information and place secondary set of LightProbes a bit higher in those places.

While doing that, we also managed to optimize the LightProbe placement code a fair bit as well, and that's a definite bonus since there are quite a few of them in each level.

See all the yellow dots connected by the pink lines?  You don't want to place them by hand. Any speed up in the placement code is worth it!

Other changes and Bugs Fixed:

New UI sounds. Loads of them. We got our sound designer to do a pass of new sound events for each specific part of the user interface, and now are no longer recycling the same button click sound for everything.

Apps with a use cost could not be turned on if the SPECTRUM app was not turned on first. Now we assume that if data view is off, you can certainly afford to use the app. (We might need to revisit this later if we add apps that cost more to use than what you can afford by default.)

Data meshes of data points placed in levels at design time were offset from the actual data point position.  (We had changed some geometry layers around since the data point prefab was made, and the code that moves overlapping data points away from each other was checking for its own location and not just other points)

Whats ‘Appening

Harry’s first port of call for the Sprint was to update the app system.

Apps can now have multiple actions and options

These are presented as two sub menus. We’ll be getting into this in future posts when we show you some new incarnations of the apps you might already be familiar with if you have played the game with us at an expo or a modding workshop.

Apps can now also react differently depending on what kind of targets are passed into them

So apps can display different functionality for devices vs. data, and even different types of data,

Now app are much more flexible and extensible

This is a fairly in depth point, but it’s safe to say that this opens up a myriad of things modders can call and do with the rest of the API when modding their own hacking tools.

New app for interacting with drones called FlySwatter

This used all of the above and was put in as a working example of how to use the new systems, a kind of test case. It might not stick around as a final tool in the game or it might evolve and merger with other tools, but that is what is great about the Off Grid modding system there is a lot of space for interesting tools to grow.

Continued work on the save system

We faced a few last minute headaches, but we have got autosaves and checkpointing working nicely ready for the EGX show floor.

New team member!

Josh has joined us as a design intern - he is testing modding tools, helping with documentation and helping to design hackable objects.  We’re really pleased to have him on board and hope you all join us in welcoming him to the team!

Here’s a little from him about what he’s been up to:

Hi there, my name is Josh and I have been working on the Off Grid mod tools producing some light-hearted hacks - primarily making Joe his very own disco room where he can party the night away with disco lights and lots of balloons!

This involved me taking a look at the pipeline for adding custom 3D assets into the levelkit and getting acquainted with lua, both of which were a very enjoyable experience, and you can see the results for yourself!   While fairly new to the modding workflow, I have had a blast with it so far and I am definitely looking forward to making a full story-based level in future. 

Speaking of levels, I have also had the pleasure of checking out and testing the demo level of Off Grid!

During testing, my aim was to identify bugs and explain to the team the steps to recreate specific bugs. For example:

missing text on main menu - this was a tricky one that only appeared at certain resolutions, but was easily fixed by the team once identified

menu navigation with a controller - as most people will be playing Off Grid at EGX, I thought it would be important to test the controller experience, which lead me to a few navigation issues when using UI menus

missing colliders:  I spent several hours walking around the demo level trying to identify anything that I could walk through

When working my way through the Off Grid mod tools, I was able to give feedback on the wiki and add to a few pages myself. I was responsible for adding the Art Pipeline to the wiki in order to help modders to add their own works of art to Off Grid Levelkit.  I am absolutely loving putting some of my skills into practice and helping with the project - for me its a dream come true!

Characters Ahoy!

The team spent a chunk of this sprint getting together new ‘docker’ type NPCs for the harbour level, with a little help from our good friend Silvia Bartoli.  There was some wrangling to do as the NPCs are quite a complex array of components and AI behaviours and actions. They require ‘Ears’, viewcones, personalities, all the AI actions available to them, patrol routes, and related props like flashlights or tazers.

We’ve also got a new character editing ‘tool’ for re-colouring the characters.  This guy above is making the most of the metallic values on the colour lookup tables. :)

We specifically designed the geometry of the characters to make it easy for players to make distinct variations.  Above, you can see the same character with a different colour lookup table applied, giving him a different skin colour, hair-do, and even profession - all done with a couple of switched textures. 

We have also added blend shapes to the characters that players and modders in future builds will be able to control via lua - so when they spawn an NPC, they can define the model type, their weight via blend shape and their colour with colour lookup tables and textures.

The Experience

As mentioned, we spent a lot of time on mission scripting and refining player experience ahead of EGX - this meant new mission content for both the new Harbour level and the older Apostle HQ.

You can see the newly re-implemented drone above. These are now spawn-able through level kit as a guard type.  We also put in a bunch of smaller and less noticeable gameplay script fixes to make the conversations read better and player experience smoother, including a conversation introducing the light meter tool for sneaking through shadows.

PR You Ready?!

Rich has organised the next London Indies meetup on Friday October 6th, featuring Stefano Petrullo from Rennaisance PR.  He’ll be joining us all the the Loading Bar in Dalston to talk about how to market your games, how to engage a PR firm and evaluate whether they can add value to what you are doing, and how and why, in his view, events are so important for indies! It’s a 4pm start on the Friday and a nice way to wind down a work week with your fellow game devs.  Check out all the details and RSVP here - look forward to seeing you!

And speaking of marketing - did you receive the very first Off Grid newsletter this month?!  If not, SIGN UP now!  What are you waiting for?!