a lovely view of my sleeper cabin's seat, pre folding downIt's been a couple weeks since my last update. Life gets in the way sometimes.
Two weeks back was Melbourne International Games Week, usually a good time to do some bizdev stuff, so I took the train down there for a handful of meetings. The sleeper down was fine, an 11 hour trip with a cabin mate that snored for the most part was lovely by comparison to the trip back. I took economy on the way back, so imagine an 11 hour flight where your sleep is interrupted every hour or so as you stop at a new station and people get on/off the train. Oh yeah and also the seat is made of concrete.
a lovely view of my sleeper cabin's seat, pre folding down
Admittedly I also took two days off to dive into Starfield. I rarely take personal time off, and when I do it's usually for family stuff. Once every Bethesda cycle* though I'll take a couple days off to get oriented with their latest game. I've spent countless hours in the various Bethesda open world RPG's and often love their attention to detail, immersive nature and freeform style. Starfield has been my least favourite so far specifically because the landscapes aren't as handcrafted or as easy to get lost in. But it's many improvements beyond that are all really welcome. I still get the feeling that having one continuous engine since Daggerfall holds them back technically. That said, what they can do with such a relatively small team is nothing shy of amazing.
My kid also managed to get sick between the last release and this one, meaning I lost a couple days of work there too. Fortunately they're getting old enough to entertain themselves more easily now, and so I can squeeze in some time to work here and there.
On top of all that I've had a bunch of extra-curricular activities on my hands, including pitches, a presentation at a school, and a ton of admin (yay tax time) to handle in amongst trying to get this patch ready.
With all that out of the way, lets talk about Exoloper. The main thrust of this dev was two fold: Getting active utilities on the table, and beginning the rework the of the campaign.
Active utilities are more or less the same as they were in Interloper, with some neat new additions. Press a button, and something cool happens. I could probably write an entire post on why I kinda hate making these in games, but in short it comes down to the fact that I rarely pre-design their functions, and instead build them as I go. This means they're hardly ever accounted for in the codes architecture. Want to make an exo go faster? gotta hack that in. Spawn an energy shield? Hack it in. Zoom optics? Hack it in. You get the idea. Partially this happens because I'd ideally like them to be able to do nearly anything, to mess with any of the systems I've built for the game so far, and partially this happens because I happen to be not such a great programmer. The solution I came to was to simply build out the generic component, something the player can activate, has timers, disables when required, etc, and then to subclass each of the utilities to do their own thing on activation / deactivation / while running / while recharging. This mostly works for now.
mw3 inspired zoom lens, no.. not that mw3
As for the changes with the campaign, this is a little more holistic. The campaign as it has existed so far has divided sectors up into their function. Combat sectors give you combat, resource centres give you resources and so forth. This... sucked. It felt more like a board game and less like you were trying to unseat the local Commonwealth forces. Mechwarrior 3's campaign is a prime influence here, along with most other games that do a militaristic campaign (thinking early ARMA / Operation Flashpoint). The idea that a set of small strike teams go in to attack key components of the infrastructure of the opposing force is really tangible. You're not out to personally kill their leader, you're not gonna showdown 1 on 1 with their general, heck, you're not even facing the brunt of their armed forces, you're using fast moving attackers to quickly disable their key resources. Thats the feeling I want to give the player here.
The first part of achieving that is replacing the existing nodes with something more tangible. Instead of functional nodes, now each node is a place, be it a section of badlands, a Commonwealth fortress, fuel supply point or a stretch of highway, each node serves a narrative purpose.
The second part is moving the function of those nodes into parameters. A node can have a list of parameters, it can be a combat, it can have a difficult decision, it can give the player resources, and it can also be an extraction point. All of this is defined by values assigned to each node type, and a campaign dictates what node types are available. Once I've generated the map I start figuring out what nodes exist where, and defining the players objectives, so that now instead of the objectives being a simple number you have to complete, now they're targets you have to clear out.
The third part is tying the campaign world to the battle world a little more closely. This includes a day and time cycle, tracking weather, and more. Right now all of this has little effect beyond how it impacts sensors, it may as well be random for the player, but eventually I'll give you the option to wait at a node for a time of day or weather that works for you. I'll also add roaming enemies to the campaign map, and sensor complications that make it so that you don't have 100% visibility on where enemies are / what their force strengths are. This should all add up to give you a much more rich campaign experience.
As you can see there's a lot more to go with the campaign, but I think this release is a good step towards where I want that to be.
ma the rains are coming