We’re waving goodbye to May and welcoming June and so it is time for another monthly progress report. We’ve been in a ton of areas, including improvements in animation integration, level building and automation tooling to help our team develop content for the game faster.
May Progress
During May we made substantial progress testing our over-map story and dialog system which is used to inject story events and mission chatter directly into the game map. This required some new loading and asset management code, to ensure that both characters on the map and characters off the map (like your team’s Face and Contacts) were still able to appear correctly.
Another feature that saw significant improvement during May is the snap to cover movement mechanic. While Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is tileless, we’ve found in testing that a snap-to-cover mechanic is a necessary one to ensure player’s expectations are met in regards to taking cover and controlling sight lines. When combined with raycast based line of sight detection and feedback about targets, snap-to-cover gives us a best of both worlds hybrid with the benefits of tiles where players would use them, and with the freedom of tileless where players would want it.
Our animation team is completing an overhaul of the weapon’s targeting suite during May to allow characters to raise or lower their weapons up to 45 degrees when selecting high or low targets. Using reference frames and additive animation techniques, the engine can dynamically slide across the scale between straight out aiming to high or low or anywhere in between.
As our first set of playable levels comes together, we’re working hard to make sure they’re as beautiful as they are playable. We’ve just completed our first four ambient-only lighting setups which will act as the baseline lighting for different levels and thematic feelings established. Unity provides a rich set of tools for both lighting and color grading and we’re experimenting with different tools to apply LUT and color correction in both cut-scenes and gameplay.
Let's call them, Sea green, Day Blue, Dark Night and Radioactive Haze
May also included some heavy lifting on our shader implementation which is a critical pre-alpha task. Finalized physically based rendering (PBR) shaders that are both performant and beautiful and still support our feature requirements are necessary for all the Cyber Knights: Flashpoint platforms to live together. We’re experimenting with replacing our custom, hand-built shaders with more flexible ones created in Amplify Shader Editor which might give us more flexibility as we approach the wide variety of platforms and hardware in our target set.
the Amplify Shader Editor
Our team has grown substantially for Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, but the core machinery of the studio is still the two of us, Andrew and Cory. We don’t really plan to change that for Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, and so we continue to put a major focus on automation wherever possible. In May, one area that got some serious attention was the Level Builder’s light probe placement and alignment system. The levels and environments you’ve previously seen us demonstrate and show off to Executive Producers and Twitch streams have all used manually placed probes, which we’ve found takes a lot of time to create and maintain. Recognizing that we will need MANY levels for Cyber Knights: Flashpoint to live up to our ambition, we’ve created a new light probe automation layer that will save many hours and deliver a level of fidelity in probe placement that would be challenging to achieve consistently by hand.
Each dot in the screenshot is a light probe -- I think we want to automate this one :D
If you aren’t watching Twitch but are still looking to keep a finger close to the pulse, join us on our official Discord server or follow @CyberKnightsRPG on Twitter.
Executive Producers #6
In early May, we met for the 6th Executive Producer summit to take a behind-the-scenes look at Cyber Knight’s level builder and our process for building levels which we’ve honed throughout our entire gamedev career, as far back as Cyber Knights classic, Heroes of Steel and Templar Battleforce. We’ve included a 5 minute excerpt from this Executive Producers session which ran over an hour in length. In the clip, we discuss how the heist “Missions” are assembled from smaller content chunks called “Levels” and the wide variety of Level types we are designing and building out for the game. If you’re eager to learn more about how we’re building the game, this one's for you! Enjoy.
Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
As always, we include the infographic of our progress to ensure it is clear where all of our commitments on stretch goals and rewards stand. With this update, there are no changes to the progress bar as we are getting down to only a few final milestones before the next big thing -- alpha late this year.
Also, we are hammering away still at delivering 3D faces. We have cleared a few technical hurdles related to beards specifically which had stopped delivery for a bit and so things are moving again. If you haven’t received your email yet, blame your beard? Lol, honestly -- we thank you for your patience. We’ve been putting extra effort into getting them perfect, so each one now takes about an hour of work to set up, record and deliver to the backer.
Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis - PSO2_Moderator_2
Scheduled Launch Date: After the maintenance on June 9, 2021 (Wed)
Due to the PSO2:NGS launch, the scheduled maintenance that would have occurred on June 9 (Wed) will be moved forward by about one or two days. More information will be announced at a later date.
Global Maintenance Announcement Due to the change in the maintenance schedule, there will be changes to the dates and the content of the “The Road to NEW GENESIS Event” countdown login bonus event. More information will be announced at a later date.
Note: There are no changes to the amount of SG distributed.
We will hold campaigns to celebrate the launch, so be sure to check them out!
CORPSE FACTORY for Nintendo Switch & PC is now live on Kickstarter!
This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and secure a copy of the game for your platform of choice. By supporting us on Kickstarter, you can score your name in the game's credits and help bring it to life.
We're offering a host of goodies for backing our campaign, including digital copies of the game, an art book, soundtrack, tarot cards and posters.
CORPSE FACTORY for Nintendo Switch & PC is now live on Kickstarter!
This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and secure a copy of the game for your platform of choice. By supporting us on Kickstarter, you can score your name in the game's credits and help bring it to life.
We're offering a host of goodies for backing our campaign, including digital copies of the game, an art book, soundtrack, tarot cards and posters.
Learn Japanese To Survive! Kanji Combat - RIVER CROW STUDIO
CORPSE FACTORY for Nintendo Switch & PC is now live on Kickstarter!
This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and secure a copy of the game for your platform of choice. By supporting us on Kickstarter, you can score your name in the game's credits and help bring it to life.
We're offering a host of goodies for backing our campaign, including digital copies of the game, an art book, soundtrack, tarot cards and posters.
Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War - RIVER CROW STUDIO
CORPSE FACTORY for Nintendo Switch & PC is now live on Kickstarter!
This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and secure a copy of the game for your platform of choice. By supporting us on Kickstarter, you can score your name in the game's credits and help bring it to life.
We're offering a host of goodies for backing our campaign, including digital copies of the game, an art book, soundtrack, tarot cards and posters.
Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle - RIVER CROW STUDIO
CORPSE FACTORY for Nintendo Switch & PC is now live on Kickstarter!
This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and secure a copy of the game for your platform of choice. By supporting us on Kickstarter, you can score your name in the game's credits and help bring it to life.
We're offering a host of goodies for backing our campaign, including digital copies of the game, an art book, soundtrack, tarot cards and posters.
The update bringing the game to version 0.7.1.0 is now available!
We'd like to thank all of you for supporting the game, providing your feedback and being patient with us! And a special shout-out to kormakrtv, a friend and streamer who provided his voice for one of the characters in this update. See if you can spot him!
Update notes
Content Update 1 - Version 0.7.1.0
A note on save compatibility
While preparing for this update, we did some extensive testing to ensure older save compatibility, smashing most major bugs in the process, including the pesky Birgit dialogue issue which was still plaguing some players in the previous patch. We also added backwards compatibility for the majority of changes to player character progression.
This means that your saves should allow you to jump into the new content added with this update right away, and your characters will also be able to unlock and use all the new abilities we introduced. In Ashya's case, you'll have to win a couple of fights with her (luckily there are respawnable enemies now...) in order to unlock the new baseline Bard abilities from her updated starter kit.
Unfortunately, we cannot ensure such backwards compatibility when changing objects which already exist in the player's save state: that would mean somehow merging the changed state of each individual object the player has interacted with during their playthrough - a cyclopean task that would deter us from working on actual new content.
Because of this, we suggest starting a new game whenever a large update such as this one drops. Of course, you're still welcome to submit bug reports and other feedback when playing the game using an older save using the "Send Feedback" in-game tool - we will review such reports case-by-case and do our best to resolve any issues we can reasonably fix. Thank you for your understanding!
Changelist
Bolded changes are new additions since the preview
General
Added a difficulty slider and two new difficulty levels: Normal and Hard.
Existing saves from previous versions will continue the game at the default difficulty, known as Classic.
Difficulty can be changed at any point during the game. Note: difficulty levels were designed specifically to affect the strategic difficulty of the game without affecting the numerical progression of the characters - e.g. enemies on Hard will not suddenly turn into arrow sponges, but fights on that difficulty will require more careful planning and preparation with less room for mistakes.
New enemies will now appear in certain areas when the players revisit them later in the game.
Enemy corpses will now disappear as time passes by.
Improved the chase logic of enemies in the map. As long as the enemy who initially noticed the player is chasing, the other enemies in the pack will continue chasing as well.
Changed "load game" on defeat to "load last save".
Slots in Load Game menu are now sorted by date and time.
Fixed scrolling issues in Quest Journal.
Content
New major side-quest: recruit a blacksmith for your hideout!
New contracts: unlocked after clearing one of the initially available contracts. Fight men and beast alike, and test your mettle against the might of a travelling blademaster!
Hidden mini-boss added: see if you can find it!
Several new items added, including a new weapon group: bows!
Morten can now pet the dog.
Fixed a progression blocker with Birgit refusing to talk to the player if certain conditions were met. Note: hopefully for real this time. If she still doesn't talk to you after updating, please make sure to head downstairs and interact with the contract board. Return upstairs and Birgit should revert to her normal dialogue.
Ability Changes And Fixes
New ability mechanic: modal passive abilities that can be switched on and off at will during the order phase for no additional cost. Active modals are highlighted in your character's ability lists. Note: it made sense - both thematically and tactically - to allow certain passives to be switched on and off depending on the situation on the battlefield. For example, with this change a Rogue character will be able to switch Patience on when needed to delay their action in combat, then switch it off when a quick response is required.
New ability mechanic: area damage. Note: usually this works in combination with Engagement-based attacks such as Cleave - such attacks will now deal damage to everyone standing in their area of effect, but targets affected by Engagement will take additional damage.
New ability mechanic: targeted buffs (certain Preparation abilities can now be used on other characters, not only self).
Certain abilities will now ignore weapon scaling and will instead only scale with character stats directly (where thematically appropriate). Examples include Kick (Two-handed stance) and Mend Wounds (Item ability). Equipped weapons can still affect these abilities by providing direct bonuses to main stats.
Generator abilities (e.g. basic attacks) will now restore 1AP to characters using them instead of a number of AP equal to the character's Preparation. Preparation still defines the number of AP a character gains each turn normally.
New ability group: Archery (stance, requires a bow equipped).
New ability group: Conjuration (magic).
Bardic Lore: abilities now ignore weapon power but scale better with base stats.
Class: Bard's Repertory passive logic updated: the buff it grants cannot be stacked endlessly by rotating just two songs anymore, but is now easier to maintain (playing any song will automatically refresh it).
Bardic Lore: Soothing ballad is now a direct heal (regardless of Repertory).
Bardic Lore: Several new abilities added.
Class: Mender's Healing Pulse passive has been reduced in efficiency. AP bonus is now chance-based, and can only occur once per ability use.
Support: Several new abilities added.
Destruction: Several new abilities added.
Destruction: reduced the Critical rate bonus of Fireblast and made it slower.
Class: Wizard has received a brand new Spell Focus passive. This replaces the Spell Focus preparation ability previously available in Protection tree.
Protection: Arcane Shield is now an active preparation ability and has been moved to Conjuration tree.
Protection: Group removed as its abilities were dissolved into other ability trees, old and new. Note: we felt that Protection, with its pure defensive focus and no offensive spells, lacked the flavor of other ability groups, and made a choice to dissolve it, moving important abilities such as Arcane Shield into other thematically-appropriate groups.
Shield Stance: Reduced the scaling of Shield Bash at level 2.
Restoration: Reduced the healing provided by Healing Chain and made it slower.
Items: Mend Wounds will now correctly work as a generator.
To avoid disrupting the player's strategy, certain abilities (mostly buffs and debuffs, e.g. Kick) will no longer allow switching to another ability when it is unlocked.
Stat changes and fixes
Characters can now have 0 engagement slots under certain circumstances. Such a character can never intercept nor be intercepted, their attacks will always be from the side, but attacks made against them will also be resolved as side attacks.
Added a hidden Damage Taken multiplier (1 by default). This can be altered by certain abilities to reduce or increase all damage a character takes (on top of normal Defense modifiers).
Fixed an issue with Strength stat having incorrect XP gain calculation.
Miscellaneous fixes
Reworked the pathing logic in combat. The characters will now try to stay away from enemies when repositioning for action, and will move much less chaotically when idle.
Resolved numerous minor bugs reported by our players. Thank you all for submitting your feedback!
Thank you for supporting the development of Shores Unknown. If you're enjoying the game, please leave us a review - every single one helps us a lot! (If you already did - we see you and thank you!)
