Jul 7, 2023

Eresys - dragonisgames

0.6.7 MAD MAN DIFFICULTY
In this patch, we introduce a new difficulty made for experienced players, along with a brand-new character that can be unlocked by those who successfully beat the game on the new difficulty level.

NEW DIFFICULTY
The difficulty "Mad man" is now unlocked, selecting it will apply the following changes:
-Creatures have slightly more health and speed
-Tweaked creature timers to be slightly more aggressive
-Increased attraction timers and % chance to trigger in some cases
-Pages are more difficult to come across
-Victims drop less blood
-Cursed ground victims still have infinite blood, however they have a higher % chance to curse you

Completing the game on this difficulty will reward you with:
-New steam achievements. One for each of the 2 endings
-Unlock the ¨Grand cultist¨ character (just getting 1 of the endings is enough)

NEW PLAYABLE CHARACTER
-The grand cultist is now a playable character!
Additionally, all the masks the player has unlocked are compatible with the grand cultist

OTHER
-Slightly increased the number of ¨wax head¨ available (single-player respawn item)
-The portal located on one of the cursed grounds, has a little surprise if you get too close (what was behind the portal is cut content, more info below)
-Normalized audio volume for some of the creatures footstep and growl SFX, that were meant to be loud, but were set up too high
-Fixed a potential bug where you wouldn't see your own mask when looking down after respawning
-Adjusted and delayed when the random item placement and location selections are set at the start of a game
Now it happens more gradually in order to stop any potential lag when the players spawned

A few days ago we also uploaded a hotfix 0.6.6.1 to fix a few issues reported by the community, we did not announce it then as it wasn't really much to note:
-Fixed issues with the perception level (eye) and a potential lantern/map usability bug by reverting the sprint/crouch delay change made this last patch (regardless of the delay revert, the ¨no oil¨ text bug is fixed)
-Fixed some important reported collision issues, and modified the collision settings for one of the types of tree assets we use
-Adjustments to the terrain of one of the spawn areas
-Fixed a floating rock found near one of the spawns

REMINDER
This update is now live, if for whatever reason the update doesn't show up, restart steam.
And remember, for co-op sessions, all players must have the same game version! With this new patch, game version will be Eresys 0.6.7 MAD MAN

FUTURE CONTENT
We've decided on not adding a third ending as it would overcomplicate the island mechanics and bloat the story.
Instead, we'll begin to focus on offering players more content in the form of a new map.
The assets created for the scrapped ending will be repurposed for future content, most likely for the Insmouth map (3rd map).
The upcoming patch will tie up any loose ends on the island and begin to shift our focus to the Abyssal Temple map (2nd map).

Jul 7, 2023

Dev Blog #2 - Setting the Mood

Combustion - 3DR Vince

Hello everyone! It’s me, Fredrik, director of Combustion back again for another pawgress report.

Today I am going to highlight one aspect I am very proud of which is the signature look and vibe of Combustion. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Atmosphere

Combustion intends to have a dark atmosphere that permeates the city Norrune where the game takes place. It’s dark, industrial, but should also feel lived in and believable.

It is of course difficult to describe “atmosphere”, as it is more of a feeling and about the totality of sound, music, visuals and even mechanics. But what I find in development is that one informs another and everyone in the development team has an understanding of the atmosphere the game intends to have by just seeing or listening to the contributions of others. A very organic, living form of development I am happy to see build up the world over time.

To make the world feel just that much more real, there is a button dedicated to smelling.
(Atmosphere you can almost smell it. Calico can describe it to you)

Commuting through Norrune.

Norrune nightlife

One thing I feel gives life to a scene is to always have something “alive” about it. Even in a completely still location with no other people, there’s a gust of smog, a sparking fuse box, a billowing flag, a swarm of flies around trash. It’s a living concrete jungle, the city called Norrune.

(Music video)

Practical Design

The world of Combustion is inhabited by a variety of animal persons and takes place in a city made up of oil rigs. Questions quickly arise as you walk through the urban environments of this concrete jungle such as… how do these people live?

While the game never gets bogged down into specificities, the goal is to have things make sense with an underlying thread of logic. Little bits of scenery, conversation, advertisement, etc that helps sell the world as a real place.

Bathroom. Notice there are stalls, urinals and sinks in different sizes

Combustion feature 5 different toilets (Not counting the 3 different urinals)

The definition for good sci-fi worldbuilding is little cleaning robots to fill out the scene.

Lighting (Or Lack Thereof)

Tonally, Combustion is a colorful noir. It has the same degree of contrast and harsh shadows as the black and white cinematic classics such as “The Maltese Falcon” or “Sunset Boulevard”. The light (And subsequent lack of it) becomes not only a great way to highlight the important things of a scene, but becomes a visual metaphor for our characters’ state of mind. The changes and transitions in lighting are there to say something about what our character is feeling or thinking. It might not be the most realistic, but the game certainly has an elevated sense of reality about it at times.

Applying more modern lighting techniques with a modern game engine really helps make the game feel authentic, though it technically isn't. Its bloom and volumetric lighting really become something akin to watching one of the pre-rendered backgrounds of the era via a glowing CRT monitor.

Our lead character Calico is one with deep inner conflicts and who witnesses a great many things in the span of the game. In a lot of ways I feel the light, scenery and details that are given priority in the environment are in a way filtered or skewed in an emphasized way to really underline that we are seeing the world through his eyes.

And it's those eyes and the person attached to them we will be exploring in the coming updates as it is through Calico we experience the story. The world he sees, the people he knows and how he sees, listens, thinks, talks and walks through life should be an interesting thing to share next, so look forward to that.

You can say a lot with very little

While Combustion is a dark and gloomy setting, it actually uses a lot of color in its lighting

Volumetric and dynamic lighting

That’s it for the second development update. We’d love to hear what you think, what you want to know and what you want to see from the project in these updates.

And if you haven't done it already, don't forget to add Combustion to your wishlist!

Follow 3D Realms on Twitter.
Follow Fred, creator of Combustion on Twitter.
Check out the 3D Realms Youtube Channel.
Be sure to Join our Discord for community, news and updates.

Jul 7, 2023

Intel Report #016: More V1034 News

GROUND BRANCH - Scopey

Greetings, tactical realism aficionados.

We're a week into July, and it's about time we put out a new Intel Report for you with fresh dev news and more sneak peeks for upcoming release V1034 of GROUND BRANCH.

⚠️ This report is not an exhaustive list of V1034 features!
For the most up-to-date list of expected V1034 and later features, see our {LINK REMOVED}roadmap.
You may also want to check out last month's Intel Report #15 (June).

Going prone and more animation work

One of V1034's most notable features will be the first iteration of the highly anticipated prone stance, in which characters drop to the ground on their stomachs and move around by crawling.

Lead programmer Kris and animator Mike have spent a lot of time and effort navigating the considerable complexities of GROUND BRANCH’s true first person system, and the prone system is now ready for a little showcasing.

The media below is all very much work-in-progress/first pass, but here are a few shots straight from Kris:

Folks, it's real

And here are some quick and dirty captures of one of the pistol reload animations while prone:

https://youtu.be/RhG0GVR7Wac

https://youtu.be/-V4raFBAHY8

The prone stance will offer the lowest profile, making you harder to spot and a smaller target in most situations, while also boosting weapon accuracy by providing the most stable of all three basic shooting stances (standing and crouched being the other two).

Here's the result of Mike sacrificing his IRL knees in the name of science hardcore vidya during last month's mocap session:

https://youtu.be/BAw1rnBa16Q

Though it comes with a stealth and accuracy bonus, prone is also the slowest stance — not just to move around, but also to perform actions such as reloading, changing weapons and equipment, and looking/aiming around. For reference, the prone pistol reloads above are roughly one second slower than the standing/crouched variant.

More upgrades to the animations will include equipping and stowing additional primary weapons on and off the character's back:

New map on the way

We're not disclosing too much at this time, but John has a smaller map project going called "Hideout". Here are some sneak peeks:

Any ideas about the possible setting or theme? Drop 'em in the comments!

Chasing that quality of life

In each update, we try to include some quality-of-life changes to make your gaming life a little easier — often based on community feedback. When it comes to mission setup, we have two new features coming to V1034 so far:

Objective and insertion randomization

In game modes with randomized insertion/extraction points, search areas, hotspots etc., you can now click the 🔄 button on the Ops Board to "re-roll" them.

Don't like the choice of hotspot in your Terrorist Hunt game, or the search areas in Intel Retrieval? Not a fan of the Team Elimination spawns for the next round? Just click the button on the Ops Board (either in Lone Wolf or as a server admin) and see if you like the new picks better.

Special role volunteering

Feeling like you become the hostage way too often? Ugh. Do you want to place the flag in DTAS, but never get the chance? We feel your pain. That's why we're introducing a "volunteer" button to the Roster menu.

Simply click the button, and you'll be volunteering for any special role associated with the game mode. Only volunteers will then be considered for the special role. If no player volunteers, then the role is picked at random like before (though in all cases, game modes always try not to pick the same player in a row).

💡 Server admins will also be able to, well, "volunteer" other players. Is that a thing? Volunteering other people? *opens new browser tab*

Color blindness support

A quality-of-life update of a slightly different kind is provided by a couple of new Advanced Video options.

We have received reports that the default red reticle, red laser dots, and the red search area and hotspot markers are very hard to see for people with color blindness (especially in the case of deuteranopia, which affects about 6% of males). In response, we're implementing two different schemes to try to assist people with color blindness of different types (and other visual impairments, hopefully).

Firstly, it is now possible to change the color of reticles, lasers, and search/hotspot markers to one of a range of different colors that different types and severities of color blindness may be more sensitive to (and thus have an easier time seeing).

Secondly, we have implemented a number of different extreme look-up tables to attempt to "correct" colors into a palette that is more visible for people with different types of color blindness. This may also shift the default red color of the reticles, lasers, and so on.

We hope that these measures provide at least some alleviation and/or aid for people with different types of visual impairment. We will of course keep an open mind as to other measures we could put in to assist with visual impairments, and we welcome your feedback.

💡 When color blindness corrections are active, a warning message is displayed on screen so that hopefully anyone seeing footage of it will not be confused as to why the colors have gone a bit awry.

The composition below shows the color correction schemes that are possible:

Speaking of quality of life, we have also managed to fix two very special bugs that you have no doubt grown to know and love:

Being unable to set the enemy AI count ("Expected resistance") on the Ops Board
Moving option sliders adding one (1) to the number that you wanted

Sorry we let those slip through, everyone.

Helmet cam

Head and body cams are all the rage these days, and since we always wanted to make it a Spectator Mode camera, we're going ahead and adding a spectator helmet cam perspective in V1034. It may or may not eventually replace the regular first-person spectator camera, depending on feedback and practical implications.

Here's programmer Matt "Fatmarrow" Farrow testing his creation on The Farm's shoothouse:

Radio pouch

In V1034, we're finally adding a radio pouch to all vest platforms. VOIP radio is a default feature in regular play, so the radio pouch is a fixed, non-removable item — though the former aspect isn't necessarily set in stone.

It's a small cosmetic update, but it adds some flavor to setups.

VFX

Grenade effects continue to be iterated on, and VFX artist Charles got to a nice spot with the frags.

Notice how the version below even has some small flying debris bouncing off the ground:

Expanding mod support

Cal, one of our programmers, has been making good progress on the GROUND BRANCH SDK and Steam Workshop integration.

He's already got a functioning test mod into Steam Workshop, and servers and clients will soon be able to download mod updates automatically from the Workshop. We are planning to stagger the development of the SDK so as not to delay updates: V1034 should see the addition of weapon mods, while maps and other kinds of modding will follow in later releases.

This should be exciting news to all modders and modding enthusiasts out there who have been having to hack their mods into GROUND BRANCH for a while now.

That's it for this month's Intel Report!

If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back and know that we do have favorites.

Don't forget to check out last month's report if you haven't already, and maybe check out our {LINK REMOVED} if you're not in there yet.

As always, thank you for supporting GROUND BRANCH. We'll see you again next month!