[WIP] 3rdPerson Shooter & RogueLite Elements

[silik1]

Kaboom!

Play the current version : ShootOut

Hello !

This week was quite complicated. I found out that the previous build introduced a whole lot of bugs. In fact almost nothing worked as intended. I found out that from now on i’d need a whole day, at least, to test the game and check everything is working as expected. That will be my new schedule, the week is 4 days long to add features, 1 day to test, publish and comunicate… and the week-end to clean the code.

Oh well, anyway!

Grenades are fun!

• Grenades! I could implement the grenade. My goal was to implement more version : Smoke grenade, Poison, flash etc. But due the fact I had to debug so much I had no time. Nevermind, the main grenade system is running, it shouldnt be hard to add diversity

To access them (when you looted some of course) : Keyboard G Gamepad D-Pad Left!

Another one for the fun:

Grenades

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[silik1]

Playgrounds!
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The Pink Kitty Club is opening its doors! Of course there is still plenty of work to do, well at least there are dancers!

No music or drinks yet, it will come.

I also worked on integrating a procedural level system, thanks DungeonArchitect from Code Respawn!

It’s still rough, but the main layout is working, there is an entrance and an exit, and of course some fiends to dispatch!

Find out in the Shuttleport.

Beware, they can be deadly. More to come next week

https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzQxMDMzOTMucG5n/original/25+ru4.png

Last but not least, a multitude of bug fixing, tweaking, tuning…

Well that’all folks! Not many talk this week, I’m quite tired : I screwed the AI code, lost one day to screw it more and finally had to reset to the last working commit which hopefully was 12 hours before

Still, screwing like that the day of the build is not quite the fun!

Thanks for reading, and playtesting! Please leave bug report, feedback and opinion! It is always usefull and appreciated!

If you got questions or wanna talk, don’t hesitate to join me on any channel I feed! Special mention for the itch.io page!

Shuss! Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

AI Improvement

Hello!

Since I’ll take a little 4-5 days break in the mountain side, I decided to use this small week to solidificate what I got, a kind of pre-polish

I used the new dungeon system to test the AI, I think it is a lot more solid now. Both ennemies and Player’s party. Here is a run down a dungeon :

DungeonRun

Play the current version : ShootOut

I get rid of the SquadOrderWheel. It was not usefull nor adding any tactic. Now there is a toggle follow/Stay(Keyboard F - RightShoulder Gamepad). I’ll find out a way to improve tactics later.

I also put some attention on the Bots respawn system. It now “should” work as intended. aka: Bots should respawn after 20 min playtime.

I’ll now work on improving dungeons design unless I find some important bugs to take care of! If everything is running smooth, you can expect another small update this week!

Cheers!

[silik1]

The Syringe Gun

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Hey !

Today a new toy has arrived, both for player and Bots. Be it friendly or not. It adds a good amount of survivability!

The Syringe Gun can silently apply various chemical effects (for now poison and heal, more to come)! https://youtube.com/watch?v=R6Sqz_8lwjE

How to use it:

IIt’s a kind of gun, it has a 40m range. It launches a dart with chemical toxin in perfect silence. To switch betwin the diferent toxins, Reload while already loaded(this will cycle the toxins). To perform a heal to self, pull the trigger whithout aiming.

Also I removed the ability for bots to perform headshots, was not really fun to be one shot! Even if it was quite rare. The counterpart is I augmented the chance for ennemy spawn in dungeons by 10%.

As I had to dive into the AI logic for it to use the new toy, I did a lot of tweaks and cleaning there. There is still some work to perfect it though!

Please, enjoy the current version, send me some feedback, opinion, ideas, reviews, hug or kisses!

Until next week!
Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

A new tool is at disposal! Drone.

Play the current version : ShootOut

It’s a little fragile mechanic, with some knowledge one can program it to perform useful tasks. For now only one (lot more to come): it will generate a kinetic shield every 60 seconds for the whole squad. With such a tool, your longevity on the battlefield is considerably longer!

But, beware, your foes could well possibly own one!

It is very fragile, few hits will destroy it, though… And upon destruction, not only you loose its benefits but it also explode… better run, then!

Here we can see Jack and his squad using it :
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_CetfFrZXq4

As usual, a lot of bugs fixes, tweaks, improvement… and new issues. I’m particulary happy to have tracked down and killed an old crash… Thanks the drone, with it I could test some shootout against dozens of baddies, that made easier to reproduce the faulty method!

No really sexy screenshot to show this week!

Thanks everyone who read this, and everyone who play! Don’t hesitate to share impressions, feedback, ideas, bugs, hugs and anything you wish! It really helps!

Until next week! Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

DoubleTrouble

Hello!

This week a new tool arrived: an infrared sensor for the drone. It provides a pulse every 5s up to 30m, allowing the owner to detect life thru walls!

I worked on making it possible to embrace a more subtle way of dealing with villains. While crouching the player will be almost invisible up to 15m. Almost only, the bots will see something and move toward it to be sure. While in squad, each member will add 4m to this undetectable distance. That means a squad of three guys will only be stealthy at 27m! You’re warned, live hidden, live lonely.

A great news, you should no longer experience crash! yeehaaa! …I know I say that each week… but this time I promise!

Another great news ! DoubleTrouble Contest!

Play the game and win 20$ worth of any product on itch.io! Click that link for all info!

That’s all folks! Take care in these strange times!

[silik1]

Smoke
Play the current version : ShootOut

Hello!

This week update isn’t gorgeous, I had some business which took a good part of the week. I mainly played the game previous build as part of the DoubleTrouble Contest which is, I can say, a total failure, as there is not a single participant Whatever, I used the event to experience the game as a player, to get an overall feeling of the experience. I would have loved to see a couple of streams from you guys’n gals, playtesting is really a big part in the process of creating the game.

You know there is still the whole day to score one single point, make a 1min stream and be the proud winner? –> DoubleTrouble Contest!

Smoke

I added the Smoke Grenade to the game, once thrown it will create a quite huge smoke area that occludes visibility. The perfect tool to retreat from an unwanted fight, or avoid it altogether. The few tests I did with it whispers that it needs some tuning, or some counter like the scanner drone. I’ll also do some test occluding the player vision to be fair. In any cases, I feel that the system is more balanced between aggressive and sneaky tactics now.

In the future some more weapons are planned, I mean big stuff like

• rockets, miniguns, missiles, exo skeletons

Sneaky tools and technics are also planned :

• stealth kills, traps, lures…

And of course a lot of work is needed on the AI, party members must adapt better to the player’s actions and tactic, enemies need more complex tactic moves like retreat, regroup, flank…

But other parts of the game need some love now :

• Story / Choices / Narration / Consequences / Meanings / Emotions / Reward / Exploration / Character Development

just to name a few.

Play the current build, share some feedback, ideas, opinions, it is never useless!
Play the current version : ShootOut

And stay tuned!

[silik1]

Narration Round 3
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![StoryTellerDevLog1Resized.jpg|1000x562](upload://gyoCmCDbSSKiYpJ5bGOh3i4OqJg.jpeg)

This week no build will be pushed for you to test. I’m working on the narration process and there is no point delivering small chunk of it.

Narration is a lot more time consuming than I want it to be. Not only I have to set up the camera, the protagonists pose, the dialogs, the player’s choice and a lot more, but I want it to be the more fluid, easy and fast to implement too. I want to be able to create sequences as fast as possible, so the story can be written, tested and tweaked easily.

To achieve this goal I use the Sequencer which is a really powerful tool delivered with UE4. This tool allow you to create cinematics in few minutes. You can add any actor in it and trigger its functions, all of what an actor can do, the sequencer can triggers it (I mean all, be it the camera(s) transform, aperture size, focal length, a character, or you can even switch a light). So the natural way to achieve my goal was to create an actor that implements all the function I’ll need often and implement an interface between it and the Sequencer, eh? I called it StoryTeller.

The storyTeller can start at BeginPlay (seen in the first sequence when you create a character) or on Player Overlaping its Box. It implements all the usual functions needed (Start, Pause, Jump to Frame, End, Update Journal, ect.) so the sequencer just have to call them. And it performs some optional checks like StoryState, PlayerState, ect.

So I’m not only writing (improvising mainly, to build up the system) the story, but also setting up a system to do it fast. The goal being able to pull 10 complex sequences a week. I want the writing process to flow as smoothly and fast as possible, so if any idea comes to mind it’s a matter of minutes to implement and test.

Hopefully yall see it in action next week! Till then, shoot some villains in the current build. Share feedback and ideas and stay tuned! Play the current version : ShootOut

[EtienneAndlau]

So happy to see someone actually knows how to build 3rd person movement mechanics into a shooter game.
All the these game companies except for Digital Extremes have no clue.

[silik1]

Thanks for the compliment but I can’t take it, the 3rd Person movement is 99% fromAdvanced Locomotion System by LongmireLocomotion

[silik1]

​ Narration Round 4
Play the current version : ShootOut​

​

Hey everyone ! This week won’t bring new build for you, sorry for that ! But the wait will worth it!

The first chapter is almost done, roughly, there will have a lot of polishing to be done. You will soon discover how the story will be handled!

The plot is quite basic. Amanda and Romeo are hired to break into 7SidesCorp building. Sophie is an employee of 7Sides, she will have to protect a precious and mysterious alien artifact. Jack, as a police officer work inderectly for the Corp, he hears about a coup in 7Sides and investigate.

This is the chart I use, a simple Inkscape document (I love Inkscape)! I manage the StoryState with 4 main variables :

• A character Name
• A chapter integer
• An alignment integer
• a step integer

Names, chapters and steps are quite obvious, with them I can know who’s playing and where he/she stands in the story. In the chart above you can see that, for this first chapter, there are some branching and two possible conclusion. Some boxes are outlined with green, this will be used if you already played the chapter with another character. If so, the game will use the outcome you had.

For example if you succeeded to investigate with Jack, the alarm will be active when you try to break into 7Sides with Romeo… and so on.

Later I’ll add one another possible outcome : each character will have the opportunity at key time to switch side, hence the alignment variable. But this is for an another chapter.

*A first version should be ready for you to test next week! 'til then don’t hesitate to play the current build and leave feedback!*​ Play the current version : ShootOut​
​​

[silik1]

Game Master!

Play the current version : ShootOut

When I decided to devote some time and love to the Narration System I was quite naive due to inexperience (I levelled up!). I did not realise that the Story System, to achieve what I envision for it, is encapsulating quite a bunch of Sub Systems.

• A Cut Scenes System (what I originally limited the task to)
• A Mission System (To set goals, Objectives & validate or not the outcome)
• A Npc Script System (To make bots perform some precise tasks that would be an over killing effort to implement on a generic AI)
• A Spawn System (To be able to spawn characters and set them up depending of the state of the story)
• And of course the Story System that encapsulate and make use of them all.

That explains why I could not publish a build for you to test since one month now. As I need a week to at least draft each system IF I subdivide well the work, which I obviously did not in this case, resulting to be overwhelmed by diverse and too different tasks.

But everything is coming together. The StoryTeller Actor I told you about in some previous DevLog as fatten up. It is now not only checking StoryStates and triggering a Sequence, but it can also Spawn actors, Start Scripts on them, Start Mission and check it states. It literally does the job of a Game Master in tabletop role playing game in fact. It is working well and will grow even fatter in the future.

Here a demonstration. Playing as Amanda. She’s part of a team whom decided to break in 7Sides Corp. They planned to pass through a sewer. Amanda’s role is to dispatch silently any guards but she’s not skilled in hacking electronic devices. That’s Romeo’s role.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xQcxsAZABAs

Still a lot of work making all this more sexy. But the StoryTeller is doing its job, and all its little soldiers be them Mission, Spawner, Cut Scenes components also. They all implement their useful functions and variable and communicate to each other as needed. They are quite easy to set up, reusable at envy and of course eagerly awaiting expansion.

Hopefully next week all this will be ready for you to test! I’m quite impatient to publish a build because some parallel improvements has been done.

Until next week, take care in these strange times!
Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

**Coupez!

**

Hello !

Long time I did not update, sorry for that. I was quite struggling to pull out things, to be honest Struggling led to no pleasure and motivation lost. I was still working on the project but not advancing, really. Then a neat blog post from Chris Zukowski i’m following : very good link here! I decided to do just what Zukalous said: Cut every features not ready and polish a game loop with what I got so far.

So, I’ll just get rid of almost all the narration which is quite above what I could build until I got some more miles in my counter.

I got this pretty solid shooter mechanic, a satisfying and fun AI, a working weapon and equipment system, a squad system and a very good procedural dungeon/map generator. The game will turn around those features. I’ll use the three months lasting before release to polish and refine the user experience around those axes. With a simple story which will be more a context.

With this devlog I published a first rough of what to expect in the next builds: The player will own a Headquarter where he’ll manage his crew, rest, equip and launch procedural mission map from there. The missions will be increasingly difficult with increasingly good equipment drops. He will be able to recruit squad members and upgrade them if they survive the mission.

Freed from the overwhelmed goal I pursued, i’m back to work with all my will! thanks Zukalous!

Aye! Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

New Toy in Town

Hello!

Today I pushed a new version for y’all to try!

A new toy for both player and bots: the plasma rifle! This tool can change the tide of a gunfight by itself. It launches a plasma shot that creates a good sized area filled with toxin. The toxin can be of healing or poisoning type.

PlasmaRifle

Also added a Galactic Market Console in the Player’s HQ, there you can browse and buy tools, ammos, grenades and drones.

A second Tutorial Chapter has been added, for advanced weaponry (use of different types of grenades, drones, toxins) which is accessible from the Mission Console under “Tutorials”.

Finally a good bunch of tweaks and fixes have been done!
Play the current version : ShootOut

[silik1]

Gemütlich

Hello!

This week I focalized quite a lot on Quality of Life. A lot has been done to make the experience “gemütlich” (comfortable).

Now you’ll see the maximum allowed ammunitions next to the carried ammo, when approaching an ammo pick up it will display in red if you’e already full, weapons pick ups will also be displayed in red when you carry a better or equal ranked one in the appropriate slot (one hand or two hands).

In dungeons when you discover the exit, a tag will appear on the screen so you can still explore without risking to be lost again.

The Mission terminal is a lot clearer: useless buttons will disappear and appear again when needed.

I also added quite a bunch of notifications when needed.

The two firsts tutorial chapters have been tweaked also. A third and probably last one will be added soon.

Some tweaks have been made to the AI, it is now more responsive, take care. I also tweaked the weapons loudness, be careful, shooting a Pistol won’t attract foes from really far, but an Assault Rifle will be heard from 45m and an Alarm will from 90m!

Yes, the first trap has been added, it’s a laser that will trigger a powerful alarm. With a Scanner Drone you can hack it, though.

It’s about all, there are still things to discover!

Thx for reading,

Don’t hesitate to try out the game and give feedback, opinions, ideas… Play ShootOut Now!

[silik1]

Who’s the boss?

Hello!

The first boss is ready for you to fight! At mission level 5, if you get through it, you’ll initiate the fight against Jearl Hyatt, the raiders leader.

I also worked on the introduction sequence, it’s more detailed now. As well as the Player’s vessell-HQ “Wanderlust”. It has a bridge now! From there you’ll be able to fly between chapters.

And a new threat has been implemented: explosive trap! trigger it and you got 2 sec before a blast. If you’re caught unaware it will hurt and you’ll fly. But the worst is coming: the blast can be heard pretty far and will surely drag some scums.

it’s quite a milestone for me. The first chapter loop is done. There is still a lot of polish and additions to do, though. But it’s a good base and I’ll work on adding an another chapter. This first chapter will constitute the game demo.

Until next week, take care! And please give some feedback, opinions, ideas!
Play ShootOut now!

[silik1]

New threat!

Hello!

A new threat for you to overcome: turrets. Don’t be caught on their line of sight, especially the gattling one which spits 7.56 candies at 600 rounds per minute. You got choices, thought: wasting a good bunch of precious ammo an explode it or flank and hack it making a good ally in the process!

https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzUzMDQyMTIuanBn/original/rQ4hIP.jpg

Much more turrets type to come! Stay tuned!

With this build a load of fixes, tweaks and improvement have been done. Most notable one coming into my mind: PumpGun has been doped with better firerate (90bpm), greater range (30m) and better ammo load(8). This is assorted with a 3 seconds immunity on KnockDown effect, though.

HackedTurret

I’m also working on the next chapter which will be exterior, here is a preview:

Wildlands

Once dealt with Jearl Hyatt, the first boss, you’ll have the opportunity to travel there… the boss fight has been improved also, and will be again in the near future.

Thanks for reading, greater THX for playing, and please, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts, ideas and feedback, it’s REALLY appreciated (I cannot afford play testers ya know ^^)!
Play ShootOut now!

Cheers!

[Vollgaser]

nice design, i like the looks !

[silik1]

​Wildlands!

Hi!

This week was a lot about Chapter two. After beating Jearl Hyatt in Station 23B, our hero will be asked to investigate Mantaurus Prime, capture enemy bases and find their headquarter.

This chapter will be outdoor, the gunfights will be more intense, with the presence of heavier weaponry. The maps are, as chapter one, procedurally generated. The main goal is to find the enemy HQ, and capture bases along the way for bonus credits & loot; captured bases will also serve has rally point, once captured a group of 7SidesCorp troop will guard the zone.

Here is a preview of what is coming:

WildlandsCapture

I also worked on balancing weapons combo. I doped the plasma gun which now have an explosion on the poisoning version. And I added a new toy: Submachine Gun: a middle way between Pistol & Assault Rifle. Still, Assault rifle is shiny…

AI has been cleaned a bit, their is still latency on Bots reaction, though. This will be worked out. Bots learnt to throw grenades on turrets, they still need practice I guess, cause they are killing themselves more than often.​

Till next week! Play ShootOut now!

[silik1]

Hello!

Play ShootOut now!

The demo available exclusively on itch.io is in its Beta version. If you haven’t tried it yet or if you want to share feedback, it’s time to do so!

• I’m especially looking for feedback on the difficulty. How would you qualify it? Challenging / Too easy / Too difficult? Do you feel cheated by the mechanics? How?
• Do you want to see a difficulty slider?
• I’d love to know how the game is running on your rig also. What is your FPS with which CPU/GPU/RAM/HD?
• What is your prefer weapons combo? Do you think some weapons need love?

This week, I spent quite a lot of time integrating Steam. Now that I did it i’m face palming, it is so easy and straight forward with UE4. There is literally nothing else to do than activating a couple of built in plugins! So I’m working on creating a cute and appealing page during my spare time (ie week end :D).

I also added Drones Mark2, which are upgraded version of the first ones: Shield drones Mk1 pulses a 100 ward per minutes, Mk2 pulses twice a minute.

Scanner drones Mk1 pulses 12 life detection through solids per minutes at 30m, Mk2 at 60m.

Jearl Hyatt fight has been slightly improved also, he now got a level 10 weapon, which double its damage (he was equipped with a level 0 gear). He also got an another healer now.

Station23B level required to find Jearl Hyatt is now 8 (was 5).

I’ve cleaned the Key Bindings, it is now clean.

Here is a Station23B Level 8 run, using PumpGun / syringe / Scanner combo.

Station23B Lvl8 PumpGun & Scanner

Play ShootOut now!