KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[ERYFKRAD]

Graphics-wise reminiscent of Prelude to Darkness

Ho yeah, my thoughts exactly.
Whalenought_Joe whalenought_hannah, assuming those are placeholder graphics, how easy will their replacement be?

 

[Anthedon]

I didn't mind the art style of SotS per se, but pixel art fonts can go burn in hell. So I'm all for the switch to 3D. The dice animation above a character is a neat way to represent the rolls. Looking forward to more news (and the SotS expansion).

 

[CptMace]

My body is ready. My seatbelt is fastened. May incline keep on.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Tito Anic]

Good video, i liked intrigue at the end. I got some "Stalkerish" vibes - wich is good. Some animations were funny because models looked wooden. Other than that - it looks promising

 

[Excidium II]

Looks p. cool. Pumped for the vertical element which CRPGs lack badly.

I wanna know more about those ailments and how it works.

 

[Immortal]

Looks p. cool. Pumped for the vertical element which CRPGs lack badly.

Why not play Fallout 4..

 

[Excidium II]

Looks p. cool. Pumped for the vertical element which CRPGs lack badly.

I wanna know more about those ailments and how it works.

Why not play Fallout 4... Oh you said RPG.

Well to be more specific, non-action titles. Most ARPGs that aren't made by bioware let you climb stuff and jump.

 

[Tito Anic]

Whalenought_Joe, what engine are you using?

 

[Infinitron]

I doubt they have the time and resources to switch to a different engine.

 

[Excidium II]

I remember it being said it's unity. They even originally planned to use 2d characters with 3d enviroments which would have been cool but ran into issues with shadows or something.

 

[udm]

The dice animation above a character is a neat way to represent the rolls.

Yeah that was kinda cool

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Looks nice, but I didn't spot anything that demonstrates proposed "time based resolution" of turn based combat.

Will there be Codex fundraiser?

 

[Jimmious]

For some obscure reason I have a good feeling about this, but the video doesn't show a lot(gameplay wise). I liked the backgrounds btw

 

[Jinn]

I will definitely be supporting this on Kickstarter. Can't wait! This gonna be good.

 

[Mustawd]

Same here.


Kind of seems like Commandos meets Escape from NY

 

[circ]

Are the developers colorblind? I get it, it's so dystopian. But try symbolism elsewhere not with palette.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Graphics-wise reminiscent of Prelude to Darkness

Ho yeah, my thoughts exactly.
Whalenought_Joe whalenought_hannah, assuming those are placeholder graphics, how easy will their replacement be?

These are all testing models and decor, but it will remain similarly stylized but with some refinement, we only got the 3d pipeline going somewhat recently. The demo/Kickstarter will have a more finalized art style to get an idea of what that will look like, though we'll post some screenshots before then. Playing to our strengths still with smaller textures without filtering — the faces are all cybermodified Serpent portraits at the moment, and you can zoom in without getting anything blurry.

Hannah and I were both pretty skeptical on 3d, but did a lot of research figuring out what would work well with the mechanics and what we thought was visually appealing. I don't think roshan will let us get away with anything too jarring, being seemingly less privy to 3d than we are!

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Whalenought_Joe , is 3D the future, or are you willing to consider 2D again if it suits the game? Personally, I thought SitS looked fantastic, and 2D sci-fi turn based game would have got you a free hug along with my pending kickstarter pledge.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Whalenought_Joe , is 3D the future, or are you willing to consider 2D again if it suits the game? Personally, I thought SitS looked fantastic, and 2D sci-fi turn based game would have got you a free hug along with my pending kickstarter pledge.

Thanks! We have some fun rewards for the Kickstarter planned!

3D is a requirement for quite a bit of the mechanics for the usable and vertical environments, and with the more simulated combat and movement like our volumetric line of sight visuals to work with the height. Our 3d models do all have very small textures, so you get a sort of Vagrant Story-esque vibe from them. Sticking to what we know still, just adapting for 3d.

We created the Burning Candle ruleset for the next Vol game (which we're actually just finishing a Kickstarter update for now), and the original premise of that was having authentic castles and heists/infiltrations within — and that of course required a map of an area that's fully explorable in any direction, which 2d unfortunately makes impossible unless it would be top-down, which we wouldn't enjoy working on.

We love 2d, and really loved the style of Serpent, but for the foreseeable future the mechanics and systems for The Burning Candle games will make the change worth it we think.

 

[Lucky]

These are all testing models and decor, but it will remain similarly stylized but with some refinement, we only got the 3d pipeline going somewhat recently. The demo/Kickstarter will have a more finalized art style to get an idea of what that will look like, though we'll post some screenshots before then. Playing to our strengths still with smaller textures without filtering — the faces are all cybermodified Serpent portraits at the moment, and you can zoom in without getting anything blurry.

Hannah and I were both pretty skeptical on 3d, but did a lot of research figuring out what would work well with the mechanics and what we thought was visually appealing. I don't think roshan will let us get away with anything too jarring, being seemingly less privy to 3d than we are!

If you're going to do a kickstarter, you should, if possible, release the free SitS expansion close to it. That way you get the positive media exposure of releasing free content a year after release, which will positively feed back into your kickstarter reception and make journalists more likely to report on it, as you'll be fresh in their memory. Also, as it was a kickstarter goal, it'll make it clear that you can reliably deliver on what goals you set, which is an expectation that plays a big part in why people pledge much more to kickstarters by established teams. Naturally, also broadcast in your kickstarter that you made Sits for added prestige and some bonus sales

 

[ArchAngel]

That is assuming media cares to report anything. We have seen that they don't for hard core indie games. Both sits and underrail were skipped by most of media.

 

[Cazzeris]

The inventory interface looks like it'll be a pain to handle. A bunch of gridless windows where it'll probably be common to end up blindly tossing the items (which are apparently not immediately descripted since they only appear as a piece of graphics). It doesn't sound too convenient.

Spoiler

The graphics seem to be nice, though, specially the cool texture art which hides the low-poly count pretty well. The UI, the camera and the 3D models all look good to me.

 

[Merlkir]

The only thing bothering me in the 3D so far are the jaggies on thin objects (possibly using alpha masks? Can't tell) - like various railings and grass/bushes.
If I can force some AA, that's fine I guess.

 

[DeepOcean]

What I liked on the video was the verticality + fighting enemies manuevering around on grappling hooks and through the windows, that is pretty cool. It could create some pretty good encounters.
I liked how they are creating a rule system from the ground up, most developers would just cargo cult Fallout or create some half ass bs.
Those two are big pluses for the developer and if those two things work well I will play the game but there are a few codexian nitpicks I want to do about this video.

There are just three things I didn't like in the graphix and the narrative:
Too much grey that makes everything looks the same. (could be just the scenes chosen for the video but I wouldn't like an entire game with just black and grey as colours. Remember Blade Runner folks, a dystopia can be pretty colourful be careful to not go overboard on "Let's make everything grey for the world to look desolate!" because this could go for a boring art style)
The dice over the head of the enemies is distracting, make the dice appear on the corner of the screen or something because if every time enemies shoot at me and the screen gets full of dice, that could get old pretty quick.
The trailer narrator doesn't say anything interesting, most of what he says are cyberpunk cliches that could be summed up on a "This is a cyberpunk setting, folks!". I ended watching the trailer and I didn't feel anything about the setting mostly because the narrator didn't say anything relevant about it, was much more intrigued by SitS.
Cut that Ui screen from the trailer, it appears to be unfinished and the loot icons look unfinished, you can barely see what they are on their low poly 3d, maybe you should consider big 2d icons on the game.
That scene of the low poly guy arming the grappling hook, my reaction was like "Ewwww, this model is really low poly to... Cool, there are grappling hooks in this game!", maybe the zoom on his unfinished low poly glory wasn't a great idea, especially as on the rest of the trailer, the camera is far away enough to hide the low quality models.