Killing Floor 2

[skacky]

Killing Floor 2 was announced today on PC Gamer, which has a lengthy article about it. Some stuff I gathered:

- The game uses a very advanced dismemberment system they call MEAT (Massive Evisceration and Trauma), with 95 different death animations for every zed, divided into several zones.

For added variety, each zed has 95 death animations divided between kill zones—the head, neck, chest, stomach, and limbs. Thanks to Killing Floor's success, Tripwire had the money to hire a mocap expert and record every zed movement at a motion capture studio in Los Angeles. Munk captured 3000 motion capture clips for the zeds, and melee attacks, and gun reloads. The once-stolid zeds that clunked around like Unreal Tournament bots are now alive, swaying and howling, lunging and beating their chests. Gollum's Andy Serkis would be proud.

- The maxiumum perk level is 25. Killing Floor's was 6. More perks as well.

Hensley opens up a co-op game lobby—an addition to KF1's classic server browser—which is quickly filled by five Tripwire testers elsewhere in the office. Most of them play with level 25 perks, KF2's new level cap. Two skills unlock every five levels, but only one can be equipped from each pair. There's always a tradeoff. The Commando has to choose between a damage boost and a skill that shows his entire team the zeds' health bars.

The new perk abilities add variety and, more importantly, a longer level curve for players to work on. In KF1, players could go months without earning a rank up, and each perk had only six ranks. "A big goal for us this time around is to make sure the endgame, playing the game for a long time, is much more entertaining and has a lot more replay value," Gibson says.

- Lots of guns with a cool feeling, as usual from these guys.

Tripwire's guns, already renowned for their realism, also benefit from Killing Floor 2's focus on animation fidelity. "Guns shoot at such a high framerate, if you animate the gun at 30 frames per second, you're only going to get six frames per second when you go into slow-mo to show that gun animating," says Munk. "We started experimenting. What happens if we animate our weapons shooting at ridiculously high framerates? Using the Bullpup as an example, we animated at 242 frames per second, which gives us 22 frames per shell that ejects out of the weapons. In slow-mo you can actually see every kickback."

Hensley's team move through the streets of Paris, first killing zeds with pistols, then upgrading to more powerful rifles and shotguns. Each perk has four primary weapons. That's 40 weapons across 10 planned perks, but Tripwire says there will be others—backup melee weapons and "sidegrades" that won't ruin game balance.

- Bloodstains are permanent and stay forever.

Still, there's enough blood in KF2 to make Sam Raimi envious. And here's the crazy part: it stays. Bloodstains become permanent fixtures of Killing Floor 2 maps for entire matches. Tripwire's designers grin mischievously when I ask how they did it.

"We're using some really clever tricks to modify textures in the level in real time," says Gibson. "Typically blood is rendered as a texture that is projected onto objects in the world. It's very expensive to render. What this is doing, in real-time, is modifying the textures being rendered to display the blood so there's almost no additional rendering cost. You can literally paint the texture with blood and it'll stay the entire match."

- It looks like the game takes place in Paris.

Paris is burning. The sky behind the Eiffel Tower glows an ominous orange through a haze of billowing smoke. Sparks and ash and scraps of paper float through the dark streets of the city, where cars and offices stand eerily abandoned.

This sounds like and Killing Floor is one of my favorite FPSes.
Original article: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/08/k...rror-with-the-most-advanced-gore-system-ever/

 

[Siel]

Same dev team?
As long as the gunplay is as good as in the first one, would play the shit out of it.

 

[ZoddGuts]

Haha. Guess you beat me to it. Anyways game is looking good.

 

[skacky]

Same dev team?
As long as the gunplay is as good as in the first one, would play the shit out of it.

Same dev team, yeah. I have no reason to doubt their ability in making great gunplay, they're the best in that domain. Pretty much every weapon in Killing Floor feels incredibly powerful. I hope zYnthetic is still in charge of the soundtrack as well.

 

[Astral Rag]

Sounds great so far and I love me some KF( according to Steam it's one of my most played games with 250 hours )

Here's hoping they don't give in to the decline.

KF's weapons do feel great, I never seem to get tired of blasting away Zeds with the AA12.

Any news on which version of UE they're using?

 

[agentorange]

Sounds good. But kind of disappointing that there don't seem to be any new enemy types? It really just looks like a graphical overhaul.

 

[skacky]

Astral Rag It's running on the Unreal Engine 3.

Even Tripwire's lighting system, which is they built themselves and integrated into Unreal Engine 3, will be easy to animate.

 

[Cazzeris]

When we started designing the game we decided gore was going to be the most important feature," says David Hensley, art director on Killing Floor 2. "We were really inspired by Soldier of Fortune, the GHOUL system. We wanted to outdo Soldier of Fortune's gore.

Hensley starts the match on Hell on Earth, the hardest of four difficulty settings. Tripwire removed one difficulty option from the first game and completely redesigned how difficulty scaling works. In KF1, zeds simply moved faster and soaked up damage like lead-starved bullet sponges. In KF2, zeds become more aggressive and gain new abilities. Clots that would stumble around in a daze on normal charge towards Hensley in a fury when he shoots them on Hell on Earth. Spider-like Crawlers pour out of vents in the walls and ceiling and scurry around in the darkness.

Killing Floor 2 is still Tripwire's baby. They're raising it, molding it in their image. But eventually, it will become the community's game. "Every system that we make we're looking at how to make it extensible to modders," Hensley says. "We'll design a system and then go 'oh, that's not going to work for modding. So we'll redesign it to make it easier for modders to access."

KF2 will support Steam Workshop for mods. Tripwire will release a mod SDK. "That's one of the things we're very adamant about," Gibson says. "We like to prod DICE and EA on this one occasionally. They've essentially come out and said that games have progressed to the point [that they] don't believe the community can make content for [their] games. I say that's total BS. People are smart. That's selling them short. They will figure out their tools. If we can do it, smart kids out there are going to figure it out too.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/08/k...rror-with-the-most-advanced-gore-system-ever/

 

[anus_pounder]

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Berekän]

Nice, KF was one of the favourites when I played with my friends on LAN.

 

[Ivan]

Time to build up the shotgun tree.

 

[Erzherzog]

One of the best mindless shooters out there. No need to redesign the wheel, give it some update and polish and it's still worth every penny of the pricetag. Looking forward to it.

 

[Baron Dupek]

British replaced with frenchies? Mondieu.
:spysappingmydosh:

 

[Metro]

Definitely one of the better modern FPS as far as gunplay goes. The wave defense thing got a bit tedious after awhile, though. If they keep it at a 'budget' price I'd consider D1P.

 

[sea]

Killing Floor is the most fun I've had with a multiplayer shooter in 5 years, easy. Definitely interested.

 

[bert]

"When we started designing the game we decided gore was going to be the most important feature," says David Hensley, art director on Killing Floor 2. "We were really inspired by Soldier of Fortune, the GHOUL system. We wanted to outdo Soldier of Fortune's gore."

HOLY FUCK YES DAY 0 PREORDER

 

[Yuri Gagarin]

Behold the next CDS MP game!

 

[Metro]

HOLY FUCK YES DAY 0 PREORDER in a Russian 4-pack

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Holy crap.
KF is a pretty good game when it comes to gunplay. Maybe unpolished and too focused on co-op, but fuck it, I'd like to see more.

 

[Astral Rag]

Part deux: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/09/k...e-aims-to-design-gamings-most-realistic-guns/

Zed Time desaturates the world and oversaturates blood, Sin City-style.

 

[Dickie]

Hensley starts the match on Hell on Earth, the hardest of four difficulty settings. Tripwire removed one difficulty option from the first game and completely redesigned how difficulty scaling works. In KF1, zeds simply moved faster and soaked up damage like lead-starved bullet sponges. In KF2, zeds become more aggressive and gain new abilities. Clots that would stumble around in a daze on normal charge towards Hensley in a fury when he shoots them on Hell on Earth. Spider-like Crawlers pour out of vents in the walls and ceiling and scurry around in the darkness.

Man, this sounds so much better.

 

[Menckenstein]

 

[sexbad?]

Zed Time desaturates the world and oversaturates blood, Sin City-style.

I'm not sure I like the sound of that. F.E.A.R. 2 did a similar thing that looked awful in slow motion. Maybe it'll be cool if the blood in-game is generally darker than in that screenshot, though.

 

[Astral Rag]

I'm not sure I like the sound of that. F.E.A.R. 2 did a similar thing that looked awful in slow motion. Maybe it'll be cool if the blood in-game is generally darker than in that screenshot, though.

Yeah this feature should definitely be optional but I'm sure mods will fix it in no time if it's not.