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Game News Realistic tactical RPG Spy DNA now on Steam Greenlight, free public alpha demo available

Infinitron

I post news
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Tags: Shy Snake; Spy DNA

Last year we learned about Spy DNA, a futuristic turn-based tactical RPG from indie studio Shy Snake featuring an ultra-realistic combat model with genetically enhanced "super-spies". The game's Kickstarter campaign in June didn't even come close to succeeding, but as I'd hoped, the developers didn't give up and continued to work on it. Last week they released a free public alpha demo, and today they've put up a Steam Greenlight page with an eye towards an Early Access release in Q2 2017. Here's the game's Greenlight trailer and an excerpt from its description:



Spy DNA is a tactical squad RPG that combines turn-based game mechanics with realistic combat simulation.


The game plays about 70 years in the future, and the player controls a squad of genetically-enhanced super-spies with unique talents.

When the genetic enhancement research is stolen from the lab, it is the player's task to recover it and prevent a rogue nation from creating an army of super-soldiers. In the course of the game, you will face a variety of opponents, such as endangered animal traffickers, unethical researchers, and rogue military organizations.

What's next?

Shy Snake, the two-person team developing Spy DNA, are already working on the Early Access version, slated to release in Q2 2017. The team's immediate focus is on getting the game through Steam Greenlight to be ready to distribute the Early Access release.

The full release of Spy DNA is slated for Fall 2017 and will be localized into Russian and German.

Want to try it today? Download Alpha Demo of Spy DNA on IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/spy-dna/news/spy-dna-alpha-demo-now-available

You may heard that Valve are planning to shut down Steam Greenlight soon and replace it with a per-game submission fee. Now is the last chance for Spy DNA and other worthy titles to make it in before that happens, so I encourage you to take a look. Make sure to vote for The Dark Mod and Grid Cartographer too!
 

CRD

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 23, 2014
Messages
297
Divinity: Original Sin 2
The game maybe plays 70 years in the future but unfortunately looks from the 70s.

Jokes apart, there are very old games that are playable now and 50 years in the future will still looks good because of the design. Spy DNA doesn't, and it is a huge flaw they should address.
 
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D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
I m afraid the developers at Shy Snake are committing suicide.
Its not possible to get from Alpha to early-access in 3 months and full release in another 3, judging the state of the game from the videos on youtube and the demo.
Also, the system is the same as Apeiron's SPM, as much as they dont want to admit it. And with that system/series of games SpyDNA will be compared. There is enough room to improve upon Apeiron's games and system, but now SpyDNA is missing a ton of features.
If they dont take their time, they may fail and thats a big shame since SpyDNA is the only SPM game on the horizon.
 

shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
Thanks to all those that voted for us!

I'm going to be making a video to talk about the technical aspects of the game in the next few days. If anyone has questions about the game please post them and I'll try to answer them.
 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
shysnake

Since your goal is a realistic combat simulation
lets start with the basics

is there a detailed Stats/abilities system for your team members and the enemies?
like the one in BE5:

Health

Health defines the maximum amount of damage which a character can take.
Health recovers over time and after medical treatment.

Energy

Energy allows a character to do any actions dealing with movement. If the character depletes his
energy, he faints.

Eyesight

Sharpness of sight affects the speed of object detection in low visibility conditions and the
accuracy of aimed fire.

Hearing

Hearing determines the distance at which your character will be able to locate the source of a
noise.

Strength

Strength affects throwing, carrying loads, and damage in hand-to-hand combat, as well as
shooting with heavy armament.

Stamina

Stamina determines the speed of energy recovery.

Agility

Agility determines the velocity of the character’s movement and affects weapon preparation time.

Dexterity

Dexterity affects weapon preparation time in combat.

Reaction

Reaction affects the amount and length of shock.

Intellect

Intelllect determines the speed of learning gaining skills.

Trade

Trade skill determines the discount and markup placed on the items being purchased and sold in
the shops.

Exp. Level

Exp. Level is accumulated during the adventure and directly affects all professional skills.

Charm

Charm affects how other characters look at you and their reactions to your character (may define
the path the dialogue will develop or defines the sum of the deal).

Shooting

Determines your overall effectiveness at shooting with firearms

Gunfighting

Determines the effectiveness of targeting while shooting from the hip or snap shooting

Sniping

Determines the effectiveness of shooting a weapon with an optical scope mounted

Heavy weapons

Determines the effectiveness of shooting with machine-guns and grenade launchers

Throwing

Affects the accuracy of throwing grenades and knives

Melee

Determines the effectiveness of the hand-to-hand combat

Medicine

Affects the speed of healing with the use of first-aid kits and other medicines

Camouflage

Affects quietness and stealth of trooper movements

Sapper

Determines the speed of detecting enemy mines and success of laying of mines and trip wires

Of course the above indicate if you have other systems in place or items i.e. Hand-to-hand combat / melee weapons, a stealth system, an energy system, mines and traps, a health/recovery system etc etc. After you reply we can ask more detailed questions for the individual systems and items.
 

shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
Since your goal is a realistic combat simulation
lets start with the basics
...


I'll make the video tomorrow. In the mean time here is a rough translation of questions to our systems. aka, I needed an outline to avoid forgetting to cover things.


Intro: Simulation, easy to play, very detailed under the hood. [Kind of like driving sims]

Attribute & Skill overview:
  • Attributes and Attribute groups
  • Skills

Movement [strength, stamina, quickness]
  • Encumbrance
  • Movement modes

Damage model [health & energy]
  • Weapon damage model
  • Blood loss system
  • O2 system
  • Stun system
  • Trauma system
Sense system [eyesight, hearing, camouflage]
  • Hearing, DB based, with attenuation
  • Sight, raycast system with visibility modifiers and spotting check
  • Smell, less important but can detect some hazards
  • Stealth reduces noise generation
  • Concealed weapons
Ranged weapons [shooting, gunfighting, sniping, heavy weapons]
  • Aiming and chance to hit
  • Effects of range
  • Effects of stance
  • Effects of cover
  • Effects of recoil
  • Armor and penetration
  • Doing damage
Melee & unarmed fighting

Throwing

Genetic Enhancement [medicine, ...]
  • In battle effects
  • Post battle effects / recovery
Character progression [exp]
  • Improving skills through use
  • Improving skills through training at the base when idle
  • Getting enhancements
 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
Thanks shysnake!
Eagerly waiting for your video.
Would you consider subtitling your videos? There is a big chunk of fans of Tactical games with Time-Based system, that are German or Russian speaking.
 

shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
Thanks shysnake!
Eagerly waiting for your video.
Would you consider subtitling your videos? There is a big chunk of fans of Tactical games with Time-Based system, that are German or Russian speaking.

So good news / bad news. Finished the videos, be warned they are long. The length would make them take a long time to translate and the automatic translators produced gibberish. So that will have to be a background task as it seems to take about eight time longer to do than making the videos. As you pointed out we have a lot to do to hit our dates.

Overview


Damage System


Aiming / Chance-to-Hit


Enhancements / Medical
 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
WOW! Just WOW! You have a calm narrative voice and your videos were to the point! And may i add, they were not long enough!Thank you Jason.
A lot questions emerged from your videos but far more were answered.

Dont want to litter the thread with more techical questions so i ll just ask the general and crucial ones.

- Can you autofire with a machinegun on an arc? Lets say on a setting like the one in your damage system video, autofiring on an arc from left to right trying to hit all targets?
- There is a first aid kit in your files (yeah i already looked inside them) but there is no medicine skill?
- You talked about mines but there is no sapper skill?
- Is there an attachment system for the firearms? scopes, flashlights, lasers, UGLs, foregrips etc etc
- What will be the minimum specifications the game can be run?
- Does the stance of the target (standing, kneeling or prone, walking or sprinting) affect your accuracy?
Yes it does. I just read it in your forum.
- How about fire-on-the-move? I know, never been done before in a squad-level tactical game, but you are opting for a simulation.
- Your maps show that you 've nailed x,y axis distances. How about z axis?
- Your -strange- targeting system bundles together snapshot, aimed shot and scoped shot. How about firing-from-the-hip? Submachineguns?
- Moving with weapon-at-the-ready?
- Is there an adrenaline system? How about suppresion fire?
- Will you support modding? (map editor, adding mercs...ehm... i mean spies, adding firearms, writing quests)

I know that introducing more systems at this stage of development will take publishing your gem further and further away but please consider adding them if they are not too much hassle. For the bigger ones even a promise that you ll do them in your next installment may suffice.

On a final note
:takemymoney:
 
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shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
WOW! Just WOW! You have a calm narrative voice and your videos were to the point! And may i add, they were not long enough!Thank you Jason.
A lot questions emerged from your videos but far more were answered.

...

On a final note
:takemymoney:

Thanks!, Also, working on it...

I'll start doing the videos to answer questions every two weeks or so. So keep them coming.

The Arps system, our name for the simulation engine, was originally developed as a GMs tool for pen and paper role playing. So it's very flexible. Most of your questions are not engine challenges, but rather UI challenges. i.e. how do we present them to a player in a UI that is usable. Autofire over an area, attachments, fire on move, off hand fire, hip shooting, move with weapon ready, use weapon bipod, and brace weapon, all fall into that group. Most of those are already on the roadmap and being added as we figure out UIs for them.

Z axis maps, we are currently planning to restrict maps to one Z plane of variable elevation. This is to avoid creating very difficult to solve camera usability issues. Getting a camera right is so important we didn't want to tackle this in our first release.

Suppression fire, this is an AI issue in our system. Once complete, near misses or sheer volume of fire should make a NPC feel threatened. They should then act with some degree of self preservation.

Med-pack / medicine. Would be trivial to add. Has not been added as the genetic enhancements make it moot for playable characters.

Modding, I would like to support it. However, we need to get the game to market first. Right now you could do a lot by editing the Arps.xml file. Adding generated levels, npcs, and items would be easy to add support for. Custom map levels (made in the UE4 editor) would be a bigger challenge because of how the objectives tie into the xml data.
 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
I'll start doing the videos to answer questions every two weeks or so. So keep them coming.

Understood. So, i ll refrain from any comments and suggestions for the time being, and just ask questions.


- What are the planned attributes of firearms?
- What are the planned attributes of ammo?
- What are the planned attributes of grenades? (not only for the hand thrown ones but also for barrel launched, rocket propelled etc)
- Will there be a crafting system? Even a simple one i.e. combining a string and a can to make a noise trap.
- Voice acting? All/some/none of dialogs? I noticed spies commenting during battle. How many different categories of comments?
- Incendiary weapons and flamethrowers?
- Is this the final GUI? Are you planning to add/subtract/re-arrange anything i.e. a minimap?
- Non-lethal weapons? Present. Just read it in your blog. Sorry, misunderstood. Question stands.
- Ricochets . Will some bullets ricochet on a hard surface and lethally continue their new path?
- Bouncing. Will you be able to bounce a hand grenade on a wall? Yes you will. Just watched your "Creating the world of spydna" video.
- Suppressors? Planned. Just read it in your blog.
- Weapon jamming. Present. Just read it in your blog. What contributes to it?
- Will hits do energy/stamina "damage" to the target? i.e. Hitting an armored target multiple times, non-penetrating hits, will his energy/stamina be less or even out of breath?
- Do armored vests degrade after multiple hits?
- How much C&C is there? Is the game strictly linear or do actions/decisions alter the flow?
- Micro/Small air/land drones (ones that can be carried by a man and be deployed in meaningful time) i.e. Battlehawk aka T-RAM , PD-100 Black Hornet , COTS-M

I think thats enough for this round.

All of the above of course by keeping in mind that wanted#planned#realised#included
 
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shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
I had a few free min to answer a few more of the questions earlier than expected. This is mostly centered around how we create items and maps, and by extension some part of what modding would have to re-create.

 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
Thank you Jason for the interim and long video. As i wrote previously, not long enough...
Again i ll refrain from any comments and suggestions and just ask questions.

- Can you sidestep/strafe? Can you move backwards?
- Can you jump i.e. through a low window or over a low fence?
- How about PGFs like TrackingPoint or One Shot XG(now CWO) or other interim systems like Eliminator or even for 40mm GL like FN FCU
- How about guided munitions like EXACTO
- Will there be animals present i.e. guard dogs?
- Will you be able to load a magazine with different ammo? i.e. HP,AP,AP,HP,AP,AP..... and not having to do this for each round but by establishing a pattern and then pressing an autofill button.
- Guard mode? i.e. can you leave a character with orders to watch a sector and automatically fire when certain conditions are met?
- Inventory system. Is this final? Will it be developed/detailed further? i.e. backpacks, vests, belts, pockets, shoulders (with sling) etc etc
- Dragging wounded comrades (or fallen enemies out of sight of others)?
- Will the enemy AI react to the sight of his fallen comrades?
- How about different weather conditions. i.e. Heavy rain would impair movement (mud) and/or visibility, accuracy etc
- Will you be able to drop your weapon in hand so you dont have to holster it to equip another? (thus saving precious time)
- Will you be able to arm a grenade and hold it as long as you like before throwing it?
- Will you be able to choose the arc of the grenade for a given target? i.e. shallow vs high arc
- Will the bullets fly with reallistic balistic trajectories?
- Lean/fire from cover (using normal guns or guns like cornershot)?

Btw, how often do you check your forum?
Thanks for your time & patience!
 
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shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
Thanks, I'll answer a couple quick ones. Some of these questions are complex and I'll have to do them next time I record.

- Sidestep & strafe. Not currently planned, this would all a lot of complexity to the UI.
- Advanced aiming systems. Yes, exact effects are still being tuned.
- Guard mode, ... Some form or logic is planned. It's not clear how far we will go. Effectively you are issuing an AI command to a playable character at that point.
- Today we re-arranged the gunsight today to make room for some extra options. So an aim only, fire until target is down, and a few other options are on their way.
- Inventory system. Not near final
- morale system. Planned
- grenade arc. Ideally yes, I just need to come up with a good UI to do it.

I should be getting notifications to all posts on the shy snake forum.
 

D_F_N

Novice
Joined
Jun 30, 2012
Messages
29
Hi Jason. Thanks for your quick answers.
This is the last bunch of questions i came up with. If i remember/think of anything else i ll just bundle it with the comments and suggestions after your videos are up.

So,

- Weapon weight balance. As closer to the end of the barrel is the center of mass of a firearm, the more easy it is to handle burst/auto fire but also the more difficult(time and energy consuming) to ready and aim the firearm. Of course the opposite stands for as closer to the holding hand is the center of mass of the firearm.
- Flare guns, flares and chemlights.
- Do lighting conditions (of the target) affect the accuracy (of the shooter)? As also quality of lighting? i.e. its different if the target is illuminated by a midday sun than a weak lamppost.
- A way to see the field of view of the selected character? (depended on obstractions and lighting conditions and scopes/binoculars)
- A way to see the field of fire of the selected character? (field of view with accuracy calculated).
- Will the field of view/fire be narrowed when you aim through optics? (making it easier to spot further but in reduced arc as also easier for an enemy to sneak upon you)
- Will you be able to set under which circumstances the game pauses? i.e. getting hit, seeing a new enemy, out of actions etc etc
- How about Dual feed weapons as ARES or Baikal MP-131 or Kel-Tec KSG or UTAS UTS-15 or Neostead
- Exoskeletons?
- Mortars (the man-portable ones) with all range of different ammo
- Modular armor like IBA with additional components
- Ballistic Shields
- Will the time to do something be displayed before you choose to do it? (not just aiming and firing, but moving from A to B, changing stance, equiping a weapon etc etc)
- Which commands will be interuptible or able to cancel? All? None? Some?
- Will you be able to inject commands? i.e. issued a command to move from point A to B and while this is executed and the character is half way there, i issue a command to change stance or ready a weapon or look behind or all of them and they are carried first and then the character continues to point B with his stance changed and the weapon ready.
- Weapon familiarity? i.e. i give a new sniper rifle to my sniper and that affects aim time and accuracy because the character is not accustomed to the new weapon. Will we be able to see how familiar the character is with the weapon he is holding?
- Can you decrease/increase how fast the time passes?
- Will knowing the position of an enemy be based on what the character sees and not automatically know the enemy is there because his teammates see the enemy? Of course info of enemies sightings may be passed to the teammates if they are equiped with intercom. Even then will the character know only the general area of the enemy or will he know with pinpoint accuracy? Will this be time-based?

Thanks for your time and patience!
p.s. Do you also check the pm's on your forum?
 

shysnake

Shy Snake
Developer
Joined
Feb 14, 2016
Messages
41
First, a thanks to everyone that voted, we made it though Greenlight!!!

Second, for those that wanted some info in German, Alex made a long form video going though the most complex mission in the demo. She said the next one will be in Russian


DFN,
I do check PMs, but I am guessing you sent yours to Alex (admin), and not me, (rjs)

I've taken notes and have a doc with all the unanswered questions which I'll get to eventually.
- Can you change when the game pauses. Yes, in the demo the buttons for this are right below the compass. We need to make it more clear when they trigger and finish the mechanism but it will be there.
- Field of view display. Press and hold "L". We will have a better visualization in time. My first pass at a better one used too much CPU.

- Interruptable commands. Yes. You can right click on the character portrait to clear their queue. Most commands will be interruptable. A few will not. Basically those that would leave the character in an undetermined state would reach a point where they must finish. Ex: draw a weapon, you could stop up until the hand were on the weapon and moving it.

- Detection. Right now it's party based. If a member of your party sees the enemy, all do. We do track the information of which characters each player character has seen. We don't yet use it to enforce attack restrictions or penalties.

Which reminds me of an old question
- We will be implementing penalties for shooting at moving targets. While it's easy to hit a stationary target, moving ones are much harder. The penalty will be based on the time of flight for the weapon, rate of crossing, and if the target is moving in a straight line. This isn't in the demo but will be there soon. We don't want the gameplay to mimic WWI style line warfare.

Also there is a new demo build up. Doesn't change a lot for gameplay but has the re-worked movement animations.
 
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sstacks

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2014
Messages
1,151
The more I learn about this game the more interested I become... as one of the demo videos says it's a realistic simulator that can be played as a game.
 

sstacks

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2014
Messages
1,151
Hey all Alex and Jason from shysnake will be on the live show here in about 10 minutes :)

You can listen online at http://965fmtheanswer.com. I'll also post the podcast version when it comes out in a few days.
 

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