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Interview Vault Dweller talks about life and The New World at RPGNuke

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Yeah, that's cool but...humble request: please don't make 3 disposable shit-tier companions like the 3 stooges from Dungeon Rats. Also, custom parties, maybe? Full respec on recruit (like D:OS 2)?
No custom parties, no full respec. As for shit-tier companions, we have 4 tiers. When you start the game you're a nobody so you get two nobodies as your companions (Evans and Dinah). You can ditch them the first chance you get or stick with them. Overall, you can get up to 5 possible companions in the Pit (two are mutually exclusive).

What exactly constitutes "cover"? And how important is it going to be? I frankly hate how cover works in nu-Xcom and its clones.
Cover - energy shield and anything you can hide behind. Cover is important because it makes you harder to hit whereas standing in the open makes you a magnet for bullets.

What exactly you don't like about XCOM cover (not saying it's great, just want to understand your concerns better) and what is the best way to implement cover in your opinion?

Another thing: smoke. That's pretty hard to simulate in an RPG, since smoke is tied to LoS. Well, unless you make magical buff smoke. :roll:
Magical buff smoke, most likely. We don't have time or resources to do anything ground-breaking when it comes to smoke and LoS but we can do a defensive AoE "spell" that lasts 2 turns and makes you harder to see and thus harder to target.
 

Diggfinger

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
1,200
Location
Belgium
What a cool interview. And Vince is an all-around great guy, mentioning Fallout and Arcanum as his fav games :positive:

Awesome that AoD sold 100K! I bought it ages ago, but never got around to playing it because it wouldnt work on my Mac (Wineskin - graphics where f'd).
Anyone knows if it runs on Vista? I could whip out my old laptop, and give it a spin...

- Diggfinger
 
Last edited:

Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
What exactly you don't like about XCOM cover (not saying it's great, just want to understand your concerns better) and what is the best way to implement cover in your opinion?

NuXcom's implementation of cover is atrocious. It's a popamole shooter from a top-down perspective. Hidding behind a park bench or a dumpster somehow protects your guys against PLASMA FIRE!? Lol. Xenonauts provides a decent implementation of cover IMO (at least with mods it does). I remember the color coding: red for solid cover, green for visual and yellow was smt in between.

Implementation ideas:

It's absolutely imperative to differentiate between visual and solid cover. Hidding behind a car only makes you harder to spot, but your enemies should have the option to just fire at the cover and hit whatever is behind. Decent FPS games like Insurgency do this really well. If I see a guy running up to a car and taking cover I'm just gonna empty a clip on the car and I KNOW the other guy will drop dead on the other side. HOWEVER if I DON'T see him running to the car and he shoots at me I'll have a much harder time "zeroing in" his position. So in order for this to work you would need a "likely position" system like in Silent Storm. Eg: I had a visual on the enemy during his turn, saw him taking cover behind some piece visual cover, I should get a "ghost siluette" during my turn, unless he fires at me from his cover, thus giving away his current position.

In the end, visual cover would work hand-in-hand with LoS and stealth mechanics. If you get to a good position without being spotted AND you use a silenced + muzzle break weapon then you can score several kills before the enemy even realizes wtf is going on. HOWEVER, if you go loud and you don't care whether or not you get spotted/heard, then visual cover is almost as bad as standing in the open. Just adding a smaller or a bigger penalty to enemy THC (like nuXcom half/full cover system), IMHO, doesn't cut it.

Also, being able to spread bullets around like in JA 2 1.13 would be REALLY cool. That and suppression is what brings the JOY of using a machinegun in an RPG to life. Machineguns in Wasteland 2 felt like garbage because they were essentially rifles/smgs with different stats. :decline:

Magical buff smoke, most likely. We don't have time or resources to do anything ground-breaking when it comes to smoke and LoS but we can do a defensive AoE "spell" that lasts 2 turns and makes you harder to see and thus harder to target.

Xenonauts has a pretty decent smoke system. My problem with magical buff smoke is that it has absolutely nothing to do with how smoke is used IRL. You toss smoke towards wherever you think the enemy might be hiding in order to block HIS vision, not your own. Standing inside a smoke screen makes no sense, since you're blinding yourself as well. I wish I was good at drawing, but you'll have to use your imagination: suppose your party reaches a fork in a long corridor. To the left is where they wanna go, but they suspect enemies might be hidding to the right, laying in ambush. The proper place to toss smoke is not in the middle or in the left, but to the right, thus blocking the shots of would-be-ambushers while STILL allowing the party to take a clear shot at whoever comes from the left path. If you have "magical buff smoke", then the proper place to toss the smoke would be in the middle, putting the party in magical smoke while they shoot at both sides (and not get blinded by the smoke for god knows what reason :roll:).
 
Unwanted

Wonderdog

Neckbeard Shitlord's alt
Joined
May 2, 2017
Messages
1,477
It sounds pretty good, and I think that a homebrew system will be a lot easier to manage for a game with guns. I am glad you guys are chugging away and doing so well.
 
Unwanted

Janise

Unwanted
Joined
May 14, 2017
Messages
727
NuXcom's implementation of cover is atrocious. It's a popamole shooter from a top-down perspective. Hidding behind a park bench or a dumpster somehow protects your guys against PLASMA FIRE!? Lol. Xenonauts provides a decent implementation of cover IMO (at least with mods it does). I remember the color coding: red for solid cover, green for visual and yellow was smt in between.
Da fuck? Its the same thing.
LOS breaking walls in NuCom - your beloved Green cover.
Full cover - Red.
Half cover, baaaw park bench - Yellow.
 
Self-Ejected

Lurker King

Self-Ejected
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Jan 21, 2015
Messages
1,865,419
Vault Dweller,

One thing I didn’t like about AoD was the cramped rooms. I know you don’t have the resources to make detailed interiors, but did you consider using only wider interiors? Or do you think that the camera angle you are planning will solve this problem by itself?
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
One thing I didn’t like about AoD was the cramped rooms. I know you don’t have the resources to make detailed interiors, but did you consider using only wider interiors? Or do you think that the camera angle you are planning will solve this problem by itself?

Take LSD. That should solve the problem.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Vault Dweller,

One thing I didn’t like about AoD was the cramped rooms. I know you don’t have the resources to make detailed interiors, but did you consider using only wider interiors? Or do you think that the camera angle you are planning will solve this problem by itself?
Let's wait and see how the first screens look and feel.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
Vault Dweller,

One thing I didn’t like about AoD was the cramped rooms. I know you don’t have the resources to make detailed interiors, but did you consider using only wider interiors? Or do you think that the camera angle you are planning will solve this problem by itself?
Let's wait and see how the first screens look and feel.
By the way if you guys wanna get free animations from mixamo you gotta do it now cause adobe is gonna remove them.
 

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