KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

[LESS T_T]

Progress report, also with many gifs: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/2160558

Progress Report: April

Hello and welcome to another issue of Pathologic 2 Report—a post where we showcase our current progress in cool gifs!

Make yourself comfortable, ‘cause the post will be long and we’ll be happy to—

...make a nice, welcoming game
Um.

That was the new district-by-district system of dynamic reputation, by the way, that ensures that if you choose to go on a murderous rampage, people will remember… but not in a magic ‘stop right there, criminal scum’ sort of way. Only the local community cares, so if your reputation in a district drops, you try to avoid the place… unless you need something or someone there.

To be done: The system works as intended, but we need to balance what raises and lowers your reputation, because the townsfolk seem reeeeally unforgiving of petty theft now.

Picking Herbs

It’s like Skyrim, only everyone around is screaming in horror and pain
Picking herbs, that the Haruspex needs for his concoctions, is a process that needs to be both streamlined (i.e. the player should be able to find them with reasonable ease, not waste half an hour on a single blade of swevery) and non-intrusive visually. The system we’ve implemented works as intended, throwing something more on top of visual alerts.

To be done: The system works as intended and is finished.

Craft

Hand-made immune boosters are better than the ones you buy in shops

But brewing more efficient, valuable remedies also takes time. Happy Farm has never been so grisly!
Pathologic 2 is a game about planning and resource management, where crucial items often have several uses. Do you drink water or use it to make a tincture? Do you drink that tincture or use it on someone else to detect early plague symptoms in them? If making a remedy takes time, how do you plan your movement around the town? What do you use and what do you sell?

The choice is yours.

To be done: The system is in place and works, it’s all about balancing now.

Fights

K.O.!
Melee fights have gone through several iterations since January, with us improving the stamina management aspect, adding new hits (pictured above), and ensuring the actions of your opponent are telegraphed well enough for you to be able to react in a smart way. The fights are now working properly in the actual game environment.

To be done: One-on-one fights are fun now, but the actual action in the streets gets too chaotic in a bad way sometimes. We also feel that the player isn’t properly encouraged to utilize all options available to them, making hit-and-run tactics too beneficial to try anything else. More tuning required.

Odongh Fights!

‘Aww, but he’s so cute!’ (Famous last words.)
Just like in the original Pathologic, odonghs have unique animations and hit like a truck. They can also jump at you with a bestial roar. All in all, you don’t want to mess with them (but we all know that at some point you will).

To be done: Same as above, only with a bestial roar.

Cool AI Shticks: Conceding

Well played
One way to ensure the player doesn’t feel pressured to murder everyone who rubs them the wrong way is introducing the long-promised non-lethal fights.

Let’s face it: while the mood and the role-playing of Pathologic 2 may not be about fighting, sometimes mugging people makes fiscal sense. There are several systems in the game precluding you from abusing this, like the aforementioned reputation and armed NPCs reacting to your violent actions… but some players will still be tempted to resort to violence, especially in self-defence, and we want to provide a middle ground for them. If an NPCs feels threatened enough, they will stop fighting and let you mug them. No blood will be shed.

(Unless you reeeeally want that sweet, sweet kidney of theirs.)

To be done: Tuning the AI. While conceding works as intended now, the whole complexity of NPCs’ behavior is not complete yet, so we may need to change things.

Cool AI Shticks: Points of Interest

Oooh, a crate! Gotta investigate that!
While we don’t want the NPCs to be overly active, they keep learning things. For example, now they feel an occasional tingle of curiosity and inspect points of interest, like crates, walls (to lean against), windows (to look out of), and, of course, the most engaging of them all: dead bodies.

As a bonus, most of our NPCs can look like they’re going through a really painful break-up at will
To be done: More points of interest… but also less chaos and unnecessary activity. We’re in that phase now when our NPCs have learned to do cool things, but tend to do them in ridiculous ways. That needs to be fixed.

Cool AI Shticks: Burning People

Job well done
The flamethrower-wielding corpsmen can now detect infection and cleanse it with fire, both in infected NPCs and you. Unfortunately, the cleansing tends to have the minor side effect of the infected person dying. One more thing to keep an eye on.

To be done: The AI works as intended, but the victim actually doesn’t burn and once, waiting half a second to catch fire instead.

Voiceover

https://d15chbti7ht62o.cloudfront.n...4b6ba71bde45f09b6baf35f74683d394_mp3.mp3?2018

https://d15chbti7ht62o.cloudfront.n...adc5c272a792f753676f48653be84362_mp3.mp3?2018

https://d15chbti7ht62o.cloudfront.n...db32f81c76b9e64b7ae1e3a418c9da42_mp3.mp3?2018

The voices work in Pathologic 2 like they did in the original game, with characters uttering single phrases—not voicing their written dialogue, but expressing an additional level of character. Most Russian lines have already been recorded, but they’re not implemented yet.

To be done: Actually introduce the voices to the game. Record the English version. Add subtitles.

Characters and Plots

A rather CHEEKY-BREEKY fellow
Currently, most of our resources and energy goes into implementing actual content—that is, the storyline itself. While the majority of the assets are already complete, you never know when a particular event may demand a unique animation, item, or even subsystem. After a story is fully devised and all assets are available, it needs to be scripted and tested.

And not spoiled to y’all, which is why this part of the Progress Report is brief.

Just like your fleeting life
To be done: The task of adding more content is never done.

More Locations

Kind of hard imagining a young girl living here

You can almost smell it
The town is built completely now, except some unique indoors. Now it’s all about polishing the locations.

To be done: Polishing. Polishing. Building more indoors. The ‘burnt-out’ (post-infection) districts are still to be added. Also, polishing.

Less Stupidity

How Can Stairs Be Real If Our Legs Aren’t Real

Oh, it’s the dancing plague

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee
Like we mentioned before, before they get smart, they have to pass their stupid phase. The really, really stupid phase.

They do perfectly represent our modus operandi sometimes though
The Russian version of the update is here. Русская версия апдейта — здесь.

 

[Sacibengala]

http://ice-pick.com/en/progress-report-june/

 

[Infinitron]

Progress Report: June

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope—it’s another -laden update charting our progress with Pathologic 2!

Like we said before, many game systems have already been locked in place, and most of our resources go into content creation these days. Still, we keep fine-tuning interfaces and experimenting with sub-systems! So let’s dive right into them.

Trade and Barter

If you can’t match the price, merchants will sometimes accept items too, but you’ll likely have to overpay

People in the street won’t take money and are more selective, but you can get rare items from them

Trade and barter are the bread and butter of the game’s economy—and since it is, in many ways, a resource management game, you will likely spend a lot of time buying, selling, and trading for items. The screens for trade and especially barter took us a while to fine-tune: it’s oddly tough to visualize the idea of item value when it’s not monetary, and convey the understanding that different characters value different goods differently.

To be done: We’re happy with our current trade and barter screens and are now mostly concerned with balancing economy.

Autopsy

If you take human arteries and veins and lay them all down in a straight line, said human has a decent chance to feel slightly unwell

Remember the simpler time, when veins were straighter and organs, less numerous? And blood was drained from a knee? (This is an older version of the same screen.)

Trade, however, is a common mechanic in video games, so there’s a bunch of solutions that we can draw inspiration from. Things become more fun when we work on a unique, lore-heavy system, like autopsy. Even though the process is seemingly straightforward (you take a body, you cut an organ out, you take it), it’s not always trivial to communicate.

To be done: In this case, we want to make clearer still what “organ damage” is and how it works.


More Threats

Dude, that was a perfectly good bottle

An outbreak leads to panic. Panic leads to unruly behavior. Unruly behavior leads to the Dark Side. Scared people do stupid things. And you are likely to find yourself on the receiving end.

To be done: That bottle physics could still use some work.

Lockpicking

The idea is, you need to click LMB and RMB until the green bits meet at the right height. Only they won’t be green in the actual game LOOK PATHOLOGIC 2 IS A HARD GAME OKAY

Whaaaat? A lock-picking mini-game?

Mini-games can be kind of gimmicky, so for a long time we had no plans to implement one. But then a talented programmer in our midst made this small prototype that was both simple enough and somewhat skill-driven, and it turned out to be a perfect fit for Pathologic.

You see, strangely enough, opening locked doors is not the simplest concept to convey unless you have detailed hand animations. You can, of course, simply “consume” a lockpick from the player’s inventory as they open a door, but it might be a tad confusing. In the original Pathologic, you had to equip a lockpick as a weapon and attack the door, which should have made sense, but also felt weird (take that, door!). So a mini-game is just a simple way of letting the player see what their character is doing.

And, of course, it allows for more nuanced gameplay. Locks can be simpler and more complex. A more skilled player can save resources. And the mini-game is fun.

To be done: Adding actual visuals would be a nice start. Also balancing lock complexity for different places.

Diagnostics and Healing

You may not like it, but this is an actual scientific representation of what human health looks like. Yup. It’s triangular

The plague became more complex in Pathologic 2, and curing it isn’t as simple as just giving someone a pill. Well… it might be, actually, but choosing the right one is a challenge now.

And Sand Plague is no longer homogenous.

To be done: Unfortunately, while the mechanic we’ve invented provides a fun risk-reward tension, the way we present it to the player requires more work and the diagnosis/healing screen is yet to become self-explanatory.

Infection

Free hugs!

See that inconspicuous bar in the corner? We won’t spoil how it works, but infection is a bit trickier now than “one bar filled = bad, one bar empty = good.”

Also note the fashionable hoodie that some infected people boast.

To be done: …Actually, the infection mechanics are a bit too tricky now—to the point of not making sense. We’re once again working on delivery here (note a trend?), ensuring the player can figure out what is happening to them.

Rifle

Hasta la vista, baby

It’s rifle time! And boy does it pack a punch. Our game is not a shooter, of course, so you won’t be running and gunning people down any time soon, but landing that one perfect shot does feel satisfying.

Until you take your time to count how much that bullet cost, that is.

To be done: We need to find a way to overcome the frustration stemming from the fact that the rifle is actually supposed to be a not-so-accessible item in the game, that not every player will even lay their hands on. Otherwise it feels great.

Save and Load

Actually, this , showing an autosave, is slightly outdated already. Saving freezes the game for a second, which can be annoying if it happens without the player’s consent, so we’ve switched to manual now

Saves are tricky bastards. You want to give players flexibility, but prevent abuse; you want saves to be unintrusive, but available.

Having experimented with several options, in the end we chose manual saving—but it’s only available in certain places. It’s a nice compromise: said places often host important characters, so if you strongly need to reload a heartfelt conversation, you will be able to do so, while save-scumming an action sequence in the street is discouraged. Another cool aspect is that it doesn’t break the flow of the game: as you reach a new location and the story thus reaches its next beat, it feels kind of natural to save.

As for loading…

Mom, look, I’m famous!

…it is now more than just pressing a couple of buttons. And while you do need to load after death… are you absolutely positive that loading a save just turned the time and erased the unfortunate event from in-game history completely?

Are you sure no one remembers?

To be done: That whole thing with dying and reloading is not finished yet. Not like you’ll know, because we ain’t spoiling it.

Dreams

We said “lucid”, not “actually visible”

The stretch goal we’ve reached, Lucid Dreams, promised that sometimes, upon going to sleep, you’d actually see—or even participate in—an event that might hold plot significance or tell you more about the world. From game design perspective, it actually doesn’t sound too complex: you just load a separate scene with the dream situation, right? …Right?

Ah. But it would be mighty silly if the player could drop real-life items in a dream, wouldn’t it? Or if they dreamed of a real location in the Town and then woke up just there instead of a bed?

Yeah. Turns out it’s not that simple to separate dreams from reality.

(And in the game.)

To be done: The sleep interface in the above is actually being reworked: giving the player only three options instead of letting them choose the precise time they want to sleep for ended up being too restrictive. Not all dreams have been scripted yet, so we’re working on those too.

Stamina and Thirst

Ah, stamina. The bane of anyone dreaming of doing decent cardio in a video game

Stamina is a tricky thing. It’s understandable, of course, why it gets added to so many games: a stat that limits your action options allows for interesting gameplay, forcing the player to think about what they’re doing instead of mashing buttons. The same goes for sprinting: it can’t always be available (otherwise it would make more sense to just increase the player’s overall speed).

But stamina is also often silly, especially if it makes you stop every five seconds.

Well, here’s our solution to the issue: we tied stamina directly to your global thirst stat.

When you’re refreshed, you have a big stamina bar, that would allow you to pack punches left and right and drop the whole silly “you can only run for like five seconds” bit. However, each time you use stamina (to fight or run), your thirst increases slightly, decreasing the overall bar size. Over time, your options become more and more limited, until you find a way to refresh yourself. Otherwise you may find yourself in a tight spot. But if you’re good at finding resources, you’ll actually find yourself relatively free to be active.

The moral of the story is, stay hydrated!

To be done: This system makes real-life sense, is balanced and fun to play. What more can you ask for?

Characters and Plots

Sticky got his shirt back

Like we said before, most of our resources go into chucking out actual content now, scripting plots and scenes. The majority of game assets is already complete and are now being polished, although new and unexpected tasks still come up regularly (and will keep doing so until the build is freezed).

Say, we may have a character fully modelled, textured, rigged, and animated, but then suddenly the need arises for us to have their dead version too. And pray to the ancient bull gods that the death was peaceful and no limbs need to be torn.

And yes, Sticky got the shirt he wore in the original Pathologic back.

To be done: The task of adding more content is never done.

FUN

Hey, isn’t it like that Abyss thing from Oolacile?

Dance like no one’s watching

Wow, what a spooky, uh, totally deliberate effect

Some would say that Bad Grief is a bit two-faced

The game is working all right. But its characters could still learn a thing or two in the not-splitting-yourself-in-half-randomly department. And just… you know… learn to behave.

Except for Big Vlad. He may keep on. Because let’s face it: the Bachelor kind of deserves this

 

[Egosphere]

I played the hd classic version very recently. Great game, but really tough to get through.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I played the hd classic version very recently. Great game, but really tough to get through.

Agreed, great game but damn nearly gave me PTSD.

 

[Master]

Remake now has a voiced intro

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Perkel]

amazing trailer. I hope IPL will earn some decent bux on it and make more games.

 

[kain30]

oh god, oh boyyyy!!! I want this game so much!

 

[Egosphere]

Just wondering, how is the setting the same given that

Spoiler

Spoiler

literally all of the events of the first game turned out to be a children's game being played in a sand-box after a funeral?

 

[Big Wrangle]

Just wondering, how is the setting the same given that

Spoiler

Spoiler

literally all of the events of the first game turned out to be a children's game being played in a sand-box after a funeral?

The game's isn't exactly a narrative sequel, and more of a "reimagining" with some changes and I assume extra trippiness.

 

[Egosphere]

Just wondering, how is the setting the same given that

Spoiler

Spoiler

literally all of the events of the first game turned out to be a children's game being played in a sand-box after a funeral?

The game's isn't exactly a narrative sequel, and more of a "reimagining" with some changes and I assume extra trippiness.

I see. I heard somewhere that there was only 1 playable character in this, so I figured it must be either a direct sequel or prequel.

 

[AnnoyanceCrime]

I see. I heard somewhere that there was only 1 playable character in this, so I figured it must be either a direct sequel or prequel.

There was only one playable character in Marble Nest, which was a some sort of demo, but not really.
Remake is going to have 3 characters, just like the first one.

 

[LESS T_T]

Alpha: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/2270349

The Moment of Truth

The moment of truth has come. Today, we invite all eligible backers to play the alpha version of Pathologic 2.

E-mails containing all necessary instructions should already be in your inboxes. If you haven’t received yours, please let us know through any channel of communication, and we’ll fix it.

The Haruspex needs you.

What is an Alpha

Art by Meethos
Playing game alphas sometimes feels more like work than fun. We’ve no doubt you’re all prepared to encounter all kinds of bugs, crashes, hilarious AI glitches and balancing errors. We have, after all, tried to set your expectations by showing our grand collection of ridiculous gifs!

But now you can also help is fix all that. We realize that not everyone has the time to provide extended bug reports, so we did our best to streamline the process for you. You’ll have our eternal gratitude if you find a moment or two to let us know what you think.

Reporting Bugs

Art by SpaceLaika
If you find a bug, please report it here.

Bugs are, first and foremost, technical issues, e.g. visual glitches (a texture didn’t load), AI problems (a character runs in circles), the lack of an object or line of text, a dialogue not launching. If you have general feedback (which you hopefully do), please provide it via the channels described below.

The Channels Described Below

Art by Meethos
To find out more about your impressions, we’ve sent the alpha backers a survey. It contains a quiz (that’ll take 5-10 minutes) and an optional open question to spill your heart out.

We’re now also launching Backer Steam Forums and a Discord server if you’d rather provide general feedback there.

About the Keys

Art by Meethos
If you haven’t played The Marble Nest, haven’t gotten the Steam key, signed up for the Backer Portal and are generally feeling confused, here’s what you should do:

1. Sign up for the Backer Portal. To register, you’ll need to enter a backer code, that we’d sent you when the Portal was launched. If you’re missing it, please contact support@ice-pick.com.

2. Grab the keys tied to your account

3. Activate them on Steam

4. Dive into the world of painful breakthroughs and intriguing discoveries

5. Let us know what you think

To Steam or not to Steam

Art by Meethos
Some of you chose a non-Steam version of Pathologic 2 as a reward. We always keep that in mind. But for technical reasons the alpha and beta will only be available there.

Worry not! Even if you’ve chosen a different platform, you still can try the alpha on Steam. It will not affect your reward. You’ll still get a version of Pathologic 2 of your choice even if you take part in the Steam-based alpha test.

Back to the Future

Art by Meethos
As the release date draws closer, we would be much obliged if you could make sure everything is in order. If possible, please find a moment to:

1. Check if your personal data (name, address, e-mail) on the Backer Portal is correct

2. Make sure you’ve selected the right rewards (yes, you still can choose different ones for now, but the full freeze is drawing near; we’ll let you know in advance, but perhaps now is a good time to double-check everything)

3. Please add our e-mails (mail@ice-pick.com, support@ice-pick.com, and, if you’re interested, tabletop@ice-pick.com) to your address book. Reward e-mails often contain links, so some services filter them out as spam. We’d like to make sure you don’t miss them!

See you in the Steppe.

 

[Sacibengala]

Please give feedback guys, this is one of the few I m considering really interesting.

 

[Brocken Jr.]

Why did I back Tides of Numanuma and not this.

 

[LESS T_T]

Alpha to Betas: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/2276068

Alpha goes to the Beta Backers

Today the alpha goes to backers who have beta-test access. You don’t have to do anything special to obtain it — just open Steam and launch the game.

You already have the key — since The Marble Nest, in fact. If you’ve already activated it, Steam will update the game automatically, and our alpha will replace The Marble Nest. Otherwise, it’s time to visit your personal page at the backer portal and grab that key.

You’re a Beta Backer

Art by Meethos

In the previous update we’ve told you how to report bugs and share your feedback with us. Let’s review the channels you can use to reach us.

1. We’ve made this survey for you to take part in. Please don’t peek before you try the alpha!It has spoilers. It’s mostly in quiz form and will probably take you 5-10 minutes to fill.

2. You can provide full-fledged bug reports via this page. Shower us with silly screenshots! Describe ridiculous situations in full detail! The more precise you are, the easier we can fix the issue.

3. We’re now launching Backer Steam Forums and a Discord server if you’d rather provide general feedback.

4. And, as always, we’re carefully reading every e-mail you send to support@ice-pick.com.

You’re an Alpha Backer

Art by Meethos

If you’ve missed our previous update and haven’t played the alpha yet, you don’t have to do anything — it’s going to replace The Marble Nest in your game library automatically. If you’ve already downloaded the alpha, you’ll have to switch to another branch of the game:

1. Right-click the name of the game in your Steam Library, and select “Properties”. In the Properties window open the “Betas” tab.

2. Select “NONE — Opt out of all beta programs” in the drop down list.

3. You’re now in possession of a new and improved version of the alpha, with some of the bugs you’ve found earlier already fixed.

You Just Want To Play

Art by Meethos

If you want to take a look at the alpha, but are neither an Alpha or Beta backer, you’ll have to:

1. Sign up for the public test here.

2. Be patient. In this case, waiting has its upsides — for example, you’ll get the least buggy version possible.

Changelog

Art by Meethos

We’ve already fixed some issues that came up after the initial round of testing. Let’s review the most important ones.

Saving and Loading:

- static characters no longer disappear after loading;

- fixed lighting problems causing blackening of objects;

- fixed the flood of unlocked mind map nodes on loading;

- loading is now possible only through the menu;

- added an indication of the loading process;

- fixed savegame sorting in the menu;

- fixed a critical bug causing breaks in game logic and reduced performance.

Inventory:

- bags with dropped items no longer fall into hard-to-reach spaces;

- bags with dropped items no longer persist indefinitely.

Visual fixes and improvements:

- fixed the glow of protagonists’ hands when indoors

- improved Albino’s textures;

- fixed tumour development HUD animations;

- switched bags with dropped items to a new model.

Lamp:

- significantly increased the time the lamp stays lit;

- fixed the annoying tutorial notification;

- fixed several visual issues.

Other:

- fixed and improved the logic of numerous quests;

- NPCs no longer can attack through doors and walls;

- most floating NPCs now stand firmly on the ground;

- fixed a bug causing game time to run 10 times faster on some systems;

- fixed several combat-related bugs;

- updated the hitbox system;

- various performance improvements.

The Russian version of the update is here. Русская версия апдейта — здесь.

Random playthrough on Youtube:

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Perkel]

I wish they would rerelease The Void/Tension with improved graphics and maybe some additional content and reworked a bit combat.

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Nano]

Some of you chose a non-Steam version of Pathologic 2 as a reward. We always keep that in mind. But for technical reasons the alpha and beta will only be availablpe there.

So... does anyone here have any industry-insider info that explains why this happens so often?

 

[Konjad]

I wish they would rerelease The Void/Tension with improved graphics and maybe some additional content and reworked a bit combat.

I don't see a reson to do that, it is good enough as it is, even the graphics still look nice. Though I would want them to release Tension officially, right now it exist if you download polish version of The Void on steam (and gog I assume). On the other hand remake/reimagining like what they do with pathologic would be nice, but entirely new game from them would be even nicer.

Tension is perfect as it is, but I wouldn't mind improved textures and animations of ladies as well as a larger map and more quests.

 

[Perkel]

I don't see a reson to do that, it is good enough as it is, even the graphics still look nice. Though I would want them to release Tension officially, right now it exist if you download polish version of The Void on steam (and gog I assume). On the other hand remake/reimagining like what they do with pathologic would be nice, but entirely new game from them would be even nicer.

I am one of the biggest fan of The Void but i can see this game could be A LOT better if they would change some things here and there. For example create a bit more content and reduce a lot color grind. Rework glyphs to be less annoying. More dialogs with sisters and brothers, more color dialog, more interactivity when you have certain colors like game supposed to have and only barely changes.

And imho graphics is what it needs to be improved. Don't get me wrong, The Void even today looks superb but due to limited budget they didn't do much with how Void changes due to color. I would love to see for example how some stages change vide like Soul Reaver when you use a lot of red color on some stage and you can see progressively how trees get spikes, monsters start to become look like human femele like etc.

 

[Tacgnol]

Some of you chose a non-Steam version of Pathologic 2 as a reward. We always keep that in mind. But for technical reasons the alpha and beta will only be availablpe there.

So... does anyone here have any industry-insider info that explains why this happens so often?

Simplicity I would guess, they probably don't want to update two different branches.

 

[Wunderbar]

Played alpha. It's pretty good, except OST.
Stamatin bar's music declined hard.

 

[Life of the Party]