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KickStarter Sentinels of Freedom - superhero turn-based tactics

CryptRat

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Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/underbite/sentinels-of-freedom

https://www.sentinelsoffreedomgame.com







Full description :
Sentinels of Freedom is a turn-based digital tactical game inspired by the upcoming Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game, designed by Critical Hits studio in conjunction with Christopher Badell of Greater Than Games.

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Prepare for a story-driven campaign (featuring writing from Sentinel Comics creator Christopher Badell and artist Adam Rebottaro) within the Sentinel Comics universe as you join forces with an ever-growing team of heroes to face a wide variety of villains. What seems like a typical bank heist reveals itself to be just the tip of a much more sinister plan! Create your hero, lead your team, and save the world!

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  • Build your Team - select from the many available heroes and unlock more throughout
  • Character Personalities - heroes will have likes, dislikes, and preferences which influence the mission
  • Full story campaign - writers and creators from Sentinel Comics
  • Freeform movement - Turn Based game that allows you to move anywhere
  • Squad dynamics - heroes or villains can work together for more powerful actions
  • Living Environments - multiple objectives, interactions and dangers
  • Adaptive AI - enemies will start to adjust to current tactics and also make long term changes to strategy
  • What kind of hero will you be?
    Create your Hero - choose backstory, archetype, powers, and appearance
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Sentinels of Freedom is a single player turn based tactics game for PC and Mac. The game will feature Episode 1 "Cold War" - as a self contained story - on release. Episode 1 will feature 4 core chapters, each with many levels, new heroes and villains, along with hero upgrades.

During initial design, we wanted a blend of classic turn based games along with some new mechanics to enhance the genre. We spent a lot of time talking about our experience playing the physical games and how to bring some of those feeling into the digital space without simply copying these game. The goal was to create a fresh experience with strong roots within the amazing universe of Sentinel Comics. The team is excited to share a couple mechanics in particular.

Choose the character's backstory, personality, power source and archetype - each heavily impacting your final character. Heroes have "stances" that provide boosts to certain stats like enhanced dodging or even flight along with powerful sets of abilities and can be fully customized to fit your play style.

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Read more about Hero Creation
When customizing your own hero or one of the many pre-made heroes, players can set up different stances. A stance has a theme which will influence the characters stats and available abilities. Stances are typically set once a character's turn is complete to prepare them for the next activation, although other stances are still available during a character's turn by spending available action points.

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Bunker Operation and Turret Mode
For example, Bunker may have Operations, Recharge, and Turret mode stances. While in Operations mode, he has full movement and access to moderate damage attacks. To deal some massive damage, Bunker will need to switch to Turret Mode, which will make Bunker immobile but give him higher defence and access to super powerful attacks.

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Learn more about stances on our blog!
Support and Vigilance actions add life to the battlefield when characters perform additional actions out of sequence, triggered by special conditions. When a character performs an action, support actions allow other characters to take part or enhance that action, like a character creating a distraction to reduce the target's dodge ability before an attack lands. Positioning your team to take advantage of these extra actions can be critical to the success of a mission.

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Vigilance allows an inactive character to react to the active character based on various triggers, such as moving through their line of sight. Each character has a "vigilance zone" around them which sets the chance of the vigilance action happening. These actions can go much further than the standard overwatch with actions like "keep cover" which allows a character in cover to try and find new cover when flanked.

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The "learning AI" allows the enemies to change their tactics over the course of the game. This could mean introducing resistances to certain types of attacks through new armor or new attacks helping them break through your defenses. Keeping a diverse and ever-changing strategy will help combat the learning AI.

Will you be able to rescue the hostages in time? Can you survive the chaos until more defensive actions are taken? Initiative can have a major impact in situations like these. In Sentinels of Freedom, initiative determines the turn order for all characters and events in a round. Actions from previous rounds can have a major impact on initiative.


Take a closer look at Initiative on our blog

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Pledge Levels...

SideKick

Get a reduced cost digital copy of the Sentinels of Freedom game DRM Free for Windows and Mac

INCLUDES: Digital Copy of Sentinels of Freedom

Hero

Along with the Digital Game, stay up to date with early access to the character builder and get more digital content. Kickstarter DLC Pack is free at this tier!

INCLUDES: Digital Copy of Sentinels of Freedom, Early Access to Character Builder, Additional DLC, Custom Hero options, Digital Sound Track, Digital Backgrounds

Dynamic Duo

Get everything in the Hero level plus an additional copy of the game that you can share with a friend!

INCLUDES: 2 Digital Copies of Sentinels of Freedom, Early Access to Character Builder, Additional DLC, Custom Hero options, Digital Sound Track, and Digital Backgrounds.

Legendary

Everything in Sentinel edition plus be forever remembered by having your name on an NPC in Sentinels of Freedom!

INCLUDES: Digital Copy of Sentinels of Freedom,Your Name as an NPC, Early Access to Character Builder, Digital Sound Track, Additional DLC, Custom Hero options, and Digital Backgrounds.

MasterMind

Get the Legendary Edition reward and help be a part of designing content for the game!

Work with Underbite and Greater Than Games to help design a custom character theme of your choice.

note: must be approved and fit within the design of the game.

INCLUDES: Digital Copy of Sentinels of Freedom,Help Design a Custom Hero Theme for the game, Early Access to Character Builder, Digital Sound Track, Additional DLC, Custom Hero options, and Digital Backgrounds.

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Here is a look at the exciting goals you can help us unlock. We have self funded the initial design, core game mechanics and playable demo to show early on our commitment to the project. This early playable will also help you see our vision for the final game.

We are confident that at any level, this will be an amazing game. The goals are there to provide more options and new ways to experience this amazing universe.

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About Underbite Games
Underbite Games is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan - recently named Beer City USA. The team has spent several years honing our skills by building games for a variety of people and companies. Our latest released game is Super Dungeon Tactics on Steam. Over the past few years, we have made a myriad of strong friendships and unique game ideas which have lead to developing Sentinels of Freedom. Underbite Games will continue to develop games that bridge the game between the analog and digital gaming.

About Super Dungeon Tactics: http://store.steampowered.com/app/463160/Super_Dungeon_Tactics/

Since Super Dungeon Tactics released, we have continued to add and improve the game. We are also releasing the game on Xbox, PS4 and Switch summer of 2018.

About Greater Than Games, LLC
Greater Than Games, LLC is a leading tabletop game developer and publisher based out of St. Louis, Missouri. Established in 2011, Greater Than Games is well-known for delivering engaging, richly-themed, highly-replayable card and board games.

Look for Greater Than Games titles in major markets worldwide.

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To help reduce cost, bugs and time to release, Underbite is using the Unity3D game engine. Our team has been working in Unity for many years allowing us to focus on gameplay and design instead of developing or struggling with a game engine.

Unity3D also allows us to potentially reach other platforms through future updates more efficiently.

Work began September of 2017 on design, prototypes, and art style discovery. During this time we also created a physical version of the game with an attack simulation software. This allowed our designers to iterate very quickly without having to constantly change code. Once the design was solid, we then started digital prototypes but still referenced the physical version to try out new ideas.

Currently, we have a strong start to the initial game in all areas. Here is a brief estimate of where the project stands:

Design: 75-80%
Art: 20-30%
Story: 70-80%
Development: 30-35%

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We are looking for help from the community to make Sentinels of Freedom go beyond what we can achieve through self funding. Underbite has taken the 1st step and risk by developing a strong playable prototype and design documentation. We will continue to develop the core of the game in anticipation of a successful campaign.

Underbite Games has committed resources to developing Chapter 1 of Episode 1. This will end up representing a majority of the core development (coding) tasks that are used throughout the rest of the game. Along with development, design for the entire game will be complete to ensure the game scales correctly. Also during this time, art for the entire Episode 1 will be at around 50% complete.

The funding goal allows us to finish the remaining development and art tasks to complete Episode 1 and ship a complete game with no compromises to the core design.

With your help, we can not only reach our goal of Episode 1, but continue into more episodes along with additional heroes, missions and features.

We greatly thank you for taking the time to review our Kickstarter and hope you will support us :)
By the makers of Super Dungeon Tactics, the AP system looks cool.
 
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da_rays

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Look very nice! And they seem to have gotten around 25K $ from the kickstarter has of now . Hoping to see a few things from FF ( that comic book vibe , voiced character and/or quote that make you love/hate them . I can still hear Man-bot voice in my head . Landscape/building/envirronment destruction would be nice too )
:bounce: cautiously

From my play sessions of Sentinels of the Multiverse ( the digital boardgame ) , they do have a loads of super heros / villains / lore . Unless im forgetting something , thats gonna be the 1st TBS super heroe themed PC game. Unless you count Chroma Squad, which fit the bill but was pretty lazy on tactical layers.
 

da_rays

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Messages
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Filthy Pub , Quebec City
Totally forgotten about that one...you stirred up some funky memories. Funky , but good memories. I remember playing that on a 486.
Unless im forgetting something , thats gonna be the 1st TBS super heroe themed PC game.
Super Hero League of Hoboken was turn based.

Damn youre good , totally forgotten about that one , rare mix of adventure/exploration/puzzle with TB combat IIRC . Gonna visit that old DOS era game for nostalgia and to see how it holds up in 2018
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/underbite/sentinels-of-freedom/posts/2154241

Stretch Goals - Phase 1 posted

We just posted the stretch goals now that the project is funded! The focus in the beginning is on adding more content, heroes and expanded gameplay to the core game as we work towards some of the bigger goals we have planned, like more episodes, multiplayer and ? - we will have to wait and see :)

Here is a description of a couple goals...

Combat Simulator
This is an option to generate quick play missions based on a number of player settings, allowing you to enjoy the game in a more condensed play session. You can also use the simulator to test out new heroes and abilities - without having to impact your campaign. This tool will be very similar to what our designers use for creating levels. We hope as the project continues that we can expand on the simulator into a full user generated content creator allowing you share your creations!

Core Hero Upgrades
This will take all the core heroes such as Wraith, Bunker, Tachyon (and more) to a whole new level, really pushing the limits of what each of those characters can do and upgrade into. Even though these are not custom heroes, we want them to feel as unique as your hero in abilities and stances. This will allow the core heroes to have enough options that you can not fully use everything in a single play session - helping improve replayability and customization.

Side Quests
Hero side quests will focus on that particular hero more - and sometimes may not involve your player character. These quests will offer more variety to the main story as you dive deeper into the heroes of Sentinels Comics.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Would be nice if additional hero archetype goal is reached. Combat sim would be nice but that's dubious in six days.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/underbite/sentinels-of-freedom/posts/2305419

Progress Update

It has been a busy month+ with our studio pushing towards the next major build of the game. Mid November is our deadline for a "feature complete" build of the game. This means that everything that is going to be in the game (code wise) will be. This build may look ugly from the outside but internally is a huge milestone. We can also share with full confidence more details on the game - and we have some pretty cool new features to share!

After the "feature complete" is a series of milestones to refine each of the major features\systems as we approach a full build.

On the art side of things, we moving along very well with about 3/4 of our environments complete and 2/3 of all the characters complete.

For design, we are heavily focusing on making the levels very unique with multiple objectives (and objective types), environmental hazards, and large enemy pool. Personally, this is one of the most exciting parts of the game!

Lastly, there are still "user designs" coming in but we will be compiling what we have and discuss that more in the next post - which should be sooner then a month :)
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Bad Guys Doing Good Things

We are very excited about the current progress of Sentinels of Freedom. We will be hitting our goal of "feature complete" within a couple weeks of the target and managed to even expand some of the features along along the way - most of which we will be highlighting in future updates.

One of these enhanced features is how enemies form and act in large numbers - fixing an issue in some past games. Turn-based games often struggle between balancing the number of active characters and the wait time of a turn. The more enemies, the longer a player has to wait. However, fighting through hordes of enemies can be quite satisfying!

In Sentinels of Freedom, enemies start a round by forming a squad with other enemies. The enemy forming the squad acts as the leader who chooses targets and type of actions that squad will perform. All units then move at the same time to get in range of their chosen actions (if possible). Each unit who is in range performs their action. Finally the leader then directs the next set of actions including re-positioning to get cover or even another attack!

While still a work in progress, the clip shows a group of 5 enemies working together to put the hurt on Tachyon. Even in this test, you can see how efficient turns can be in Sentinels of Freedom. Next steps for squads will include more visual feedback and smoothing out the transitions.

With the final features going in, we can really start to show some of the features of the game. Looking forward to sharing with you all!

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Enemy Squads
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Holiday Update
Posted by Underbite Games (Creator)

Hope everyone had a great holiday! Our team took a much needed break to recharge and spend some time with family. We are back to work and wanted share an update.

Design
Super excited that all main levels are "white boxed" and playable (White boxing is a method of using simpler 3D to represent final assets. These simpler assets allow us to more quickly iterate on design). We will be sharing more on white boxing in the next update. Currently we are finalizing options and abilities for custom heroes!

Art
Level art for all the missions are nearly complete. We are doing a second pass now that white boxing is done to see what additional models are needed. Custom hero art is moving forward now too.

Most character are fully rigged (bones that allow for animation) and we are working on all the different animation sets for different attack\weapon types such as "hand to hand", "melee weapon single handed", and "large rifle".

Another exciting art development is the pipeline for custom hero costume swapping and coloring has been completed. As we finalize art, we will post more on these.

Development
Sentinels is now fully playable with the full "game loop" all functional including the hero base or plaza along with hero selection and path choices for longer missions. Developers are also working on some additional abilities that the crazy designers came up with to really expand what heroes can do for action.

We are planning another update very soon showing some level design!
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Update #38

Apr 30 2019

BUNKER

Posted by Underbite Games (Creator)

26 likes
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THE HUGE POWER SUIT
THAT CHANGES MODES AND WIELDS THE RIOT CANNON!

This week, we're focusing updates on BUNKER, releasing images and videos on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. However, we're giving you a first-look at what's to come!

BUNKER Q&A

Do you have questions about how BUNKER will look, how he's going to work in-game, etc? Send your questions to bunker@underbitegames.com

Later this week, Cory Heald (Team Captain) will be sitting down with Brian Olmstead (Artist), Cris Miles (Designer) and Levi Schneidewind (Developer). They'll answer your questions and then release the video on Facebook and YouTube.

Tyler Vance grew up in Boulder City, Nevada and had never seen anything outside that town. He worked in his father's auto-repair shop as a teenager, but he longed to get out of the desert and see the rest of the world. As soon as he finished school, he enlisted in the Army. They sent him to join the forces in the Middle East, merely sending him from one desert to another. There, he was quickly promoted through the ranks in an armored division. Lieutenant Vance and his platoon saw a lot of action in a short amount of time, but with very few casualties.

When Tyler arrived back in the States, he was awarded for his valor with the Army's Distinguished Service Cross. After the ceremony, he was offered a chance to further serve his country by participating in the Freedom Five Initiative. While operating outside the official Army chain of command, the position would provide Vance with a unique opportunity; he would operate the Personal Armament Exo-Chassis YS-1300T suit, an automated battle suit capable of wielding the firepower of a full battalion. Vance accepted the offer and became the first mechanized officer in the U.S. Army and also a founding member of the Freedom Five, providing significant strategic planning before most of the Freedom Five's missions.

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In the last few years, Lt. Vance has grown closer to his teammate known as Wraith. Maia Montgomery leads a very different life than her heroic alter ego, yet both Maia and Wraith are people that Tyler gets along with well, respecting her abilities in battle, her shrewd thinking as a business owner, and her ability to handle stress and adversity in any form.

Recently, the US Military was revealed to be capturing and training powerful individuals and hoarding items of great power. Lt. Vance's duty to his superior officers was running in direct conflict with his duty to his team. It was a bit of a shock when he was promoted to Captain, as his superiors had made it clear that they considered his actions to be more civilian than military, but he had little time to consider these developments. OblivAeon had come to Earth.

Together, the Freedom Five fought alongside all of the heroes of Earth and beyond against a foe that threatened all reality: OblivAeon. Bunker fought in the defense of all, and now, after that climactic battle, still works to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Working with brilliant inventor and fellow hero Tachyon, he developed a new Bunker suit that utilizes one powerful weapon: the Riot Cannon. It is as configurable as the suit itself, making sure that Captain Tyler Vance is the Bunker he needs to be, no matter the threat.

BUNKER ARTIST:

Brian Olmstead has years of experience working on a huge variety of projects, allowing him to create fantastic art and a process enabling others to reproduce his techniques. Brian is a workhorse from the start of the day till then end - headphones on and hunched over his Cintiq display.

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Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Board Game to Video Game: Capturing the Feel
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Posted by Underbite GamesCREATOR
10 Comments24 Likes
Our team was very excited to have the opportunity to work with such a great property. We were very familiar with Sentinels of the Multiverse and the Sentinels Tactics board game. Our first step was to play the games and jot down notes focusing on specific feelings and highlights that were throughout the games. While Sentinels of Freedom is a whole new game, we wanted to capture the essence of the property.

From our sessions, a few things stood out and we wanted to focus on them during our initial designs of the game:

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Restricted Power.

In the board games, the cards represent your actions and abilities. Your characters are capable of doing incredible things and able to meet any challenge - if you had access to all cards at anytime. However, you only have access a select pool and you mush strategize on how best to use those available abilities.

We incorporated this mechanic into our Themed Stances. These Themed Stances allow the core character stats to be modified and restrict the character to use abilities that support that theme, creating a very focused state for the character. For instance, when Tachyon is in her Push the Limits stance, she is capable of dealing tremendous damage but all that effort has a cost - her HP is reduced with each attack. When she is switched to Hypersonic, her attacks are more focused and all balanced with some support and vigilance abilities.

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In the paper prototype, the heroes had this amazing van as their vehicle!
Hero Sync

Many of the heroes can help fellow teammates with Hero Sync, making them feel more unified and powerful. We are able to add Sync Ability Triggers to some heroes' abilities that can have a heavy impact. Bunker, for instance, can receive an Assisted Reload, which provides more Action Points to continue his assault.

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Even early on, enemies could move and attack as squads
Enemies Acting in Groups

In the board games, leaving minions alone can result in devastating attacks and loss of important HP. We brought this into the digital game by allowing enemies to create squads which group several enemies together. All these grouped enemies activate at the same time making their turn feel very powerful.

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Development of the Prototype

Work began September of 2017 on design, prototypes, and art style discovery. We used miniatures from Sentinels Tactics as well as parts from other games to create a full setup. Each character had a full character sheet with abilities and instructions. Combat and Initiative was all determined through using a 20-sided die. While the digital version has greatly evolved since then, there are still strong ties to this origin.

Movement and range were based on inches and we used a flexible tape measure to determine valid actions. Some basic templates from other games allowed us to create blast radiuses and other area effects.

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Measuring and area attack templates
When attacking, the first roll is used to determine your accuracy and if you hit or not. Many factors modify this base roll including your speed, any obstacles, and range. A very high hit number might even get you a damage bonus!

The second roll determined the type of damage from minimal to critical with each level doing a set amount of damage based on the ability. This roll could also be modified based on various bonuses and conditions.

Finally, the damage amount was determined with one last set of adjustments based on the health status of the target and their type of defenses.

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Hit calculation software
This was a lot of calculations! We decided to created an attack simulation software to assist in the calculations and allow us to focus more on gameplay. This allowed our designers to iterate very quickly without having to constantly change code. Once the design was solid, we then started digital prototypes but still referenced the physical version to try out new ideas.

About Greater Than Games, LLC

Greater Than Games, LLC is a leading tabletop game developer and publisher based out of St. Louis, Missouri. Established in 2011, Greater Than Games is well-known for delivering engaging, richly-themed, highly-replayable card and board games.

Look for Greater Than Games titles in major markets worldwide.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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June 4, 2019Update #40
Adventure with Purpose

Posted by Underbite GamesCreator

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Christopher Badell & Adam Rebottaro Discussing Story Design

In Sentinels of Freedom, we took a more "adventure" approach to mission and level design, expanding on what we did and learned from Super Dungeon Tactics. Many of the missions have two parts, Encounters and Engagements, which are grouped inside the overall mission.

Encounters are larger areas, typically involving a more drastic change of an environment. For example, a mission may start with fighting outside of a building (Encounter 1) before moving into the main floor (Encounter 2) until finally descending to the lower floor (Encounter 3). Between Encounters, typically players can swap active heroes with reserves, allowing different tactics and maximizing health pools.

Within each Encounter, there can be smaller Engagements. Each Engagement can spawn new enemies and have further objectives. Missions can also utilize this system to offer players options on which path they take - providing the player with more choice.

Missions can have any number of Encounters and Engagements offering a variety of challenges and length of play. Some missions may offer a short 15 minutes of action while others can take well over an hour.

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When developing missions in Sentinels of Freedom, we started by referencing the story outline so we could create missions that support the main plot points. It was crucial to us the missions were a part of the storytelling process, not just action between story progress. Once these core missions were roughed out, we added missions to either further push the story or allow players to experience more of the universe.

After finalizing the mission outline, a list of key locations and enemies was created to provide a basis for design. Sentinels of Freedom offers an impressive number of unique enemies, quite a task for an indie studio, with each major plot shift offering new environments as well.

Level designers had access to more than just environmental changes and a large variety of enemies; tools were created to allow for a whole host of objectives including rescuing civilians, repairing generators, and even tower defense inspired objectives to name a few.

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Lobby (concept)
Rough level designs are drawn up on graph paper and whiteboards with call outs to various events and enemy positions. These serve as a starting point when building the levels. While all this is very important and helpful, it leaves many partial ideas and questions. Is the level too large or too small? What does the evil base look like? We should have the bad guys do this! In the next phase of design, these questions get answered and ideas are formalized. While these may change over time - we start by shooting for the stars.

In short, we took a great deal of time crafting the levels in Sentinels of Freedom and we hope you enjoy the result of our effort!
 

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/underbite/sentinels-of-freedom/posts/2532511
Whiteboxing


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What is whiteboxing? The process of taking all the big ideas and chicken scratches from the design phase and bringing them into the game engine. Very simple objects are used to represent core elements of the encounter, typically primitives like boxes and cylinders. These basic objects make tweaking encounters very fast and provide a foundation for environment artists to start creating assets.

Sentinels of Freedom was created in Unity, which offers an abundant amount of plugins for all different tasks. A key plugin used during whiteboxing was ProBuilder, a basic modeling tool that allowed designers to quickly create level objects right in Unity. Sometimes we used the tool to create more complex objects because simple primitives we not enough. Our designers were able to make this happen without disrupting the modelers from their tasks, saving a lot of time. These objects ended up looking so good - some were used for final art!

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Once the scene is laid out with plans and white boxes, the next step is setting up the logic to turn the scene into an encounter. This process involves placing enemy spawn locations, creating objectives, identifying where the encounter needs to be split into smaller engagements, and setting the number of heroes available, both active and in reserve, along with their starting positions.

In the beginning, we can use these whitebox levels to get a feel for every level and identify any potential issues. Over time, however, these evolve and allow for a near final experience of the level - all that remains is updating the art and lighting.

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