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Development Info Dead State Design Update: Meet the Team

Crooked Bee

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Tags: Dead State; DoubleBear Productions

DoubleBear Productions have put up a short new design update for Dead State, their post-zombie-apocalyptic role-playing game. This one is mostly about introducing the team behind the game:

Just a quick update this week. We’re hard at work locking down and polishing what we want to show for the Kickstarter. We want to make sure we show as much of the Dead State experience that we can before we ask fans and gamers to pledge money to our game. To that end, we’ve actually been expanding our team. The GUIs you saw last week were done by Mazin, who also did the GUIs for Age of Decadence. We’ve also added a composer to the team whose work you will be hearing soon.

That brings our team size up to about ten people working on weekly tasks for the game – and that’s not counting semi-regular contributors on the art side. I see my name or Annie’s thrown around as the “people who are working on the game” so I think this week I’ll do a refresher on who else has been working on this game.

Oscar – Oscar is our Lead Artist. Oscar supervises all of the other art tasks, and is responsible for much of the art and level work in the game. He is pretty much the jack-of-all-trades on the project and assists in design and scripting tasks in addition to his art lead responsibilities. Oscar is also responsible for the art direction on Age of Decadence.

Nick – Nick is our Lead Programmer. Nick is responsible for engine modification, content tools and systems implementation, and pretty much anything that has to do with the code. Nick is building upon code he worked on for Age of Decadence, though Dead State has plenty of new features that have kept him busy.

Ivan – Ivan is our animator on Dead State. You’ll be seeing a lot more of his work when we show off footage of the game. Ivan also worked on the animations for Age of Decadence.

Kim – Kim is our portrait and 2D artist. She has done all of the portraits for Dead State and is working on multiple other 2D art tasks such as inventory icons.

Brandon – Brandon is another 2D artist specializing in logos. Any time you see a store logo (of which there are many in a modern day game), mascot, product billboard, or poster in the game, it was probably drawn by him.

Joao – Joao is a 3D artist who did all of the weapon models in the game and is currently working on level objects and level art.

Jason – Jason is another 3D artist and longtime contributor helping out with objects in the game.

Joey – Joey did the 3D models that you’ll see in the trailer and our screenshots.

Mazin – Mazin is our new GUI artist. He also worked on the Age of Decadence GUI.

Leif – Leif is our composer. You will hear his work in the trailer and some of our other promo material.

And that’s who is working on Dead State. Obviously, one reason we’re doing the Kickstarter is to compensate our team and allow them to devote all or most of their time to the project, which will allow us to plan around more rigid milestones. Many of our team members have been working on or contributing to the game for a while now. You’ll find most of them stopping by here on the boards, so feel free to give them a virtual thumbs up.​

So there are people working on this other than Brian and Annie? Shocking.

The update also includes a new screenshot of the infirmary upgrade for the shelter, which you might want to check out.
 

hiver

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The whole ITS, except the fuhrer... who is "advising",...

Brian... we want our Age of Decadence... capiche?

I mean, ok fine.. fine... the team will get more experience points and will be included into a Kickstarter campaign which are pluses... but if you wake up with a toy horse head bleeding red confetti all over the bed... (well... a real clowns head would only make people give high fives to each other)... remember not to eat the confetti....thats not candy.... catch my.... drift?
 

CappenVarra

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Not much new there, but more info is always better so I support the notion :) Also, only one Actual Developer Who Writes Code for this and AoD both? Guy must have started with a pretty high Sanity score, and the limited scope of the games becomes quite understandable in that light...
 

hiver

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btw... if you do catch my drift... please return it to me, i... seem to have lost it along the way :D
 
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Kosmonaut

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The whole ITS, except the fuhrer... who is "advising",...

Brian... we want our Age of Decadence... capiche?

I mean, ok fine.. fine... the team will get more experience points and will be included into a Kickstarter campaign which are pluses... but if you wake up with a toy horse head bleeding red confetti all over the bed... (well... a real clowns head would only make people give high fives to each other)... remember not to eat the confetti....thats not candy.... catch my.... drift?
Jesus. So many lame "jokes" and stupid nonsense.
 
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Kosmonaut

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By the way, who was responsible of the concept art with the T-Rex girl? It was one of the funniest things to ever be posted on the 'Dex? You have my thanks for that hilarious piece.
 
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The style was consistent with the current portraits, so it's likely the same person. But please, it was an expressive piece of art! It fit the mood perfectly!
 

PorkaMorka

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Internal concept art can be as ugly as it wants, no one cares.

But if you release concept art to the public to promote your game, you should probably make sure it is not terrible.

Unless you want to be justifiably mocked.
 

Jaesun

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MCA Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
They really need that shit engine fixed
yup

And their 2D art guy.

You constantly drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the same fucking boring shit with all of your alts. It's neither funny or clever. It's just boring. Nobody fucking cares. Seriously, even volo makes a few changes from time to time.
 

Burning Bridges

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Though I facepalm about Drocon more often, Drocons posts are much more interesting than Jaesuns, which are actually, not interesting at all.

How's the herpes and high heels coming? Or was it wearing women's knickers?

Not very funny either. :facepalm:
 

Burning Bridges

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Seriously since it's in mockup phase they should do themselves a favor and change engines. Torque is rickety crap as it is, and the future won't make the situation any better.

:roll: But it's absolutely impossible to change the engine mid project. I bet they would almost start from scratch, because the way they presented themselves so far (clueless GUI designer), a lot of their stuff may not be very data driven and programmed in a rather cumbersome way which only works in Torque.

They have to stick to whatever shit they have used now, and cross fingers that it will do. Which it might, though only barely, just like AoD.
 

Morkar Left

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The graphics don't look like Mass Effect 3! Not even close to Mass Effect 2! That means the game will be terrible! How can someone make a game today with such old graphics! And what about that interface? It's 2012! Where's my windows aero look?! Turnbased is already bad enough for immersion but with such graphics the game is gonna become terrible!
 

Burning Bridges

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I already put this notion in practice. I dont have to explain you the whole problem, let me just say that I worked on my main software project over ca. five years, and all the time I knew I could rewrite it much more efficiently, as you said.

About 1.5 years ago my boss said he wanted me to rewrite it, because he wanted to switch most licenses anyway. I finished that in less than year, the new software has only about 10% the footprint, is much faster and more reliable, and I can make updates without much stress now. But the problem is, about 50% of the features are still missing (the obscure ones that you think people are not using), and I am too lazy to work on them.

Let me also say that it worked in my case because I am the sole guy programming, but it's even harder with a team.

What I want to say is, reprogramming always sounds like a good solution, but from experience, it's easy to overlook the time factor. so it is often not a solution at all.

Also, with so many people who will put with even much greater crap (like Java based games, or even browser based games), what does it matter if some guys who are programmers themselves know that your tech is mostly crap? They will simply ignore it, and it will have no impact on sales.

So I think there is much to criticize but a change of engines is certainly not on the table, even if the engine is obviously crap.
 

Burning Bridges

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I would wait until the game is finished. My feeling is that it will inherit a bucket a lot of problems from AoD, but then most people may not notice anyway, and it may be not so bad.

In any case I have given up hope that anything you or I say will have any impact on the development of this game. I think by partnering with VD / Iron Tower they have already embarked on the "not invented here" road, presenting the solutions they already have, and ignoring better ideas, because they require a lot of work.

I think even if they realized it by now, it is too late to turn around now.

Perhaps it may not become a bad game at all, but it's quite obvious I am no longer excited after I understood the AoD heritage.

As I said, let's wait and see. Be more relaxed. It's not like games with these features are not likely to come out in the next years anyway, by other developers.
 

Morkar Left

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They should switch the engine. I'm really looking forward to the game in 2022.
 
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Kosmonaut

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concept1n.jpg

PwMLq.png
 

Saint_Proverbius

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I read the Dead State forums a few months back. It looks like it's going to be pretty nifty. The only problems might be ZOMBIE BURN OUT, if that's even possible.

About the only thing I noticed that I thought was really silly was that setting zombies on fire in the game would be really a bad idea since you get a zombie that does fire damage too. Given the game has zombies reacting to sight and noise cues, you'd think it'd be more along the lines of getting a blind zombie that hears very little other than fire crackling in his ears plus fire damage. But that's just me.
 

Zed

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The only zombie game I've ever really liked was Zombies ate my neighbors (SNES). What makes me excited about this game is the blend of survival micro-management and RPG. That, rather than the setting, is what makes this game stand out to me. Oh, and Mitsoda.

The game could just as well have been about dinosaurs attack-... I just had a brilliant idea.
 

Vault Dweller

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Saint? If it's really you, welcome back to the land of the living.

Missed your insightful opinions and reviews.
 

mbpopolano24

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I am actually very excited about this game. Zombie burnout?? I don't play (well, with some exceptions) FPS so I only had the opportunity to play one game with zombies. I am fine with the graphic, the GUI, and most importantly I hope they start the Kickstarter campaign with the specific goal to hire people to make this game a success. I know that they cannot listen to everyone because we are, well, varied (which is a good thing, I don't want to live in a World where everybody likes to walk), but there are so many games out there that offer standard canons liked by the target audience (turn-based, tactical combat, exploration, non-linearity, multiple choices and consequences). Looking forward to back this up. Any idea when you will be in Kickstarter?
 

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