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Game News Copper Dreams Kickstarter Update #19: Tile Effects

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Copper Dreams; Whalenought Studios

One of the features demonstrated in the Copper Dreams Kickstarter update earlier this month was the various environmental effects that can be applied to tiles in the game world. Today Joe and Hannah have published a new update that goes into further detail on those. Area of effect mechanics in RPGs are nothing new of course, but in this game they're more simulationist than you've ever seen. I quote:

All the tiles on a map can have quite a few variables that change during gameplay:
  • Occupied/Unoccupied
  • Lit / unlit / shadow
  • Sound emission
  • Light color
  • Line-of-sight hidden or visible
  • Projectile or Damage range traveling through
And now featuring state effects like:
  • fire
  • blood
  • water
  • smoke
  • electricity
Trackable and Ailment Tiles

Should you (or an NPC) walk over water or blood tiles, the character will get a 'wet' or 'bloody' ailment, and track that liquid for ~10 tiles. If these footsteps are seen by an NPC faction who is hostile against another NPC (Guards at a compound see thug patrolling), they'll initiate an AI path similar to last-known-position, and track those footprints until the last one, and then do a wary-state check of the area. They obviously also do this to you, so watch where you step! You can also use this to your advantage, toy with NPCs by luring them away from an area, out of sight and hearing of others.

Running over smoke causes your character to take on a coughing ailment, which interrupts them for a ~tick (more if you have other chest ailments) and causes them to cough, making noise. Not great for being sneaky or on-the-run. This ailment re-rolls every 10 ticks.

Electrical tiles on the ground stun your character for 3 ticks, and re-rolls that every 6. There are low and high-voltage electrical tiles, the former just stuns you, and higher ones can drain batteries on equipment, short-out cybernetics temporarily, or on higher rolls cause burn damage. That kind of electrical damage is caused by weapons, while environmental ones are less lethal.

Fire damage takes its ailments from the FIRE damage spreadsheet, and that's not a table you want associated with your character's health. For fire-grenades you'll take an initial blast-damage ailment, and that could cause a burning wound which procs every 4 ticks for a duration.

This was also the first ailment to cause more ailments we've readied for the alpha, and it's a pretty slick system. Another one for alpha is impact weapon damage causing bones to break and getting bone-splinters which proc a bleeding damage.

Causality

Tile effects are automatically caused by some weapons. Like displayed in the previous update, shooting a gun causes tiles around you to light up for a light mod, as well as cause the sound of the gun, and lastly firing some bullet. Adding to those systems, weapons like flamethrowers can pour fire down hallways and leave fire tiles on the ground, and smoke grenades fill a room with smoke tiles.

Since the Burning Candle ruleset leans simulationist, there's no balance needed for things like this, but there are some odd ways we can allow to deter it. For the alpha we'll have fire extinguishers for clearing fire tiles or dousing yourself. For tactical drying action, keep a one-time-use hanky or towel on hand to pat your butt dry.

If you've caught on fire, you can use your roll action (if you have the Grace for it) or our very own implementation of stop-drop-and-roll to extinguish flames by crawling/crouch and standing in sequence. Each of those stance changes take a tick, and burning damage procs frequently, so you'll want to exclusively and quickly do a dance like that or extinguish yourself other ways if you want to keep yourself from getting too well-done.
If that's not impressive enough, after the alpha is released, Joe and Hannah plan to take things even further by implementing Divinity: Original Sin-style environmental combos. There's still no release date on the alpha, but hopefully more updates will be coming soon.
 

Big Wrangle

Guest
I love games that let you use the environment to your advantage, so this is some good news to me. So far this game is shaping to be a massive upgrade compared to Serpent in the Staglands. That's it, I'm fully aboard with Copper Dreams.
:greatjob:
 

Gecos

Learned
Joined
Sep 26, 2015
Messages
79
Don't know if it's heartening or downright grim when 2 people have better ideas and are willing to go further than AAA teams. Anyway, glad I backed their game!
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
Currently playing through Serpent in The Staglands, and absolutely loving it. Looking forward to this, massive kudos to the team.
 

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