Curratum
Guest
That's still more people than Wrath has working on it, I'm willing to bet.
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Incline Ion Fury (formerly Ion Maiden) - Build Engine powered FPS by Duke Nukem 3D mappers - now with Aftershock DLC
- Thread starter tormund
- Start date
That's still more people than Wrath has working on it, I'm willing to bet.
randir14
Augur
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2012
- Messages
- 762
New-3D Realms has more projects in development hell than their predecessor ever did. Aftershock, Wrath, Graven, Sin Reloaded, Kingpin Reloaded and probably a couple others I forgot about.
Wrath is releasing out of Early Access this year while Aftershock is nowhere to be found.
I'll probably get it. There have been a ton of retro shooters out there lately that have been pretty good looking/nostalgia.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,662
Wow! A soundtrack:
A new devblog about the base game. It talks about the DLC too, I'll post it here (without the pics and gifs):
What’s in an Aftershock?
We had such a solid and balanced base from Ion Fury that for Aftershock we could be more playful. Players are expected to have already played the main campaign and so--
We thought c’mon, let’s get nuts.
Level Up
The long story arc in Ion Fury’s main campaign often left the player stuck in underground areas. This time we wanted to focus on more varied environments with lots of outdoor locations. One important early decision to help with this was to go with a more theme heavy approach that makes each map something you can describe in a few words.
Here are some of the thematic elements from our “art gallery map”.
One longtime dream of Build mapping was to have sloped sprites in the engine.
This is now a reality.
It does this by clever re-use of existing sloping code in the engine to pull this off and in a way that does it very faithfully as per Build standards (quirks, jank and limitations but it looks cool!)
Level designers are now using that to build unique areas and objects, even custom physics props. Even simple visuals like lasers and bullet trails benefit from this technology.
They’ve also got a suite of new effects like being able to flood areas by setting the water level, bunch of new palettes to work with and loads of tweaks to the existing roster of effects.
Get Messy
The pacing of combat difficulty in Ion Fury helped ease you into encounters with each enemy, but for Aftershock, players know what’s up! So the pacing was sped up, with more challenging enemies from Ion Fury appearing much sooner. New and alternate enemies have their own attacks and movements for players to learn, and most of them have quicker reaction times than the original ones.
We also added a new, and harder, fifth difficulty mode. This mode makes encounters even more intense, and creates a new layer of strategy as undestroyed enemy corpses will come back to life! Using the right moves and making enemies gib into pieces from your attacks becomes even more critical. Skill 5 is something we will also be including in the vanilla game as a bonus!
New boss encounters were a must, with distinct and interesting battles. In Ion Fury “bosses” could be hordes or puzzle-like, in addition to the occasional “boss fight”. We weren’t able to have as many of those boss fights as we, or players, wanted so for Aftershock we made it a must. Expanding the game gave us the time to create memorable encounters so bosses took a big step up with some cool surprises.
Maximum Power
Shelly has some really powerful attacks in Ion Fury, but most are balanced in some way to not be completely overpowering. However, since the bad guys up the ante in Aftershock, Shelly gets to respond in kind.
There are a few new instant Items, but we used the new pocket we introduced in Ion Fury 2.0 to introduce more PowerUps. Now Shelly can incinerate her enemies with flame traps, give every gun a spectacular boost with new attack modes, and slow things down to look cool while doing it. We also upgraded the regular arsenal! There’s some new ammo types for the Disperser, and also a new much fan-requested weapon that will really wreck Heskel’s day.
Highway Star
A key feature for Aftershock has been the bike. It’s something we’ve wanted since the early days of Ion Fury itself, and here we finally got to do it! It was one of the earliest things prototyped and done as a proof-of-concept for an expansion. It had to be fast, agile, weighty, and easy to handle with different inputs. It had to feel good to actually use, not the clunky mess people know from some other Build Engine games.
So we settled on a quad-copter hover bike with beefy armor and infinite rockets to pummel enemies with. Even some of the toughest dudes are no match for Shelly’s blistering power when she revs up that motor.
Keep Watching the Skiiiis…. Skies.
Of course this is just a taste of what you can expect from Aftershock. — What started as a simple map pack ended up adding a ton of new things to the game. Parts of Aftershock were already started soon after the release of 1.0, and parts of its development have already seen their way into the base game. Improved performance, minor game play tweaks such as the pocket inventory, and even some undocumented effects
It’s been a long road and we’re really excited we can show everyone more of the expansion! There’s more reveals coming soon, so remember to follow us on social media to get the latest, and if you haven't done already, add Ion Fury: Aftershock to you Steam Wishlist! Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
I’ll see ya next time,
Jonathan “Mblackwell” Strander
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,662
randir14
Augur
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2012
- Messages
- 762
Reminds me of the soundtrack for an old Raven Software game called Cyclones
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,662
They couldn't make a glorified mission disk in over two years from the announcement trailer (March 2021)?
Decline. Fucking decline.
Decline. Fucking decline.
The DLC is a side project they are doing in their free time with their own money. This has been stated by the dev several times. They also have said that they have the same problem of the original game: The scope of the project turned out bigger than they expected.They couldn't make a glorified mission disk in over two years from the announcement trailer (March 2021)?
Decline. Fucking decline.
I'm not trying to defend them, just saying what it is.
Correct_Carlo
Arcane
The original game was great, but too fucking long. I was trying to 100% it and balked when I realized I'd only completed the first 2 episodes of 7.The DLC is a side project they are doing in their free time with their own money. This has been stated by the dev several times. They also have said that they have the same problem of the original game: The scope of the project turned out bigger than they expected.They couldn't make a glorified mission disk in over two years from the announcement trailer (March 2021)?
Decline. Fucking decline.
I'm not trying to defend them, just saying what it is.
Yeah, I recently thought, "Oh I liked that game maybe I should play it again." Played it for less than 5 minutes and was like "Oh yeah, I did this already and years later I am still really not hungry for more."
It's excellent and everyone should check it out but don't expect it to be a forever game.
It's excellent and everyone should check it out but don't expect it to be a forever game.
axx
Savant
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2017
- Messages
- 862
The seamless transition between areas was nice at first, but on my 2nd playthrough I kinda wished they used the classic end-level approach. At least I'd know how far into the game I've progressed. The real bummer is when the drab industrial/toxic waste levels return late in the game.
They should rename the expansion pack to "Ion Fury Forever".
Correct_Carlo
Arcane
Well, even when the locales are too similar, the level design is usually creatively brilliant, which I don't think people will realize unless you grew up playing Build games, designed levels in them yourself (I did both), and you know its limitations.
It's just way too long with not enough enemy variety. They really should have made the game 5 episodes and saved 2 of them for a dlc.
Glop_dweller
Prophet
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2007
- Messages
- 1,226
Do they have lifetime access to the Build engine, or did they license [again] it from Ken Silverman?
I tinkered with it; mostly with Witchaven 2.
Later, much later...
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2012
- Messages
- 2,334
No, Ken Silverman released the source code but not under an open source license (in case anyone doesn't know, open source has a specific definition and criteria that have been around for decades, it isn't just being able to access the source code, that is sometimes called "source-available software"). He wrote his own licensing terms and terms 2, 3 and 5 are not compliant with the open source criteria (specifically he wanted the source to be distributed only through the internet and he didn't allow commercial use but instead for commercial use one had to get a separate license from him).
Note that the Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior sources were originally released under GPLv2 which is open source compliant, however as the games rely on Build to work (which isn't open source) the final product also isn't technically open source (however if someone recreated the engine under GPLv2 then they could use the DN3D and SW code with it and be proper open source). Normally you can't mix GPL and non-GPL code, however this is a special case because 3D Realms owned the full rights of their own code and they only released their own code under GPL and was meant to be linked with the non-GPL Build engine. This is something they could do only because they owned the full rights to the source code they themselves released.
We have a Photo Mode now.
Boost your screenshot game with Photo Mode!
I’m Katie, community hype machine for Voidpoint and Ion Fury, and I’m here to tell you a little bit about my favorite new feature in
Ion Fury: Aftershock
— Photo Mode!
Photo Mode began as a wish. I adore the recent shift in games to facilitate taking screenshots—it’s gone beyond the shortcut keybind to dump a HUD-covered JPEG into a subfolder. Now we’ve got in-game camera tools that make taking dramatic shots incredibly easy. Players and creators have the opportunity to bring their creativity to a lot of games and communities using virtual photography.
Ion Fury is a beautiful game, and I mentioned to the team how it would be helpful for generating screens and media to have an in-game photo mode. I wanted to capture how great it looks, but I was frustrated by having to work around the console. Having easy, accessible photo capture tools in a game encourages players to share their content, either through Steam or through social media channels.
Imagine my excitement when Jonathan Strander, lead designer on Ion Fury: Aftershock, surprised me with a complete photo mode to try. If you’ve enjoyed the videos, gifs, and screenshots Voidpoint has shared over the summer, you have Strander to thank for it.
Let me walk you through the basics of Ion Fury’s newest community tool.
In order to access Photo Mode, you’ll hit the
[BACKSPACE]
key and the controls will appear on the top of the screen.
This automatically pauses the action and lets you freely fly to the perfect picture spot, but it’s got some other features that will help you capture what you want, like some toggle options for the HUD, and individual screen elements, like the weapon hands and crosshair. Movement is WASD, but you can move up using
[SPACE]
and down with
[CTRL]
. You can go high up and capture a wide cityscape, or crouch down to get some low-angle drama.
My favorite options control the enemy AI. By default, enemies are dumb to your presence in photo mode. But if you want your screenshot or video to contain some action, you can wake them up and let them move on patrol by choosing
[4]
Awake AI. If you want them to follow and shoot you (don’t worry—you can’t be killed while in this mode), choose
[5]
Aware AI. Watch Heskel’s scumbags fire at nothing.
You can also show Shelly’s sprite in third-person. Pair that with the mode’s ability to slow down time by toggling
[7]
, and you can recreate your favorite John Woo movies right in Ion Fury.
When you’ve set up your scene and you’re ready to snap a photo, hide the mode overlay with
[0]
and hit your screenshot key. If you’re finished with it, you can exit Photo Mode and you’ll go back to where you left off.
It’s so exciting to see the retro tech of Build incorporate a modern virtual photography mode. I can’t wait to see what the community captures with this new tool. Be sure to share all your beautiful new shots with us!
Cool idea. I didn't save any screenshots for my desktop rotation because they all had UI stuff in them. Don't want to play it again but if I'd had this I would have used it a lot.
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