KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[ArchAngel]

Joe got very sick. Cut them a break. It's only two of them after all.

Then they should hire an apprentice so they can kill him when things fail

 

[Prime Junta]

Let's hope they don't cell-shade it too much, the first screenshot is already too cell-shady. Otherwise, cool update.

I love it when everybody becomes a game dev expert and starts commenting on rendering techniques.

Spoiler

It's called cel shading, not cell-shading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cel_shading

 

[Lacrymas]

I love it when everybody becomes a game dev expert and starts commenting on rendering techniques.

The fuck are you talking about? I'm not "commenting on rendering techniques" "trying to be a game dev expert", just saying that I hate that aesthetic. Even then, the article you posted reveals that I only added 1 extra L, which isn't even that grave a mistake because the name comes from celluloid with 2 Ls (which I knew and that's why I spelled it that way), and literally the second sentence spells it with a dash. No idea why you thought it would be appropriate to be passive aggressive.

 

[ushas]

Great.
Hope it means they're ok.

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Sensuki]

yay prone

 

[HoboForEternity]

really looks like isometric MGS 1 somehow

 

[Sensuki]

Nice little update in the alpha forums today. Hopefully the new internal build won't be too far away.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Nice little update in the alpha forums today. Hopefully the new internal build won't be too far away.

There's an alpha forum?

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah there is, internal only at the moment.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

This smells of massive incline.

Tentative release date?

 

[hello friend]

Nice little update in the alpha forums today. Hopefully the new internal build won't be too far away.

There's an alpha forum?

Alphas only. You can't come.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Yeah there is, internal only at the moment.

Okay, was just curious. I had pledged $250 to the game, which included alpha access, so hearing that made me curious.

 

[Sensuki]

I should have said pre-alpha forum. I imagine that forum will open up when the Alpha goes live, which should happen in the next few months I suppose.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

it's a super exclusive forum where Sensuki talks to Joe and Hannah and I lurk from time to time

 

[Sensuki]

roshan also seldomly posts

 

[roshan]

:D

 

[grimace]

[URL='https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1940200']Update #16 [/URL]


Jul 24 2017


Ticks, Tiles, and Dodging Bullets


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1940200

As some of you've heard, Joe decided to waste a ton of time with an unexpected stay at the hospital. Thankfully he’s all recovered and we’re back to work. That did delay our alpha date, and we’ll just be pushing that to next month to make up that lost time.

Very meaty update.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Worth posting the whole thing in the thread I think.

16
Ticks, Tiles, and Dodging Bullets
Posted by Whalenought Studios (Creator)

Hey guys, we wanted to let you know about a small schedule change since the last update, as well as some more info on gameplay upgrades! In the next couple weeks we’ll have a video overview of the alpha level and gameplay so everyone can get a look at it prior to when alpha testers jump in.

As some of you've heard, Joe decided to waste a ton of time with an unexpected stay at the hospital. Thankfully he’s all recovered and we’re back to work. That did delay our alpha date, and we’ll just be pushing that to next month to make up that lost time.

Meanwhile Hannah frantically rummages for glowing, spinning medkits in the hallway.
We've received some excellent portraits coming in from backers since the last update, so thank you everyone who’s sent them thus far! We’ll show off some new character models and heads in the upcoming video. Lots of great options for everything from player characters to enemy super-agents, loving what we've received!

We wanted to explain in a bit more detail the ticks and tiles implementation we briefly mentioned in the last update. While this will be easier to see in-action with the video, the mechanics it has added are pretty neat, so we have some images and gifs below so you can get an idea of how it works.

It's been around a year since the initial Kickstarter pitch and concept, and we're extremely happy with where we've gotten it to. There's been a lot of frustration and successes with various designs, but we haven't had to make any compromises to the design or ruleset for what should be a very fun romp through the cyberpunk city. And we managed to get a wish-list item in: swimming! So put some points in Stamina or risk rolling to start drowning every few tiles.

Overview of Ticks and Tiles

As we mentioned in the last update, the gameplay wasn't feeling as impactful towards the goal of being able to react to enemy turns on the fly. There also wasn't a way to clearly visualize these elements. It was competent on paper and execution — turns for players/NPCs just take a variable amount of time on the combat bar to execute, however, wait times, lack of clarity of predicting enemy turns and not wanting to get stuck in a long turn during combat was hampering player actions, encouraging you to play too carefully. There was the promise of reactivity in turns, but gameplay and use of time just wasn't allowing it. Ticks, tiles and shorter phases allow the player to have the intel to make more calculated and reactive decisions.

The ruleset we had described in our original Kickstarter pitch has been a difficult one to find just the right gameplay for. The original idea had the essential premise of the turn-based model with just staggering turn order. Players and NPCs took turns when they were able to, and these took various amounts of time to perform and recover from, and could be temporarily interrupted. These actions were all displayed on a single timeline.

What we've implemented instead is a solution that replaces the general idea of ‘time’ with chunks of time for actions we call ticks. We also brought back tiles to quantify distance, in the pursuit of clarity.

Ticks are represented by a quarter second of gameplay, but are abstract in that longer animations can play-out during these, or multiple hits shown off individually. So behind the scene, these play out like regular turns where gameplay they appear as more linear time.

Importantly, on a bar with other combatants these are super easy to compare. If an enemy is targeting you with a pistol and takes 3 ticks to aim, and 4 to recover from, you have the insight to know to start running and to attack after their bullet is airborne, as it obviously won't follow you. So with ticks, you can quantify how long your action will take compared to your enemy’s actions, allowing you to plan your moves and have the payoff of dodging and taking cover.

In Turn Mode, which can be toggled whenever you want and is automatically turned on in combat, after any action you take recovers, the world pauses for you to take another turn. We’ve somewhat reformatted the UI to make this snappier, and there’s no longer a confirm button for using an action. Once selected, your actions cannot be interrupted or changed, so gameplay is quite a bit quicker.

The new layout also makes it simple to assess when and where bullets and thrown objects are headed. When it’s your turn you can see what direction they’ll be flying at and start to get the feel for how fast they travel.

With these changes the gameplay really has hit its stride, and we’re very happy with it. We hope you enjoy the flow of combat and all intense roll-under action during the alpha.

Alpha map and some other updated features

You’ll be playing some of the intro maps during the alpha, starting with your very safe shuttle landing. These maps start on the outskirts of the city but take you inside in various directions, depending on your mode of entry.

A few of the other gameplay features that we’ve recently implemented and will be cleaning up for the alpha for these maps:

• Kill-cam during ticks. For confirming decapitations
• Swimming. When you want to infiltrate while getting really wet. Create wet tiles to slip on!
• Cruising the grid. Your civilian grade vehicle options are a combination of an 80’s sci-fi vehicle and the Peel P50, really adorable for the cyborg agents stealing them to get around on. You can drive onto the electro-magnetic powered freeway grid to navigate to new city maps quickly.
• Shadow. We have shadows working really well, where you turn largely ‘invisible’ if you are sneaking in a dark part of the environment. These can be removed with lighting, or by taking out lighting. Being ‘hidden’ is boolean, and trumps a line-of sight from the enemy.
• Interior Line of Sight. If your character is obstructed by a building, then that building gets sliced away down to the level height of your character (so you don’t have to spin the camera like a maniac to navigate the maps). We now have a blacked area inside that building so you can’t see inside. If you get near doors and windows however, your characters can peek inside via a line of sight cone.
• Computer Hacking. Roll-under to see how well you perform or how well you block yourself from further use of the computer!
• Chemistry. Find icky and fun glowing substances and put them in jars. You can fill these mixtures in 1/4 increments, with increased potency the more you the fill, or seal it off and then utilize it as a thrown chemical agent. It’s like canning fruit, but instead using radiation and chemical waste.

There’s quite a bit more in there, but those are some of the recent highlights.

Medical
Character ailments haven’t gone through many iterations since the initial design, boiling down to damage taken equates to various ailments received. How that’s distributed to body parts and subcategories have changes since, as well as determining how many ailments a character receives until they drop unconscious or die.

The balance at play was:

• Damage severity and how much players/NPCs strive to avoid it
• Forgiving damage allowing players to take fun risks and allow NPCs to be more brazen

The death penalty also challenged that balance. We didn’t hear a great reception from that last update, and we hear you. Gameplay continuity aside, we wanted to improve that by changing the focus away from always avoiding danger so you wouldn’t be stuck with your failures. We’re keeping the perpetual auto-saving for roleplaying aspects, but instead of death penalties, it just results in a re-load of the last safe-place you were in. Of course if you were instead knocked unconscious, you may get something stolen and thrown into the gutter to wake up later a bit worse for wear. The gameplay and combat focus should still keep you wary, but allow the familiar challenge of letting you do some trial and error without worrying about dire consequence.

Damage and Life
Prior to this, ‘death’ was the result of accruing a certain number of ‘Mortal’ and ‘Greater’ ailments based on a character’s Virtue and Stamina mod, and allowing characters to get any number of Lesser ailments. This model had a problem where an enemy could have 3/4 Greater ailments filled, but then take on a score of Lesser and then a Mortal. While we liked the idea of having death associated with the ailment categories, it was arbitrarily gamey to try to just fill a particular one and frustrating to mix them, so we’ve removed how those tally separately, and instead just gave ailments the potential to have a “Life” reduction value.

The Life meter has 3 variable states:

1. Max Life

2. Flux Life

3. Lost Life

• 1. The Max life is again dictated from character stats, factors coming from Stamina, Age, and particular Background Points fields chosen at character generation. Max health can be artificially raised through stimpacks and drugs, or permanently through cybernetics (until disabled).

• 2. Flux Life. If a character is hit with an attack that also has a chance to inflict Life damage, they’ll receive whatever ailments associated with the attack as well as a reduction to the Life meter. This Life count is in a state of flux until the character is hit again, which results in the last Flux amount transitioning to just Lost Life. If a character doesn’t get hit again, that Flux life remains in Flux until stabilized with a healing item needed for the type of attack received. If the remaining Life meter is in flux, your character will go unconscious.

Stabilized means you regain that Life back. We have an option available we aren't using at the moment, but could instantiate during the alpha and see what you guys think. Your medical sheet can tally some of the more crippling wounds from ailments and keep a lesser form of them even when you stabilize Life, which would be healed back at a clinic. For instance putting a splint on a broken leg broken stabilizes the limb by giving you back the Life as well as taking a character component that’s turned off like being able to jump, but you'd instead have a lingering issue of having longer recovery until you rest up. Might add some fun punch to these wounds, but might be too tedious or confusing as well which is why it's currently off.

• ! Numerous hits on a tick

Numerous actions can simultaneously resolve in the same tick, and if numerous types of damage are taken, we currently have each being recorded in Flux. This allows you to recover from any damage taken in that one tick, so if you get shot a few times by different enemies all at once, you could suture/disinfect those wounds individually and recover those three chunks of Life. This is a bit gamey, but we’ll see what player’s think of it during the alpha.

• 3. Lost Life. Life that is lost has to be restored by medical means, a clinic or equivalent. Losing all Life results in character death.

Selecting Damage
Healing damage is very easy to do, there's a handful of general damage categories (they are grouped together from the list below) that have healing items associated with them. You can disinfect and suture all bullet/projectile wounds, and to do so would just open the medical menu and select the body part and ailment. A list of medical supplies from your bag appears and you can use the appropriate items to stabilize them.

Taking damage is a bit more in-depth as it can alter anything on your character sheet or gameplay. In our ailment sheets we currently have 47 attributes of your poor character that can be hampered, ranging from stats to mechanics, being forced to crawl to lessening their weight allowance. Our Mortal and Greater ailments from before essentially just have a potential Life value addition to also be rolled against.

So a standard .38 S round from a handgun might slow down recovery to movement if you’re hit in a leg, and the severity of it might deplete up to 3 Life.

These damage and medical tables probably deserved their own update, as it's fairly robust, but we'll go through the basic steps since we've talked about damage. During gameplay these tables will be viewable in-full within the Burning Candle ruleset menu.

1. Damage Table

First we grab the table from whatever type of attack hits a character.

Some attacks can stack some special prefixes from another table, like if using a hollow-point round of ammunition it will have some extra interrupt power or if a melee weapon has a live current going through it it'll output additional electrical ailments. These tables are:

2. Severity

Like before we need to grab how impactful the attack is to stats, so we categorize these into Mortal, Greater and Lesser based on the damage roll, which is a roll of 3d8 like everything else.

Crit fail: 3

Lesser: 4-10

Greater: 11-18

Mortal: 19-24

3. Prefix.

Within those categories are 4 unique naming prefixes each, which also scale severity of the attack within the category, and this is chosen randomly next.

For instance the Edge Light Thrust Lesser attack has:

• Negligible stab
• Grazed
• Hairline slice
• Shallow incision

Greater is assigned:

• Slashed
• Pierced
• Lacerated
• Punctured

These have smaller differences, but instead of just have 3 versions of severity per table we can have 12.

4. Body part

This is gathered a few different ways, depending on if it was an aimed attack and was successful or could be a random roll if it came from somewhere non targeted. Based on the roll-under, here is the current deviation table:

The body part defines what types of stats or gameplay mechanics are going to be affected, ranging from brain power, ability to carry two handed weapons, reload times, to recovery times for various types of actions. These are meant to stack, so individually they aren't so debilitating that they should stop you in your tracks, but some will certainly kick your character's performance down a notch.

5. Body part Specific

This category is more focused on the damage table itself for variance, but does allow for some ailment diversity within a body part. Depending on the Wound Category there are different names as well, though this is mostly cosmetic. For instance getting hit in the head with one of the Edge damage tables with a Lesser category has:

• Front of face
• Right side of face
• Left side of face
• Jaw

The Greater has:

• Temple
• Eye R
• Eye L
• Mouth
• Neck

And Mortal starts to get a bit more dire:

• Eye R
• Eye L
• Throat
• Ear R
• Ear L
• Brain

For Impact weapons and larger rounds of ammunition, these are more focused on bones rather than bleeding or more immediate stopping power (interrupt time) than slowing you down in general (recovery).

Most Chem agents just damage the Torso/Lungs/Head, and the rest can target all body parts.

6. Reduction

The target failed to dodge or completely block the attack, but they can still mitigate damage. Since you can get hit in various body parts, it's appropriate that you can outfit types or armor to those body parts. There aren't a wild amount of armors planned for the game, but there are some diversities planned for categories of damage. Different types or armor focus on different parts of the body and types of attacks. Hazmat gear won't absorb bullets, but will fully block chemical weapons, where leather armor focused on the chest will keep your vitals in check while leaving arms and legs exposed. Better armors gives you some full body protection from a couple types of damage.

Reduction is a flat number which lowers the damage roll itself per body part, so that could lessen the ailments or knock it down from a Mortal to Greater state.

We haven't implemented the art/number visuals for that yet in the character sheet, but that will be a grid of damage types and body parts located on the bottom right here:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So there’s a bit of info of where we are with changes. Working on tweaking the alpha level to get that ready for you guys. Let us know if you have any questions. Next update we'll also be asking backers for some fake advertising plugs to put in the game. So get your creative hats on.

Drink your Barto Brew!
Cheers!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Sensuki]

The ailment/damage system sounds like potential lollerskates.

 

[YES!]

Nice update. I can't wait to play this. Anyone know when this or the SitSL expansion are coming out?

 

[Ivan]

what happened to the guy?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Omg yes that looks amazing. The UI looks pretty stylish and i like the tick/tile system.

Doubt itvwill be out this year tho

 

[Excidium II]

what happened to the guy?

Ate cat food.

 

[Alienman]

I'm glad Joe is back in action.