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

[Ninjerk]

The systems look so good that I'm worried where the time for content creation will come from.

 

[Sensuki]

Wow, I'm really liking a lot of the changes since I last played the pre-alpha build a few months ago.

The custom lights, moving boxes, hex tiles and fixes/tweaks to the aiming+movement look great. Lots of potential for sick gameplay including prefiring/pre-aiming and using movement to perform bullet dodging. Definitely a big step towards fun gameplay.

 

[grimace]

End of the video https://youtu.be/cfAi2h0A-lY?t=1570 asks players for Ad ideas.

In game advertisements for in game products?

• protein bars
  
• MRE (meals ready to eat)
• Canned foods (canned Whale?)
• Numbers Up soda? (Like 7 Up)? "you cant run when your numbers up"

The lore of the game says we are on another planet? So are most of the edible items shipped in to the planet?

The movie Space Truckers featured pigs that were grown in square shipping containers to maximum the bacon potential.

Earlier in the thread we mentioned cat food (that could be human food if hungry enough).

whalenought_hannah Whalenought_Joe

 

[grimace]

Here's an idea:

Excidium II Cat Food

Not just for cats. Not just food.

Excidium II Cat Food

Not just for cats. Not just food.

 

[Sensuki]

I second this motion

 

[Ninjerk]

Here's an idea:

Excidium II Cat Food

Not just for cats. Not just food.

Excidium II Cat Food

Not just for cats. Not just food.

EXCIDIUM II IS CATS

 

[Merlkir]

 

[Junmarko]

The lore of the game says we are on another planet? So are most of the edible items shipped in to the planet?

Copper Dreams is set on an off-world island colony called Calitana. Owned by the US government, Calitana is one of many interstellar bases, although it is notoriously the least enjoyable to live in.

An easy idea would be goofing on the typical Milky Way/Mars bar equivalent - Deus Ex inspiration also means they gotta throw in various Soy, Cigarette & Coffee products lol. (Soy-bean smokes? ).

Dark humour: Include products made from the planets indigenous fauna - eg: Fruit punch that has high toxicity with plant being unpredictable on humans (heavy organ damage - but so delicious) - advertisements for rival product: An antidote of said fruit punch's negative effects (which has addictive properties itself )

The setting sounds like a loose homage to Blade Runner with it's off-world premise (Calantha, Blade Runner 2049). Cyberpunk is never complete without Asian street-food vendors either. Screw with the written characters a bit to capture off-world identity (Korean + Cyrillic etc). Can have heaps of fun with it.

 

[CptMace]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Lagi]

as for fake-game-advertisment - hackneyed idea:

lets some main company that sell some some widely available product, use humans as resources. And this "secret" player would have to discover it by accident (like in the second quest, he would be forced by game for casual speak with emotionally broken scientist).

f.ex. soap from human fat (fight club)
rejuvenating pills from human blood
organ replacement (that are harvest from poor bastards, not grow in labs)
cheap priced meat from human (BladeRunner, animals are almost extinct due to environment pollution and dense urbanization)
plants grow on fertilizer from human (funeral homes find new source of income)
some type of service, that are commonly believed to be done by machines, but in fact is done by child labors (smartphones assemblies)

 

[Infinitron]

MOAR: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/2162018

Detonating the room with tile effects

In the distant future, the year 2000, pills and computers are wicked cool.

We wanted to follow up the last update to show off something else we've been finishing up on: the framework for the tile effects for environmental hazards.

Tiles in Copper Dreams are part of the active simulation in and out of combat, and one of the last big systems we needed for the alpha to add to the sandbox of rules and systems for the player to abuse.

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

There was a lot of reactive parts to these effects to work into the wide variety of other sensory systems, not just medical ailments but sound emission and enemy AI paths so they can track effects like dripping water or unusual noises.

Stunning an entire room with smoke or fire works as you'd expect it to with our ailment system, so players should make as good of use of that as enemies will on them. A smart tactic for fire-fights is luring opponent(s) around the corner until out of sight, where they will last-known-position you, and then track you blindly — allowing you to get the upper hand pretty easily. To counter that, if they have grenades of some sort, an AI path for certain enemies for the alpha will be to just flush you out. The tick-tile movement coordinates well with that. If you see a grenade coming toward you and can ready your turn, you can get a chance to run from it. And you'll want to. This guard survived the initial blast and courageously ran through fire to hunt our agent down. He'd later go on to regret this.

Bravery.

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.

Water Tracking

Blood Tile

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.

Smoke Tile

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.

Electrical Tile

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.

Fire Grenade

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.

Stacking Tile Effects
At the moment tiles are tiered to only have one per tile, like you can't have fire tiles on water. After the alpha is released we'll work on the final step for them which is just augmenting them together — fire on water tiles converts the two to vapor (which will just dissipate), an electrical attack on a water tile can travel to all other touching water tiles, and so on. It isn't a design focus nor are we trying to make this into chemistry class, but there is room for some puzzles and fun gameplay for that, so we'll be getting to it later.

BACKPACK
We also added the backpack into the main HUD on the right side. This allows the player to instantly swap active items without needing to go into the backpack first and equip them into quickslots. You've also got all the tools your character does at your disposal up front and center now in a full, glorious frame.

More update to come soon!

Cheers

 

[grimace]

For tactical drying action, keep a one-time-use hanky or towel on hand to pat your butt dry.

What's the max thread count on a towel I can find?

 

[Abu Antar]

Joe is a vampire.

 

[Ninjerk]

OMG cyber-

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Anything new?

 

[Ninjerk]

Sensuki

 

[Sensuki]

I haven't been in touch with Whalenought for a while. I imagine they've got their heads down working towards releasing the alpha build, which I'm looking forward to playing.

I did a little bit of testing of a build in January pre-update 18 but I didn't have too much spare time. I'm not sure whether I will get to test another one before the Alpha.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Big Wrangle]

I hate it when I see the explanation of the joke first.

 

[Lahey]

 

[HoboForEternity]

Oh my god dat UI.

I wanna take it to dinner, then have passionate loving sex with it.

Fuck these modern minimalist, souless, styless UI and fuck those UI designer school nowadays.

Bring back thematic UI like this.
SO beautiful i could cry

 

[Alienman]

She looks a bit like The Boss.

 

[Lahey]

She looks a bit like The Boss.

The concept art reminded me of Shinkawa too. Similar style.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So I'm not the only one that thought MGS series too?
The art is good, quite descriptive in that manner too.
Overall, I like it.