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

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

They misspelled "next".

 

[Diggfinger]

I'm getting excited, gentlemen

Spoiler

.

 

[The Fish]

I'm getting excited, gentlemen

Spoiler

.

 

[conan_edw]

Is it out yet

 

[conan_edw]

Now I'm feeling guilty.

Go to sleep Whalenought_Joe!

 

[Got bored and left]

Sensuki must be cracking that whip extra hard these days. Keep it up, mate!

 

[conan_edw]

 

[agris]

You guys are in for a treat...

 

[Abu Antar]

You guys are in for a treat...

It’s Halloween. Could be a trick.

 

[conan_edw]

This world is cruel

 

[ArchAngel]

999 micro issues remain.

 

[geno]

It's the usual Whalenought time, so keep in mind that "a day later" may not be our classic concept of a day later

 

[AdolfSatan]

They're probably just doing some final adjustments to the art-style. Should have the brand new 8-bit re-skinning done by tomorrow.

 

[gaussgunner]

2 years down, 15 to go.

 

[Terra]

There's still time to change the art style yet again before this thing goes live Joe!

 

[Feyd Rautha]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/2333781

Copper Dreams Alpha Testing Starting Now



We wanted to let you know that your builds in Steam have been updated with the first alpha version for testing!

Do expect bugginess. This is a work in progress. Consider this access to feature additions and our bi-nightly builds of squashing all the bugs you'll see.
After designing the tick/tile system with the microtiles, we threw everything we could into it that was part of the original design of the game. Now that it's all in, or at least the fundamentals, it's time to start cleaning it all up on our end and get feedback from yours. The gameplay bugs need a lot more passes while we prep it for the beta (the actual start of the game) release, but if you'd like to follow along with the remainder of fixing things up and provide any feedback now's the time!

Update 1.01
We had pushed this out earlier yesterday, but have done a small patch since which fixed an ongoing issue with the gameplay around picking up and arranging items.

[1.01 Update notes here]

The alpha map is a small example map just to test some mechanics. You’ll start over on death to make that simple, or can retry upon success. Some of these early test maps like this we had done were a little more wild in terms of structure placement and navigation, so expect a little clunkiness getting around. The next map and mission for the alpha we put up will be a variation of newer ones, which are more blocky and fit more rigidly to the microtiles for easier horizontal and vertical navigation. Expect that 1.02 update Monday.

These have been the primary goals we've been working toward making play nicely together since we launched the Kickstarter. We created a micro-turn based global world simulation with the ticks&tiles system, resulting in a much more concise, less abstract way to utilize a turn based roleplaying model. It's pretty groovy and we're very proud of what it is and what it can become — this alpha should hopefully show the fundamentals at work, if anything.

Working on Movement
Right now we're still smoothening out how things move on the tiles, and you'll notice some characters sort of popping around. Originally everything acted like pawns and just snapped tile-to-tile while they moved, which was easy to make sure everything was working properly, but now they have animations to blend between those tile locations. Sometimes that visually works great, others times they can look like they are possessed. This is something that could use some work to make things clear, as weird movement and animations can really dampen the mood. We're working on that, as well as other numerous bugs for 1.1.

There is one game mode and map available, and the rest will unlock the following two weeks, starting Monday. Other alpha maps will focus on other gameplay or ruleset elements that we will be finishing the last things on and putting in for them.

We’ll be posting our short-term timeline there so you can know when to expect new modes and features to be included for testing. You'll also get to choose what feature we'll work on for a big milestone: companions or character generation. We're almost done with both of them, so once we get what we need for 2.0 we'll finish one of those up!

Box Art!
Things should be moving a lot quicker now, and we’re looking forward to your feedback. Thank you again for your patience and support to make something new and awesome, we always appreciate it.

Cheers

 

[conan_edw]

 

[conan_edw]

So I encountered something that's weird and I think it's worth mentioning. when I started the game it launched on a windowed mode so I alt-enter to make it fullscreen but everything was blurry and ran on low resolution. I did quit the game by mistake while I was experimenting and when I launched it again I pressed the "enlarge" or "maximize" button that's in every windowed screen and now everything looks fine
so yeah instead of alt-enter press maximize then you can alt-enter if you want fullscreen

 

[Abu Antar]

I will have to try it out this afternoon.

 

[ArchAngel]

Someone that has access to Alpha please stream this on youtube or twitch

 

[Merlkir]

- there's no option to Quit while in the opening screen, you have to enter a mission and then Quit through the menu.
- time doesn't stop while in menu. (I have the mission briefing going on under me trying to change Options.
- there aren't many options
-> speaking of which - the game for whatever reason starts in a window the size of a postcard and I can't up the resolution. (maybe in some ini file?)

edit: Nevermind, should've read Conan_edw's post.

edit2: OK, this game needs some serious antialiasing, all those lines and edges are making me a bit motion sick.
edit3: OK, nevermind? It's only an issue in the title screen? Is it because the camera wobbles so much? Or is the AA not on there?

 

[Avonaeon]

-I completed the Extract mission, but what I assume is the other missions, didn't seem to unlock. Not sure if they're supposed to either.
-The art style looks OK when playing it, but some things are really hard to make out what material they are. Sometimes you can't tell by their shape alone, and then it's kind of "what is this?". This could be alleviated within the current art style by just have a little more definition in some of the textures (Not all, definitely). In my opinion it's mostly a problem with metal stuff, and I feel you should be able to see just a hint of wear, or something.
-Picking up items seem a little buggy. As far as I can tell, you can only pick up dropped weapons, bodies and the diskette. Sometimes picking up a weapon and moving it to your inventory, will place the weapon there, but then you can't use it or move it after that. It doesn't get the little "+" next to it or anything, just ends up taking space.
-Sometimes the targetting doesn't seem to work when enemies got really close and I just kept shooting past them. Maybe I'm missing something.
-I think tooltips would help a lot. A lot of stuff I have no idea what does.
-Going down stairwells are a little tricky with the ceilings, as they don't always properly cut away and you have to rotate the camera quite a bit.
-I really like alerting enemies, sneaking to a vantage point and waiting for them to inspect/die by ambush. Feels satisfying.

Just a few thoughts for now. Will try it a couple more times.

 

[Sykar]

Are there any non-lethal options for taking out enemies?

 

[conan_edw]

So I finished the mission and here is some of what I experienced:
First, the game is clearly in need for a lot more time, I really don't think it should be called alpha yet since many of the systems don't seem to be working at all. Actually all of the skills except 'pistols' and 'social' are labelled as "coming soon". Also, 'social' skills are all grayed out except 'intimidation' which I didn't have the chance to use (maybe I missed any interaction for it)
- The interface is really buggy, dragging one of the weapons to the hand slot will usually cause many bugs. Once you put a weapon in the slot a weapon icon should appear where you can choose the type of attack and when you remove it an 'unarmed' icon will appear that you can use to punch but sometimes the unarmed icon won't appear which made me drag the weapon back and forth many times.
- I don't know if this is a bug but I tried sneaking upon someone who wasn't alert to me and I started punching him but no damage was taken, it seems that he wasn't aware of me at all even with me trying to punch him so I moved around him and when he noticed me I was able to punch him.
- For some reason, I had more than one weapon overlapping in my weapon slot and when I tried to sort everything out one of the weapons which was reloaded with many of the ammo didn't respond at all and I couldn't drag it back to the slot so I had to use the other weapons
- One of the enemies that noticed me was one (floor?) below me and instead of trying to get to me they kept following me while still under me which was weird so I had to go down stairs to face him. Also another one magically climbed to me after I killed his friend
- I actually love the art style, reminds a lot of GITS but yeah it's really hard to tell what some of the stuff are, I spent some time to figure out where were the stairs that leads down in one area and it appeared to be in front of me the whole time
- Time cycles seems to happen so fast. Lightening is constantly changing
- The way that some buildings hide so you know what's around while you are ascending or descending is weird, I hope if it was something I could toggle up and down myself since sometimes while I'm looking at something it would suddenly disappear.
- The hovering camera is somewhat clunky.
- I like the Tick & Tile system, while I'm still not used to it but it seems to force me to move a lot and try different attack regularly especially when there are enemies that are on different positions.
- The initiative rolls don't seem to be available in this build

Maybe I expected the experience to be a bit more polished but I'm really liking it and definitely looking forward for the upcoming updates.
Will try the mission again couple more times and maybe I will record a playthrough if I got the gist of the system

 

[Avonaeon]

A few more things.

-I can't seem to target heads when using precise aim, at least not on the guys down in the basement.
-Music is great.
-Atmosphere is pretty good, despite me still not being the biggest fan of the art style.
-I like the tick system, but it's a little unclear how much enemes can move per tick. I'm also a little sad that we don't also have the "tick list" seen in previous videos. There might be a reason why it was removed, but I feel it would make it clearer which characters are part of a fight.