Vapourware Notes about the next DG

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Been slowly-but-steadily gathering ideas for the next DG, and now I have roughly enough to dump them here and sift through the feedback by the time I'm ready to implement everything.

The next DG is going to be a spin-off taking place on Earth and will take place in a single dungeon, about 10 floors (but bigger compared to the original) w/ a small sub-area or two thrown into the mix. It's not a large step up for DG mechanics, but more of a 'fix what didn't work well, add some minor quirks to the existing mechanics and add some new mechanics on top'.

This post will assume that you've played DG enough. I'll list some of the major changes to the existing mechanics as well as new mechanics here.

list

• Stats -- the main change here lies in addition of Energy stat, used for various abilities and is not upgradable, but replenished to the max at workshops. Use it wisely (tm).
  
  On top of that, evasion is no longer a simple hit/evaded check (w/ a minor quirk) -- I've been thinking of adding a possibility of slightly scratching the target (dealing 1 point of damage), which can make weapons like chainguns and similar even more useful against evasive targets.
  
  
• Quirks -- attacking from a point blank range should give a chance of landing a critical hit, attacking from the side or behind should give a nice fat bonus to the damage and/or evasion penalty.
  
  
• Armor degradation -- workshops will restore DC to the max value at all times, while reducing max DC by ~10% of the damage taken. This should make short-term mistakes (e.g. stepping on the minefield) less frustrating, allow making individual encounters more challenging and also add long-term armor management into the mix.
  
  Armor points will remain as means to reinforce the player's armor after repairs.
  
  
• Combat focus -- allows you to focus on aiming (at the expense of evasion), evasion (at the expense of aiming) or just keep things as is. Should work well in cases when a jammer throws off your aim and you really need to land that next attack, or when you're running away from someone and don't care about attacking anymore.
  
  
• Hacking -- allows you to hack doors/consoles/whatever w/ access level 1 point above your current one. Hacking higher-level objects and improving your odds of successful attempt will require upgrading this skill. Failure will result in sounding an alarm and increasing the encounter rate around the target. Consumes energy.
  
  Will probably be merged w/ disarming skill.
  
  
• Turrets -- stationary enemies, can be hacked to roast enemies all over the place (or avoided using cloaking).
  
  
• Cloaking -- allows to avoid encounters altogether and also makes running away a much easier task. Consumes a shitton of energy, which can be somewhat softened by upgrading this module.
  
  
• Barricade -- generates a destructible forcefield in front of the unit, which can be used to buy some time to run away/reload your gun/show a middle finger to the entity on the other side.
  
  
• Pilot's HP -- if your armor is worn out or very damaged, enemy bullets can break through the armor and hurt the pilot, which will give heavy penalties to your attack capabilities. There are also hazards that hurt the pilot directly, but there are medical terminals located on each floor of the dungeon to make up for that.
  
  
• Upgrades -- instead of collecting upgrades for a specific stat/skill, you're collecting generic upgrade parts that can be used to upgrade your stats (accuracy / evasion), skills (cloaking, hacking, barricade, disarming) or weapons (damage, accuracy, reduction of evasion penalty, range).
  
  
• Interactive Objects -- generators can be found an nuked from orbit to cut the power to remote-controlled doors/forcefields to bypass switch hunting, thin walls can be destroyed to open new paths or give enemies a big 'surprise motherfucker' in the butt, security terminals can be hacked to reduce the encounter rate on this floor, weapon stations can be found to grab new weapons/exchange your current shit guns for newer ones.

It's not a large step up from DG1, but it already allows some customization for the player and more space to play around. Stealthy assassin mech that saves ammo for the big bad boys, creeps on them and shoots them down from the point blank range? Hacker that reprograms turrets in the area, turning the enemies into a swiss cheese the moment they dare to show up? Big fat chad that doesn't give a fuck about that nerd shit and turns a pussy SMG into a weapon of mass destruction? Why not!

Anyway, lmk what you think.

 

[Viata]

and will take place in a single dungeon

Best kind of dungeon crawler, the second best kind is "only one city, many dungeons".

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Stealthy assassin mech that saves ammo for the big bad boys, creeps on them and shoots them down from the point blank range? Hacker that reprograms turrets in the area, turning the enemies into a swiss cheese the moment they dare to show up? Big fat chad that doesn't give a fuck about that nerd shit and turns a pussy SMG into a weapon of mass destruction? Why not!

Ok, my post was misleading. Should be:

-- Stealthy assassin runs out of energy in the middle on the minefield surrounded by turrets.
-- Hacker that turns a relatively easy section of the game into a nightmare by repeatedly failing to hack a soda machine.
-- Big fat chad that runs out of bullets halfway through the game and forced to ram his way to the endgame only to realize the final boss has a chaingun that tears him apart in 3 turns or less.

 

[d1nolore]

Needs more appealing name.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Heads up: I decided to ditch the original codebase in the sequel and spend time on making a cleaner codebase, which should make adding new features a lot easier.

New and exciting additions:

• Pilot stats. Pilot's control of the suit improves as the player completes objectives/fights battles/avoids combat/hacks shit/disarms traps/etc, which positively reflects on the accuracy and evasion. Levelups are going to be pretty frequent early on, but maxing out is going to be next to impossible.
  
  You heard that right, now it's a multi-layered RPG where you have to manage the pilot's stats, the mech's stats and the weapon stats.
  
  
• Different fire modes. Most weapons will have at least 2 fire modes to increase the amount of options available to the player in combat. This ranges from boring single/burst fire for SMGs and rifles to single shots/big blasts w/ energy weapons and also an option to use the internal battery (reserved for abilities) in case you run out of ammo and need a shitty last resort weapon.

Among the less exciting stuff, I made a barebones inventory, which should turn the game into an ammo hoarding simulator to boost your weight and smash heavy guys like nobody's business.

 

[Punch]

I wasn't even aware that the first one got finished, will check out the Steam page ASAP.

 

[Excommunicator]

Make DG2 look like this

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Only if you somehow end up self-ejecting from the combat suit or there will be sections where you travel on foot.

Otherwise, scanners are our friends.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Some little bits of fun:

• Status effects. There are separate status effects for robots and pilots and each one can have up to three at the same time. For example, SMG may suppress the robot (giving it an evasion penalty), while a successful hit on the pilot may cause bleeding, or laser may lead to burning and pain shock to the robot and pilot respectively. This is both a plus (you can pick weapons to inflict status effects on certain targets then use your favorite weapon to wreck them) and a big negative (if your pilot is shocked and bleeding, you may bleed to death without being able to do shit);
  
  
• Aftereffects. Status effects may lead to other status effects upon wearing off unless they're treated in time. For example, bleeding will lead to temporary dizziness unless you apply a bandage. Another important bit -- most meds also give temporary status effects, so injecting T in the middle of combat can make you feel slow for a while, which could be fatal;
  
  
• Stat modifiers. They remain similar to DG, but now the robot's and pilot's conditions are taken into account (damaged/hurt entities get noticeable penalties to stats) and the tile you're currently standing on may have wreckage on the sides that leaves less space to maneuver, thus giving you evasion minor penalties.

Before I forget, I'm thinking of adding knockback to ramming if the target robot's weight is way below the attacker's, so you can potentially send the enemy flying into a landmine.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Darth Roxor brofists this.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

 

[Excommunicator]

so you're saying when you get drunk it will make the game look like system shock that's p interesting

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

so you're saying when you get drunk it will make the game look like system shock that's p interesting

Why are you fixated on making the game look like System Shock?

 

[Excommunicator]

I'm not

Spoiler

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Doesn't really fit my game unless you somehow leave the combat suit and start seeing the world through your own eyes rather than the scanner.

 

[Grauken]

You should include a mech inventory where you can add different type of weapons to different bodyparts etc. That was always one of the most fun parts of mechwarrior

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

You should include a mech inventory where you can add different type of weapons to different bodyparts etc. That was always one of the most fun parts of mechwarrior

I guess I'll stick to the single equipped weapon from DG1 here, since managing time on switching/reloading weapons is part of the process. Expanding it to two slots that can be switched whenever the player wants wouldn't be a bad idea for the future though.

Different bodyparts would be cool, but hard to say whether there's room for that at this point. I'd definitely like to eventually look into that.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Initial graphics tests are coming along nicely.

 

[Ysaye]

I like the new look - particularly the sparse use of the lighting but also the level of detail.

One graphical question: have you ever considered putting the camera angle slightly off 90 degrees? (like they have done in The Dark Spire) - I just wonder particularly with the wireframe whether this might be more aesthetically pleasing?(although bearing in mind that it probably doesnt match the scanner reasoning stated earlier).

 

[Darth Roxor]

aesthetics clearly inspired by ELEX

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I like the new look - particularly the sparse use of the lighting but also the level of detail.

One graphical question: have you ever considered putting the camera angle slightly off 90 degrees? (like they have done in The Dark Spire) - I just wonder particularly with the wireframe whether this might be more aesthetically pleasing?(although bearing in mind that it probably doesnt match the scanner reasoning stated earlier).

That's not a bad idea on paper, but in practice it could work if it was a Wizardry-style crawler with stationary combat or combat on separate screen. Since DG has combat inside the dungeon, it sounds a bit iffy.

Still, I gave it a try and it's not too bad, but I doubt I'll go with it. While it looks interesting and playable, something feels off about it compared to the standard perspective.

aesthetics clearly inspired by ELEX

Didn't know ELEX looks like this.

 

[Grauken]

Looks not as bad I assumed it would. I never liked that perspective shift in Dark Spire, but here it looks kinda ok

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'd say it looks pretty bad.

 

[Ysaye]

IMO it looks okay movement-wise but yes I forgot that DG combat-wise plays out in the map and I agree it will look a bit wierd - thanks for giving it a go though!

 

[V_K]

I'm sorry to say I'm not convinced by the new look. It doesn't look like an abstraction, the way DG did, but rather like a regular 3D level with monochrome textures.