KickStarter Prometheus Wept - turn-based RPG from Vigilantes developer - Demo Available

[jdinatale]

Anyone else think the game name is edgy, try hard, teenager cringe?

 

[Timeslip]

An uncharitable person might ask the same question of your question.

 

[Viata]

LEL I saw this game on infi's post on steam next fest and thought "oh this looks like that Vigilantes game". Turned out it was from the same dev. Now I have a whole thread to read.

 

[Timeslip]

LEL I saw this game on infi's post on steam next fest and thought "oh this looks like that Vigilantes game". Turned out it was from the same dev. Now I have a whole thread to read.

Hi Viata - well spotted. There's quite a lot of Vigilantes DNA in Prometheus Wept, with more emphasis on story and gameplay depth this time around. The demo took around 3 hours to play, which was more gameplay than I expected.

The Steam version has been updated again. There's way more ambient music in it now, another kicking combat track, a number of bug fixes, and the incredibly annoying bug preventing characters from being revived after combat is fixed.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

This video covers the completion of a new mission in turn based PC rpg, Prometheus Wept. In this mission, you will investigate an old world research lab, running afoul of its territorial guardian.

 

[Timeslip]

Hi all - hope you're keeping well. That mission took quite a bit longer than expected, largely down to the scripting heavy nature of the mission and the boss encounter. Here's some extra detail and images:

The Mission
Whispers of the Old World is a more story focused mission, with a number of routes through a hostile environment controlled by a deranged artificial intelligence. As such, there's a ton of scripted events, and a boss fight which can be approached in a number of ways. These two factors accounted for the majority of the time spent working on the game.

The Boss
To defeat Hec8, you can either face it solo in cyberspace, while your allies protect you in the physical world, or overcome the automated security, and destroy the servers on which it resides. You can also opt for a simultaneous attack on both fronts. The battles on the cyberspace and physical layers are interconnected, so if you destroy a server, it affects Hec8 and any automated security, while damage to Hec8 debuffs automated security. I wanted to avoid the boss battle being determined by the character with the highest stats, so Hec8 goes through a number of phases of attack, utilising special abilities which can be countered with your own cyberspace scripts.

Script Lab
To make this work, I added an interface, much like the crafting screen, which allows you to create and upgrade cyberspace abilities using the software engineering skill. The file size of the scripts increases as you develop better versions of them, and the number of scripts you can load is determined by the amount of RAM in your data warfare suite.

Combat Drone
Combat Drones have been added to supplement the static defenses provided by sentry guns. These are hard hitting units, which hover, and are thus unaffected by any tile affects, such as fire.

What's Next?
I'm currently working on the food convoy mission. This is the first mission which can be played from two sides, that is, supporting either the rebels or the militia. It's likely to take longer than a regular missions but it's unlikely to be as time consuming as Whispers of the Old World.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions, or share your thoughts on the game. Have a good day!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...t-a-post-digital-turn-based-rpg/posts/3857075

Dev Update June - July 23: Militia Food Convoy & Release Schedule​

Hi again!

I've wrapped up the food convoy mission, as played from the militia side. This mission puts you in charge of a small unit of Sunny Pines militia tasked with transporting a desperately needed food shipment to Sunny Pines. Below, you will find a brief summary and a dev video, should you want more details.

The Mission:

Aware of a hostile group are trying to overthrow the leadership of Sunny Pines, and running out of food, you are tasked with escorting the food convoy from Rawlston Farm to Sunny Pines. This is a combat focused mission, with three battles. The first battle introduces the vehicle escort mission type, while the latter two focus on modifying the battlefield to your advantage (through destroying bridges, placing sandbags or mines) to better defend a stationary truck from attacks.

Early Access Release:

I've tried increasing my working hours over the past two months, to see if it would be possible to release before the end of the year. Unfortunately, no matter how many hours I throw at it, it just won't be possible. If you've been patiently waiting on the game, I'm sorry to disappoint you. My expectation is to release around Apr - May of 2024, which is further explained in the video.


Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or comments, do let me know!

All the best,

Daithi

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...t-a-post-digital-turn-based-rpg/posts/3887576

Dev Update Aug 23: Convoy Ambush!​

Hello again!

I've wrapped up the rebel side of the food convoy mission. Here, you will ambush and attempt to capture a food convoy destined for Sunny Pines. Below, you'll find the dev log in video and text format.

The Mission:​

This scenario is comprised of three battles. In the first, assisted by rebels, you must halt the convoy and incapacitate as many guards as possible before it flees the map. You can carry out a variety of beneficial actions, such as chopping down a tree onto the convoy's path to occupy some of the guards in clearing it, or making caltrops to slow the truck. Any guards not incapacitated will join the defenders of the next encounter.

Using Time Units to chop down a tree in the convoy's path will force some of the escorts to focus on clearing it, rather than on you.
The second battle tasks you with assaulting an entrenched enemy at the militia outpost the convoy has retreated to. You will be joined by Gordina, the awakened, old world postal robot, who is a skilled tactician and very durable, but cannot be repaired in combat. The defenders have destroyed the bridge and your options will include searching for traps, building pontoon bridges to de-risk the river crossing, and sneaking some troops across the river bed.

Having an awakened old world postal robot on your side isn't going to hurt!
The militia have more firearms, but you have access to an off-map smoke launcher, which can deploy smoke at no cost, once per turn. After defeating the militia, your departure will be interrupted by a final attack, where you will lose the convoy if defeated. Failing to capture the convoy, or losing it will have a substantial impact on the act finale.

You have a number of options at your disposal to crack the militia outpost's defenses!

Additions:​

From the start, I've operated on the belief that gameplay variety is one way to elevate the game experience. To facilitate continual gameplay variation, minor and major, a number of new features have been added.

The convoy type mission, which can be played as escort and ambusher is the most significant addition. These missions appear occasionally through the game, and will play a significant role in act 2. Changes to AI behaviour were required for computer controlled characters to balance maintaining a distance to the convoy and attacking.

The convoy's militia are much better equipped than your rebel troops
Time Units, a resource which allows you to manipulate the battlefield in your favour were also introduced. This facilitates a series of choices, rather than a single choice, being made to shape the upcoming combat, and greatly improves tactical depth. Some of the choices available in the convoy missions include blocking the convoy with an obstruction, destroying bridges, creating them, placing sandbags, placing traps and detecting them.

There are now two ways to deploy your troops prior to combat. When you have map control, dialogue options may allow you to move your characters X number of tiles before combat begins. In cases where you lack map control, or are preparing an ambush, you can use skills to unlock new tiles to deploy to – for example, by using lockpicking to gain access to a building, you can open up more advantageous deployment slots for your troops.

These recent additions all contribute to a deeper bag of tricks I can use to improve gameplay variety. It's a time consuming approach... hopefully the results will merit the effort

That's it for this dev log. I'm going to start working on the finale for act 1, and worldbuilding, and will check in again in the near future. Thanks for reading/watching, and if you have any questions or comments, do let me know!

 

[cyborgboy95]

A quick check in!
Hi again-

I hope you're doing well. I'm still working on the finale for act 1, specifically, on the options you can pursue to strengthen your chosen faction and weaken the enemy before the showdown starts.
The options available include purchasing equipment, recruitment, training, intelligence gathering, acts of sabotage and more. There's a lot of work involved – hopefully the effort will translate into a good game experience. Here's a couple of early screenshots of the... *ahem* re-education centre in Sunny Pines.

I'll check in again in another month, at which time I'd hope to be well through the pre-finale gameplay. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, do let me know
All the best,
Daithi

 

[Jaesun]

Holy shit ANOTHER game that fell off my radar. Wishlisted! Really like what I am seeing in encounter design, writing and this setting is really interesting, Looking forward to this!

 

[HoboForEternity]

Yeah, vigilantes was cool, but albeit a bit repetitive in the end.

 

[Timeslip]

Holy shit ANOTHER game that fell off my radar. Wishlisted! Really like what I am seeing in encounter design, writing and this setting is really interesting, Looking forward to this!

Glad to hear you like the look of the game, Jaesun. The next few months are likely to be tough going, but early access isn't a million miles away at this point.

 

[Timeslip]

Yeah, vigilantes was cool, but albeit a bit repetitive in the end.

It's the most frequent criticism, and I agree with it. I didn't anticipate how much more work it would be take to break up that repetitiveness. I may have gone overboard... at this point, I've probably put in the same amount of hours as it took to complete Vigilantes.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Decided to play the demo again because of one thing that has been bugging me.

Does game really need to have 2 separate skills for pre-battle relocation and is there enough discrete uses for both?

 

[Timeslip]

Hey Taka-Haradin puolipeikko - Tactics won't generally be used for this purpose. In this case, it's used on the basis that the character has noticed enemies are mostly using melee weapons, and that fighting from the far side of the river with a firearm would convey an advantage.

Since you're playing through it again, what do you think the biggest issues with the demo are?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Hey Taka-Haradin puolipeikko - Tactics won't generally be used for this purpose. In this case, it's used on the basis that the character has noticed enemies are mostly using melee weapons, and that fighting from the far side of the river with a firearm would convey an advantage.

Since you're playing through it again, what do you think the biggest issues with the demo are?

-Lack of content. Me wanting more might be considered a good sign.

-Certain jankiness which comes from shoehorning Vigilantes-system to more freeform level exploration.

 

[Timeslip]

Content will certainly improve. The world is quite lifeless outside the main quests at the minute - how far I'll be able to go with this is an open question, but I wouldn't even consider an EA release until this is improved.

Can you give me some more on point 2 - is it the real time movement system, or something else?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Can you give me some more on point 2 - is it the real time movement system, or something else?

Certain little things:
-Clicking second time while moving stops movement. Took some time for me to get used to that.
-There are some (empty) containers in Sunny Pines on which is possible to get ´stuck`, opening and closing inventory seems to fix that.
-Roof fades when PC enters building, but if you pan camera around, it gets rendered again until you exit and re-enter building.

Those were the ones that came to my mind now.

 

[udm]

Holy shit ANOTHER game that fell off my radar. Wishlisted! Really like what I am seeing in encounter design, writing and this setting is really interesting, Looking forward to this!

Did you play their previous game, Vigilantes? If not, you should try it. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did (because of the nuXCOM mechanics), but it was really good up until the last 20% of the game when it was just a grind to get to the boss.

 

[Timeslip]

Can you give me some more on point 2 - is it the real time movement system, or something else?

Certain little things:
-Clicking second time while moving stops movement. Took some time for me to get used to that.
-There are some (empty) containers in Sunny Pines on which is possible to get ´stuck`, opening and closing inventory seems to fix that.
-Roof fades when PC enters building, but if you pan camera around, it gets rendered again until you exit and re-enter building.

Those were the ones that came to my mind now.

I'll take a look at these, cheers!

 

[Modron]

There was a large post today (I snipped the youtube videos to just links, they were just covering the demo): https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1208110/view/3888358641543452068

Prometheus Wept Dec '23 Update: Getting there on act 1 finale
Hi again,

I hope you're doing well! I'm still working on the finale for act 1. A quick summary of some recent activities, and you can find more detail below:

- Completed the Homestead Heights map for Sunny Pines.
- Rebel pre-finale is virtually complete.
- Militia pre-finale will require less work, and will be started next.

Homestead Heights Map:
I've added the last of the five districts of Sunny Pines, Homestead Heights. This is the seat of manufacturing in Sunny Pines. It houses most of the worker population and the Shaded Pine, the local pub. It's a little depopulated at the moment, but you can get the idea.

Much of Sunny Pines industry revolves around food and lumber.

Pre-finales & Finales:

I've broken down the work on the act 1 finale into 4 parts. For each side, there's a pre-finale (recruitment, purchasing/crafting faction, sabotage) and a finale, where the fighting plays out.

I'm on the cusp of completing the rebel pre-finale. Just one act of sabotage is left to be scripted. The militia pre-finale will be quicker to complete as much of the code to interact with the faction (equipment, troops) is already in place.

Due to restrictions on weapons ownership in Sunny Pines, you must employ the services of an outside arms dealer to equip the rebels.

After that, work will begin on the finales, which will be 3-5 large scale battles for control of Sunny Pines.

Prometheus Wept Coverage:

I missed the coverage of Prometheus Wept by let's players Wee Hours Games and Vlodril at the time, but have since caught up on it. If you like more chilled let's players, they're good ones to check out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxU1Ow5vOLg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLxMPbHDS3E

Developing Prometheus Wept the way I envisioned it has proved more difficult and time consuming than imagined, so thank you for all your patience and support. There are times in development when the hill feels more steep and the rock, heavier, but that's a passing thing. Thankfully, an early access release, which will be great for motivation, isn't too far away.

Development will slow down, but not stop over Christmas, and I'll check in again around the end of January. On that note, I'd like to wish you a nice time over the Christmas holiday

All the best,

Daithi

How many acts are there going to be?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

How many acts are there going to be?

From kickstarter page:

Prometheus Wept will comprise 3 acts, each with a fresh setting, characters, objectives and unique game mechanics.

 

[Timeslip]

Hey-

3 acts is correct. I'd expect subsequent acts to be quicker to develop, partly because more of the infrastructure is in place. At best though, it's going to take 12-18 months per act. Crazy when you think it's for 4-6 hours of gameplay. Act 2 will not have a choice between factions, so that will help considerably. Granted that there will be new additions to gameplay, but will deal with that when I get to it. I figured that adding two main routes through the act would increase the development time by 1.5, but the reality, with a couple of exceptions, is that it's twice as time consuming. The very slow pace of development can be frustrating to deal with, but knew it would be tough, so there's no point moaning about it

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

it's going to take 12-18 months per act. Crazy when you think it's for 4-6 hours of gameplay.

What takes so much time when you have game systems in place and a lot of assets can be reused?