KickStarter Satellite Reign - Syndicate Wars spiritual successor from original devs

[Branm]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...and-syndicates-simulation-legacy/#more-158898

Awesome Interview from rockpapershotgun


Well tells us a ton about the game

 

[Branm]

Hmmmm sounds like combat will be much more like say Commandos and Desperados.

Eh not a terribly bad thing. I'm a old man these days and cant keep up lol..>Incline!!!

RPS: I think the thing people are most thrilled about, at least if they are anything like me, is the idea of another city simulation. Just watching a Syndicate city functioning was always a grand thing. Can you tell me about your plans for that?

Diskett: We’ve got all the standard stuff – a vehicle system, a traffic system, a police force. But, okay: one of the classic sort of things is /behaviours/ being implemented, not scripting. I’ve been doing a lot of AI in the past few years, and I was an AI specialist at THQ. Consequently I am into implementing behaviours as you would expect, rather than scripting them. You think about how a person would react, and make the game character act like that. You make them react to what they perceive, and you make their perception work correctly, with vision cones and true line of sight. That means they act without having 100% information about something. One of my pet hates is AI like in Borderlands, which is where if you shoot them from half a kilometer away they instantly start shooting back. I prefer AI that says: What do they know about it? What’s the reaction time for them? How long do they take to look around before they decide whether to shoot or run for cover? Does it need more gunfire before they make a decision? So that’s the approach for individual AI entities in the game. But you’re asking about another aspect, which is the wider simulation of the city itself, and I want to simulate that down to the powergrid. That’s one of the things I’m really interested in for hacker class is to have power nodes all through the city that are correctly modelled, so that you can trace where power lines are, and see them with EMP perception. So if you place explosives here, you can shut down a gun emplacement there.

Hmmm quality AI??? Sounds too good to be true lol

 

[kris]

And the hybrid turn-based/real-time combat was an abomination.

I actually liked it. I had not played the previous x-com at the time though.

 

[Infinitron]

RPS: I think it’s clear that people were much quicker to attack Syndicate Wars than they were Syndicate. When the Satellite Reign Kickstarter appeared a fair number of people were eager to voice their dislike over Wars vs Syndicate. Is that fair? I liked Wars less, but played it more, due to the PC I had at University – oh I am one of those guys you were talking about!

Diskett: One of the problems with Syndicate Wars was that we rushed into making it 3D. The hardware wasn’t really ready for it. When the first Syndicate came out it was one of the first games to appear in 640×480 hi res. It was all sprite and tile based, and looked good as a result. When we went to 3D for Syndicate Wars that was actually a step back, because although it was 3D and lit and you could rotate the world, it was low-res, 320×240. And yeah. And it had niggly design issues in there that I now regret not changing. One of those, which I think was critical, was that how zoomed out you were was based on the gun you had selected. Since you started with Uzi you were zoomed in quite close at the beginning. Even the minigun was only mid-level zoom. So it wasn’t until later in the game that you could zoom out and get a sense of the city that you got immediately in the first game. All that said, we had a lot of time to work on the level design tools, and the levels in Syndicate Wars are much better, with much more going on than in the original game. Unfortunately you ended up fighting with the interface because had to rotate the map occasionally, and that meant it was a confusing thing rather than a feature. It was just there because it was 3D.

RPS: And that’s reflected in your design for Satellite Reign?

Diskett: Even though we’re completely rendered in 3D, we’re not going to be letting you fully rotate the map. It’ll be a fixed isometric view on the camera, with a little bit of tilt and rotation, which means you are scrolling around the city from a particular direction. That helps you orientate yourself, and means you can build your mental map of the city much faster. It’ll be a little like Starcraft II in the sense that they took the original game, made it 3D, and then just allowed a very limited amount of tilt and rotation.

Paging all camerafags.

 

[Rake]

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Someone is looking at their work and admits the flows of their design? No more fighting with cameras is a good way to design next-gen Syndicate. I wonder if they decide to put Atlantic Accelerator-like mission.

RPS: Another departure is a class-based system for the agents. Can you tell me about that?

Diskett: One weakness of design in both Syndicate and Syndicate Wars was that people tended to band all four agents together and use them as one single awesome tank-like gun-toting super agent. You didn’t get the strategic splitting up and independent control of agents that we wanted in the games. Having a class system means you have to use them in different ways. The classes in Satellite Reign are the assassin, the soldier, the hacker, and the support class. The soldier is the traditional agent, who will take people on in the streets. The hacker can hack into and take over mechs, and augmentation of civilians – he’s an agent which takes the role of the persuadatron in the original Syndicate games. The assassin is more stealthy, and able to go in close for cloaked melee attacks – and all these mean you can use them independently. The assassin will be infiltrating over rooftops while the hacker is breaking into the city’s grid, disabling CCTV. A class-based system will make the game more tactical, and less of a shooter, than the original. It’s an improvement.

RPS: You also have a persistence of agent characters? How does that work?

Diskett: You will be able to upload and download the history and knowledge of your agents and put them in new clones. All the augmentations you’ve stuck into an agent, if he dies and you can’t retrieve the body, that’s what is lost. The levelling up of the agents is where we have this concept of downloading and uploading minds into new agents. An agent can die, but a cloned version will have his talents uploaded to it. The penalty will be that you’ve lost money because you need to redo the augmentation. You will also need to keep the clone bank updated, because you need a high level clone for a high level mind.

No streamlining, only building something upon the foundations of the game.

 

[Trash]

Pledged. I'm liking what I hear.

 

[Storyfag]

Sounds really, really promising.

 

[Destroid]

I guess that will be somewhat moderated by the class system.

Unless using four thugs is an option. Which would be fine.

 

[Galdred]

One weakness of design in both Syndicate and Syndicate Wars was that people tended to band all four agents together and use them as one single awesome tank-like gun-toting super agent.

Precisely how cannon fodder was played...

But... Cannon Fodder was awesome!

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Diskett: One weakness of design in both Syndicate and Syndicate Wars was that people tended to band all four agents together and use them as one single awesome tank-like gun-toting super agent.

He says it like it was a bad thing.

You didn’t get the strategic splitting up and independent control of agents that we wanted in the games. Having a class system means you have to use them in different ways. The classes in Satellite Reign are the assassin, the soldier, the hacker, and the support class. The soldier is the traditional agent, who will take people on in the streets. The hacker can hack into and take over mechs, and augmentation of civilians – he’s an agent which takes the role of the persuadatron in the original Syndicate games. The assassin is more stealthy, and able to go in close for cloaked melee attacks – and all these mean you can use them independently. The assassin will be infiltrating over rooftops while the hacker is breaking into the city’s grid, disabling CCTV. A class-based system will make the game more tactical, and less of a shooter, than the original. It’s an improvement.

Pointless without turn-based mode. So much for the Syndicate spiritual successor.

 

[Branm]

Commanodos worked just fine in real time...

Syndicate was never particularly strategic or tactical. It was an action game. The upgrade tree went Good > Better > Best. It was compelling and the atmosphere was stellar, but there wasn’t a whole lot to the gameplay. I loved Syndicate, but it is probably for the best that they follow it thematically rather than mechanically. If they can keep the atmosphere while attaching a better game to it, I’d be happy enough.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

or RTwP

RTwP is rather shitty for skirmish games. Wait. RTwP is generally a rather shitty mode. For the basic reason is that you get unrealistic ability to control and coordinate actions of several persons/units and react to events.

So, either RT with good planning tools, command delays and subordinate AI (which almost never happens) or TB.

 

[Overboard]

RTwP is generally a rather shitty mode.

I once thought the way you did, then I played Brigade E5 and 7,62.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I once thought the way you did, then I played Brigade E5 and 7,62.

What in them changed your mind?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The fact that you can also slow down or speed up time in both those games, aside from pausing, for one thing.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The fact that you can also slow down or speed up time in both those games, aside from pausing, for one thing.

Slowing down time is the same shit as the pause. More of giving more control over the flow of action. Speeding up is nice though, though again - useless without a subordinate AI.

I value both TB and well done RT over RTwP because TB limits control by introducing enemy turn when the consequences of the player's decisions play out and flow of time in RT naturally limits control.

 

[Gozma]

7.62mm style Rtw/P is still not great for gameplay, but it's good for complex simulation stuff and creating little action movie mini-narratives (e.g. it's probably the coolest way to handle Wild West style pistol quickdraw for example). The problem with it in B5/7.62mm is that it is like 95% of the games and it isn't really interesting enough to be worth that. If it were in something like Fallout 1 where most of what is going on is adventure game stuff and the combat doesn't have to be the gameplay that carries everything else it could work.

And slowdown only really interests me if I'm effectively gonna be doing shit like playing multiple Diablo characters at once, i.e. it would have to be a pure action game, and it would be 100% judged as an action game. It's just the action plays out in slow motion, because I couldn't possibly manage the controls otherwise. Slowdown does not in any way make a game more tactical; it would just increase how much action control you can ask of the player.

 

[Infinitron]

6 pages and no link to the Greenlight page?

VOTE: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=157080530

 

[Branm]

6 pages and no link to the Greenlight page?

VOTE: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=157080530

Or if you prefer totally DRM free:

http://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/satellite_reign_5_lives_studios?as=1649904300

 

[Johannes]

or RTwP

RTwP is rather shitty for skirmish games. Wait. RTwP is generally a rather shitty mode. For the basic reason is that you get unrealistic ability to control and coordinate actions of several persons/units and react to events.

So, either RT with good planning tools, command delays and subordinate AI (which almost never happens) or TB.

It's not necessarily any more unrealistic amount of control that a TB game gives. If you want to limit the reaction speed you can have, set a delay of how fast a command translates to action, and possibly lessen the delay depending on the stats of the controlled guy.

 

[Branm]

Did this campaign ever slow down, Derple Fine really didnt help these guys with their timing. Shame

 

[Branm]

think it has more to do with them having no real updates

True didnt consider that, they only really had that one update with a dev video. Their holding a reddit AMA tomorrow though at like 5pm EST.

 

[Branm]

Good new update up going deeper into classes and agent death.

Agent Death

• Agents can and will die!
• If your agents body dies their consciousness is removed and implanted into a new body.
• Agents will keep their skills and abilities which are carried across with their consciousness.
• New agents are cloned from a selection of bodies back at base.
• New bodies can be obtained by multiple means, like: purchasing them from the black market or harvesting them from the population.
• Cloned bodies have genetic traits that give small bonuses to your agents.
• Agents lost in the field will lose their augmentations and equipment but if you are fast enough you can salvage the corpse for spare parts or we have multiple insurance packages available to suit your needs.

Classes

• Your squad is comprised of 4 different agents, each with their own class or speciality: Soldier, Support, Assassin or Hacker.
• This is only the agents starting point.
• You are free to customise each of your agents to be fully combat oriented, fully espionage oriented, or anything in-between.
• Agents will be able to be customised by giving them different augmentations, skills / abilities, weapons and gear.
• Each of these customisation options will allow them to play more of a combat role or an espionage role, or anything in-between.

 

[Branm]

We're doing a reddit AMA at 21:00 GMT, 16:00 EST (in approx 8.5 hours)
I've posted about the reddit iama to a few subreddits , you may like to go upvote them for visibility.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1i03om/we_are_5_lives_studios_the_team_kickstarting/
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1i03re/we_are_5_lives_studios_the_team_kickstarting/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/1i03sw/we_are_5_lives_studios_the_team_kickstarting/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1i04px/we_are_5_lives_studios_the_team_kickstarting/