Game News Spy DNA, a realistic tactical RPG featuring genetically enhanced super-spies, now on Kickstarter

[HeroicBloodshed]

What we are trying to do with Concurrent turn based is mix the aspects of the two. The combat simulation is 100% real time. We present it as slices or time to the player so that it feels like turn based. The slices get varied in time so characters don't sit idle. From watching the play testers we are in great shape keeping the players in control of the party. We have a few things to fix on the side of making sure the players sees everything that happens (within their FOW). This is the point of early and often play testing. In the last two sessions we have not seen a play tester have the "chaos" issue common with RTwP.

I'm having a hard time visualising this.
By concurrent turn based do you mean something similar to frozen synapse's gameplay?

Also consider ditching mocap and 3d. Isometric 2d is cheaper and better-looking than amateur 3d.

 

[shysnake]

I'm having a hard time visualising this.
By concurrent turn based do you mean something similar to frozen synapse's gameplay?

Also consider ditching mocap and 3d. Isometric 2d is cheaper and better-looking than amateur 3d.

There are a lot of similarities with Frozen Synapse in terms of your ability to queue orders and how you see them played out. However, there are also differences. The most important difference is in Spy DNA the player dictates the length of a turn. They can be very short, basically ratcheting the timeline forward a few tenths of a second at a time. Or they can be large if you queue up multiple actions for a character. The natural way to play seems to be more, smaller, turns.

The second big difference is the support for interrupts. Rather than forcing the player to guess the activities of the other NPCs multiple seconds into the future, the turn can be interrupted if a PC spots a new threat. This is critical because we have a full fog-of-war. So if a character spots a new threat the turn is interrupted and the player given the chance to update their orders. The characters attributes (reaction, to determine how quick) and skill (observation, to determine if they spot the threat) will control how effective a given character is at this mechanism.

As to Mocap and 3d. We are well past the point where a change is practical. I agree the animation is rough. This is in part because we prioritized the UI, gameplay, and story development prior to KS. We wanted people to get a feel for what it would be like to play the game and hoped people would understand it's a KS pitch and not a finished product. If it were done we would just be selling it. What that really means is I put off working on animations and many aspects of the 3D world until we knew what the budget was going to be.