In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor
New Build With Third Person Again!
You can switch between them using the F key on your keyboard or the left bumper on your gamepad. If the bindings don't work for some reason, please reset them to the defaults in the controls screen. But it should reset them for you in this build.
The new third person controls gain a lot of good things from the first-person view. The controls are now char-controller-based rather than rigidbody-based, which means that enemies can't knock you around anymore, and neither can explosions. Animations are smoother, same as in the first person view. The raptor no longer gets caught on the environment, same as the first person view.
There are a few unrelated changes in here, too. The raptor now moves 1.5x as fast as in the prior build. This is back to a speed closer to very early demos. We'll see if that needs to be tuned down slightly, but the extra speed here makes it so that walking is actually a reasonable speed sometimes, and running is really efficient.
The way I wound up handling the slapping-enemy-shots in third person view, for now, is identically to the first person view. It zaps out of the center of your screen in both modes. That's a bit strange in the third person view, but I haven't figured out a better way to aim that that isn't auto-aim, and this doesn't seem super egregiously strange, so for now that's what it is.
Enjoy!
Dev Diary 5: First Person Camera & Level Editor
View Video On Youtube!
Launching on the 8th, now, rather than the 5th. Also, please note that the first-person view will be an OPTION, and third-person view will still be supported. It's been pretty clear that a lot of people like the third-person view, so there's no way around keeping it. Personally I really love the first-person feeling, but I can also see myself switching back and forth between the two modes in the future.
Lots of positive evolution for the game in general, on a whole bunch of fronts, and not remotely all of which I was able to discuss here.
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
Update to the press preview build.
Things of note in this patch to the preview, anyway:
-some various new ambient sound effects from objects in the Lab demo level.
-fixed up the area secure message in such a way that nobody should be having a freeze when it's coming up anymore. We had two people with that issue, and nobody else, so it was a finicky sort of a thing.
-fixed up an issue where sounds were propagating incorrectly in some places (like the lab).
-fixed a bug where if you had the objective counter turned off, it would not finish levels (not sure anyone saw this but me).
-fixed an issue where the speed of the raptor's movement got reverted at some point to being slightly too fast for its animations. (so it looked like she was sliding along the floor -- oops)
-the turn speed of the raptor has been cut in half to give a better sense of control of it when using the keyboard in particular.
-- Misery had suggested making this faster, and in certain ways that makes sense, but as Quinn pointed out this leads to LESS control on the keyboard+mouse. It also felt more cartoony in general. I'd like for this to not require quite that degree of turning speed in general, mainly because you have the side-jumps and tail-slaps anyhow. I may make this customizable if this continues to be an issue of taste, though.
-The default sensitivity on the mouse and gamepad camera controls is now higher so that people won't feel those are sluggish if their DPI isn't set in a good way. They are more likely to look for adjustments if it feels too fast than too slow.
-The settings menu now has messages about where you can find the settings for the inversion of mouse, and messages about how to tune the performance of the game, etc. Some folks were missing these things, so a little note helps out.
E3 Trailer!
Woohoo! Finally some real footage of the game with actual robots in place. Things are proceeding really well, although slightly slower than I'd like. That said, it's really polishing up very well. We're currently aiming for an early access launch near the start of July.
Here's some random information you might like:
- This trailer only shows two different types of robots, with three variants between them. There will be maaaany more, though, and the little mobile guys won't always be so hard to catch.
- If you look closely in a few shots, you may notice that you can tail-whip enemy shots back at them. :)
- This is still using the two test levels, because we needed to polish up a press demo and that was the easiest way.
- Actual procedural levels are still in progress, because we need a better map editor to really get that working the way I want. That's my focus for the rest of this week, and then Misery and I can get to designing spaces.
- Overall the minimum system specs are coming out a bit heavier than I expected, but it makes a certain amount of sense given what all this is. We're certainly not wasting any processing.
- Generally speaking if you're running a graphics card that is midlevel from about 3 years ago you can expect to get a solid 30-60fps depending on what effects you have enabled and what screen resolution you have.
- If you have a lower-level card from about 5 years ago, you may or may not be able to run this at 30fps with every effect off and a very small resolution.
- We do have it tested and running on windows, osx, and linux at this point. :)
- This will be launching on the Humble Store at the same time this goes live on the Steam Store.
- The starting price is going to be $5, but then that will rise over the course of development as more features are added. The ending price is expected to be $15, unless there just isn't enough support from players to warrant building it out to that level.
- Either way, I very much intend to make sure that you get a good value for your money at whatever price point it's sold to you at -- not theoretical value, but actual value-at-the-moment. That way we can let this evolve as a partnership between the players and Arcen, and we'll build it out as much as you'll let us. ;)
- I'm suuuuper jazzed about this, if you can't tell. This is such a fun game. Not that I'm biased.
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
Quickie developer update: what's going on?
Short version: I have been very very busy on this, and feeling the time crunch in a major way for a variety of reasons, and so have been more silent than I should be.
Longer version: a TON of work has been done... all over the place.
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- The way the raptor handles
- the visual polish
- the destruction improved a bit
- the raptor audio much more raptor-y sounding (thanks to Pepisolo for big parts of this, and pushing me on it, too)
- other bits of audio sounding more varied and material-appropriate (thanks to Pepisolo on this completely)
- a fully custom AI system that handles traversal of VERY complicated level geometry like a breeze (and that will be showing up on the unity asset store in a month or two via a new partner in that area I'm working with to handle the asset store part and not distract me from actual development).
-integration with new pooling systems to make garbage collection better.
-upgrading to the latest version of unity (5.3.5p2) to get some bugfixes and some performance improvements.
-integration with the mobfarm smooth turret system (my AI does not do any targeting logic because there was already plenty of public code for that sort of thing)
-heavy improvements of said turret system to integrate it with pooling, with SECTR audio, and for nearly zero ram allocations during runtime.
-side-jumps/wall jumps for the raptor, which is a big deal for dodging projectiles.
-ledge hanging and jumping for the raptor.
-lots of particle effects are partially implemented, but more are coming.
-lots more asset store art has been worked on and partly integrated and optimized. More coming on that.
-the workflow for level editing has been figured out on my end, and a lot of improvements made in that department. However, it will be only for the developers unfortunately, and not client-side, because it requires the unity editor and the ability to embed prefabs for this. Such is life.
-a ton of the raptor animations have been improved or outright redone by Blue, making the raptor increasingly organic.
-lots of robot animations, only a few of which are in place thus far.
-a new sort of explodey-collapse logic for the small robots is partly in place, and I'll finish that tomorrow.
-a system for visual force field bubbles and the logic for that is about halfway done. It's super cool! it's for the robots, of course, not you. ;)
-lots of internal optimizations to code, project structure, etc, to make for increasingly fast development of content as time passes.
-the game actually compiles for a standalone executable now, haha. I had not bothered testing that previously, and there were some issues (as expected). All sorted now!
Big things coming really soon (next couple of days):
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-the first actual procedural levels to be shown off.
-the main menu, with attendant settings for quality and performance and controls.
-fully getting the robot AI in there and letting you actually win levels. Right now the movement logic is done and the shooting logic is done, but they aren't put together.
-a much better antialiasing solution, which will really take that quality up a notch.
Big things missing but coming a bit after that:
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-the big "dismemberment enemy" robots will be implemented, to go along with the "pounce target" robots that have been my focus thus far.
-substantial camera system improvements that are needed.
Other related big news:
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-we are aiming to have a new trailer AND the first press playable preview build out on Tuesday. :)
-we're not announcing the exact date yet, but this will be heading to early access later this month.
About the early access pricing strategy:
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The final price is intended to be $15, but we'll be adding content as long as player interest is there to financially support it. Our goal is to always provide the game at a price that at minimum reflects the value that is there at the time of sale, so that if financial support for the game dries up, we can wrap up the 1.0 release at a lower-than-intended price while still providing a great price-to-content value.
Teaser Trailer 1: In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor
Here's some fun/interesting facts about the trailer:
- The music is by our own Pablo Vega, with lead vocals by his wife Hunter Vega. That's not the whole title track for the game, but it's about a third of it. I'm so stoked to be able to share that with you, because they both knocked it out of the park.
- The main footage shown is still from the SciFi Industrial Level Kit demo level, by Ximo Catala. I'm getting soooo close to having stuff I can show you with the procedural generation, but I'm not there yet.
- The darker lab-style stuff was from the demo scene from Lab interior pack by Silver, which I've shown a screenshot from before, but no video. The lighting in that was a mess and mostly off, but it looked neat and so I figured why not.
- The robots shown being destroyed are Mechnarid, by Daniel Kole Productions. Those are suuuuper stand-in alpha stuff. I just slapped them in there in about an hour and rigged them up so I could demolish them in pieces.
- The temp-y robots illustrate an uber-simple form of "dismemberment" (with the top gone, but legs still walking), but it doesn't have true AI, and it doesn't look like the real robots will in the game. Thematically I needed some sort of robot footage for the trailer, so I figured that was good enough to get the idea across.
- The story talking about "the corporations have fallen" is a reference to the corporations that run the world in Bionic Dues. The incompetent machines that make for such fun puzzles and levels in BD are the precursor to the robots in this game, which are in no way incompetent.
- The story mentioning "our fleets have abandoned us" is actually referring to the abandonment of Earth that happens back during the civil war in the prologue to AI War: Fleet Command.
- Curious about how the story for our games fit together? Bionic Dues is maybe a few decades before Raptor, and then Raptor is about 800ish years before AI War. The Last Federation and Stars Beyond Reach both come later (in a different galaxy), and Starward Rogue is a few billion years after that. The forums have a cool post on the Lore timeline of the Arcenverse.
- Anywho: the idea is that the humans have mostly abandoned the planet to the machines, and yet a few humans left behind are turning to genetically-engineered raptors to fight the robots that are after them.
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
Steam store (coming soon, anyway) is a go!
What is this game?
In short: you get to pretend to be a raptor, but in computer game form instead of just walking on your toes at home. (Or was that just me? I'm afraid I have to admit I did the toes-thing at school, even.)
What's the plan for this space?
I've been doing a variety of dev diary posts about the game, and now those will be posted to the steam community as well as the Arcen blog and forums for the game.
So definitely give the game a follow if you want to keep up with the news. Or wishlist it if you want to keep up with the news and be notified by Steam when the game comes out!
What have I missed dev-diary-wise so far?
Some pretty cool stuff! Two videos, and some substantial writeups. If you're a fan of reading nuts and bolts stuff, or seeing some of the behind the scenes bits, I talk about and show those things in pretty good depth.
- Dev Diary #1 is part of this announcement post, which also talks about our use of Unity Asset Store assets and how we do that: Announcing “In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor”
- Dev Diary #2 is a freaking hour-long video: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man. Sorry about that length -- though people have said it is interesting, at least.
- Dev Diary #3 is a video that is thankfully only 10 minutes long: More Audio And Video. On that one I learned my lesson and did some substantial editing-down to get to the good parts and avoid some tangents and places where my train of thought derailed a bit.
When can I buy this game?
That... is a very good question. We may or may not do early access. If we do, then potentially you can get into that in about a month (sometime in June).
How much will it cost?
I'm honestly not sure on that just yet, either. If we go the early access route, then the plan would be to release something that is bulky and fun, but which could be built out more. If we go that route, then we'd release it at a starting price substantially lower than what our v1.0 price would be.
In that scenario, the price would gradually go up as the game gets larger and larger. If there's a huge popularity to the game during early access, then we'd probably build it out more and the final price might be a bit higher for those who don't get in earlier.
Overall I don't see this costing more than $15 USD at v1.0, though, and ballpark I'm presently thinking of $6.99 for the starting EA price. If we do EA.
How accurate are your system requirements?
Very inaccurate! The minimum system requirements on the graphics card side are literally the bare minimum to actually have the game function. Below that it won't launch, but with that I'm not sure you'd get any appreciable framerate you like.
The recommended system requirements are a stab in the dark based on other similar games, since I have limited styles of hardware to test on. But most likely you could get 60fps on that hardware.
Figuring out the real system requirements, and having time to help optimize things for people's specific machines (whether that means options they can toggle or adjust, or code improvements or whatever) is one strong argument in favor of EA.
What sort of rig are you running?
Personally I am developing this on a GT72 6QE Dominator Pro G laptop. Crazy as it sounds, because I always built my own PCs -- I used to do that for a living, and prior to that I built PCs with my dad going back to the 386 days. Ah, sweet memories of my first pentium.
Anyhow, I wanted the mobility of the laptop, and I wanted specs that were good, but not TOO good. If I was running some crazy SLI setup that almost nobody has, then I'd get a very different experience from most people who tried to play my games. As it is, it's rocking a GTX980M, and that's a bit of a jump above the average card already.
What performance do you get with that?
On my 980M, I've mostly been playing in test levels thus far, not real ones constructed and fully optimized using my custom occlusion system. Despite that, in the worst instances I'm dropping to only about 30fps, and on average I maintain a high-50s framerate. In places that are closer to approximating the actual load of a real level (read: where the occlusion system is able to properly do its job), I'm routinely getting 200fps or more.
What is the status of optimization in the game?
Premature optimization is always a bad thing, but I've also been very frustrated in the past with many early access games (or release games) that don't pay any attention to it at all. One goal of mine has been to figure out "budgets" for various things (destruction physics, camera post-processing effects, dynamic objects, particle effects, static meshes, etc) in terms of GPU/CPU latency.
Overall my goal is to make it so that I maintain a smooth 130fps or more on my machine, so that lower-powered machines can hopefully maintain 60fps either at the full graphical settings, or with things turned down a bit.
In my case, these performance goals actually play into level design itself. The way that the mazes are created is specifically designed around the custom occlusion system that I created, which in turn was developed specifically for this kind of game.
The test levels I've been running around in and having lower framerates in have these issues specifically because they are not split up and designed properly like the procedural levels are. In a lot of cases, because of their design, the occluder has no choice but to show about 5x more of the level than it otherwise would, and that's when the framerate hit kicks in. When it's able to show just an appropriate section of the level, then that's when I'm back to 200fps or so.
Other questions?
The best place to reach me is actually the official forums for the game. I'll try to catch things on the steam community as well, but there's a much higher chance that I'll miss it for at least a few days if you're posting somewhere other than the arcen blog or forums.
NB: I'm actually going to be unavailable from tonight until Monday morning -- go figure on that timing, eh? -- so I'll be slower to respond than usual. But if you have press requests, then contacting Erik at arcengames at gmail dot com will still get you in touch with us during this period.