While we don’t want to spoil much of the story or lore about the world, it is quite easy to see where the inspiration comes from regarding how the players start and end a level in Just Read The Instructions. This white room where everyone gets ready for the fight is a small hint to what is actually going on for the characters in the game. It’s obviously a reference and homage to The Matrix, although the cinematic version might have a leg up on visual quality... In any case, the players start off in this seemingly infinite and empty room. They grab the weapons they want to use and then they go through a portal, a door, a rip in spacetime or whatever one might call it. These are our portals and they play an important part in the game.
Neo and Trinity grabbig some weapons
[previewyoutube="n6m0Byyydvc;full"] The player starting the level in the white room and then goes though a portal
Guns are always good to have
The players get to equip themselves with a few guns in that first white room where everyone starts. Then they need to use them effectively and sparingly, because as mentioned in a previous dev blog, the weapons break when they are used enough, especially when they are used with high power. The portals then come into play again when the players need more weapons. Because at the start everyone gets one portal to use later in the level for whatever problem they need to solve. When this “portable portal” is placed in the level, it leads back to the first white room and now there are more weapons to pickup. This really encourages cooperating and sticking together so that when one player uses one portal, all four players can go back together and bring new weapons.
[previewyoutube="8HJggH3TN0M;full"] The player going back to the white room for more weapons
The ‘design-rabbithole’ of portals
There are quite a few intended and unintended consequences of these portals. One intended is that the players can temporarily hide in the white room to catch a breath or to heal a bit. But there are other consequences that we did not first think about, but are quite intriguing to keep in and see how players will use and abuse. For example, if there is a portal open and someone else opens another one, the new portal will replace the connection to the white room, rendering the previous portal non functional. So if a player enters through the first portal and waits in the white room for a new one to be placed, going back out will now be through the newer portal, wherever that is. Lastly, an important limitation of the portals is that they are active for only 30 seconds, so one better return before that, or else who knows where one might end up?
We hope this huge wild card turns the design just enough up side down to make it feel really interesting! And don't forget to sign up for our beta! www.Knackelibang.com
/ The Knackelibang Team
The dust will hurt you
Is originality always good?
When designing a game there are always choices to make between following the beaten path or trying to explore new ideas and mechanics. It can range from new takes on core mechanics that permeate the whole game, to singular “simple” innovations. The bad ones are sometimes called gimmicks. Balancing between being original enough to stand out and still doing what players expect from your game and genre, that is a tricky thing. In Just Read The Instructions we are taking a big step into mechanics that is completely new, at least for us. Some might say too big of a step, but we hope to be convincing in our execution!
The death of a Crawler
The primary enemy in the game is the crawlers, we have talked about them in previous blog posts. They don’t hurt the player directly, instead when they come near the player they explode into particles. These particles are what hurts the player, it’s not the only thing that does damage, but the primary thing. These particles behave like you would expect particles to behave, they explode out from the crawler and come to rest in the air. Then if you walk into a cloud of particles you take damage. When a lot of crawlers run you down and explode, it quickly gets out of hand with particles flying everywhere, it looks pretty but it’s quite dangerous.
[previewyoutube="xrDc43xwRck;full"] The player walking into some particles and losing HP
The fun counterplay
How is the player supposed to handle this then? First of all, if the crawler gets shot, the particles coming out of it quickly fades away. But if the crawler gets too close, explodes and the particles get everywhere, the player can still fire away with their weapon and use the “air puff” from the discharge to blow the particles away. That means that when the player is firing, the weapon discharge will make particles everywhere move and generally fly away. We think this is kind of a novel and fun way to deal with the crawlers and their tendency to explode. We are still experimenting with different mechanics that can enhance and make interactions with particles more fun. But so far the particles and their behavior feels both novel to play with and pleasing to look at, and that is a good start!
[previewyoutube="0w4SC8WerKk;full"] Blowing away the particles looks kind of pretty!
We hope we will bring something new and exciting to the FPS table! So don't forget to sign up for our beta! www.Knackelibang.com
/ The Knackelibang Team
With great power comes great responsibility
We need more power!
In the previous blog post we talked about the amount of enemies that can be present at the same time in the game. As we explained, it came from the fact that the new Unity DOTS framework enables new levels of performance and thus we could have this amount of enemies. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, how is the player supposed to handle all these enemies? The weapons are by necessity very powerful and effective.
The technical aspect
Powerful weapons have their own performance implications, it’s not trivial to handle a shotgun discharge with 80 individual bullets (pellets). Just spawning 80 bullets is not a big deal, but then there are all the individual hits and calculations following that, which sort of expands into a host of different systems that all need to crunch all the aspects of every single bullet and it’s behavior. And then you need to multiply this by 4 players in co-op. So while the decision to have these powerful weapons came as a result of the amount of enemies, it’s made easier to manage with the DOTS framework.
Power when needed
To make the weapon power more interesting, we decided to make it adjustable. So most weapons have a power level that can be adjusted in real time with the scroll wheel. The available levels are 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200%. In the case with our shotgun when using it with 100% power, it behaves like a normal shotgun, maybe a slightly more powerful shotgun. Then more power will increase the spread and amount of bullets in every discharge. In close quarters with lots of enemies, this is highly effective! And when the power is reduced it has less spread and less bullets come out of the barrel. On 0% it does nothing at all, because why not?
[previewyoutube="VQo7E32Atsk;full"] Demonstration of the power levels
Is that balanced?
The power also has negative consequences. First of all, the recoil of all ballistic weapons are increased quite a bit when used with higher than 100% power. This means that you will not be able to keep a good aim though a couple of fast 200% discharges, the crosshair just flies up in the sky. But with some practice and skill, the weapons are much more effective on high levels of power. The other part of the balancing is the durability of the weapons, all weapons will eventually break when they are used enough. And the higher power, the faster the weapons will break. This is where a lot of finesse with how you use the weapons can help a great deal, knowing to use 200% and when 50% is better, that is the pro-gamer move!
[previewyoutube="C-3FQKuOoGc;full"] The power is really useful
This is hopefully a quite satisfying feeling. So don't forget to sign up for our beta! www.Knackelibang.com
