Hey, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been feeling pretty under the weather. I'm doing a lot better now and that means back to work.
Because I've been sick I haven't been able to get much work done so there has been a lack of progression in Northern Regime.
This update I will talk more about what I would like to get done before we launch, which is FEB 17 2017. I'll also be explaining what will be in Northern Regime on EA Launch.
EA Components (Mini List)
Semi-open world environment. We will be partially closing off particular coordinates until we figure out what we want that area to hold. We aren't doing this to limit players, but ensure that they don't waste their time or get lost.
10-15 Craftable items list. Our crafting list is somewhat short but the items on the list take a while to be able to craft. One of the biggest reasons for Early Access is to gather ideas. We'll be constantly adding new cool recipes based on your ideas, through out development.
7 different enemy fortress' to attack and raid. 7 may sound like a small number but these camps are actually quite large and are re-raidable. We are going for a somewhat "Borderlands" style farming system when it comes to enemies.
over 10 different materials used to gather, to craft, or to heal.
Random building to search and to loot.
Basic clue based story line. The story line is not complete, but if you are smart and tedious enough, you may be able to figure it out.
Of course, there is so much more but here his a minor list to give an idea of what Northern Regime has to offer.
Early Access games are often buggy and unfinished, we understand that. We can't promise a polished finish game because that's not what it will be on the 17th. If you are looking for a complete game, we ask you to hold off buying Northern Regime. Although we say that, Northern Regime right now is still a fun and great experience to play.
Goals For EA
There are quite a few things in development right now that may or may not be completed before Early Access launch. Here's a small list with explanations.
Character Interaction: So we did make an update showing this feature off, and the response was great. Thank you for that! It is in the game but because it is such a difficult component to master it is not working perfectly in many ways. We are going to do our best to finish it off. We are going to decide which components or functions are priority one.
Character trading: Pretty close with character interaction, character trading will be pretty important to find new items, or sell items to acquire the things you need. This is one of the most complicated functions.
Position Location System: Because everything in the world respawns back in when you do, we need to figure out the best spawning system that will go arm and arm with that. If you spawn where you quit the game you'll be able to mine the materials you just mined, which seems too easy. We are thinking of a random spawn with in a certain radius.
There are quite a few other small things we plan to get done before release, we promise to keep you all updated as we progress. You can follow me on twitter for continous updates.
Conclusion
Thank you all so much for the amazing support. It means the world to me knowing there are people out there excited for something that I created, and spent so much work on. I can't wait to include you all into the development once we launch. I hope we have a great devoted community. I'll see you all soon!
Happy Holidays!
I hope everyone has an awesome break enjoying family, friends, food, and video games in the warmth of their home!
I, myself will be taking a small break from programming to enjoy the little things as well as playing some cs go. I'll see everyone after New Years!
Small Update : Npc Interaction.
Interaction with characters and questioning for clues.
So just today we have begun the system of interacting with the various characters throughout Northern Regime. Interacting with characters will be very important to Northern Regime's storyline. It will be up to you, the player, to ask questions and interrogate people to find answers to the crime you are trying to solve. There is also the option to trade for goods, sell goods, and take on jobs.
Interacting with characters will involve the following :
Various questions to choose from.
Different question combinations that will yield different answers.
A few different camera angles that rotate as your conversion goes on.
Ability to mark a character as suspicious or a possible threat hiding information.
You will have the ability to kill someone you are talking to, this will influence other characters to be more open when questioned.
Bribing characters for answers.
Trading with characters.
Doing jobs for characters.
Robbing characters.
This picture is showing two different angles you will experience when talking to a character in game. The edit of the photo does not depict the perspective of the in-game interaction.
First Implementation Of Sneaking & Fortress'
Sneaking Now & Future Improvements
We finally have started working on sneaking. Sneaking is something we have wanted for quite a while, but we really didn't know how we were going to put it in Northern Regime. Since there is reputation in the game and how some enemies won't attack unless you have poor reputation or if you have a weapon out.
Here are the basics of the sneaking system.
Enemies have a field of vision of 90 degrees on the Y and X axis. If you enter that area and you are near enough they will notice you and begin watching. If your reputation is poor or if you have a weapon out they will begin attacking.
If one enemy of the specific camp you are near attacks you, he will also let his fellow camp members know, and they will all start attacking
We have introduced silenced weapons, such as old rifles and some pistols. Because we don't have melee weapons sneaking wouldn't make sense otherwise, unless you were just attempting to steal resources. We don't have silenced rifles clips yet so we just turned down the rifle volume and increased the pitch to sound less threatening.
Some things we want to add to make the experience more realistic and challenging
Enemies triggered by noise, such as opening chests, walking to close, or mining materials nearby. We would also like to take in account the speed and sound of wind to diffuse certain situations.
Enemies as of now do not wander or patrol their area. This would help make sneaking into camps harder, more strategic, and an increase in realism.
There is definitely a lot we can do with this new implementation, so if you have any ideas please feel free to comment on this post!
Enemy Fortress'
Enemy camps haven't been what we originally imagined them as. We didn't notice it either. Camps have consisted of around 4 tents, a couple resources, and 3-4 enemies total. That was really it. It wasn't immersive, exciting, fun, or realistic. It just didn't seem right. Here are some things we added to make it a lot better.
Full-scale fencing or some fencing to guard the perimeter.
Guard towers to give enemies increased visual distance, as well as an easy identifier for the player notice camps before it's too late.
Loot chests you can take after defeating the camp unless you sneak passed the soldiers. These chests contain mostly all resources including ammo.
Created blueprints for camps the player can trade resources to get, from other camps or tribes. This will make it easier to deceive your target or to sneak in more efficiently.
The layout is larger in general and more spread out to a bigger degree. Camps before were very compressed, it made it feel far too fake.
We have added much more foliage, rocks, and trees. This makes the camp dense and harder to identify. It also makes gun fights more challenging as it is harder to spot the area where an enemy may be attacking from.
This are some basic additions that do really make it a better and challenging. We are going to continue adding to this. We want raiding to be a big part of gameplay, and as now it is still now where we want it to be.
Things we would like to add
More structures like tree blinds the enemies can hide in and surprise the player.
Enemy traps like holes in the ground near entrances that the player could fall in.
Possible camp allies that would come to their aid if in serious trouble.
Camp scouts. They would patrol larger areas around the camps radious to be on the look out for possible threats. They would alert the camp if you were to be spotted.
Camp bounty hunters. These men would be paid to hunt you down after you have attacked their camp, poor reputation or not.
Ideas & Free Keys
Introduction
Hey, everyone. Just wanted to check in and give you an update one what has been happening with Northern Regime and some small stuff we have added, and some stuff that we plan on adding. In addition, we would love to hear some ideas you may have or things you would like to see added to Northern Regime as we have been going through a little burnout for ideas and stuff to add. If we love your idea and end up putting it in the game we'll send you a couple keys!
Northern Regime Additions
Added new looting and resource gathering system.
Added additional terrain and map details.
Started adding buildings and houses into Northern Regime.
Added Enemy and Random characters with aliases and personalities.
Began implementing story mode into Northern Regime survival.
Added random events; dead bodies, random characters, small mysteries
Added bounty hunting. Pick up a wanted poster to begin quests.
Added currency once more.
Added loot chests which contain most all materials and some. currency.
Took out Night and Day cycle for now.
Added more options to optimize the players game.
Created a new menu that fits the game more (Journal)
Northern Regime Future Additions
there are many things we want to add, though most listed here are more long term and difficult.
Trading items will neutral soldiers and random characters.
Readable books for clues and names.
People you can interrogate for names and locations of enemies.
We need to incorporate more complications to receiving poor reputation.(The system is there, but most responses aren't built in the game.)
Random attacks between other groups leaving random resources left over.
Add roaming enemies and other characters. (Most characters right now are completely stationary, which isn't very life like)
Development Live Stream.
Live Stream Tonight
Hey, everyone! I just wanted to let you know that we will be live streaming in about 25 minutes! We'll be live streaming some basic development on Northern Regime. This also give us a chance to answer questions or include ideas that you may have! So if you want to see development behind the scenes be sure to tune in to our live stream in 25 minutes at https://gaming.youtube.com/channel/UCP6fMSV-9Zvxgo_0iUIOScg/live?pli=1
If you can not make the live stream tonight, you can always watch our last development blog here
Hey, everyone! I've just bought a brand new mic, so I am now ready to begin creating awesome development video blogs and progress videos. I think it's going to be a great opportunity to show everyone the "Behind the scenes" of development, especially for those who are interested in how Northern Regime is being built. It also gives me an awesome chance to get feedback from the Northern Regime supporters. Like I've said before I would really like to implement some of your ideas and see how they work. I'm sure a lot of you have much better ideas than me. It would not just be cool to include community ideas but it would also help me out tremendously. I like the idea of Videos on top of steam update blogs, I know not everyone wants to read 10 paragraphs of text. Videos would make it easier and faster to explain new iterations.
Twitter & Youtube
Since we are going to start focusing on social media a lot more I've decided to make a new twitter and a new Youtube. The accounts are focused mainly on Northern Regime rather than myself, which makes a lot more sense.
You can find the pages from the links below.
You can expect to see our first video blog either tonight or tomorrow, so stay tuned for that!
Development
Development is still going steady. We have lots of new items and new craftable items, including hammers, pickaxes, repair kits (Items now have health), more materials and ores, and we even created a new crafting menu to make it easier on everyone. We had a bug where people were capped off on their frame rate, we believe we resolved it after many hours of struggling to understand the problem.
Northern Regime : Free Play Week
Short Announcement.
Hey, everyone! We have been super happy and excited by all the support Northern Regime has been getting lately. Because of this, we have decided we are going to have one week where everyone can play Northern Regime early and for free! We aren't entirely sure on when this will be happening, but it will most likely be on November the 20th to November the 27th.
Event Prizes.
We want this event to be special, we are going to be giving away a few prizes for milestones reached in the game by you the players. We are going to have one cash prize of $50 and the rest will most likely be games seen on steam, including a few copies of Northern Regime.
Pre-Alpha 2.0.65
Progress Introduction
Hey, everyone. It's been a while since the last update a result of being busy. I thought I'd update everyone on the progress we have made since, and where development is heading. We'll also talk a little on the release date.
System and Mechanics
Northern Regime has a lot of its core systems implemented and ready to be added to and refined. A few of these systems include; crafting, animal breeding, animal migration, experience, weapons, level bonuses, reputation, and a few more. The game right now is getting really close to being a fully playable and fun experience. It takes a while to create a game that can be played for hundreds of hours, and it's especially hard to make a game fun. I think we are getting really close to accomplishing that feeling, but it will take many more hours to get it perfect.
Kickstarter
I'm not sure if we will make our funding goal with-in the next 20 days but it's okay. Kickstarter would have allowed us to take a little longer and really polish Northern Regime. This just means we will be able to get help from the community earlier in development. Something super amazing happened, though; Kickstarter gave our page a "Project We Love" badge and that really means a lot knowing that the staff at Kickstarter has an interest in our game and ideas.
Road Map
We're going to be working on a lot of pretty "minor" stuff. It's minor but in a sense, it makes the game. I'm talking mostly about adding different items, resources, plants, ores, etc. As well adding different crafting recipes and item unlocks. I usually procrastinate on adding new items because it's a little more intense than I would have imagined. It's not difficult to do but it requires so much art and models it's insane. To craft one item we have to make at least 4 models and 4 images. 5 items would be about 20 models or more depending on the recipes. When Northern Regime does come out we'll allow people to submit item ideas as well as the recipes. The next few months of development will pretty much consist of adding items, recipes, level unlocks, enemies, just small things that make the game feel like it has a large amount of content.
Graphics
A lot of development has been focused on quality and graphics. I have a heavy compulsion when Northern Regime doesn't look fantastic, so I am usually always tweaking the graphics and color scheme to try and accomplish the best look possible. I think now I am finally happy with how it looks so the graphics will most likely be untouched for the next little while to focus on making NR fun and engaging. I mean, most of the development for the next few months will be tweaking and polishing.
Testing Team
Developing a game for 12-14 hours a day you really start to forget about small bugs and problems. To get around this I would like to assemble a devoted team to test and report all bugs and problems they encounter. There will be a private forum on the Northern Regime website so the team can make entries. This will really help development form around the opinions of others which is what I really want to an extent.
Release Date
I personally would like to release sometime in November or even better, December. However, these are two months would be the worst time to release an indie title. Because it is near Christmas time, so many big companies release their games. I know we are not competing with these companies but we are competing to gain the same consumers which causes a conflict of interest.
Outro
I know this update wasn't totally about game-play, sorry for that. We will make sure the next update will go over Northern Regime a lot more, it will also come a lot sooner for you guys! Thanks for the support everyone, developing Northern Regime has been a total dream. I haven't enjoyed making anything more.
Kickstarter Official Launch!
Introduction To Kickstarter
Hey everyone! Today we have officially launched our Kickstarter campaign. There are quite a few reasons why we have decided to reach out on crowdfunding.
The more funding we have the longer we can work on Northern Regime
The more money we have the better assets and graphical art.
With more time allocated to Northern Regime will result in less bugs and problems on launch.
Of course they are many more reason to be on Kickstarter that's just a very brief list that displays some of the major reasons. If you want more information on why we need the money and where it is going to go please check out our Kickstarter campaign.
Kickstarter Perks
A great part of Kickstarter is being able to hand out special perks to the wonderful people that helped raise the money and make Northern Regime into a successful Steam video game. We have listed quite a variety of different perks including beta access, instant access, working with us on the game and quite a few more.
You don't have to pledge
Even just following the game on Steam is so much great support and we couldn't be any more great full with the response from all of you awesome people. If you really do want to help out, sharing the Kickstarter page would do wonders!
