Off Grid
ICYMI : The 'OFF GRID DevStream' livestream catch up
[previewyoutube="V5mTJH1wPAo;full"]
Come and watch Rich, mc.fly and other CCC goers and members of the community make this mod into more than just Milliways, perhaps even more than CCC, as we look to transcend space and time in this mod of the hacker universe!
You'll get some inside commentary on hacker camps and events, and some opportunities to get involved yourself.
Join our next stream:
TONIGHT!! Thursday, 16th April ~8:00PM GMT
--> WATCH ON <--
YouTube
Twitch
or
Steam Broadcast
Til Next Time!
The OFF GRID Team
Join our newsletter!
Join our Discord
Make your mates Wishlist OFF GRID!
Sprint Roundup "Swimming up the features stream"
Trialing and tweaking new key art
Working up new Key Art
Pretty excitingly we have been working with an awesome Portuguese artist, Joao Sapiro, to work up some new images for our key art and capsules. We have got something really special coming together, focusing more on the themes of the game directly through its characters. Here is a sneak peak!
Making Timeline dynamic, and moddable!
We spent the last two sprints working on some features to improve signposting and tutorialisation in the game. This was namely in the form of a) implementing Unity Timeline instances that work with dynamic characters, cameras, and objects being spawned and b) being able to give cameras dynamic lookAt/follow targets. As with everything else OFF GRID this has to fit into the moddable systems. We decided it was needed so that devices & mission objects etc can set the camera target as the current NPC (or player) interacting with that object. This gives us a huge amount more flexibility when trying to signpost specific moments or interactions, but oh my did we find that timeline has some quirks when getting it to work with dynamic instances!
It's odd to say this, but at times it has felt like the entire Timeline feature has been built without interactive video-game use cases in mind...
Implementing Timeline in a dynamic setting can feel like swimming upstream
Defining gesture & sound events in Hackable/InterestPoint devices
Previously these were being done in the agent Lua script (or, should have been done there at least!). That didn't allow for mods that would add new devices (each mod would require replacing all agent scripts in all levels, or the device can't be used by those agents), there needed to be a way to at least define a default gesture in the device itself.
We added support for defining use of gestures & sound events in Hackable devices (on the Unity scene object/prefab). Hackable devices and InterestPoints need to be something modders can create, so the default gestures & sounds to play when using them needs to be defined in the scene object (or prefab), on the Unity side. AI Lua scripts can then define an override to this if the specific NPC should play a different animation. But having a default one defined in the scene object makes sure new devices are usable by all characters without having to modify AI code for every new added device (which would have been a pretty impossible situation for modding support).
Vibration patterns on the controller
Vibration patterns. Not all of them, and none are final, but there's some in the game now and we can keep adding more & tweaking them until they feel nice.
We added a new tool on the dev side of the project to help us to implement quickly, various vibration patterns. Each vibration pattern has various options that we can use to define different types of vibrations (like you can see in the following screenshot).
To start, we can control each motor vibration individually, so it's possible to have a vibration pattern in only on one motor. Each motor (or the both of them) has a curve that defines the level of vibration. That vibration can be constant or can have an interval between two values. It's also possible to define a constant vibration pattern, that is a loop, which can have a fixed duration or it can have a minimum and maximum duration. This in turn enables us to have patterns that change duration or force according to the situation of the game.
So, for example, it's possible to have a vibration pattern that can increase or decrease it's force according to the distance between the player and a respective objective, like a mission objective object. It also has some less important options, like pause between loops, and that pause duration can also change according to something that is happening in the game. So, with all that, it's a flexible tool that's going to help us to add new vibrations and improve the game's moment to moment experience, and player feedback.
Bizdev baby
We have had some of the year's un-sexiest admin work over the last month or so with our annual returns, but thanks to VGTR that at least means and nice cheque at the end of the process, which, everything being so uncertain with COVID-19 on the loose, is much appreciated.
We are also lucky enough to be part funded by Creative England. Recently we have been able to take advantage of their support to do some business planning and a series of investment events, workshops and mentor meetings. We have some exciting news on a well known new advisor of ours that we will be able to talk more about soon! As development of OFF GRID gets further down the road and closer to release we have started making some rough plans for expansions and future titles from Semaeopus too. Exciting times!
In the latest game and Levelkit build :
No build this time around while we get these features finished and tested, so, what can you expect to see in the *next* build of the game and modding tools?
Content (Level Design and Art)
Gameplay and Mechanics
Controls and UX
AI
Modding and Lua API additions
Bugs fixed
All now fixed!
Other
Virtual CCCamp in the Milliways mod
We are restarting the Dev Stream just in time for those self-isolation blues! And what a time to be doing so, as the extra free time that some of our hacker collaborators are finding themselves with means we have the opportunity to crack out the Milliways mod and make some progress on it. If you would like to swat up on things ahead of time then be sure to check out the previous streams and other resources on the wiki page.
Be sure to tune in at 8pm GMT on Thursday (26th March) to learn some more about modding in OFF GRID and hacker culture in general.
Thanks for reading, as always we hope you found it interesting. Let us know in the comments or on the forums if there is something you want more detail on, or that we used too much jargon explaining and you'd like us to clarify, we love a good chat! We look forward to speaking with you more online!
While you are self-isolating, social distancing, and generally keeping out of public, why not work through your Steam backlog so you are ready to play OFF GRID when it releases ;)
Bye for now, and stay safe and healthy folks.
If you haven’t already - be sure to Wishlist here - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
ICYMI : The 'Videogames is serious business' livestream catch up
You'll get some inside commentary on the authenticity of the hacking games we play, and some opportunities to win keys for some of those games!
[previewyoutube="gjl2kw5qq98;full"]
Join our next stream:
TONIGHT!! Thursday, 30th January 8:00PM GMT
--> WATCH ON <--
YouTube
Twitch
or
Steam Broadcast
Til Next Time!
The OFF GRID Team
Join our newsletter!
Join our Discord
https://store.steampowered.com/app/526720/Off_Grid/
ICYMI : The 'Videogames is serious business' livestream catch up
We have also been starting to mix in letsplays of other hacking games that we find interesting, and we have been mixing it up by getting friends form the security research nd hacking community along to play and analyse with us.
In case you missed the last one, here it is to catch up on:
[previewyoutube="UK_i7HhL0Js;full"]
Join our next stream:
TONIGHT!! Thursday, 16th January 8:00PM GMT
--> WATCH VIA STEAM BROADCAST! <--
Til Next Time!
The OFF GRID Team
offgridthegame.com
Sprint Roundup - "This week I have been mostly eating bugs"
Eating bugs
We have had some fun stuff, and some not so fun stuff, this last couple of sprints. But in all fairness the not so fun stuff has been satisfying... We decided to spend some extra time on lengthening the test sprint and working through bugs to tidy up the backlog ahead of the end of the year. Oh boy does it feel good reducing tech debt!
The last month or so has included:
As Pontus put it "this week we have mainly been eating bugs :D"
31 dead bugs.
A new look for Steam
We did some admin around the edges too, getting the Steam Library artwork all updated for the new look launch of Steam Library, and we have started making use of the new formats for Steam Announcements, as you as you may well be able to tell if you are reading this on Steam! The backend is so much nicer from a developer perspective, and hopefully it is all working nicely for you to have the whole thing collected together and centralised on the Steam community pages.
Our new box are for Steam Library.
A little helper on the Discord
But even more importantly for you good folks who are here keeping up on our news and take part in the various OFF GRID communities, we launched a bot pathfinder has been working on to the Semaeopus Discord.
Why not hop in there now and try throwing around a few commands?
Darth Vegas in action.
But what about the game itself?!
Well a load of work went into new gameplay and testing for the opening missions in the game, and that included optimising and bringing a higher level of polish to some of our draft levels, coloring and braking up walls, adjusting lights, and baking initial lightmaps for testing gameplay in the shadows.
Debugging physics colliders.
Arty stuff
We pushed forward with the design and creation of a system of pipes and cables with multiple interconnecting pieces, and made
Sprint Roundup - Coworking and Cracking On
In the midst of things we managed to schedule this last devblog post and leave it in drafts, so belatedly here is the previous Sprint Roundup. Keep your eyes peeled for a new one next week!
We had a fairly unique sprint last time around, with loads of doing stuff IRL! And with that we have got plenty to update you on with this sprint:
Facetime
This sprint we had a great co-working session with the team in Essex. It was the first face-to-face gathering with all of the current team in one place, and so we made sure to start it off well! Sarah welcomed the team with fresh, homemade doughnuts and Rich had several racks of ribs ready for the smoker.
It was an extremely useful co-working session with lots of planning and organisation - with discussion carefully curated by Filipe. The team also got together with other Essex devs for a bowling session one evening... and we've learned there are no standout bowlers on the team!
[table]
[tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr][td]Essex Dev Bowling[/td][/tr]
[/table]
We have built a studio and processes around working remotely (and even globally!). It gives us access to talent we wouldn't manage any other way, but it is so good to get together and share a meal around a table.
[table]
[tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr][td]Rich, Filipe, André, Pontus, & home smoked ribs! Sarah's behind the camera (again)![/td][/tr]
[/table]
We did a lot of scribbling with markers on oversized paper, and presenting ideas for things from new technical solutions to twists and details in the core story of the game. Of course one of the best things about getting together as a team when you predominantly work remotely, is having a reason to take a step back. We covered a lot of our release planning fundamentals as a team, and looked at the big picture such as milestones, work organization, bottlenecks and solutions, and more excitingly, what post-release plans we have in store!
Milliways Mod
This sprint included some fun extras, too. Chaos Communication Camp 2019 (an international meetings for hackers!) was the end of August, and we celebrated with a Milliways mod. Josh and a great new modder of ours, Luri, created the mod and Rich streamed with it during CCC.
You can read about it and watch the recordings of the streams all here on our Milliways Mod wiki page.
And if this interests you, you can even pull the repo from gitub and contribute to the mod.
Dundee Calling
Rich and Sarah went to Dundee for the UK Games Fund Awards in early September, where Rich was nominated for the Rising Star Award. The event was great fun and OFF GRID was demoed at the gorgeous V&A Dundee. The Videogames exhibition is on at the V&A and it's got a great look in on the dev journeys behind loads of great games, and so much more.
[table]
[tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr][td]V&A Dundee[/td][/tr]
[/table]
[table]
[tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr][td]Entrance to the Videogames exhibition at the V&A Dundee[/td][/tr]
[/table]
Release Date
You may have also spotted that there is some news about the release of OFF GRID. We'll now be releasing OFF GRID in 2020 - you can read more about that here.
Cracking on with Dev
In between all of this, we have continued on with dev! We had a bunch more level content we were working on, some updates to the save system and a bunch of smaller tasks inbetween all of the above, a few of which are visible in the latest builds of the game and modding tools - as listed below.
In the latest game and Levelkit build:
What can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools?
Gameplay and Mechanics
Controls and UX
Modding and Lua API additions
Other
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
Sprint Roundup - I AM Controlio
Want to hear more? Read on...
Giving you "the feels"
Character controls, and what some people like to term "the toy", are incredibly important, especially in a third person game where you see the character all the time and the camera revolves around that entity.
Walking in a Unity wonderland
A good "toy" in any third person game is two systems, character movement, and camera movement (in a first person game for instance this is just one system) and sometimes these two systems can conflict, especially when trying to get animation driven movement to follow camera direction. Anyone who has played early versions of OFF GRID will know that we left the movement in a "passable" state for a long time while we focused on AI and data mechanics, well, in recent months, the character controls have finally been getting some love. We got our friend Mike Robinson (of Rekim/ Pool Panic fame) in to hone in on this stuff and he overhauled the two systems for us to get them feeling good!
To get the the bottom of things he stripped out all the input curves and other curves except the controller dead zone, simplified the stick to world position code right down to just use the local eular y from the player and camera instead of the inverse transform stuff we had before. A portion of the direction now gets added to the player's rotation directly outside of the animation system. The amount added is based on the pose mode. More for walking, less for running, even less for crawl. He stripped out the checks for about-turns, set off directions etc, which were previously causing over-compensation and are no longer needed because the turn now nice and quick.
We have now set it up so the head look at returns to straight on when the direction is over a threshold to avoid the weird snapping rubber banding from before. Less comedy gazing through your legs now we're afraid! With all that in place we were still getting a little jittering from the camera and player fighting. We moved the player logic from Update to FixedUpdate which smothed it out (although we had to move the inputs back to update otherwise the buttons would only work on physics updates!).
The camera we haven't finished tweaking values for yet. It may still be a little snappy in places, but you should feel some improvement.
And so... we'd love your feedback and thoughts on it! If you are a #FirstAccess backer please pull the latest update on the testing stream and let us know what you think, is it an improvement? Is it worse? Is there anything that still sticks out as needing particular attention in the character and camera controls? Jump in the Discord (www.discord.gg/semaeopus) and let us know!!
Adding Character
We have been adding to characters a bit over the last sprints, and here is no exception, we set up some systems for designers / modders adding accessories to heads, and for devices adding props to hands.
It's important to have flexible systems that will help to give the game more visual variety quickly and easily, for both developers and modders, so we added new dynamic visual elements to help to achieve that. Now it's possible to have multiple head props attached to any character (yes including the drone!). These props can be hair, hats, glasses and earpieces, anything that will work to be fitted to the head bone. So it's possible to make many combinations.
The props are set in the mission script with their prefab names in the specific character section, and they will be shown attached to the character when the game starts, there is no limit to the quantity of props used, but usually it's recommended to only use one type of head prop at a time. A usage example and the list of available props can be seen on the following wiki page.
Drones need love too.
To add to this, some new visual elements were also added in the device and character animation systems, so that when NPCs are interacting with a device, the device can attach an item or prop to these interaction animations and the hand being used in a much more dynamic fashion than before. An example would be, if an NPC interacts with a soda machine to drink a can of soda, then the soda can will appear in the hand of the NPC when it picks it up and when it's drinking it, but if the NPC goes to a water machine then a bottle of water will appear instead. The interesting bit is that the device itself is deciding this, meaning devices can be set up to hand some odd things over to characters in different situations or states.
Again, if you are a FIRST ACCESS backer interested in modding, please check out these systems and let us know how you area finding them. Are they intuitive? Have you reached any limitations? We are keen to hear!
New levels on the way
We have had some specific focus on level design and content creation recently, which is always hard to talk about without giving away some spoilers.
After all the changes we've done to our prefabs, and all the other systems in game, the old harbour level some of you might have played (or at least seen in our past blog posts) has gradually fallen into more and more of a neglected state, like some forgotten-about rusty, old, industrial... harbour. We need a harbour for the game, so this sprint was the time to start getting it back into shape. Considering how much work was needed, we decided to scrap a lot of the prototype geometry and just rebuild it from scratch. Which should be good news for anybody who might have played the old level, since now you'll end up with a completely fresh level to play instead... :D
About to take the stand
We have also been developing a courthouse level, anyone who has caught the Dev Stream recently may have caught glimpses of this in progress. We have taken a stroll around it while other hacker comrades have been on the stream, as the level itself is based on real courtrooms we visited while showing support to our friend Lauri Love during the court case against his extradition.
Means of Production
There has been a heck of a lot of organising to do since the last devblog, both internally and externally with the modding community.
We have done some scheduling and product management improvements. There has been a lot of small internal changes and reorganization of our epics and backlog as a couple of new team members start sinking their teeth into the project. More on this on another blog post to follow!
The Milliways Mod stream was always on somewhere at camp...
Meanwhile we had some gearing up in preparation for the live stream of the Milliways Mod. We made plans to help a couple of modders from our community recreate part of CCCamp 2019 inside OFF GRID. The whole thing went fantastically, and we had a bunch of people watching from camp on a screen at the Milliways dome. We even had people voting on the scale and height of different structures in the mod, and sending reference photos of camp as the mod was being built to help add detail.
You can read up on the process and the plan on our wiki page about it. You can check out the streams and watch the modding process here, and if you are tempted you can pull the repo and make a contribution or base your own mod off of it (more info on the wiki page linked above)!
In the latest game and LevelKit build :
So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools?
If you are a #FirstAccess backer you might expect to see some of the below next time you boot up. But most importantly we really would like you to check out the controls tweaks and post thoughts in the Discord.
Additionally are you one of the lucky people that got to experience a weird stutter in the camera in the last 2 months? Turns out it was Garbage Collection (a C# method of memory management) and so if your machine was effected by this we would love to hear if you are still experiencing it, or if our optimisations have fixed it for you.
Other than that, here the usual release notes to summarise:
Controls and UX
AI
Modding and Lua API additions
Bugs fixed
That's it for now, we'll be back soon with some more dev news soon!
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
ICYMI : New Stream Show - Hackers Playing Hacking Games!
Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream, and traditionally it has focused on what is currently going on in development of OFF GRID, and as a primer for how to mod the game and use its Workshop tools. However...
In order to mix things up, and further blur the lines between games and reality, we are going to continue with the dev streams, but add a couple of new formats in too, starting with... hackers playing hacking games in "Videogames Is Serious Business".
The idea is simple, some of our friends and IRL hackers that feature in OFF GRID as characters will guest on the show as we play through new and classic hacking games, chat about current events in infosec, and share old war stories as we go.
Incase you missed it, this last month we did parts 1 & 2 of our first letsplay, and we chose the recent classic Hacknet. We had some great fun with it, you can catch up on those first two episodes here:
Hacknet Pt. 1!
Hacknet Pt. 2!
We have the next letsplay starting tonight in 30mins (8.30pm GMT) where we are going to check out the demo for NiteTeam 4, so if that interests you jump into it with us!
Youtube
Twitch
or Steam Broadcast
Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P
Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox.
And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam!
Sprint Roundup - Information Underload
Working on Information Underload
Now, bearing in mind the game is still pre-alpha - one of the most frequent pieces of feedback we get from first time players is a sense of information overload, and that it takes about 20 minutes of play time to really break though and "get" the game, but once there they love the depth.
Many people who bear with it really get a kick out of the moment when the game "clicks" for them, it can be quite rewarding to feel the pieces slot into place as you work out how Off Grid mechanics can be used and combined to your advantage, but it's not optimal that it takes so much perseverance to get there, and this is something we have always hoped a good opening to the game would help solve.
In steps our first pass at tutorialisation!
The Workplace
This month we have been working on some new content that we want our First Access backers to give some feedback on. It's not the very beginning of the game and it's opening, but it is the first full level and in the core story missions and so should set the player up with the basic Off Grid tools and teach them the core mechanics without too much confusion.
We'll try and avoid any spoilers here, but as mentioned earlier we are looking to ease people into the mechanics and reduce information overload. It's meant to tutorialise the features you need to get started digging into Off Grid, and so we specifically made it a relatively safe environment without too much challenge to make it easier for folks to explore and experiment with the mechanics we are trying to teach.
There are a few new mechanics in there, and some nice draft sequences for rooting your phone and getting your tools, but we are really keen to hear if this helps the the game "click" earlier for people...
A lot of this is still under development and things like the Secretary neutral NPC are still being worked up and don't behave as intended yet, but we want to get a sense of how you feel about the pacing / challenge in this level and whether it gives you a better feeling for the extent of the tools available.
If you are part of our FIRST ACCESS backers from the Kickstarter then please grab your key, take the new level for a spin, and give us your thoughts in the Discord (link)
If you backed us at that level and haven't claimed your First Access / Pentester key from the Kickstarter yet then please get in touch, we are relying on the feedback of those early backers and the more of you there are the better. You should have an email from us with the steps you need to take to do so.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts!
More character work!
We have been busy beefing up the gestures available to NPCs and the modders making them! Using a mix of preexisting animations and newly sourced animations we have added lots more generic gestures to the animation controller for NPCs, all of which can be called through the Lua API. Check out the ever growing list here:
The Gestures page on the OFF GRID wiki
Have any suggestions for useful gestures?
Ping us in the Discord or make a suggestion on the public trello board:
The First Access and Modding public Trello board
Come on in and contribute!
We have been busy getting the rest of the IRL hacker characters made, some surprise reveals on the way! Can you guess who is wearing a tshirt with a simplified version of the milliways logo?
We've been adding new LUTs into the project and now all characters will have their own unique LUT, meaning we essentially have the variations for all NPCs in the game pretty much covered now!
AI
Again, sprint work was focused on AI. We needed a method of an AI appearing mid level, but spawning an AI would have required a refactor of many systems. Instead a solution where AI could be paused/unpaused made sense, meaning an AI could 'leave' by being paused or 'join' by being unpaused. As a result we can now hide AI in cupboards if we need one to appear later in the level. Also slowed AI replanning when they end up in situations where there is no valid plan.
Other significant recent work is adding more things to level saves; saving app status, and AI state. These both proved important in getting a working build out.
BUGS
In the last sprints we ran into some pretty weird and complicated to debug issues, which is why it's taken us a while to get a new build out. But after few weeks of testing for every possible and impossible reason for the problems, we finally got things up and running again.
We had a build breaking bug in the form of ghost Lighting data included in Common level, which is essentially a scene that loads in most of the systems alongside the scene that has the individual level's content. That is fixed!
We also has some mad things happenning with NPCs glitching. Turned out we needed to make sure all movement from animations is applied even when framerate drops below FixedUpdate rate, and is applied only once. That is now fixed!
It's kind of hard to even complain about the bugs we had without getting too technical : we should make sure to create simpler bugs in the future. Or at least ones that are more entertaining to explain! ;P
In the latest game and Levelkit build :
So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools?
Content (Level Design and Art)
Controls and UX
Modding and Lua API additions
Bugs fixed
Other
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
ICYMI : Recap of our previous Dev Stream Ep16
Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the OFF GRID modding tools and our Workshop integration. In this episode we do something a little different though. We take a look at another hacking game Quadrilateral Cowboy, and talk about the design in relation to OFF GRID.
Watch it here!
Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P
Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox.
And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam!
Remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!