Prisoner
Page retirement, new page coming soon.
https://discord.gg/vS7fSTK
- High Five Studios
Devblog for the week of August 13
Our first topic is audio. We happen to have a musician, composer, and audio designer/engineer as one of the founding members of our team. Audio is, often times, one of those difficult-to-fill roles in an indie team and, as such, we feel very fortunate to have Alex on board. We plan to heavily revamp the audio in the game and make full use of our in-house composer. Along with the map expansion comes several new original compositions, music-driven side stories, and a whole new set of foley and SFX. This should feature one of my favorite topics, proceduralism, as a centerpiece for the music in the forest. To achieve this, we are using a new (to our studio) middleware, Wwise, to greatly improve the quality of the audio in the game. While Unreal 4 has its own audio engine (If you have played the existing version of the game, you have probably heard a lot of it) and it works well, Wwise will allow us to go on and model realistic sound such as audio occlusion, spatialization, and much more. It will be a huge difference to the game, making the entire level feel more realistic and lively, and further build horror when you do things like walk into a room or worse, have something walk into a room behind you. On top of the middleware, we are also moving to live-recording some of the music for specific portions of the game. While this does not apply to ambient music right now, there are a lot of instances of music in the game that benefited heavily from the natural feel of live-recorded instruments so we’ve been bringing in some very skilled musicians and recording music, which has been a ton of fun.
Next, we can speak a little about the changes to stealth and how stealth will play out in the game. For those of you who have kept up with Prisoner since its early days, you will know that stealth has become more and more present in the game as it continues to evolve as a fun and intriguing gameplay experience. As we begin to introduce traps to the game and expand the game’s map, navigation has become a bigger gameplay element, so we are continuing to focus on stealth design and stealth gameplay. We have been building and designing buildings that are specifically geared toward stealth and creating interesting situations as players attempt to fulfill some requirements for crafting. This means, primarily, making levels that force players to think through their actions and plan accordingly. These buildings will have multiple pathways through them, each with their own caveats. Coupled with the traps, this should allow multiple different solutions for each “stealth puzzle” that will keep players interested throughout the game. Couple that with a few key changes to the level as the game goes on and players should find the new buildings consistently interesting over the duration of the game. Naturally, this means yet another big update to the guard AI, which will cover more cases, flow between game states more fluidly, and drive players to greater extremes than was previously required. More to come on this topic later.
Finally, we want to cover some of our community outreach efforts. We want to cover all of our bases as much as possible and social media is no exception. We have become more active on our social media lately, efforts are continuing in this department always, but we feel that we have progressed well. We are doing regular polls on our twitter to involve our audience as much as possible (many of them are questions about these devblogs), started a discord server, and are posting development pictures on our instagram regularly! All of these can be found on our newly rebuilt website. We are going to have a significant amount of content being published in the near future including trailers and, very tentatively, a small playable demo for the game. We are hopeful to coordinate with other content creators from the community to help a smooth and exciting release for all of this content. If you have any questions or want to get involved with the relaunch of Prisoner, please reach out to us on social media or via the contact page of our website, www.high5studios.com, for more information.
Many thanks,
Tugboat, Lead Designer, High Five Studios
Devblog for the week of July 2
One of the things that will be in the game in the near future is a fully functional crafting system. We are trying to put our own spin on this and really enforce a player experience that is scary and immersive, so we are doing a few things for this. First and foremost: the only things that are craftable will be traps. Traps can be used exactly as you think; placing them down and running away from them. There will still be no direct combat in the game, no base building, no pioneer-style running out into the world and building a new city of your own; everything that you do will be entirely defensive and as the monsters and the camp escalate around you, you will need to build higher-order traps to actually make it through the game. As far as the traps are concerned, our production team is moving along quickly and we have finished the inventory system (the front end of this will be changed drastically, however) and we are soon to put the first version of traps in the game and begin playtesting.
The next large change going into the game is a new narrative. We have re-imagined this from the ground up, even completely scrapping the old ways of delivering the narrative. New player models, more custom animations, better audio, and more time to deliberately polish and refine the narrative will all greatly support the coming story. Make no mistake, this will not be a standard linear narrative, but it will be harder to accidentally miss (one of the first problems we had with a narrative that has been thoroughly solved) and there will be more going on in the camp in general.
The prisoners have also been redone in the game, with all of the prisoners getting new models and skeletons to fully build out their animation suite without making them boring. We have done animation instancing several different ways in the past and had to solve dozens of problems with it, but we are now in a new place with them that will be a large improvement. One of the things we are going to be looking at heavily in the upcoming round of playtesting is how the prisoners move around the camp. We want to reduce their quick direction-changing, and also provide the prisoners with enough animations so they do not look awkward while still having enough of a variety among the prisoners so that they do not look outwardly bad. Managing a crowd in a game is a very challenging thing, from the AI down to the texture sets used. We feel like we are finally approaching our final solution, but only time will tell.
While there is much more going on at the studio (wait until you see and hear the monsters in future updates) that is all we will cover right now. The game is coming along at a good rate, and we are hoping to have a starting the initial work on a trailer, so be on the lookout for future announcements of trailers and playtesting. Also, very soon we will start putting polls on our social media. These polls will gauge the interest in topics for future devblogs and vlogs. Make sure to follow our twitter, facebook, and youtube to see and vote in these polls.
Thanks! -- Tugboat, Lead Designer, High Five Studios
Devblog for the week of May 27, 2018
We’ve spent the last two months in a stage of preparations and paying out some of our substantial tech debt. Admittedly, final exams took up a lot of time because we all were full time students (congratulations to Alex, who graduated) but we also rewrote and reorganized the code base of the game, which allows us to maintain and expand much faster and minimizes the number of bugs that will be present in future versions. We also moved to a different method of versioning/source controlling Prisoner that will allow us to create, alter, and test cooperatively. All of these things took time and, frankly, were pretty boring to talk about, hence the silence from the studio over the past two months.
The content updates coming to the game will be multiple, and while we aren’t quite ready to unveil it in its totality, we can say that we are bringing on board a new dedicated narrative writer in order to make an entirely new and robust story to the game. The systems, art, and map for the game are also being reworked from the ground up to adjust for the criticisms we’ve gotten in the last month and to heavily increase the performance of the game. Namely, the entire camp aesthetic, lighting, and animation is all being redone. Huge map expansions and an inventory system are just the beginning of new content that will be available, and in the near future, the outline will be coming soon.
Our social media presence is also about to be brought up heavily. We will be pushing more information about the game, with articles, videos, trailers, and discussions that are open to the community. If you are unaware of our social media, check out our website found here for more info on our social media.
Our last piece of concern is the state of the game. We did not plan to grow as quickly as we did, and as a result, the quality of game that we can produce is far better than what Prisoner is currently. This is not to say that we are not proud of Prisoner, but between the hardware and software expansions that we have acquired in the last month, we believe that Prisoner will be a far better game than it is currently. As a result, we are pulling Prisoner from sale for the immediate future. It will be relaunched well before the end of the year (we are currently trying for a late summer/early fall relaunch of the game) and everyone who has already purchased the game will be getting frequent updates as they happen. Our main concern and reason for doing this is mostly advertising: we will be creating trailers, talking about content, and giving statements about the game in the form that it will exist on relaunch. These statements will potentially include features that are not yet in the live version of the game and we do not want people to purchase the game based on false information. As such, the purchase button will be unavailable on steam, and will become accessible again at launch time. This decision was not easy, but we, as a team, decided that honesty with our player base would prove to be more important than the game sales in the brief period of time.
We will be continuing to update the page, continuing to put out content, trailers, devblogs and more. Make sure to follow our social media and be active on our steam page to let us know what you like, don’t like, and want more of. Thank you to all of you who have supported Prisoner in the recent months, and who will continue to support Prisoner as we move forward into this new chapter of our development
Tugboat, Lead Designer, High Five Studios
Developer Blog for the week of March 25
The first huge milestone that we should talk about is the fact that we released the game. Much of our release is simply due to the fact that we, as developers, did not want to ask for people to buy the game based entirely off of future content. We are fully aware that the game is not perfect, but it is getting constantly better. Long early access periods are something that we feel are detrimental to the gaming community. We are both developers and gamers, and we decided against something that we felt would be bad for the consumer, even if it may have been beneficial for us. At the time of this posting, the game is in a playable and enjoyable state, so we released it, and committed ourselves to supporting the game in full launch as thoroughly as we have been in in early access. As we continue to update the game we hope that it will appeal to more people and also entice people who have completed the game to play it again.
After our recent trip to South by Southwest, we found ourselves in a much more favorable position than we imagined. For us, SxSW was an incredible opportunity to get exposure for the game (which it was) and an incredible opportunity to connect with other developers, (which it also was) but we did not fully expect the sheer value or volume of the play data that we received. At the expo we had so many people play the game that we found obscure bugs that would not have presented themselves in a standard QA session.
(one bug happened after explicitly loading the game from the main menu more than twenty times without ever closing it). We also got to watch the generative monster requests work on players with completely different habits than we had remotely expected. So now, more than ever, we're swimming in data about how people interact with our game, and that has given birth to content updates that will make the game far more approachable than it has been at any point so far.
The issues that we are fixing are mainly focused on gameplay, redundancy, raising the skill-cap, and increasing player agency. Much of this will be fixed via specific changes to sneaking and expanded survival mechanics. We are also adding a health system to the game. Previously, we had strayed away from this for several reasons, but with the path the game has taken, a lot of player learning is done by testing certain actions to see the result. For many of these actions, the punishment of absolute death is too severe, so we are going to ease that learning curve slightly. We’ve also finally begun to properly dig into the way that prisoners path. Managing the pathing for eighty prisoners in a confined space is no small task and we simply did not have the time to invest in that before SxSW. Now that we have a bit of time, the next patch to the game will feature a heavy reduction in twitching from the prisoners. We are also adding additional purpose to cigarettes in small ways, and in one big interaction with the guards and sneaking.
Speaking of sneaking: people like that a lot. Like, a ton. We are going to add in more stealth-centered gameplay, which means more changes to the guards, who are overdue for a consistency update anyway. In addition to a more interactive guard AI, we are redesigning a lot of the level that was previously off-limits or unsuited for sneaking in order to provide more opportunities for varied approaches. Since we are doing an overhaul of an entire area of the camp, we are also going to redo a lot of the environmental art in the game. The stealth additions, level art, and new architecture will make up a majority of the next gameplay addition.
We’re also looking to revisit the monsters in the game. The system for choreographing the monsters is in a state that provides a lot of good gameplay. As such, we are now looking to refine the individual monsters to better account for some fringe cases and to make for more distinct gameplay that more interestingly and convincingly reflects the personalities. Some of these small changes will ship very soon, but the larger ones (a complete overhaul of Jorogumo, for instance) are a little further off.
The music in the game has come out wonderfully and, after a number of requests, our composer and producer is looking to publish the soundtrack on several different streaming and purchasing services in the near future. In other news for the sound in the game, some of the voice acting in game is getting redone as we attain the resources needed to do so. Voice acting is extremely difficult, and finding local voice actors that we can record is consistently difficult for a studio of our size. We are targeting voices to replace based on both the line quantity and quality of the current voice, so that should also be coming incrementally.
The final content changes that we are looking to ship are simply more effects designed to enhance the feeling of losing your mind without explicitly changing gameplay. The ones already in the game have been received wonderfully, and add a lot of color to the experience. Those will be coming in one huge batch in the near future.
Finally, a smaller and more personal note: Working on Prisoner so far has been both a wonderful and stressful experience. We began development of this game last year with the goal of making it to South by Southwest. Now that we have done that, we are all extraordinarily proud of the work we put in, and are ready for a breath of fresh air. We now have the ability to take the appropriate amount of time to manage small things, polish the edges of the game, and add content based on what will most meaningfully add to the game. We do not plan to squander this opportunity. While the state of the game right now may have some issues, the recent weeks have not only taught us how to fix them, but also shown more clearly the full potential of Prisoner. We are excited to continue development of this game, and we hope to foster a community that loves the game as much as we do.
The coming weeks and months will be huge for Prisoner, so stay tuned for more updates, and please continue reaching out to us and letting us know what you think. We love to hear your feedback, and we will continue to do everything we can to make our game better.
SxSW is over and we are back in full swing!
We've been hearing the communities reception to the game as well as having the priceless opportunity of getting a full stress test of the game (having hundreds of people sit down and play the game back to back for three days really helps to find issues) and we've got some big plans for the game moving forward.
We've patched the game to fix every bug that we are aware of, and we are preparing for some quality of life fixes some aesthtic changes, and many content changes. These will be outlined in more detail in an upcoming devblog, so be on the lookout for that.
In the immediate future, be looking for some improvments to pathing from the prisoners (we will be looking heavily into the detouring) and content additions for specific days.
As always, please let us know about questions, comments, concerns, and suggetions.
Tugboat, Creative Lead, High Five Studios
We've launched and updated!!
Mostly, we've added a few things like skipping the intro cutscene, gaurd behavior clarity, and some additional indicators.
We've also found a few ways to soft-lock the player while watching testers (mostly involving dozens of loads from the pause menu without ever dying or restarting the game) and also a few strange prisoners getting trapped in some places.
We've slotted some design improvmenets for the monsters and the camp as a whole, so for everyone who is interested in playing the game, reach out and let us know what you think! We'd love to hear your oppinion and make the game better.
Thanks!
Tugboat, Creative Lead, High Five Studios
Full release is on schedule for the 15th!
We will still be updating the version of the game that is live to fix bugs and preview new features. The main change shipping with the launch of the full game is the revised ending to the game. For more information on that, read the previous announcements.
We also want to include a slight warning. Future versions of the games will have some features in them that some people may struggle with. We will be updating the intro cinematic of the game to reflect this, but we want to be very transparent: if you are easily disturbed, upset, or off-put: please read the disclaimer in the opening cinematic and investigate the settings menu in the game. If you do not notice any changes, the features are not yet in your version of the game.
Many thanks, and we look forward to the full release of Prisoner
Tugboat, Creative Director, High Five Studios
Second to last early access version is on the way!
This build has some more instructions for the game, a more refined system for the horror elements, a better-looking level, and more smoothly animated prisoners (we finally finished the animation overhaul for your fellow inmates). It will also contain a fully functional options menu for both audio and graphics.
Also, by popular demand, we've added in jumping and crouching/sneaking to the game. This was something that was not originally designed into the game for several reasons, but some of the most vocal feedback we've received was centered around that being awkward. So now it's in the game, accessible, and interacts with a lot of the monsters and with the guards.
So be watching for a patch to the game, and when you get it, play it and let us know how we've done. We love feedback, both good and bad, and we want to make Prisoner as good a product as possible!
Thanks,
Tugboat, Creative Director, High Five Studios
New build with new features incoming!
We've undergone some basic playability fixes recently, including a robust options menu, some improvements to the lighting in the game, and some new loading screens for when the player dies to help players figure out the ebb and flow of the camp. This should help many people on a variety of computers scale the game to their needs.
We've also uncovered a bug in Windows 10 that occurs when you change resolutions of the game while using Nvidia drivers. There is a fix for this that can be done on your computers, and we will post links and instructions on how to do this. We would love to be able to fix this in the game, but it is (as far as we are aware) well outside the scope of what we can do in the engine.
There is currently a lot of content in the game that has made its way into live builds since launch, and there is a lot to come still. Stay tuned for more acheivments, puzzels, and monsters coming up in the next two weeks.
The big thing coming up is an animation fix for all of the prisoners. After several comments, we have redone all eighty prisoner's animations. This took a phenominal amount of work in a very short time, and is the largest reason the current build is coming more slowly.
That's just a brief synopsis of what's to come. There will also be more music, and a few new characters in version 0.1.1 (we are currently on hotfix 6 of version 0.1.0) but you will have to wait for more information on that!
Many thanks!
- Tugboat, Creative Lead, High Five Studios