I hope you're doing well! I've finally wrapped up “Whispers of the Old World” in which you investigate a mysterious old world bunker, and run afoul of its guardian, Hec8. Here's a brief development video covering recent work on the game, and more information can be found below.
The Mission
Whispers of the Old World is a more story focused mission, with a number of routes through a hostile environment controlled by a deranged artificial intelligence. As such, there's a ton of scripted events, and a boss fight which can be approached in a number of ways. These two factors accounted for the majority of the time spent working on the game.
The Boss
To defeat Hec8, you can either face it solo in cyberspace, while your allies protect you in the physical world, or overcome the automated security, and destroy the servers on which it resides. You can also opt for a simultaneous attack on both fronts. The battles on the cyberspace and physical layers are interconnected, so if you destroy a server, it affects Hec8 and any automated security, while damage to Hec8 debuffs automated security.
I wanted to avoid the boss battle being determined by the character with the highest stats, so Hec8 goes through a number of phases of attack, utilising special abilities which can be countered with your own cyberspace scripts.
Script Lab
To make this work, I added an interface, much like the crafting screen, which allows you to create and upgrade cyberspace abilities using the software engineering skill. The file size of the scripts increases as you develop better versions of them, and the number of scripts you can load is determined by the amount of RAM in your data warfare suite.
Combat Drone Added
Combat Drones have been added to supplement the static defenses provided by sentry guns. These are hard hitting units, which hover, and are thus unaffected by any tile affects, such as fire.
What's Next?
I'm currently working on the food convoy mission. This is the first mission which can be played from two sides, that is, supporting either the rebels or the militia. It's likely to take longer than a regular missions but it's unlikely to be as time consuming as Whispers of the Old World.
As always, please feel free to ask any questions, or share your thoughts on the game. Have a good day! Daithi
Updated Windows Demo Now Available!
Hi!
A quick note to let you know that an updated Windows demo is now available. This demo fixes the issue with crafting weapons, and adds a couple of missing textures. If I don't hear of any moderately severe bugs in the next few days, I'll work towards releasing the Mac and Linux versions of the demo.
All the best, Daithi
Prometheus Wept Developer Chat & Gameplay
Hi there,
For the final live-stream event, I'm going to run a re-broadcast of an entire play-through of the demo content, and stay in the broadcast chat for the duration. I'd like to get your feedback on Prometheus Wept, and design choices in turn based RPGs. Of course, I'm also happy to chat frankly about any aspect of Prometheus Wept, or game development in general.
So, if you want to share your thoughts about the game design decisions every developer out there gets wrong, find out more about Prometheus Wept, or learn what it's really like to work in a tiny development studio with big ambitions, grab a beverage of choice, and join me in the Stream :)
See you there! Daithi
Watch a developer playthrough of the Prometheus Wept Demo
Watch a broadcast of the developer playing through the demo of Prometheus Wept.
Activities include suppressing an outbreak of violent insanity among the population of a dilapidated fishing port, making friends with a sociopathic con-man masquerading as a priest (who also has a mutant ability to manipulate the thoughts of others), and encountering a sentient, old-world postal robot trying to over-throw the government of the city state of Sunny Pines.
I'll be dropping into the broadcast frequently, so if you have any questions or feedback, do let me know!
Watch the Developer Play Prometheus Wept
Watch, Daithi, the developer play through dark, turn based RPG, Prometheus Wept. I'll be dropping in and out of the stream to answer any questions you have. Enjoy!
Join the developer for a playthrough of Prometheus Wept!
Hi there,
As part of the Steam Next Festival, I'm going to run a live developer play-through of Prometheus Wept on 7th Feb from 21:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC. In addition to playing the game, I'll answer any questions you have about the game, or development.
Hope to see you there :)
All the best, Daithi
Updated Demo Available & Steam Demo Festival!
Hi there,
Good news! A provisional release of an updated windows demo is on Indie DB, will be available on Steam in the coming days, and will participate in the Steam Next Festival next week. Mac and Linux versions will be available in the near future. Here's a dev log covering the demo, which you'll also find in written form below.
Demo Link: https://www.indiedb.com/games/prometheuswept/downloads Forum Link: http://timeslipsoftworks.com/forum/index.php
Can you help with feedback?
If you have time to try it out, I'd really like to hear what you think. You're welcome to reach out any way, on Kickstarter, Steam, the forums, or email. With development entering the phase of public releases, I'm going to get the Timeslip Softworks forums going again, please consider signing up if you're interested in helping with feedback and testing. Just remember to drop me a message with the email you signed up with, as I need to manually activate the accounts to stop bots flooding into the forums.
The disappearances of the militia and the sudden migration to Sunny Pines. All the evidence points to this individual. Be they friend or foe?
About the Demo:
The demo showcases around 50% of the first act. It's close to feature complete, with the notable exception of breaking down weapons into components. Content wise, the main questline is fairly polished, but there's not much to do outside that yet. You can expect the addition of smaller encounters and conversations to develop the world and the characters in later releases.
The player team, kitted out with self crafted body armour and helmets.
There's a scattering of weapons, items, crafting options and perks. There will be many more in the final game. I've completed multiple balancing passes and combat should be manageable on normal difficulty. Crafting and dialogue checks are less tuned, but if there's time before the Steam Festival, I'll have another look at these. I'm also in the process of negotiating more music for the game to improve the musical variety.
There were a couple of things I didn't get to, particularly improving automatic camera control, and some usability improvements, but it would be too high risk to try to deal with these now.
I look forward to hearing what you think!
All the best, Daithi
Prometheus Wept Dev Log Sep to Oct 22: New weapons, perks, shopkeeper, crafting
Hi again-
I've just completed the work for the current update. The focus has been on content, wrapping up the crafting system and adding shopkeepers. Feel free to check out the video / text info on the update, and do let me know if you have any feedback or comments.
Content: Weapons, Crafting Recipes & Perks
Eight weapons, around 30 crafting recipes and 15 perks have been added to the game, which more or less completes the content required for the updated demo.
My last game, Vigilantes had weapon tiers, and each new tier largely rendered the previous tier obsolete, or at least sub-optimal. This resulted in there being a handful of optimal weapon choices at any time. For Prometheus Wept, I'm aiming to make nearly all weapons viable for the entire game, and for weapons to have unique traits to differentiate them from one another.
The cleaver provides greater bleeding damage, and additional damage against animals.
Baseball bats do high damage, and additional damage when targetting an enemy's head.
A scattering of perks have been added to the game, and the perk UI has been updated. Where possible, I've made perks more deterministic, so for example, rather than a 20% chance of a free attack, every 6th attack costs no action points.
Systems: Shopkeepers & Crafting
If you played Vigilantes, you may remember that there's a single, off-map shopkeeper in the game. Prometheus Wept requires multiple on-map shopkeepers, so I've added code to support this, to start the trade interaction, along with saving, loading and managing shopkeeper inventories. In Vigilantes, there were separate buy and sell screens for the shop and merged the old buy/sell interface into a single screen.
I've also worked on crafting system, improving the display of information and adding the ability to upgrade weapons and armour, after they have been crafted. Some layout and visual adjustments aside, this wraps up one of the more complex systems in the game.
The main parts of work to be completed for an updated demo are balancing and testing, which I'll start working on next. I'll keep you posted on progress, and if you have any questions or feedback, let me know!
All the best,
Daithi
Prometheus Wept Dev Log June - Aug 22: Act 1 Mission 4, World Map, Illustrations
Hi there,
I hope you're having a good day. It's taken longer than I'd hoped, but Act 1, Mission 4 of Prometheus Wept is complete. Here's the development video, and you'll find additional information below:
Act 1 Mission 4:
In Act 1 Mission4, you are charged with locating Dr. Kreisler, who has gone missing under unusual circumstances. You begin by visiting multiple locations in Sunny Pines, including Kriesler's house, to search for clues.
Once you've narrowed down the search area with clues, you get a number of search attempts to locate the missing doctor. Along the way, you'll encounter a number of unusual gangs, who have formed as a result of bizarre misunderstandings about the pre-virus world.
If you managed to find enough evidence, you will locate Kriesler. If not, Sunny Pines will have to do without him. Either way, you will encounter an usual entity with big plans for Sunny Pines, who will either join your party or serve as the primary antagonist of act 1, depending on your choices.
Release Schedule:
The intention is to release an updated demo for Kickstarter backers in the coming months, to participate in the Steam Next Festival in February, and to release on early access in Q1/2 2023.
Work on Illustrations:
All of the 40+ character illustrations have been improved, as have some dozens of the item illustrations.
World Map
Code to implement the world map has been added, as has a provisional map for act 1.
That's all for now - sorry this update was delayed - I appreciate your patience and will check in again next month :) As always, feedback is welcome!
Talk soon! Daithi
Prometheus Wept Dev Log April 2022: New Outlaw Gangs and Maps
Hi!
Below you will find the dev log for April 2022. I've made good progress on act 1 mission 4, where you must locate the missing Dr Kriesler by finding evidence, questioning people and searching for him. It's a big mission, which spans multiple locations and introduces two new outlaw gangs.
One of these gangs is the Blue Screen of Death Tribe. They believe the virus that wiped out all digital technology in the mid 21st century was a divine manifestation, which sought to free humanity from the shackles of technology.
How you handle act 1 mission 4 has numerous consequences. Whether or not you can locate Kriesler will have repercussions. You will also have to choose which of two factions to support, which will in turn decide which of two potential allies will join your party.
Key Points:
- 2 out of 3 maps required for this mission are complete - 4 out of 10 character models have been created, optimised and made game ready - Started second draft of writing - Added 2 new outlaw gangs - Spent a fair bit of time on unavoidable company admin work :/ - The company admin work is finished now :)
Thanks for reading / watching and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know!
