We will be releasing Sierra Madre: The Wild West to Early Access on December 17th, 2018 at 12:00 pm PST. There will be a 15% launch discount on the early access release.
Features
Three mission modes: Delivery, Outlaw Hunter, Town Liberator. Play these missions to earn in game cash to buy supplies and new weapons.
Horse ownership: the player will own a horse which can be called to the player. The player can buy new horses.
Survival Elements: hunting, cooking, gathering, thirst, hunger, and a really simple crafting system are part of Sierra Madre: The Wild West.
Weapons: the player will have access to six unique weapons.
Weather, Dynamic Sky, Day Night Cycle: The weather, sky, and time of day changes as time progresses.
Towns and Trading Posts: Sierra Madre: The Wild West has unique towns and locations to explore. Towns are filled with towns people that react if mistreated.
Outlaws and Lawmen: Fight outlaws with the help of fellow lawmen. Watch your fire as lawmen attack traitors.
Thank you for your great suggestions and your interest in the project! We hope that you guys enjoy the game when it launches on December 17th, 2018.
Improved Horse Mechanics
We have introduced several improvements to Sierra Madre: The Wild West's horse mechanics. Along with bug fixes, we have introduced an important new mechanic: horse ownership. Previously, the player owned the last horse they rode, but this is no longer the case. Now, the player starts the game owning a horse and this horse goes with the player throughout the world.
The player's horse follows them around the map maintaining a following distance of 30 to 50 meters. The player can call their horse and it will run to the player's side.
The player can ride other horses or wagons and their loyal horse will continue following them. This was designed so that the player would have their horse nearby even as the player does long journeys for missions.
When the player loads their game, their horse will spawn with them near their tent. This is the case no matter where the player left their horse unless their horse was killed.
In the event that the player's horse is killed, the player can buy a new horse at the trading post. Eventually we hope to add a horse taming mechanic to the game. If the player already owns a living horse and they buy another one, the new horse will become their owned horse and the old horse will cease to follow the player.
If the player's horse is killed and the player has not purchased a new horse, then they will not spawn with a horse when loading their game.
In addition to horse ownership, horses now move slower as they become tired. If the player runs their horse over a great distance they will have to let their horse rest or walk for the horse to regain its energy.
What do you guys think of the new horse mechanics?
Please post any suggestions or questions in the comments below.
Early Access Release Date Clarification
We have always planned on releasing Sierra Madre to early access as close to the middle of December as possible, but we haven't clearly defined this on our store page before. We want to be as transparent about the development of Sierra Madre as possible and would like to clarify when we intend to release this project to early access.
To clarify this we have updated the store page to now say mid-December, which was always the intended date. We don't want to lock it down to a specific date quite yet as we have a few things we want to polish.
We intend on releasing Sierra Madre to Early Access between December 14th and December 21st with December 14th being preferred.
Why mid-December instead of a specific day?
We want to make each release (including the first) as bug free as possible and want the flexibility to make sure that this happens. At this point we only have a few known issues that need addressing.
We also have two more features left on our list we want to get in this release: improved horse mechanics and improved weapons models and animations for the player character. These two additions are on schedule and shouldn't hold up the release, but in the event that an unforeseen problem arises we want the flexibility to solve it.
Thank you for your patience and interest.
Missions and Objectives Added To Sierra Madre
Missions and Objectives
Sierra Madre's mission system is now up and running. The mission system allows the player to complete mini-missions / quests for in game cash. These missions are designed to help the player to explore the map and travel great distances. All missions have rewards proportional to their difficultly and the distance they require the player to travel.
In the first early access release of Sierra Madre there will only be three different mission types: Delivery, Outlaw Hunter, and Town Liberator. In the Delivery mission the player must drive a wagon from the town they are in to another town or trading post on the map. In the Outlaw Hunter mission the player must travel to the location marked on their map and take out the outlaw there. In the Town Liberator mission the player must kill all outlaws around the town or trading post that the outlaws are harassing. More mission types are planned for future updates after the first early access release.
To select a mission the player must go to the nearest Sheriff's station (which was suggested in this post) and select one of the missions from the board.
When the player is near the board and looking at a mission a description will pop up. After the player has selected a mission, an objective display will appear in the top left hand corner of the screen.
The mission's objectives will continue appearing as the player progresses through the mission.
Once the player has completed all of the objectives in the mission a completion banner will appear and the in game cash reward will be added to the player's inventory.
What do you guy's think about the new mission system? Any ideas for improvements? What missions would you like to see in future updates?
Please let us know in the comments below.
Improved Survival Elements
Our survival elements were, in a word, lacking. Since we are making a survival games this was quite a problem. So we decided to add more survival mechanics to Sierra Madre! We have divided food and water into two categories: edible/potable and inedible/non-potable. When you collect food from animals or collect water from streams or lakes it is not safe to drink or eat. You can eat or drink it, but you might fall ill and loose some of health after eating or drinking it. The effects of consuming unsafe water or food are not immediately felt. It might be an hour before these effects are felt.
So if the basic food and water that is collected is now unsafe how do you go about surviving? With fire!
The camp fire is a new tool that can be used to sterilize food and water. The camp fire can be placed at any time and most anywhere. Once a camp fire has been placed you must add wood to it and light it (wood can be gathered around the map or bought from trading posts). Once the fire is lit you can add food and water to be sterilized. The food and water will cook for a certain amount of time and will be automatically added to your inventory once cooked.
What do y'all think?
Dynamic Weather and Bullet Drop
Dynamic Weather
Sierra Madre now features dynamic weather that changes over the course of the day. This weather ranges from different levels of cloud cover to thunder storms.
Currently weather changes are evaluated every 15 minutes in game. Should this be more? Less? Please let us know in the comments below.
Bullet Drop
I was supposed to be working on Sierra Madre's mission system today... but I did something a little different instead.
This is an image from inside the Unity Editor (the weird colored lines are not visible in the actual game).
What is that weird image? You might have to zoom in to see what is relevant about it. Each one of those RGB colored lines represent a bullet's trajectory. Bullets are now bound by time and gravity; the player must hold off to hit moving and/or far away targets. This adds a necessary realism element to Sierra Madre while also increasing the challenge of gunfights in the game.
Steam Cloud Saves and Improved Level Loading
Cloud Saves
Sierra Madre has now been configured to make use of Steam Cloud Saves and will include this feature in the initial Early Access release. This feature synchronizes the game's saves to the Steam Cloud when starting up and shutting down the game.
Improved Level Loading
We have implemented a new level loading system that reduces the memory overhead of Sierra Madre. This has significantly improved level loading times and will allow for more detailed towns / locations to be added.
Enemy, Ally, and Environment Improvements
Enemy and Ally Improvements
Non-player character (NPC) gunslingers are now significantly better in gun fights. The old aim system has been overhauled in favor of a multi-threaded aiming system that creates more realistic and more accurate aiming for NPCs.
Environment Improvements
We have added some major improvements to our skies. Sierra Madre now uses sun shafts, dynamic clouds, and has stars in the night sky.
Days in the game are currently setup to last 2 real hours.
Is 12 game hours to 1 real hour too long? Too short? Please comment any ideas / preferences you have about how many real hours a day should last.
Sierra Madre Early Access Release Improvements and Upgrades
As part of our continuing effort to make Sierra Madre the best game possible, we are upgrading some of our assets and technologies before our first release.
Better Player Character and Weapon Artwork
The first major improvement we are making is in terms of aesthetics: better quality weapons and arm models for the player character. We are replacing our current weapon models with more authentic weapons and using a higher quality mesh for our main character. Here are a few of the weapon models we will be using:
In addition to our weapon art improvements, we are also overhauling our current Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) system. More specifically, we are replacing two separate A.I. systems with a unified system based off of Utility theory.
Well, that's cool, but why you should care? Our new Utility driven A.I. empowers enemies, allies, and wildlife to make more intelligent, less repetitive decisions all while reducing overhead. Immersion and realism are significantly improved over what is currently shown in our game trailer.
More Things To Do
We are adding a new mission system that will supply the player with specific objectives to complete. Completing these objectives will grant the user rewards and makes the game much more interesting.
Performance Improvements
Upgrading the game engine version has yielded significant performance improvements. Physics has seen a roughly 2x performance boost and multi-core processors see better utilization.
We have also upgraded to a new, multi-threaded vegetation rendering system that offers unbelievable performance! In our testing, Sierra Madre was running on Ultra settings, 4k resolution @ 70 to 90 frames per second (using a Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card)*.
Finally, we are switching to using a multi-threaded IK system that makes the aiming animations of enemies and allies significantly faster and more realistic looking.
*End user performance may vary depending on system.
