Hardcode for Flashbang and Smoke grenades are present
Aim Sensitivity Options
You can move behind Enemy NPCs unnoticed with lvl 3 Stealth
With lvl 4 Stealth, you can even sprint behind enemy NPCs unnoticed
If you wish try out the grenades, head over to the Queen Astrid Boulevard to pick them up. These mechanics are still very unpolished and will likely see some further work (as with most things).
NOTE; If you have launched Total Rendition before release of this update, you may need to manually set the Aim Sensitivity in the Options menu, lest you may not be able to look around. Sorry for any inconvenience!
Total Rendition 0.4.6
0.4.6 is a landmark release with a lot of extra polish!
Draggables now have collision of their own
Crouch jumping is now possible
AI is able to not notice the player from behind
In-game dialogues may be skipped
The intro level also sees a major overhaul and is more or less - if we are to overlook the many placeholders - beginning to look like as it was originally envisioned. However, this is technically not part of the update, as version numbers indicate features and bug fixes. This version will be also be available to playtesters.
The future 0.4.7 will see the introduction of grenade mechanics, for a large part to facilitate stealth. Many of the requisite mechanics are already hardcoded, waiting to be introduced once these are properly optimised.
Total Rendition 0.4.5.1!
That it's 0.4.5.1 is not an intentional reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, although it makes for an interesting case of serendipity.
0.4.5.1 introduces some important updates to make the AI of Total Rendition's NPCs more interesting. These are not the last of the tweaks to the game's AIs, but are perhaps among the most consequential thus far.
This version will also coincide with a number of changes in the maps which are already here. The starting level's layout (though not its visual design) is close to being finalized. You can also go back and forth from the starting level to Queen Astrid Boulevard, which ought to give you a better impression of Total Rendition's world structure.
Once in turn that's done, you will soon start seeing other levels and missions of Total Rendition getting progressively unveiled, as the final version of Total Rendition will have dozens of levels.
This update will also be available to those enrolled into the open playtest.
Until the next version!
0.4.4.4
Total Rendition has just advanced to version 0.4.4.4.
While this is not a particularly interesting update, it does include new configuration options, namely, X and Y invertation, as well as limited support for dynamic footstep sounds and some bug fixes which may currently be too subtle to be noticable, yet are going to be instrumental for the final result, probably.
Depending how development will progress, this - or a later - version will be the very first to be featured in the free open playtest, which we hope to be unveiling soon. For Total Rendition's next version, we will primarily focus on improving the NPC's AI.
As always, see you again next time!
We won't budge
We have received a lot of "criticisms" over our development methodology. We have been accused of "asset flipping" for using placeholders and we have gotten at least one negative review premised on the false belief that most of Total Rendition's development lies behind us, instead of ahead of us.
However, to be perfectly honest, we have had anticipated all this bile well in advance and we are not deterred at all. Is Fallout: New Vegas a bad game because Van Buren was short and buggy? Of course not. Van Buren was a necessary stepping stone in making New Vegas.
However, if Total Rendition's critics' positions were to be taken to their (il)logical final destination, Fallout: New Vegas would be a "scam" because of Van Buren. Thus, Fallout: New Vegas would get a negative review counting each of Van Buren's bugs, you'll get the idea. Of course, some of you may then be thinking: "Why release that early?" Well, what is going to follow will describe our reasons why.
Back in the 1990s, publishers could just approach investors with pitches which sounded good and developers in turn could pitch to publishers in the hope these publishers would co-opt them. If the concept sounded good enough and the developers seemed to have a modicum of skills, getting a production budget to raise a development team to build a game was straightforward enough, the reasoning being that if you made a good game, people would come to play it. However, professional game reviewers can be bribed, critically acclaimed games can flop dramatically and Microtransactions are "social proof" ipso facto. And investors are taking note and so are publishers. As a cash-starved, understaffed studio, we are at their mercy and it shows. Yet, we are also taking the potshots for it.
When work on Total Rendition began in earnest in 2018, the General Design Document (or GDD) called for a Narrative-driven game of which the main storyline would last about a day or so, like the good old titles from the 1990s and early 2000s. However, to make these plans a reality, we would require a lot of investment from third-party investors and lots of it at that. We have had actually shown Total Rendition's GDD to Rockstar Games in 2018. They were not at all interested in co-opting it at the time. If they did, then Total Rendition probably would be developing at a much faster pace, would be looking much better already and perhaps many of our critics would have greeted Total Rendition with raving anticipation. Indeed, we ourselves had significant reservations of releasing Total Rendition in its current state.
Now, to be sure, this investment is not going to be raised directly from the sales from Total Rendition's Steam Early Access. If we were, then Total Rendition would not have appeared on Steam Early Access in the first place, as this is against Valve's policies. In fact, we had to conduct to painstaking negotiations with Valve to ensure any misunderstandings were ironed out. Ironically enough, even Total Rendition's haters are helping us to get closer to our intended end goals, as they leave evidence of having played the game. Investors want evidence that people are playing (and quite frankly, not much more than that), because that suggests to investors at least some will pay for it. Constructive critics will leave notes and feature requests we can use to improve Total Rendition as well.
By 2019, when it became apparent that large publishers and developers who could hypothetically have spared the funds we needed for Total Rendition, would hardly co-opt new titles, let alone Total Rendition, we decided to engage in development in-house. Too many Gamers blame developers, publishers and "SJWs" for the decline of narrative-driven gaming. However, if we game developers want to forswear microtransactions for unadulterated narrative experiences and make this feasible, we need to understand the business models of the 1990s are no longer feasible save for a lucky few, even if the period was artistically a golden age. No investor will back video game studios based on how good the latter's ideas are anymore and for now, we don't have the funds to field the development team we ideally would like.
Of course, we won't have Total Rendition leave Early Access until Total Rendition is the polished, lengthy and engaging narrative-driven experience we intend it to be, but unlike us, investors don't care if the quality or good or bad, even if it is them we need to convince to provide us with the development budget we need. One may observe that royalty-agreement-driven Indie-cum-AAA titles almost always collapse mid-development, if not sooner, often because these devs don't get the legals right and investors are generally reluctant of sharing. But as a result of us deliberately foregoing this strategy, we are currently very understaffed - especially in terms of 3D artists - until we have received the investment necessary to recruit them, hence all the placeholders. No worries, as we can still get there eventually.
In conclusion, if we ever want high net-worth individuals to write Schizotypy Games the cheques it needs to develop Total Rendition into its intended end-result, we really have no other option to do as we do. This, in due course, has gotten us a lot of opprobrium from those did not bother to read the Early Access notes and this (very real risk of) public outpouring is perhaps why most developers do not even bother in the first place. However, this does not change that Total Rendition is really a good faith effort to make the kind of large scale narrative-driven game which most established studios have neglected to make (properly) since 2015 or so. And this is why we won't budge: If we can complete Total Rendition, it can be vindicated by history!
Planned price increase
As of the time of publication, Total Rendition has been priced at $5.99 (USD) or £4.79 in the UK. We are planning to change this price in about a week or so. More specifically, we intend to increase the price of Total Rendition to $39.99 (USD) or £33.50, or their regional equivalents elsewhere. So, if you currently own a copy already, congratulations: You will have saved quite a bit!
With the upcoming price increase, we hope to make more clear the full version's intended segment, as quite a few players misunderstood our intentions of Total Rendition's Early Access release. On the other hand, many those who did, often have had already claimed the game prior to the Steam Early Access launch or opted to wishlist it instead.
Since the Early Access of Total Rendition is served on an at-your-own-risk basis and we understand our development plans and business model are highly unusual compared to the rest of the video games "industry", we plan to roll out a free playtest round in the near future. Furthermore, since the full version of Total Rendition is envisaged as a narrative-driven AAA title, $39.99 is still somewhat of a discount.
Thank you for your encouragements, and as usual we'll see you next time!
0.4.3.8
Development of Total Rendition is currently at version 0.4.3.8, which we had originally planned to release as an update. However, 0.4.3.8's new features and bug fixes are on their own not particularly exciting nor high priority for that matter. For instance, 0.4.3.8 now boasts the technical capacity for dynamic footstep sounds that change depending on the surface you are walking on in-game, although since we are still in the process of figuring out a fitting sound design for it, we do not really have an ability to capitalise on it yet. This is not the only issue, but it is to give you an idea of how we are experiencing things on our end as developers.
We really want to make the next update feel like a major leap in terms of development. This means that if we cannot deliver you that much new in-game content, we want to make sure you'll get nice new features instead. We definitely have noted the AI could use a lot of work, so programming-wise, that is likely going to be a top priority in the near future.
Of course, a red thread that you may have noticed is that in-game art, environment design and level design do not really seem to be keeping with the programming progress, in that Total Rendition is intended to be significantly more expansive than it currently is, in terms of world-building. To address this issue, we will need to expand our team, as up to this point, our team has yet to include an environment and level design specialist, to name a specific example or two. We'll spare you the gory details, though let's say this involves a lot of a$$-kissing of techbros, because it's NOT the revenue we make on Steam that is going to pay for the production of what Total Rendition is ultimately intended to become...
Until next time!
0.4.3 released!
In spite of all difficulties, we have nonetheless succeeded in bringing you version 0.4.3! This is yet another significant milestone marking an additional step toward Total Rendition's eventual completion, as long away as that may be for now. Some new features and bug fixes include:
- Save Game now store SAVE Date & Version number - Player skills and attributes are now properly saved - Enemy AI detects hand-to-hand attempt - Retain equipped weapon after changing level - Melee and hand-to-hand animations can now be displayed (the actual animations themselves are still placeholders, have patience!) - Being in the settings menu will pause the game
Now, perhaps the most clearly visible additions are not so much apparent in the game's executable as in the content. We have expanded the layout of the intro level to give you an idea of where we want to be heading to.
In due course, the entire game will get a visual makeover to fit the intended art style, but for now, the in-game art serves the purpose of showing the core mechanics, with dialogues and in-game books conveying the overall themes and narrative.
We hope you will be able to connect the dots from here in getting a picture how the end-result will look like!
0.4.2.6
Since we recently had reduced the frequency of uploading updates, it may perhaps seem to some as if development died down, but nothing could be further from the truth. Today Total Rendition has reached version 0.4.2.6. We'll plan to release an update on Steam once Total Rendition is at version 0.4.3.
Version 0.4.3 is probably going to be the most unabashedly and shamelessly work-in-progress version of Total Rendition so far, with placeholders galore. But that's okay. We may have inadvertently disappointed a few people by presenting Total Rendition as if it had any semblance of being finished, so 0.4.3 will set the record straight and make clear that more is yet to be found ahead of us than lies behind us.
Although the Save Game feature is probably not going to be relevant for most players for the time being, we can say 0.4.2.6 fixes a bug which causes player skills and attributes to not be saved and that this fix will appear in 0.4.3. As for the long save game loading times that have been known to us for some time, we hope to look into that post-0.4.3.
0.4.2.2 Hotfix
We're glad to have at last fixed the issues plaguing 0.4.2.0, while also keeping all of the gains the latter version has made. Unless serious issues become apparent, we still intend to to decrease the update frequency in favour of larger updates adding more playable content, improving the overall quality of the visuals and tweaking gameplay. We are looking forward to show you more of that over the coming months!
