Before we dive into the second devblog, here’s a brief update on the Kickstarter.
Delaying the Kickstarter gave us more time for important tasks such as polishing the Kickstarter page itself, improving the demo and reaching out to people who might be interested in covering a game like UW. We now have a pre-launch campaign page on Kickstarter. Check it out here and be sure to share it.
The demo saw many great improvements. Besides finding and fixing dozens of bugs—most of which were thankfully small annoyances—we were also able to implement things that didn’t make the cut from our last deadline. This includes additional missions and quality of life improvements such as the feature shown below.
To make squad management easier, the game will now warn you if there are problems with characters that aren’t immediately obvious from the world map screen.
Storytelling in 0.6
UW and its story
Making UW a hybrid between real time tactics and visual novel isn’t a recent idea; in fact, it was planned from the very start. While there were previous prototypes experimenting with that, you might have noticed the complete absence of any VN elements in the current 0.5 demo on Steam.
Up until the 0.5 release, we wanted UW to have two game modes. Dynamic Mode, which would feature the randomly generated gameplay you saw in 0.5 and Story Mode, which is where the VN was supposed to happen. After 0.5, we decided to scrap that plan and merge the two game modes into one. The story would happen on the same world map on which the random events occur. This is 0.6 and it’s going to be the first public version of UW to have a proper story.
The old VN visuals
UW started as a primitive 2D game and evolved into the 3D game you can see now. Just like the game itself, the scope of the VN aspects grew, too. Below you can see a VN section of the very first public demo of UW, released in 2018.
The artwork shown above was good by our old standards. Usually the backgrounds would be photographs we put through cartoon filters, resulting in cheap and jarring looking VN sections as seen below.
There were some poor audio effects during the cutscenes and no background music.
The new visuals
As UW turned from a 2D into a 3D game, so did the VN sections. Inspired by games like the Persona and Fire Emblem series’, we’re now using a mix of 2D and 3D artworks in UW’s cutscenes.
The above screenshot was taken in 0.6. The improved character art by Rizu and Montie and the 3D backgrounds vastly improve the quality of the VN sections, as does the addition of ambient sounds and music.
The above changes already make 0.6 a huge step forward. That being said, these VN sections are still in an early stage and will see further improvements in future. The look of the textbox and the font are just temporary and the cutscenes themselves will also get major overhauls. We hope to add character animations to them in the future. For 0.6, they remain mostly static.
We also added a system where the health and equipment of the characters are reflected in the 2D artwork. This isn’t fully integrated into the VN system yet, but you do get to see it in the portraits of the characters during gameplay.
The next post will be about the new tank damage system in 0.6.
Your sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
Those of you who are following us on Twitter or are members of our Discord server may have noticed that we announced that we're going to start a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the development of UW.
Being busy with the development of the upcoming 0.6 demo, all of us just kept working on other things until it was time to launch the KS campaign. We posted our first announcement with only two days notice and none of us really thought about whether that was the proper way of doing things. Thankfully a member of Discord server, who knows more about the subject than us, shared his thoughts in a kind manner.
We realized that too much hinges on its success for us to simply rush it.
The Kickstarter will launch together with the new 0.6 demo. A lot of work went into it and after a substantial amount of changes, it’s fair to say that 0.6 and 0.5 almost feel like demos for different games. Leading up to the Kickstarter, we’ll be posting regular updates.
The Kickstarter campaign and new demo will launch in a few weeks. The exact date will be announced soon™.
The new health system in UW 0.6
Today’s devblog will cover the new health system that we’ll introduce with the upcoming 0.6 demo.
The old system
Thus far, UW has used a very simple health system. Every unit’s health was represented by a single integer value. A unit’s health may be 20 HP and each attack with a particular weapon might reduce it by 2 or 3 points. When your unit’s health value reached 0, the unit died.
The way armor played into that was equally over-engineered and limiting. When you equipped armor—say a helmet—the 3D model of the helmet would come with its own hitbox. The game would then have to perform a multitude of calculations to properly determine whether your helmet protected you from a particular attack. This system was very primitive and a remnant of the days where UW was a much, much simpler game (you can read more about that here). More importantly however, it was very restrictive. Using small integers made balancing difficult. For a weak weapon dealing 1 damage, the smallest possible increase doubling it. The integration of armor was a convoluted, difficult to work with and convoluted mess. It also had the side-effect that the hit probability the game displayed wasn’t entirely accurate. Clearly, we needed something better.
The new system
Design challenges
UW 0.6 comes with a big change in direction, which will get its own devblog here soon. For now, all you need to understand is that for UW 0.6 to work as intended, the units in your squad could no longer be allowed to die permanently. This radical change required us to handle unit health in a radically different fashion. Rather than building upon the old one, we decided that the best course of action would be to scrap it entirely and start from scratch.
Blood
Whereas the old system used generic ‘HP’ units, the new system measures your unit’s health in milliliters of blood. The max health of each unit is determined using real-world values. More precisely, it’s calculated using Nadler’s method which approximates the total blood volume (TBV) of a person based on height, weight and gender.
Units that lose 2/3 of their TBV, are either incapacitated or die. If they are a part of your squad, they are always incapacitated. This puts them out of action for the rest of the battle, unless a medic revives them (which can only happen once per battle). After the battle, they are returned to your squad with little health.
Localized damage
Rather than having a single blood value, units now take damage to different body parts:
Head
Torso
Left and right arm
Left and right leg
Damage happens either instantaneously or over time, when a unit gets wounded and starts bleeding.
In future versions, damage to different body parts will cause different debuffs. For example, a hurt leg will slow your unit down while a hurt arm will reduce reload speed and accuracy.
Healing and recovery
First aid kits no longer restore health as they used to up until now. Starting with 0.6, their only effect will be treating wounds to stop bleeding during combat.
Recovering health can only happen outside of combat. Blood recovers over time, with each turn on the world map, based on how many rations you’re giving your unit (rationing will be covered in a future devblog). If you reach a town and can afford it, you can rest there, which will also recover blood. The third and last option is to have a medic perform a transfusion between two units while camping. While it does not increase the total amount of health in your squad, you use this to give some blood to your squad’s weakest link ahead of combat.
Summary
Health is now measured in milliliters of blood
Losing 2/3 of its blood kills or incapacitates a unit
Health now uses localized damage. Head, torso, arms and legs get hurt separately
No more healing during combat. First aid kits only stop open wounds from bleeding
Your units no longer die, but get incapacitated
Only medics can revive incapacitated units and every unit can only be revived once during combat
There is no free way to regain blood. You either feed your units rations or pay to rest in a town
Medics can transfuse blood between units while camping
This shall be it for this devblog. Look forward to the next post, which will cover our revised tank damage system.
Your sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
While working on the 0.6 demo, we were made aware of a critical bug. Turns out the game used "a little" too much memory.
Here's what's we new in v0.5.4:
Katya new face
Katya used to have old design for a long time, now she's got a proper rework and has a face that matches current style!
Fixes
Game requiring more than 3GB of memory (even in worldmap) - Fixed
Thank you for playing and keep on sharing your experience and ideas through twitter :
https://twitter.com/unwargame
And join our dev discord server to talk about guns and waifus! :
https://discord.gg/HtUDeG2
v0.5.3 Not-so-Hotfix
There were some critical bugs that went under our radars, so we made this quick patch to make the demo properly playable.
As it was announced in the last post, we're working hard to overhaul and improve core mechanics(which wasn't included in this patch). Please stay tuned to our twitter and discord updates to see what we're working on for v0.6!
And thank you so much for your bug reports, without your help this critical bug could've been unnoticed for longer.
Here's what's we new in v0.5.3:
Balancing
It's easier to get a tank now. The tank event position is marked on the map from the start and you will either get damaged or full health tank when you choose to fix it.
Fixes
Opening settings window in mainmenu causing chain of errors - fixed.
Opening escape menu during traveling in worldmap soft locking the game - fixed.
Enemy squad database was missing when loading a game after exiting the application - fixed
Incorrect UI element orders
Retry confirmation button hidden behind another element making it unable to be clicked - fixed
Other UI elements like suppression circles being on top of result UI - fixed
Class UI Scout description displaying wrong bag size info - fixed
Some settings(like Vsync) weren't being applied until settings window is opened - fixed
Thank you for playing and keep on sharing your experience and ideas through twitter:
https://twitter.com/unwargame
And join our dev discord server to report bugs, make suggestions, and most importantly, talk about guns and waifus!:
https://discord.gg/HtUDeG2
v0.5.2 Patch
With this patch out, we're going to redirect our focus into adding more features. There probably still will be bug fixes and balancing patches, just not as our priority (unless there's some big bad bug, of course).
We're gonna be working on to improve combat and camping so stay tuned and feel free to tell us what you'd like to see in UW!
Here's what's we new in v0.5.2 :
Improvements
Procedural generation of field levels is back, you'll be on a new level every time you encounter enemies or camp on the field
Destructible objects are coming back, some objects/covers are destructible (with a tank, explosives or just by shooting it a lot)
AP ammo now deals damage to the tank crew, meaning you can use it to take out certain tank crew members (e.g. front MG gunner)
Placing constructibles (tent, trench, etc.) during camping won't cause lag anymore
Added VSync option to the settings option under "General"
Balancing
Grenade now deals full damage regardless of explosion radius (red & yellow) to tank
Grenade damage slightly increased
Mk5 Tank health increased by 20%
Fixes
Campfire and Tent being placed in non-camping levels - Fixed
Decals(Blood, footprints, etc) not being covered by fog - Fixed
Water not covered by fog - Fixed
'C' key opening inventory when it wasn't supposed to - Fixed
Incorrect UI Layer order - Fixed
Removing tent or campfire sometimes giving you multiple items - Fixed
Trench extrusion - Fixed
Thank you for playing and keep on sharing your experience and ideas through twitter:
https://twitter.com/unwargame
And join our dev discord server to report bugs, make suggestions, and most importantly, talk about guns and waifus!:
https://discord.gg/HtUDeG2
v0.5.1 Hotfix
Thank you for playing UW v0.5 so much! With all the feedback and bug reports, we were able to roll out some quick fixes to major bugs and balancing problems. Not everything is fixed but I think with this patch UW should be more enjoyable.
Here's what's we new in v0.5.1:
Balancing
Weapon accuracy fixes - Base accuracy & minimum accuracy increased. At a very close range, units get big bonus in accuracy(no more 1% right in front of enemy)
Decreased fatigue rate. You will get tired more slowly as you travel. (50% per turn of v0.5)
Starting quest difficulty is adjusted(no more high tier enemies when you've just started the game and are alone)
Increased heal amount on campfire use
Fixes
Tank flipping - Fixed(should at least happen less frequently. More certain fix will come later)
Objective & UI not getting updated at the start of combat until unpleasing - Fixed
Helmet not blocking bullet - Fixed
Body armor not blocking bullet accurately - Fixed
Body armor will now block most shots from frontal attack that hits on torso, but it will not be able block attacks from sides or behind. This means, while aiming, right-handed character will have more angle of protection to the right and vice versa for left-handed character.
Retry(or loading autosave) not loading correct worlmap / quest info - Fixed
Zmey field levels having floating rocks - Fixed
Not being able to cancel interacting(sleeping, eating when enemies are attacking) - Fixed
Character portraits not being updated sometimes - Fixed
Enemies being able to shoot through certain rocks - Fixed
Thank you for playing and keep on sharing your experience and ideas thru twitter :
https://twitter.com/unwargame
And join our dev discord server to talk about guns and waifus! :
https://discord.gg/HtUDeG2
Dynamic Mode Demo, now out on Steam!
After a delay of a couple of days due to the approval process, the Unconventional Warfare Dynamic Mode Demo is now out on Steam!
We've just released our Dynamic Mode Demo, which is available to download right now on itch.io and IndieDB, we hope you enjoy it!
Our Steam release has been delayed by a couple of days due to the approval process which takes time, but we hope to have it with you as soon as possible!
If you find any bugs or want to ask any questions, please report them on the #bug-report channel or post in the #ask-devs channel respectively in our Discord:
https://www.discord.gg/khASHxB
-even if you don't find any bugs or have any questions to ask, it would be great to see you there!
You can download the demo from other platforms here:
itch.io: https://duque.itch.io/uw
IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/unconventional-warfare
New features:
<*>Dynamic Mode - A brand new mode has now become implemented into UW, dynamic mode. Traverse our brand new game map and encounter a variety of random events, how you respond to which will either make or break your chances for survival. Each playthrough will be able to provide you a different experience!
<*>New Weapons - Two completely different styles of weapons have been introduced into this build. First of all, the Model 1897 Trench Gun has been inducted into UW. Second of all, placeable landmines. These two new additions might shake up your approach to missions.
<*>New Map - Brand new maps and locations with different climates and architectures have been included within this build. Their layout is also vastly different from levels in previous builds. Expect to enjoy them aesthetically and tactically!
<*>New Models and Animations - One of the factions, Zmey, now has representation ingame via the new models included in this build. On the note of models, in previous builds did you notice that the soldiers only had three fingers per hand? Well not anymore! Now they’re like you and me and have a full five. Due to the finger increase, we’ve been able to refine some of the animations to look a bit more slick.
<*>New 2D sprites - Most of the character art has been totally overhauled with brand new 4K sprites. We think they look pretty slick, but what do you think of them, we'd love to hear your thoughts!
<*>Class System - A new class system is being introduced into the game. Although limited at this point, expect to see this expanded upon in future.
Unconventional Warfare Dynamic Mode Demo, coming to Steam 08/08!
In just a few days (08/08/19, specifically) we're going to release the next free demo for our game. Its focus will be on the "Dynamic mode", while the story mode demo is scheduled for a later date. Before you ask: no, we don't have a date yet, although we do aim for it to be released before the end of this year. In this article we will explain what the dynamic mode is and also give a quick rundown on what's on the horizon for UW after 08/08!
Dynamic Mode?
Unconventional Warfare will have two game modes: The story mode and the dynamic mode. The former should be pretty self-explanatory. It's a more linear experience that focuses on telling a story. While our author works on the story, which will be an important aspect of the final game, we do realise that we can get more mileage out of the gameplay mechanics outside of that. The purpose of the dynamic mode is to do exactly that. Instead of a story, you get a randomly generated game that makes use of the same gameplay mechanics.
Just in case you wonder why we didn't call it "free mode", which would have been a more conventional name for that sort of thing. As it turns out, our boss had to clear up the misconception that the "free mode" would be a free trial version of the game and decided that we better find another name for it. The obvious second choice would have been "sandbox mode", but sandbox is well-defined genre that's quite different from what we're going for. So dynamic mode it is!
Dynamic Mode!
The dynamic mode is heavily inspired by the indie game hit FTL: Faster Than Light, but it does have some substantial differences. We'll walk you through the similarities and differences to show you what to expect on 08/08.
The World Map
Let's start with the map. Just like in FTL, it's a graph. This means that instead of being able to move freely, you can only move to the neighbouring nodes of the node you're currently at. This movement is turn-based. While you're at a node, managing your squad, making a decision about where to go next or whatever the case may be, the game is paused.
You move between nodes by right clicking on one of your neighbours. The game will unpause, your squad will then move and some amount of time will pass. This will cost rations, which we'll explain in greater detail later in this article. When you arrive at your destination, a number of things might happen. Nothing, an enemy encounter or a random event. If nothing happens, you're free to manage your squad, move on or camp. If you encounter enemies, you will have to defeat them first. Random events function much like they do in FTL- you get a textbox explaining what is going on and have to make a choice.
Note the [6 Rations] part. This means that picking that option will cost you 6 rations. If you don't have enough, the option won't be available. The events are categorised in three tiers, with T1 events being the easiest. The further you get away from your starting locations, the more the events you'll encounter will shift towards T2 and finally T3 ones. Thus far, UW looks like a FTL clone in a different setting. The first major aspect that differentiates UW from FTL comes when we zoom out.
Whereas FTL has a set of separate, small maps (sectors), UW gives you one big map to play with. On it, you'll be able to choose your path freely, you'll be able to explore the world, complete quests in any order and build up your squad for the final showdown. The map consists of major and minor nodes. Major nodes denote important places (e.g. cities) for which the levels are hand-made. They are separated by minor nodes. Camping and combat on minor nodes happens on procedurally generated levels. Since hand-crafting the major levels takes time, the demo will only feature a few of them. You can see the strip of nodes you'll be able to play on in the screenshot above. In total, the demo map already contains more nodes than FTL does. Now imagine that entire map filled with roughly the same density. That's what we're ultimately aiming for.
The Basic Gameplay
You start at the left end of the graph, while your target is at the Imon Mine on the far right. Your goal is to reach and defeat the enemy there, but you'll have to build up your squad on your way there. To help you get started, you start with three quests already marked on your map.
Similar to FTL, you have to strike the correct balance between exploring as much as you can and hurrying up. Your actions don't go unnoticed and after a while, the enemy will dispatch pursuers to deal with you. These start at the major nodes on the left side of the map and spread out from there.
Their spread rate depends on the number of neighbouring nodes. On the screenshot above, Eshnunna is connected to five nodes that are not yet occupied by the enemy. This means it'll take five turns to occupy them. Nodes go from normal, to orange and finally to red. Orange and red nodes have a 100% enemy encounter probability, with the latter having more intense combat. If a node would already have an enemy encounter, it will get amplified. This means that it's important that you keep moving right. Not only do they spread relentlessly, over time they will also be dispatched from multiple cities.
Each turn costs rations. Rations can be obtained through traders, looting and quests. In the squad menu, you can adjust the rationing of the individual units. The more rations you give your units, the stronger they get. However, you need to be careful with your resources. As your squad grows in size, the amount of rations you need per turn could get quite high, if you choose to be very generous with them. For now, you won't starve and will just have to deal with debuffs.
Lastly there are the enemy convoys. When the game starts, a few enemy convoys are spawned somewhere in the middle of the map. They will slowly move towards your target. Each convoy that makes it, will reinforce the enemy forces in the last battle. Those convoys are hidden at first, but can be revealed by completing quests. You can then intercept them and stop them in their tracks. Just beware that they are guarded and that they might merge on their way, which will make you fight both convoys at once. This will be either extremely convenient or difficult, depending on how well-equipped you are.
Beyond 08/08
Since we wanted to release the demo on this deadline no matter what, there are certain things that won't make the cut. I'll give a brief overview over those that are on the immediate horizon for us, the things we'll be working on right after we release the demo.
Taming the game's varying performance TheSniperFan (one of our programmers) only recently joined the project, but he was able to identify some major performance problems. There was no way to implement them in time for the demo, but this will be the first thing we'll look into after the demo is out (He was able to quadruple the framerate inside Imon Mine in his experiments)
UI, health and tank damage systems overhaul If you read our first IndieDB article, you'll how much the game has changed since its inception. A lot of the systems are carryovers from back then. There will be some major changes to the game in the weeks after the demo.
Camping mechanics There just isn't all that much to do while camping yet. This will change.
When our demo comes out, please report any bugs you may find to the #bug-report channel on our Discord server, found here:
discord.gg/khASHxB
We hope you'll enjoy our new demo, you can also view this article on IndieDB!
https://www.indiedb.com/games/unconventional-warfare/news/the-upcoming-dynamic-mode-demo
You can also check out our first IndieDB article here:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/unconventional-warfare/news/what-is-unconventional-warfare
