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Tout les vendredis, les Devs publient un petit billet concernant un aspect du développement du jeu, donc avec un peu de retard je me suis décidé à les compiler ici.
Dev-Diary #1: Dress-Up!
Hi! This is Tom – you might know me from one of the dev Q&A sessions. In our first installment of our dev blog I’m going to give you a couple of insights into how our technical item system works for the long awaited character customisation. We always knew that creating and customising your Shadowrunner is the big thing, but the details were vague up to a few weeks ago. As with all systems that we want to do the deciding factor is effort – can we implement the system initially, and can we support it with enough content in the long run?
The slimmed-down version we were looking at was having a character and adding upper and lower body clothing or armor, and giving him or her a weapon. This would give you some degree of customisation, and keep the system nice and manageable. However since our technical art department has made great progress, we’ve decided to step it up a bit. There will be more layers and items that can be combined, including a system that can adapt items depending on other items. For example, all of our pants (or whatever else your character can wear on his or her legs) have been made aware of the length of the boots you are wearing. If you wear higher boots, the pants get cropped accordingly so that you see the boots and there are no ugly clipping issues. A similar system is in place for gloves and upper body wear.
In terms of effort, this is definitely one of the largest chunks we’ve taken on so far, and it will be a long road ahead until you can see it in its final state. We’re going for a preview version though, so you should be able to look at it in the nearer future and give us your feedback!
Dev-Diary #2: Tuning the AI
Welcome to our 2nd Dev-Diary. This time Sepp, one of our Game Designers, talks about how the AI in our game makes its decisions.
“Organ Farm”, just after our team has cleaned out a hallway full of gangers. The next door opens and who comes running? Our new not-quite-buddy, Bert. One of my jobs on the team is to make sure Bert the ganger behaves somewhat believable. So let’s start with what we think is “believable” with a guy like Bert:
- Bert is carrying a ranged weapon: no need to get up close and cuddly
- Bert doesn’t like getting shot: let’s make him prefer positions that give him cover
- Bert likes shooting runners: he prefers positions with a fair chance of hitting one
So how do we make Bert pick a spot to run to? First, we find out where he could run to at all, then we try to find out how desirable he considers each of these spots to be. Take a look at how Bert perceived the perilousness of all the positions he could have run to:
See how the closer he could have run up to Takshak the danger-level gets ever worse? Take a closer look at the corners just at the end of the hallway – a lot less scary. And all those zeroes? No shooting through walls here, no siree!
Conversely, take a look at how Bert perceives his chances at getting in a shot:
No shooting through walls again, obviously. His chances would improve in the case of him walking out of cover, inching ever closer to Takshak. But then, all of a sudden, they’re slim again – sprinting instead of walking would leave Bert without action-points to get off a shot – not quite that desirable anymore.
What we have here is a conflict of interests: Bert would quite like to step out into the corridor, closer to Takshak, but then, looking at his assessment of threat, he also would not like to do that at all. Two souls alas!
We resolve this issue by weighing Bert’s options: daredevil that he is, he values chances-to-perforate highest, chances-to-be-perforated a little less (“Just a scratch!”) , being-up-close somewhere in the middle … you see where I’m coming from.
In the end, plenty of considerations and some number-munching later, we end up with something like this:
The last thing we do is add some spice. Would we want Bert to always pick the same spot? Of course not. Bert’s supposed to be just a little bit erratic, just you and me. What we did is that we make Bert strongly prefer the very best spot to run to, but every once in a while we’ll have him run somewhere just a little bit less optimal.
Voilà, there you have it: Bert’s brain in a nutshell.
Dev-Diary #3: Anatomy of a fireball
Hoi Chummers!
Its Friday again and that means we’re back with another Dev-Diary! This time our Technical Artist Riccardo is talking about a very hot topic – the anatomy of a fireball!
Hi, in today’s Dev-Diary I will be telling you a bit about what goes into making one of our Mage’s most iconic effects, namely the fireball! This handy skill can be used in all kinds of different situations. Just point it in the general direction of things that you feel are in need of a good burning and shoot. Simple, right? At a closer look however the fireball actually consists of many different parts that all work together to create the impression of a deadly little ball of mayhem. But before I get into that, let’s take a look at the humble beginnings of what finally became known as the “Spark” spell in the game.
Many effects will start out with a simple placeholder. This one was made by one of our programmers when they were first implementing the visual effects system – an example of what is known among game developers as “programmer art”. It might not look pretty, but it got the job done in conveying what the fireball would do later on.
When coming up with the actual design, it was important to keep it modular. Therefore the fireball is split into three individual parts: casting the ball in front of the mages hand, the projectile that moves from A to B and finally the impact on the ground. This makes it a lot easier in case we come up with some variations in the future. Want to have a skill that shoots fireballs in all directions or a projectile that travels in an arc instead of a straight line? I could easily achieve a completely different look by simply replacing or duplicating one of the parts and keeping the rest.
That’s the big picture, but we can split it up even further. Here are some of the elements that really make the explosion feel like an explosion:
- A Big Ball of Fire (naturally) – This is the most visible part of the effect and defines the overall look and feel of the explosion.
- Sparks – If you look closely the big explosion is followed by some smaller, fiery sparks that are affected by gravity. This gives the impression of the fireball really tearing into the environment and doing some damage!
- Smoke Trail – Of course where there is fire there also needs to be smoke. This makes the effect more realistic and gives the player a nice aftertaste of what just happened.
- Charred Ground – Similarly to the smoke, the the ground texture really enhances the feeling of looking at something that has a lasting effect on it’s surroundings.
- A Source of Light – No fire would be complete without emitting some light. Therefore fireballs actually light up walls and characters, looking especially nice on darker levels.
- Lens Flare – Some might say that lens flares a little on the kitschy side, but that hasn’t stopped us so far! Ours are inspired by the classic Sci-Fi look, the “anamorphic lens flare”. It looks great on a fast moving projectile and certainly helps in getting the player’s attention.
Hopefully I was able to give you a bit more insight into how the fireballs work in Shadowrun Online!
Dev-Diary #4: Spray it, don’t say it.
Hi, I’m West,
I am a Devlog virgin. So if things start to get a little awkward soon, you’ll know why.
My tasks are a mix of Art direction and Concept art. Most of my time is spent jumping from one task to another, like a mechanic with too many cars in his garage and a bad case of ADD. A single day can consist of texture adjustments, environment overpainting, character designs, logo and prop design. Consistently different tasks keeps things interesting. In this Devlog I will be discussing one of these tasks.
Recently we had a meeting, and in that meeting we decided that we needed to have a meeting about the current state of the environments. We discussed what should be fixed on the existing environments, as well as which environments should be made next. The talking stick was passed around the tribe and the choice was made: “We need a nice gritty exterior“. So now we are in the middle of designing this environment, its mood and the assets that will populate it. Because we are trying to involved the community whenever possible, or maybe because my general work ethic has always been, “how can I achieve more while doing less”, I thought, why not open this task to somebody else. Somebody like you. Stupidly, I suggested this idea to the team, and not only did they like it, they made it one of my tasks. Hence, I am writing my first ever Devlog, and addressing the masses.
And so it has come to pass, that anybody from the Shadowrun community will have the chance to graffiti bomb the Shadowrun environments with their art. Well I say, “Anybody” what I really mean is, anybody can submit their art and we will pick the ones we want to use. Unaccepted entries will be loaded on to a USB stick, burnt to a crisp then sent to the bottom of the Marianas trench.
Below is listed a few requirements for all Chummers to adhere to, should they wish us to consider their entry.
- Entries must be original artwork.
- Graffiti art and bombing will be chosen over tagging and scribbles.
- Rude and lewd is fine, but might have less chance of making it in to the game.
Format guidelines:
- The best format to submit would be a PSD or PNG with a transparent background. Jpg, photos and scanned work is okay too, just be aware that we would then need to cut the artwork out of the image to use it, and this might affect some of the edge work.
- The image size should be about 1000pixels height, width.
- Try to keep the file size under 500kb.
Please send your contributions and questions to graffiti@cliffhanger-productions.com. The deadline for this event is July the 29th,2014. And remember, this is all happening in the Shadowrun universe, you are not bound by real world conventions.
That’s me for now. Maybe next time I will actually talk about the art. Maybe.
Cheers
West
Dev-Diary #5: The sound of silence
One of the things most of you have liked so far is the fact that our characters have voices. Despite fully voiced characters being a major headache for any dev team we felt that it would give much more atmosphere and life to the world we hope to create.
The system we implemented for the first-look alpha (and that you have seen so far) is mission based, but doesn’t know anything about specific characters. That means that if someone does something within a mission, which causes a text to be triggered the person who caused this is picked, and gets the first line.
For that to work, every character has to have every line of dialogue, and they all need to fit together. For the first mission (where we know that only Takshak and Payday can be present) the exchange after the first door is opened looks like this:
So when Takshak opens the door, the dialogue starts at index 3, and if Payday opens the door it starts at index 6. This is fairly easy to handle as long as there aren’t too many characters involved, but it gets messy once you have more than three possible participants. It’s also quite maintenance-intensive – as you might have noticed we need to re-record every time something changes within a mission, which is why we’re doing the recordings quick and dirty, rather than having to live with texts that are out of date for an extended period of time.
Since the expiration date of fixed characters per mission is already visible on the horizon, there will be some major extensions to the voice system, which we’ve dubbed TOURETTE by the way.
First there will be more voices. Many more, since we expect you to want a broad selection for the characters you create. This means that we can’t continue writing texts the way we have now, but that all replies will be automatically assembled to fit the situation – like getting shot at, seeing an Aztech mage, running out of ammo and so on.
Second, we’ll try to include enemies into the system – that means that whenever a player controlled character says something, an enemy might reply and vice versa. Expect a lot of swearing.
As usual we can’t say exactly when you’ll be able to see this, it’s even more hassle in this case since after we’ve implemented the system we need to thoroughly test it with text only, and once it’s reasonably stable we’ll hit the recording booth and add voices. The big downside to this is that we can’t run both system in parallel once playable characters are being implemented, so there might be a period of about one update where everything falls silent.
BUT since the first version of player created characters is happening soon, it won’t be more than a couple of weeks after that that you’ll be able to listen to the all new voices in the all new voice system!
Stay tuned and keep listening, this is radio Free Boston!
Dev-Diary #6: I Dream of Excel
Not all people working at a game company get to do the creative stuff, be it as a designer, programmer or artist. Some have to make sure that everything in the background is running smoothly – sometimes with strange side effects. Want to know more? Then read on!
Hi there! Most of you who read this will probably know me from the forums or as the guy sometimes visible in the Q&A-Vids, however just to be certain let me introduce myself: I’m Florian AKA Soundrel, one of those guys who make sure you’re kept in the loop about what’s going on here at Cliffhanger (among other tasks). Today I will not tell you what the devs are planning or about a new, upcoming feature however. I will tell you the tale of why my dreams lately have been plagued by spreadsheets.
As some of you already know, a lot of our backers (but not all, so please don’t panic if you didn’t get an invitation) received the invitation to a survey during the last two months, asking them to confirm their name in the credits. Yes, that was my doing, as ever since Liz/Merkerrinja took her maternity leave, I am also the one who is responsible for all things that are related to our backers. For those who got this survey it should have meant just a few clicks in the game, quite a bit of watching the credits scroll (which, as the list is rather long, could take quite a long time if your name was near the end of the list, as some of you pointed out) to confirm your name (which was not done to spite you, as some seem to have thought, but to actually make sure there weren’t any problems in converting special characters or Uppercase/lowercase issues) and then to tell us either “yes, the name is correct”, “no, use this nick instead”. If you chose the latter one, you could specify a new name. Also you were asked to give us your shipping address. Sounds like something that can be processed easily enough on our end? Yes, so I thought too.
Once the survey closed I experienced something I would consider a spreadsheet nightmare though. Imagine having four excel sheets opened simultaneously to make certain that every change happens to the correct customer and is changed in all required spots, checking back occasionally when something doesn’t add up using other tools, even more sheets and the helpful hands of colleagues. Result: What I expected to be a task that could be automated very well and wouldn’t take up too much of my time turned out into over week with very little work Excel could do for me and a lot of stuff I had to do myself. That doesn’t mean that the whole timeframe was filled with nothing but credit names, but I spent a lot more time with Excel than I thought I would – in fact so much that even when I was sleeping, I was haunted by credits, addresses and spreadsheets. Who was it again who told me “oh, great, you’re working at a game developer. You must be playing all the time”?
But I’m not here to complain and thus will end this story on a happy note: All those who answered their survey and asked to have their credits changed should see the results already in the current version of Shadowrun Online. And when you look at them, spare a thought about me doing all the updating. Just to make me smile.
Dev-Diary #7: Thank you!
You might have heard some developers say you shouldn’t get too close to your prospective players while you’re working on a game as this might taint your vision. Others will tell you that working with your community provides a very unique experience and opportunity. As always the truth might be somewhere in-between, but ever since we started this journey to make Shadowrun Online, we were leaning towards the latter side. The last weeks proved to us that this was the right choice. Case in point? Your Graffiti.
Most of you will recall that three weeks ago our Lead Artist West asked you to send your graffiti work to us so we can include it in one of our upcoming environments. As we had only limited experience with asking our community to contribute to our development with artwork, we didn’t know what to expect. How good would the artwork be? Would we end with an empty mailbox or get flooded with messages? But we all agreed it was something we wanted to try – and so we did.
As the deadline for submissions has already passed (which doesn’t mean we might not be able to squeeze in a few fresh ones eventually, so if you wanted to submit your art, but couldn’t make it, you can still try – no promises though!) we can now say that this test turned out great. We have just started getting a closer look at your graffiti, so we can’t say yet which of them will end up in Shadowrun Online, but from just skimming through we can tell you already that we were impressed by the quality and the dedication of our community. So while we here at Cliffhanger are working on the finishing touches of the next update (remember: August 7th!) and already working on the next one, let us take this moment to say “Thank You” for sending in your graffiti and going down this development road with us. Here’s to our great community!
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