Greetings,
To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of such delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame
The past week was not an active dev week but rather what we'll call a "soft dev" week: most of the work focused on the level design/world building, as well as game design.
The current stage of Winterfall's existence involves a lot of cleaning up, rebuilding, restructuring and reassembling, after years and years of open-ended "research & development" where we built innovative or experimental systems to either make sure they were buildable, or to figure out if they worked gameplay-wise. As you can see on our public Trello, a lot was done.
In this current stage, as we proceed in very restricted conditions resources-wise, we gotta make sure we make smart, productive decisions and maintain practical focus. So every now and then, it's good to put the hard dev on hold and do a bit of thinking.
So let's address the three things that mostly received attention this week.
4x Mechanics
Winterfall is made of the blending of several game genres into one broader experience. One of those genres is the 4x Strategy genre, inasmuch as gameplay takes you to follow 4x objectives:
Explore an open world map
Expand your presence on that base by making land claims
Exploit the Resource Nodes you claim to build facilities and field units
all this to Exterminate any Hostile presence on the map.
Here is how it fits in the broader structure of the game's design:
So this past week, groundwork to be able to soon begin implementation of such mechanics was the focus.
First of all, we set off to rebuilding the world through a Demo map whose specifics and goals are:
25x25km
Divided into 9 main areas (3x3)
Each Area divided into 100 (10x10) Cells
Cells procedurally populated with Resource Nodes or Empty
Resource Cells and Empty Cells randomly occupied by Obstacles, Perils
Cells must be Cleared of Obstacles & Perils to be Claimed
Initially, Exploration & Cell-Clearing gives you opportunity to scavenge your first resources and missing equipment.
From there, you will get to develop your base on one of the predetermined spots you selected through your initial exploration.
From there, it's pretty standard Base-building:
From Hideaway Camp to Fortress, through a total of 8 levels of Base Upgrade
New Visitors travel by your base periodically, and can be encountered in the Wild
Recruit those you like or those whose skills you need
Each Upgrade Level (based on Resource Requirements) unlocks new potential building options
Visitors you Recruit enable you to build those previously unlocked buildings
Work was also done determining specifics of the Resource system, how you go about Harvesting and Scavenging, what are the main items in the game, the professions/skills list and many such things.
We will address all this more thoroughly in a dedicated post as we make progress on implementation.
We also built lots of new modular construction parts for future use, by us and by players, to make nice, functional and visually appropriate buildings:
Example:
And finally, in keeping with its traditional uses, the Character Creator Prototype produced some nice as well as suitably demonic test characters. We love the range it offers, where even without spending a lot of time, it's very easy to get characters that are vastly dissimilar. Remember, PROTOTYPE FOOTAGE, VISUALS NOT FINAL:
That's all for now. All for this post at least, for as always there's much more going on, but can't address it all, the work won't do itself! So, we're going back to it, stay tuned for more material. And as usual, you can:
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winterfallgame Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/willyouovercome Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/ERANgnbSeV
Thank you very much!
Greetings, As of our ongoing work to rebuild Winterfall by reimplementing, improving or fixing our old mechanics, during the past week, we have been updating the Combat build on several points.
To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of such delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame
Here is the list of updates. We are adding a first slew of "gameplay goals" for future usage in our various systems of emergent gameplay. Initially, those are added to Gauntlet Mode (the combat gameplay mode) for testing, until they make it to the broader gameplay.
Gauntlet Mode Goals and Circumstances
Goals
- "Boss" Duel: face and overcome a single, stronger opponent
- Transport: Gather objects and carry them to a destination
- Destroy Number of Objects: Destroy a number of objects spawned in the scene
- Reach Location: Attain a location in the scene and stay there
- Escape/Leave/Keep Out of Area: Stay out of an area to avoid harsh penalties
Circumstances
- "Until Time Runs Out": Stick to goal for countdown duration
- "Before Time Runs Out": Complete objective before countdown expires
- Endless Bots: Bots keep coming at you until the goal is completed
As always, what was intended to be a quick update took up most of the week, as the system contains lots of dependencies and exceptions that needed to be accommodated for. It's another one of those somewhat "thankless" updates, where a lot of work is done but it doesn't appear as a long list of showy objects. And yet, it is all crucial work that sets the ground for later gameplay.
Tools
- Unbind Tools from Mousewheel Up/Down
- Bind Tools to numeric keys
World
- Further tweaks to environment to restore it for Open World update
Known Issues & Short Term Plans
- After Boss Bot spawn, all bot spawns in subsequent waves are Boss Bots
- Make Hearth undepletable in Gauntlet Mode
- Add and configure Interaction Goal, Defeat All goal and Protect Goal
- Finish fixing timing Issues on the remaining Combat Attacks (inputs 3 4 9 and 10)
- Fix Sprint's Stamina Cost & Passage of Time
- Camera Tweaks & Small UI Fixes
- Implement basic "Monsters" for Cloudedness Hazard
Original Combat Alpha Build here (does NOT yet contain above updates): https://www.patreon.com/posts/52531521
Weekly edition of the Winterfall Vlog. Every Thursday a bit of talk about the work, the story, the discipline and the journey. The raw version of this Vlog is published earlier on our Patreon and then formatted for Youtube for publishing on Thursdays.
Thank you to all our backers over time and more recently on Patreon. Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winterfallgame Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/willyouovercome Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/ERANgnbSeV
In this new edition, we deal with the core design concepts of Winterfall and how they are expressed in the tagline "Make War, Make Love, Make History".