Berimbau Mod for Half-Life 2 Project Berimbau Playtest 2 Update news

Another tuesday another round of updates. This week marks the first time in quite a few months that both founders of the Berimbau project are in the same country, so expect a flurry of new sketches and work within the next week or so until Flux heads back to Shanghai. This fortunate turn of events has let us get together in person to go through a solid playtest of the current build of the game as well as discuss storyline and graphic themes for the culture that persists throughout the World of Guardia. While a lot of the storyline stuff is being kept under wraps for now a lot of the game mechanics are ready to be revealed. The current build of the game seen in Playtest 2 includes the following:

• Double Jump
• Direction-based Sword movement
• Sword-chained combos up to 4 attacks
• Blocking
• Knockback

The key thing that Flux has gotten working is the blocking system which radically changes the dynamics of the gameplay. While in the earlier playtest we had the sword work and tracers in the game, it still felt a bit more than a flashy knife battle, with luck beating skill more often than not when it came to sword collisions and kills. The directional system made it a bit better, but we quickly realized weaknesses and strengths that could be exploited to make the fights lopsided and boring.

This is changed with the blocking system, as it creates a tactical sort of way of looking at the duels. In standard sword fights, swinging at your opponent obviously leaves you open (made worse if it is at the end of a combo chain), which is exactly what happens in Berimbau's universe. Swinging your blade has a slight recovery lag, at which point you are unable to throw up a block to defend yourself. A smart player that sits back and blocks all day could wait until an opponent attacks, exploiting the gap in their guard and scoring a hit. However, as in an attempt to make the dueling as skill based as possible, the blade actually can snake behind the defense if the defending player is not facing his opponent at all times. This change in the gameplay is quite evident in our fighting in the videos below:

         

With this mechanic in game we're getting quite close to running an operational Alpha to get a reaction from other players and for balancing issues. As such we're adding another listing for people that potentially want to help in the development of the game: Alpha Testers! Please see the listing below. As always we encourage any comments or critiques you have, so please feel free to leave us a note here on the site or on our email at TeamBerimbau at Gmail dot Com.

Positions Still Open:
The following positions are available. While we do look for people with particular skills, a mix of many skills is even more valued than one niche. We definitely want people who are multi-talented. New listings are listed in red.

• Alpha Tester. Responsible for helping in testing out early builds of the game and taking down notes and recordings of gameplay or experience in game in order to help with balancing and connectivity issues.
  • The alpha testers will work closely with the development team in finding bugs and issues in game. Once the Alpha version is issued, several playtests will be scheduled, however unscheduled playtests are encouraged to be arrange between the alpha tester community.

• Conceptual Environment Designer. Responsible for sketching out the world of Berimbau, provide concept drawings for the rest of the team.
  • The environments of Berimbau are rich with history and culture. You'll be designing temples, samurai training grounds, European churches and alleys, and more.
• Prop Modeler. Responsible for designing environment details that go with our maps. Must have some experience building game maps with Hammer. Must know either 3D Studio Max or Maya, and have some prior game engine model export experience.
  • You'll have the opportunity of modeling the world if Berimbau, its locales, props and details. Ancient statues, cobbled roads, fountains are part of this game.
• Texture Artist. Responsible for designing the look and feel for surfaces of all types in the game. Must be able to sketch out rough ideas and communicate these effectively with our lead charcter artists.
  • The texture artist will work on both character models and prop models (with UV maps completed) and will work on environment textures for maps.
• Programmer. Must have experience in C++ and the Source SDK engine, knows how to author entities and edit network prediction code. Responsible for editing game rules, modifying combat, animation behavior, and author particle effects.
  • You'll have the chance to play an integral role in deciding the combat mechanics of the game, how sword attacks are handled, special attacks, combos, etc.
• Sound Designer. Responsible for creating sounds of sword swings, blade hits, and other combat sounds. Also responsible for authoring ambient sound effects.

The people we look for should also bring some fresh ideas to the table. We definitely don't want to be slave drivers, telling you to make our mod for us. If you have an interesting idea to contribute to Berimbau, you'll be free to present it to the team where we make decisions as a group. The people have their ideas implemented the most often are the ones who are also able to do that themselves, so if you are both skilled and have many new ideas, here's your chance to try them out.

When you apply be ready to show work, portfolio, or examples of what you can do. A CV would also be required.