We've been having a pretty hard time with bugs recently after all of our new changes to get the game into a fit state to show to people, but we seem to be over the hump now and a lot of the new graphical stuff is looking pretty nice...
Trying to give a game this complicated a clean UI is very, very challenging! If you're a fan of this genre, you'll have seen the UI in games like X-com - we really wanted to try and make something a bit slicker and that's basically been accomplished. Still some tidying and tweaking to do but I'm pretty proud of where we've got to with this.
Matt has been tied up with some pretty nasty bugs so work on the weapon effects hasn't really progessed all that much. We still have his nice blood placeholder in though...
The Thing I Can't Talk About is still happening. Hopefully I can talk about it soon!
We're still talking to various PR people about how to make sure the game gets promoted well at this early stage. Our own PR efforts will kick off next week when we get a visit from PC Format - we're really excited about that - should be great.
Our Reading Uni test on Friday is shaping up nicely - looking forward to that too. Be really interested to see a bunch of people playing the game for the first time.
One of the best ways of getting into the game is with the puzzle mode, which really involves timing your units' movement more than anything else. This evolved out of the game mode we showed at Gamecity last year. Here's what it looks like now:
We're still waiting on a couple of new features for the backgrounds to get them finalised, but that side of things is also going very well.
Hopefully a more comprehensive update soon - we'd very much like to put out a new video going into some more depth on the gameplay, but we may well save that one for a special occasion fairly soon.
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Looking like it's going to be a very cool game... Cant wait to try it out. :D
Thank you!
Wow, you're right, the new graphics look super sharp. I look forward to the puzzle mode, it would be something I'd enjoy quite a lot.
I'm stoked to hear what you've got cookin' up... and I'm more curious to know why you can't talk about it. :)
Yeah the puzzle mode is really good. Needs some AI work (and some easier levels - it's BLOODY hard!) at the moment but it's really playble.
Glad you like the graphics!
Hopefully I can reveal some more stuff soon...
I'm going to throw this out there:
Have you considered using anything apart from the same shades of blue for the menu?
Not really, I have to say. I'm pretty happy with the general concept of the UI at the moment.
Looking good ;D
Thanks!
Juicy.
And I think I've got an idea for a new game mode if you need one, it's not that original but it sounds fun enough.
The green team has to defend an object of interest (maybe a briefcase) and the red team has to pick it up and get it to an extraction point.
The green team had to be smart enough not to bunch up or they could get blown to bits and smart enough not to split up or they could get picked off individually.
Hey - cheers for that! We don't actually have a CTF-style game mode at the moment - I have a feeling that having to get somewhere AND THEN get somewhere else might be a bit punitive for the attacking team...but it could be worth a try - I'll talk to Ian about it when we start working on new game modes.
Based on this, though, I think you'll really like the hostage rescue mode. That's probably the most "comedy" (if you can apply that word accurately!) mode we have at the moment - some fairly hilarious situations arise.
I had a really good time playing Dark Extermination (kill all enemies / need to have line of sight to see an enemy) against Ian today - haven't played the game seriously for ages. Just a really ridiculous match with us slinging grenades at each other, and my slightly mis-timed grenade having an excessively lucky hit. One of the best times I've had playing the game recently...made me excited to see what people make of it instead of just WORRYING about that!
It can be punitive for the attacking team, just have them get gradually more powerful as time goes by, with respawns every so many rounds, until they get it.
Then have a role reversal, and the team that does it fastest wins.
For instance.
Those kind of 'outgunned' but then switching sides modes has always led to some of the funnest multiplayer matches I've played.
Hostage Rescue sounds sweet