Comments - aDFP

I'll have a new build online soon, and I'll be releasing a free version alongside it, which will have all interactions disabled (so essentially a walking simulator).

I'll link from here as soon as that's up.

Oh, I'm with you 100%. I'm not placing any restrictions on the player, so if you want to ditch a mission and go exploring, that'll always be an option.

Yeah, but I don't think we're there yet. It's the 'meaningful' part that's the big problem. For instance, I love No Man's Sky. It's great fun to drive/fly the various vehicles, and the space-planet transitions are genuinely cool, but there's only a handful of things in that game that are meaningfully different. Each planet/spaceship/building looks different, but they're all effectively identical when you interact with them. Like there's only a tiny set of verbs and nouns, but a ton of adjectives. The combat also sucks, but that's more because there's no depth to anything, so the encounters are kinda samey and forgettable, like a soup which looks different every with every spoonful, but is disappointing to taste.

I'm trying to do almost the opposite. Every object (noun) in The Hit will have its own set of actions (verbs), and I'm hoping that the density of these nouns and verbs will give life to the world, and let players experience something they've never seen before. I'm kind of ignoring the adjectives for now, so my game's not going to look as pretty as NMS, but I think it'll have more potential for interesting player-stories.

Dwarf Fortress is probably the most interesting procedural world (If you haven't read the tale of Bronzemurder, you owe it to yourself: Eldritch.org), but that's kind of an 'event soup', where you can sometimes pick out really tasty morsels, but there's always a million other things going on, and they can often be quite dull or unpleasant. There's good stuff there, but you have to eat a lot of soup to find it.

With The Hit, I'm trying to create a ton of interesting stories and events, and a set of systems that will work them into whatever the player's currently doing. The soup's still there, and if the player wants to dig around then they'll be able to, but I'm trying to make the tastiest bits float to the top, if you'll allow me to abuse the metaphor one last time.

Oh, I'm totally putting these everywhere. I've switched to a system where everything is an 'edit object' so it can be easily edited and rebuilt. Making a bunch of paintings takes a few seconds, so yeah, these are going wherever I can stick 'em.

Sorry, that's quite a way down my planned features list (but it is on there).

These colours are randomly assigned, using XKCD's colour survey as a source. It's useful for getting an interesting output, without having to bother with actually figuring out what colours clothes should be (which is one of the things I'm doing now).

Suitcases are a definite, because players need to be able to carry weapons, cash and sniper rifles around without drawing attention. Bags will basically be the same as suitcases, and I can't think of any good reason not to add backpacks.

The character system isn't done yet. I've got one more big update to come, which will add a ton of variety to how the characters will look. I'll tell you more when that's ready to show off (almost definitely post-release. These guys will have to do for now).

Hats are somewhere near the top of my list, but mainly because I need to make cops easily identifiable. They'll look something like this, ostensibly a US uniformed police officer, but with some clothing changes to make them more closely resemble a German SS officer. Adfp.deviantart.com

Thanks, I hope I don't disappoint you. I've taken a break recently, which turned out longer than I was expecting, but I'm getting back on it now. I'll post as soon as there's something worth sharing.

Yeah, I will. Sorry for being so quiet lately, I've been trying to get my head down and get this thing fully playable, but I also had to take some time off recently for some surgery. I'm close to having the next update ready, and I'll try to make some more noise then.

Thanks :)

Both. These are my editor tools. Getting the game playable is my priority right now, but I'm working on versions of these tools for the player.

Vehicle driving is definitely a planned feature, as is using vehicles to store weapons, equipment, bodies, shopping etc.

City driving should be a common skill, so it'll be possible to drive a vehicle just by instructing your character to 'drive to <location>', in which case they'll be indistinguishable from the AI drivers. Or you can drive vehicles yourself, but I'm planning something more realistic than the usual arcade-style driving in other open-world games, which will take skill and practice to become proficient at. Not everyone will be a natural getaway driver, but I don't think that's a problem.

Yes, and I've even done a test. I'm sticking with the cubic look for now though, partly because it's simpler, but mainly because I've designed a couple of major features for further down the line, which will be a lot harder to implement with many angles. The destruction system is already tested and working, and I'm also planning on adding water volumes at some point, for floods (think of the scene in Delicatessen for a reference point) and pools of blood dripping down stairs etc.

Oh yeah, that's the plan, or part of it anyway. I've been working hard on optimising the city generator (which is why I haven't been checking indieDB much lately, so apologies for the late reply), to make it as quick and simple as possible to create new cities, and that'll include user-edited cities, so you'll be able to go wild.

The generator already includes a wealth map, so shanty towns and super-rich cities will definitely be possible.

This is the image which the city in the previous screenshot (https://www.indiedb.com/games/the-hit/images/debugville) is generated from. The area at bottom-left is a walled seating area, complete with benches and a patch of grass.

If anyone wants to edit this map, or create your own, feel free. If you message me, I'll do my best to render out a screenshot or two for you, and if you've bought the super early version on itch.io (I'll get it on Steam as soon as I think it's worth playing), I'll try to include your map in one of the next updates.

So far, I've got brick and voxel damage systems. Brick damage is obviously for blowing big holes in the side of buildings. Voxel damage is more general, so it'll be used for many things, including real-time flesh damage, which is already implemented (https://www.indiedb.com/games/the-hit/images/flesh-damage-test#imagebox)

I'm also working on voxel volume destruction, which will basically be everything else. Trees, furniture, etc. Also, I don't have a set timeframe on this, but you will be able to destroy terrain and roads.

Hope that's enough destruction for you!

Thanks. I'll talk about multiplayer more when I'm ready to implement it, but here's a v. brief overview.

The game will only be syncing a minimal set of data across a network. Crowd behaviours will be calculated locally, and only synced when absolutely necessary, and even then will mostly correct to one of a set number of states, so shouldn't have a noticeable impact. So yeah, it should be fast.

Also, if you'll excuse the digression, I'm designing the main game to run at a more realistic pace than games like CoD or DOOM. FPS games favour fast action over situational complexity for good reason: It's relatively easy, and much less of a commercial risk.

Long-term, what I'm trying to do with The Hit is make something that plays less like a target-shooter like CoD, and more like an episode of 24, or one of the Bourne movies, where you're juggling the demands of an ever-changing free-form narrative and weighing multiple objectives, while also making moment-to-moment decisions about whether to employ stealth or force in any given situation. What I don't want to do make a game that forces you into corridor or arena battles, then tells you you've failed when you try to use your initiative. I do want to make you feel like a bad-*** assassin, but I'm not going to hold your hand.

I'll be making some gameplay movies closer to release to demonstrate what I'm talking about, because I don't think there is a comparable gameplay experience out there. Not yet, anyway.

Thanks yourself!

Actually, I'm writing everything with the goal of making it editable, but I don't know when that'll be live (not this year. Maybe next). One of my main aims of this project is to make a system where anyone can write interactive stories, whether they're game missions, one-off encounters or entire life histories.

I'll talk about this some more when the systems are closer to being ready.

Thanks! I've designed my own lighting solution, but I honestly couldn't tell you when I'll actually get round to implementing it (My to-do list is long and very changeable).

I'm tempted to borrow a solution for now, but procedural light placement comes with a few problems that I'm not sure it's worth my time to try and solve, so I may just end up keeping the flat-shaded look until my own system is ready.

One important considereration is mood-generation through lighting, which is something I'm still trying to figure out. What I want, eventually, is a fully dynamic lighting system, so each scene can be lit in an appropriate way for the current story beat. Check out the American artist Edward Hopper if you want to know what kind of thing I'm aiming for.

Anyway, here's the above scene with a few hand-placed lights and a diffuse shader. I think it looks okay, but like I said, automatic light placement comes with its own issues and will probably look a bit glitchy as you're moving between scenes. Imgur.com

Thanks. I've been considering an article about my workflow process for a while. I might have to get my notes in order and actually write it!

I'm working on the game full-time right now. I've been rewriting the game from the ground up so I can implement damage and interaction systems on everything in the game-world, and get some of the dynamic narrative stuff working early.

Right now I'm working mainly on creating assets and procedural generation systems, so I'll be posting updates more often. Definitely need a new video soon.

Just the crafting part. I'll post an announcement as soon as I have a demo ready.

Just to be clear, everything you make with this is yours. You're welcome to sell your creations, use them in your own games or give them to other people to use in theirs (especially mine, but you have absolutely no obligation to do so).

I have zero interest in closed platforms or F2P economies, as I believe they're a hinderance to progress, and I want to play the games you make with these tools as much as I want you to play mine.

I've fixed the mouse issue, and added WASD movement and a few other things. Hope you find it easier to use, and thanks for checking it out.

Thanks, I'll see what I can do.

Is this a commercial venture, or a total conversion?