CR Devblog #1 news - Catharsis Reborn mod for POSTAL III

Hey there guys, Tim here. Bet you didn't expect us to become more open with the development of Catharsis Reborn than we pretty much already are with the feature showcases and such. (*Because we uh, we uhm, are if you haven't guessed already.) Anyway, I'm here today to start us off with the first ever blogpost, the team decided that it would be a good idea to, instead of waste valuable development time screenwriting, recording footage, rendering, voice acting, and producing an video for our youtube channel for some updates we want to share, we would just post these updates whenever some member of the devteam wants to share our progress with stuff on the mod! Expect more to come in the future, and for them to be written and posted here by other developers also. Also, yes, we are aware that some people thought we probably died, sorry about that, we have had some complications and have been working on a lot of stuff lately, some of which we couldn't really disclose, but now we can disclose some stuff. So, let's talk about what the boys at WJI have been working on for a while now shall we?

We added a suicide feature! You can now end your miserable existence in Catharsis in style! Initially, we just had the k key bound to kill the player when pressed, where dude would just flop his carcass to the ground like a deflated sex doll, but we found that didn't make any sense at all, which actually spawned jokes about how absurd it was in the tips for CR that you would have seen in-game on release. (insert funnyhaha self induced cardiac arrest joke here). Anyway, we also wanted a sort of homage to Postal 2's suicide, something equally absurd. So, I suggested and thought it'd be funny if Dude were to just snap his own neck, as I could see postal dude doing that character-wise, and I just thought the whole premise would fit in with the absurdity of its grim predecessor. So, Doka/VodkaDog, animated it for me real quick, I wrote up all the required p3s code, tweaked it a bit, added some sounds, implemented the animation, then that was that. Now, you may be asking yourself one of three things right now. 1, what in the actual hell is p3s, 2, how did you manage to do this all stuff? or, you may think that “p3s” word was just a obscure typo. Well, it ain't a typo, let's have a little chit-chat about how the suicide feature works, and pretty much just about p3s as a whole.

So first things first… what in the fuck is a “p3s”? Well, glad you asked, it stands for “Postal 3 Script” and we call it that due to the file format these have (.p3s). It's a pretty in-depth semi-powerful “scripting language” trashmasters made to sort of hook/interface with the game, instead of laying everything out through C++, or doing things all via hammer entity logic and whatnot. It is primarily intended to make mission scripting and doing AI for NPC's faster and easier, but can do and handle other things too as well. Since trashmasters had pretty precious development time to spend on stuff like this, it's used for a good bit of stuff. p3s is honestly a godsend to us on the team, about as much as it was trashmasters, as it allows us to do some pretty cool stuff that we just would not be able to do without the source code, or for some of it, at least not very efficiently. I guess it's fair enough to look at p3s similar to the lua implementation in Garry's Mod, you don't need the source code to add some neat new stuff or mods, and it's much more user-friendly to add stuff, as it's an pretty simple and accessible language. Although p3s is more limited, and in our case, the language doesn't even have documentation at all for us to even reference except for an unofficial one slapped together for the team to reference from, but it's honestly not a big deal to understand 80% of it if you are an decently experienced programmer who knows stuff like the basics of a number of scripting languages, which is good for people who would like to make mods or whatever. Anyway, now that you know this p3s thing exists, we can move onto how exactly this feature works. Basically, we use this sorta technique we call “animation hotloading”, which is basically a hacky way to add new animations to the player, as we can't really do so otherwise. How this works is, we basically use the setmodel convar to call upon a custom .mdl file, containing the model, and the animation we want to hotload, and have that particular model precached in every single map in the game somewhere out of bounds out of sight of the player (like in a nodraw box or just hanging out below the map). In this particular instance, it's a separate identical model of the dude but containing an animation of him breaking his own neck. We open the .qc file for the model, and use the $include qc command to include that new model file so we can then use it to “replace” or play that animation when we set the player model to that new one through p3s. The rest is self explanatory really, setting delays, firing a few convars, fixing possible bugs that can occur using this method, and preventing the player from doing stuff.

Anyway, enough technical mumbo-jumbo, let's talk more about some new stuff added to CR.

We've added a few new Civilian variations in the current build of CR, here's a few of them you probably most likely haven't seen already yet:

There are still a good bit more variations done, but this is just a taste of them and what to expect. Our texture and model artists Melasauce and Hayal, plan on working on a bit more even to make Catharsis much more ethnically, and visually diverse than what Postal 3 had to offer previously, making CR's NPC's much more in-line with Postal 2's, including their AI, which is one of our main goals, making the streets of Catharsis seem much more alive and not artificial.

Speaking of AI, we have added a few new features we think is alright to disclose. Let's talk about them.

• Some NPC's will now walk up to the player and kick his dead carcass, as well as taunt you depending on how much they hate you. (It's basically random chance, and semi-rare even). (old crappy screenshot, but yeah.)

• NPC's will litter garbage around the city, but some NPC's will be good Samaritans and throw it away in the nearest dumpster.

• NPC's will now sometimes kick ATM machines found around Catharsis.

• NPC's have a random chance that if they are bumped into on the street, they will engage in a fist fight with one another, and if they have a gun, they will use it.

• NPC's can now buy food items from stores, just like the player can. (old video but still relevant)

Alright, that's definitely not all we did to the AI, but you get the gist, we want to make the AI much better than it already is, not just interactive lively stuff even, but also how smart they are. Anyway, let's move onto other stuff now.

We have added Kevlar armor! You can now protect yourself from the crazy citizens and the heavy hand of the law in Catharsis. The Kevlar armor basically works just like it does in Postal 2 really, offering damage resistance to the player's health until the armor gets damaged enough to break. (Note that while this feature is working just fine currently in-game, it is subject to change through development, so what you see here doesn't exactly reflect what the end product will be, so keep an eye out for changes in future blog posts or when the demo releases). Kevlar armor can be found throughout Catharsis probably just lying around waiting to be picked up, possibly more commonly found in places like a police station or somewhere else sensible, and we may make vendors sell it at appropriate stores even, who knows.

We are currently in the process of finishing up all of the maps we need for the demo, really the only map needed to be finished currently is city02, (the city the next loadzone over) which was lacking some love for a while now, until just recently. As you may have already guessed, city01 (the map you always see in our trailers on Youtube), has been our main focus for a while now, and required a lot of work to get it to the state it is currently in, and has evolved a lot over development. It is and probably will stay, one of our most intricate and detail heavy maps in CR. Making this map and fixing some bugs and stuff on it has been the primary focus for a while now, and we are glad to say that city01 is *basically* finished, the weights are off our shoulders, and our team of mappers and mission/p3s scripters can now focus on the rest of what is needed for the demo. Keep in mind that we have yet to do all the entity logic, and mission scripting for most of the maps, we are working on it, but we have really only got the maps themselves mostly done at the moment.

So, that's really about all we have been working on that's worth noting or that we can disclose, we are still in the process of working on a few new cool features also, of which will probably be talked about in a later post. We hope you liked or at least somewhat cared about at least a few of the features we added, Our main focus at the moment, is bug fixing, working on content for the demo of course, adding some brand new features and reworking existing mechanics and stuff that we see fit, and we will continue to ensure that the demo will be as enjoyable to play as it is enjoyable for us to develop. Alright, we'll see you guys in the next blogpost whenever uhh... Whenever that will be.

Also, we are currently in need of a few roles on the team at the moment, so we have a few open positions.

These positions include:

• Source engine mapper
• Female voice actress
• Black male voice actor

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE APPLYING: You are not entitled to monetary compensation. This is a pure passion project and it has survived this long through the sheer willpower and determination of a lot of talented developers, and generous donations. Don't screw it up with your money nonsense, we don't want none of it, we just want more passionate people like us with some free time on their hands.

HOW TO APPLY?: Join our discord server and post in the #applications channel to apply, or email us directly at: whackjobinteractive@gmail.com. Please feel free to blab on about your experience with the software, show and/or talk about your works or projects, and your talents! We love that friggin' stuff and it will make you more likely to be accepted on the spot!

NOTE: Please note that we work from our discord server in our development channels, sharing our work, talking to other members of the team, and holding documentation and whatnot, so it IS pretty much required to have a discord account and use it regularly enough, and be active when we need you.