City 17: Episode One MOTY Update | Day Eight & Nine news

Weapon Additions & Addons

We've been back and forth about what kind of new gameplay mechanics we'd like to have, and mainly, what would actually fit into the cannon of both Half-Life 2 and something that could possibly exist within the time line. Considering the game is about Rebels, it made the most sense to exploit what the Resistance does best: Create makeshift junk.

Our main goal with introducing new gameplay mechanics was to make sure they were obviously fun, but that they at least require some form of strategy behind them, as well as serverd a story purpose if possible. First on the list of those new mechanics are new ammo types.

Gas Cans & Incendiary Grenades - Mod DB

Fire Grenades:

• Do slightly less damage than normal grenades
• Have a 30% chance to set targets on fire (i.e play the fire animation, and they instantly die)

Fire/incindiairy Rounds:

• Do slightly more damage versus standard bullets
• Have a 4% chance per bullet to set targets on fire
• explosive objects take less bullets to be set off/exploded

Incendiary rounds are among the first weapon mod's we're introducing. Fire rounds (as we call them) are a rare find in the world. Fire rounds are often hidden in areas off the main linear track, so exploring is vastly rewarded. Fire rounds can also be found at rebel checkpoints along the journey, areas that were Resistance bases previously, but left behind due to the impending Citadel Collapse. These areas often have a nice amount of goodies, accompanied by puzzles that hide the real stache. Fire rounds are stored in a jar, where that jar (based on how full it is) defines the amount of fire rounds you can create.

Weapons with a higher damage ouput such as the shotgun require you to spend more of the jars substance in order to make fire shells. This system is entirely control via a inventory system in-game described below.

Rebel Turret - Mod DB

Another aspect of gameplay we've been toying around with are what the rebels create outside of the traditional things the player has already seen in Hlaf Life 2 and it's episodes. For one, city17 has a lot of rebel traps, including a bunch we'd like to show you, but we can't! Because that would really spoil some cool moments.

One such creation that we would like to show today is a revamped, or rather, a reworked combine mounted turret with SMG's mounted to a triggering system. This laugh of a creation comes on silly at first, but the raw firepower it contains is intense. Targets close range are shred to pieces. This turret has a much higher damage output versus the mounted combine turret (considering it has two extra guns attached) but has a much higher spread angle, thus being not so useful for long range targets.

There are plenty more variations of turrets, such as shotgun and ar2 turrets, and a few others we don't want to talk about just yet that you'll encounter throughout city17.

Inventory System

HOW DO I HOLD ALL THIS STUFF

The inventory system is an experimental thing we've been playing around with. We've certainly got some ideas on what we'd like to use it for beside just new ammo types, and storing some of your stuff, but we wanted to get an idea of what the fans think about using an inventory system, versus vanilla HL2 inventory, so please leave us comments below. The inventory system we plan on implementing works like this:

• The player can only carry so many weapons. 4 max. Weapons like the pistol will be instantly replaced by a magnum for instance, same with smg to an AR2. Weapons like crossbow and RPG are additive weapons, meaning you always have room for the, but can only hold one of them.
• Grenades and extra explosives don't count as part of the weapon carry limit
• Because of this system, you can carry more extra ammo overall for your weapons, including more grenades, and smg secondary grenades.
• Health Kits and health vials when picked up (and at full health) will be stored into your iventory, where you can then use them later when you want, or even give them to rebels (aka tossing them in front of you). There is a max amount of extra health kits you can carry: 2. Same for vials.
• The inventory system acts similair to that of Resident Evil, in the sense that you can combine weapon upgrades onto your primairy weapons. You might find upgrades in the world such as better grip, large clips sizes, etc. Through the inventory system you can combine fire ammo onto extra clips, that way you choose what you want to apply it onto, versus atomatically using fire rounds on the weapon you have out when you find the fire jar pickup.

Overall the inventory system is a reworking of Gordons HEV suit. We're still not entirely sure why Gordon was able to carry as many weapons as he did phsyically, but we didn't want to limit the actual gun play. Having a lot of weapons aviailibe to the player is cool, but sometimes players would rather use better weapons anyways, such as an ar2 over an smg.

With the inventory system, for example, you could store more ar2 ammo, and then replace your smg with an ar2 when you find one. The trade off being you no longer have smg grenades at your disposal, but instead use AR2 balls. The added ability to carry more maximum ammo helps balance out missing a weapon.

So it's one or the other, not both. We feel this will add a nice bit of strategy while playing the game, and that it feels a little more true to the idea of Rebels realistically having pockets that could actually hold way more ammo.

Lastly, Rebel zombies will also try and limp away as fast as possible from grenades dropped/thrown by the player, or normal Zombine. As previously mentioned we wanted to get your guys thoughts on this system, and whether you guys feel we should have an inventory system control the weapons you carry, or instead just use it for everything but weapons (just ammo and upgrades), or not at all.

Gameplay Demo

WHOAH HOW DID THIS GET HERE

We've saved some of our best media for last!

Gameplay | The Garage - Mod DB

That's it for today. More gameplay follows tomorrow all the way to Day Ten, including gameplay videos and other secret stuff we can't reveal yet! Follow us on Twitter for updates on what's going on in development, as well as our blog for City 17 and other development news from us. If you'd like to get in contact with us or leave us suggestions, be sure to email us at: mrtwovideocards@gmail.com.