The Road to U10
Author: The Baron,
published 3 years ago,
Hello folks, The Baron here with another little bit of Dungeons news, and some updates on what KospY and the team have been working on as we enter the endgame stages for U10 release.
The biggest activity around here has been coding work, arguably the most important work but makes for the least exciting news! This is the kind of stuff like optimization, performance fixes, and bug-fixing whack-a-mole.
However one exciting breakthrough has been another major optimization that gives a good performance boost, where only engaged enemies with the player will count towards physics strain. This change should be imperceptible, but will allow more NPC on screen, something that a lot of player should like, as well as modders ːsteamhappyː
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/c00811b0fac14bb9caa922ada670b8986c8933fd.jpg[/img]
Dungeons work continues and we are finalizing the rooms we have for U10. As mentioned in the last news, there won't be as many rooms in the U10 build as we intend for the final game. We were hoping that by 1.0 release we will have double or even triple the amount of rooms that are included in U10, as well as adding more content in them for the incoming progression mode in U11/12 (interactable stuff, loot, etc...). We are actively adding to the Warpfrog team to help with this workload.
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/d185ffb79cbe24dd7a729413bb62855c3bd050c6.jpg[/img]
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/8878a56febac1494d181f2196da0425ab12503d3.jpg[/img]
It's nice to finally be able to show off some pictures, because some people were apprehensive that "Dungeons" would mean boring underground corridors upon corridors, but that's definitely not the case, the Dungeons rooms are hand-crafted and even include some outdoor "rooms" (albeit enclosed areas).
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/31bac9c19d684d3919de685be4aa8a677247b7bb.jpg[/img]
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/349f9bea7c3457d94766bd94330e8ec70758ee25.jpg[/img]
There is also a mix of castle-like indoor structure and cave systems (also hand-crafted). The intended goal here was to give the player a sense that they are really exploring some old ruin and grounds that sprawls over an area as opposed to feeling like a self-contained indoor location. A pretty far departure from the familiar B&S arena type gameplay, but we want it to feel like an adventure!
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/ced0cbfcc7ba32b63d76a55082ee07c8357b13b9.jpg[/img]
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//33834682/dd02b99d210b6b6532c2238fac2ab5047ce9af2f.jpg[/img]
Dungeon enemies are still being tweaked and worked on; we are getting there, but don't expect any crazy AI for now as we still have much to do to make them react realistically to all the interactions a VR player could do in B&S (telekinesis, spells, touching etc...).
Stealth is possible, but as we said in a previous news, don't expect any level of polish of a stealth-focused game, (especially in U10!) as the main focus will remain fighting.
On this point, we did some improvement to combat, and you should sense an increased difficulty in hard mode, as AI dodge more often, have some new attack animations, and finally have learned how to hit you better. ːsteamdeadpanː
Dungeons will have 3 difficulty levels to choose from, with the easy mode being closer to the difficulty of the current AI difficulty of U9.
We still don't have a release date for U10 but we will surely release a trailer for it, so you will know as soon as we know.
So with that, I'll wrap up here for the day and leave you with a little patented Baron Sneak Peek. Cheers!
[previewyoutube=uqBb-PxKNYc;full][/previewyoutube]