DL-020 ∞ Keybindings, ATD, scanning mode, intro cinematic
Hello friends,
It has been a very productive July. I lied in the last devlog, and ended up completing keyboard + mouse customizable keybindings early this month. Controller support still isn’t started, but I’d love to get it done in time for the closed pre-alpha playtest. A lot of my efforts lately have been making everything ready for the playtest, lots of system polish is happening between new features.
On the new feature front, Active Time Dilation and Scanning Mode are alpha complete. I’m very excited about these features and I wasn’t sure I was going to get them in for pre-alpha. I managed to get multiple heavy work sessions in this month, but also spent a lot of time and effort up front researching and planning the right implementation for these features. Also, I think all my time daydreaming about INURBIS counts as development time. Put that way, it’s practically a full time project. Okay, maybe not really. I am on the daily crushed by my day job doing EXTREME PROGRAMMING (help)!
Active Time Dilation is a fun mechanic. In INURBIS, time dilation is practically an elemental force in The City at the End of Time, and an important factor for the setting, lore, story, and gameplay. Nature has been all but replaced as the primary scaffolding of life, but it would be valid to say that time’s ebb and flow waxes and wanes “naturally”. What this means in game mechanics is that time dilation can occur for many reasons, triggered by the world, player, enemies, or even by CHROMBUS.
All of which adds a lot of complexity to programming a solid implementation. Every call to the ATD system passes in variables governing how the player experiences that specific instance of time dilation. This means that the cloneling can “ride along” with the time dilation, moving at their normal pace while the world is slowed, and vice versa. This also means that time dilation can occur at any time, meaning I needed to build in a system that could handle multiple concurrent time dilation requests. This works by using a hybrid multi-layered priority and queue system.
The cloneling is equipped with a Active Time Dilation sensor (seen in the top of the screen while the scanner is active in below video) communicating to the player when the flow of time is interrupted against the player’s local temporal resolution. That is to say a nice little widget pops up on the screen notifying the USER when the tides of time have become choppy.
The largest use case for active time dilation is the newly added Scanning Mode. I am still building the components of the game using an MVP strategy, so with that in mind scanning mode is setting up a few future features as well as providing the player with information on INURBIS, specifically devices, enemies, and objects. This was… surprisingly fun to develop, especially the entity selection logic. For an overview of how I’m thinking about scanning mode, you should reference things like V.A.T.S. / Pip-Boy from the Fallout series, and the ATB system from Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Entering scanning mode switches the input to something resembling a desktop computer, though the player can still move, jump etc. The entire diegetic player character menu system will be built on top of Scanning Mode, with applications like managing your cloneling’s loadout, viewing their stats, configuring upgrades. In the near future, expect some of the next abilities in the game specifically made to be used from scanning mode.
I want to leverage ATD and Scanning Mode in a few ways against the larger game design. V.A.T.S. did something very cool in regards to helping players who maybe feel they aren’t the best at first person shooters to play a character who is very good at shooting. Similarly, I hope that players will leverage ATD / Scanning as a very powerful tool to help them slow down and think tactically about how to navigate difficult situations.
The player can attack from scanning mode, and currently there are no limits to how long the player can stay in scanning mode - however the player’s ENRG reserves do not recharge any faster while time is dilated, meaning that the core number of actions the player can take is still limited by their cloneling’s stats / loadout.
My working plan is to balance the game around creating what are difficult encounters that are made easier with ATD for players that want to slow down and consider options in what is ultimately moving the game towards a hybrid action “turn based” design, wherein “turns” represent the number of actions your character can take per X unit of time. It’s my hope that this will increase accessibility to the game, coming from someone who has a lot of neurological health issues which are slowly making games harder and harder to play!
I may add costs and consequences to the cloneling when using scanning mode in the future, such as increasing the cloneling’s stress the longer scanning mode is active. I think this fits the setting well, as ultimately processing the increased amounts of data during dilated time should put stress on the cloneling’s hybrid computer brain module. I’m working towards making all the elements diegetically cohesive, the story requires it.
As always, everything shown is work in progress, subject to change. I probably will not release the intro cinematic in it’s entirety or finished form in devlogs etc. I really need to get better at waiting to show things lol
I’ve also started work in earnest on the intro cinematic. I’m really excited for this, working with pr4nta again who also helped design and animate CHROMBUS! (There are many CHROMBUS animations) We’ve got the first pass / proof of concept scene fully animated in 2.5d.
I’m very excited for this and will do my best to get it done for the playtest. This cinematic establishes some historical events of significance to the main quest of the game! You may also note that this cutscene is in pixel art? I hope some players will consider why some elements are in pixel art while the game world exists in 3D (puzzle box narrative incoming).
Thanks for reading, see you next month!
HHRRIISSTT
