☢ ATOM RPG ☢

[reev4eg]

# Update 6 (from Kickstarter)

Hey guys!

It's time for another update, and we'd just like to start off with how grateful we are for all the amazing support you have given to our project. Youtubers making first look videos, backers and fans helping us out on forums and social networks. We have strong belief that we will get what we need to finish the game quickly and without any setbacks.

Thank you for caring about our game, and spreading the word!

The last update was about our strech goals, but what about something that 100% will be in the final game? Well, the update we're going to share with you this week concerns the Battle System.

Here it goes!

COVER SYSTEM

Duck and cover! A shoot-out in the Wasteland is no fun, unless you can hide behind a derelict wall, or some general rubble. There will be two main types of cover (those you crouch behind, and full body coverage, like the aforementioned wall) each one with a special set of animations.




INJURY SYSTEM

Now critical hits are sure to sting for a long time… Both NPC and Player alike will now sustain long-term injuries under various conditions. Unhealed injuries will hinder your abilities according to their type. But isn't that a fair price to pay for maiming your enemies in all the creative ways you can possibly imagine?!



MORE ANIMATIONS

We are finally working on various animations we planned from the start. More realistic attacks, no more holding guns wrong, cover animations, general body language improvements and many more.

…And yes, for all you gore-hounds out there. ATOM will finally feature maiming. In the most explosive ways possible…

These three improvements to the game are our main concern for the following weeks.



Follow us in our accounts on social media, to watch these long awaited improvements come to life before your very eyes!

Thank you again for the support. Yours, ATOM TEAM!

Kickstarter!

 

[reev4eg]

Hey there guys! Long time without a new update and too much time without replies to your comments! Let me quickly make that problem go away...

First off, ATOM now has a new update!

Another cosmetic update for you this week! Tired of everyone having the same hairstyle?

Well, soon you won't have to think about it anymore! With things as they are, we can finally allow ourselves to spare some time on important details like beards, mustaches and buzz-cuts for the tough soviet working class men, and the most exquisite post-apocalyptic hairstyle fashions for the lovely ladies!

Every NPC gets a free make-over once this update hits! Even the random encounter people like raiders and bandits won't be forgotten - as they will now get random features! ATOM RPG: Flowing free like the facial hair of a road side vagabond!

By the way, we've been supported by the biggest Polish gaming Youtuber - Mr. Patryk Rojewski (search for ROJSON on YouTube)! A huge thanks to him! His insight and help to the project was no short of amazing!

And thanks to you All, guys! Indie games of our caliber live and die because of their players! So your heartfelt support of ATOM is much more valuable than anybody could possibly think!.. Having you all with us is a real privilege! Of all of our inspirations you guys are the main one!


Yours truly, AtomTeam!

 

[reev4eg]

Another great thing that happened this week is that Brian Fargo, the MAN himself, backed us and sent his support via twitter! We had a lot of famous and semi-famous people support us in the past, and we are grateful to each and every one of them... But getting praise from the person behind our favorite game series is something akin to getting your mind blown by a friggin' NUKE!

 

[reev4eg]

Oh, this game.

I'm all for new isometric RPGs, but this one to meet the similar complexity and fun of Fallout: Nevada and New Vegas, needs more work and polishing. And also stopping stripping down SPECIAL so much.

While we're not really aiming for NV (although it's an okay game IMO) we're really looking forward to reach the high levels of Fallout of Nevada. We need our baby to become the Van Buren Fallout fans got robbed of so unfortunately all those years ago. We'll do that by making a huge world with tons of interaction, unique dialogues and portraits for each NPC, and role-playing elements in each dialogue. Branches are going to be everywhere, so that the player could become the EXACT person he wanted to roleplay in his current gaming session. On SPECIAl. While that system is our main inspiration as you can see, we are going farther and farther from it with each new update. Combat and several skills work much more differently, the cover system and aiming are also our own proud achievements. We're not looking for blindly ripping off stuff we love. We're building upon it something of our own!

 

[reev4eg]

From the last video; That is the most Fallout looking game I've seen so far.
Gonna go ahead and download the demo and check it out for myself.

Since it is obviously going for a Fallout feel (to the point of ripping off Fallout's style completely (I don't mind, I like it actually)) I am going to criticize it as a kind of alternative Fallout successor. I'll edit this post later when I've tried out the demo.

[edit 1]

All right, so right off the bat? You really need a text-box for character creation that goes into what each stat does and what the skills are useful for as well. I have no idea how skill point gain will work throughout the game just yet but the ability to "tag" skills is something I miss from Fallout which I rarely see nowadays in cRPG's. They're like Major Skills which you can easily specialize in.

Loading a game is fast though, I like that.

Something I dislike is the idea of "minimalistic HUD", it just looks aesthetically displeasing when the screen is that empty in between the action box and the text box.

Why can't you show both weapon slots? Why do I have to click a button or the "b"-key to change it? I mean, it's not like there isn't enough room on the screen to show both weapon slots.

Why isn't there a character screen key? Why do I have to click the button for it in the top right corner?

Pet peeve of mine; I dislike "screen within a screen" when it comes to a character screen. I don't like it in other games and this ones no exception.

The text box should be something the player can extend in length so they don't need to scroll through it constantly.

Personally I think that the text for dialogue should be boldened and perhaps use a fatter font. When it is that thin it can be straining on the eyes.

[edit 2]

I don't know how far along the writing is in this game or how easy it would be to uh... Tweak... But this is something that would bother me greatly. Something that quite a lot of RPG's completely fail at and, well, unless some rewriting is done for this games dialogue it will fail at it too. And that is to give the player character a sense of personality. Most of the dialogue options are straight forward and boring. They have zero personality to them. Remember how you could be a dick who just want to see how far someone would go up in Modoc and get someone to cut off their own finger? Remember how you could bother Renesco with tales of your tribe? Those kind of dialogue options add a very specific element to the roleplaying experience and that is to define what your characters personality is like. It is about having human interaction with the NPC's around you. And this games dialogue... The NPC's got personality. But the player barely doesn't, very rarely does the game allow you to speak like a normal human being from what little I've experienced so far.

So what I'm getting at is that it is boring. The dialogue is boring. It doesn't matter how good the writing is on the NPC's side if the player character side is that of a wooden plank.

[edit 3]

I read a book and it said I gained an ability called rogueslang.perk or something, is there plans to add a perk window to the character screen or something? Cause I have no idea how to find the ability and see what it does.

Too tired for this at the moment, I'll bitch and moan about more stuff tomorrow.

Hey! A quick reply, just because we don't have a lot of time at the moment. First off, thanks a lot for playing! We value criticism a lot.
On HUD: See, there was this problem with us wanting to make a HUGE HUD, most of the first players we had wanting almost NO HUD, and our artists stopping at the middle ground It's a bit bulky, but not minimal, and seems to be comfortable for most. However, there may be options on resizing in the future. We're still driving on that road to completion, and a lot of stuff can pop out!

On dialogues - the style, the language quirks and typos are being worked on by a professional linguist we got recently. But the bland character dialogue options are there for a reason. We like to play with the idea of roleplaying a blank slate. Our guy's personality does not show itself, because we want the players to imagine their own personality in its place. Some options are bland just because of that - so that the player picks only the words, and not the attitude.
However in many dialogues you can still pick on people, cause fights, and even spit in the face of a tough bandit!

On perks - slang is one of the planned features, not even translated into English yet. Generally, there will be everything needed to display perks correctly. This is a beta after all It's going to look amazing!

 

[rogerdv]

Congratulations, keep that excellent work.

 

[The_Proletarian]

It's finally funded!

Maybe it's worthy of front page? You could lift all their stretch goals in a post.

 

[reev4eg]

Congratulations, keep that excellent work.

It's finally funded!

Maybe it's worthy of front page? You could lift all their stretch goals in a post.

Thank you so much, guys! We'll do our best and then some!

Becoming front page material would actually be a dream come true. You see, ever since we reached our planned goal of 15K we were in a shock of sorts... Not because we doubted our game at any moment, it's going to turn out amazing or we'll die trying. But we weren't expecting to reach the goal so fast because nobody basically knows about us. Sad but true, guys... Being your own PR agents is so much harder than it looked before we started!
So ANY and I mean any tiny bit of help with spreading the word about Atom to the masses is almost as helpful as a generous donation
And getting posted on the front page of such a well respected Fallout community would just DESTROY us with tremendous joy )

And speaking of stretch goals... We have a new one planned. This one - requested by a whole lot of our backers.

 

[The_Proletarian]

They've hit 30k and the stretch goal for female protagonist! I'm really glad they did because I always play as a woman for some reason (dunno why).

They've also hit 1000+ backers which means we'll get a unique weapon:

Next one up is at 40k and includes:

Another Large city - vast location to the East with about +50 new quests, up to +100 NPCs and activities!

There's only 31 hours left of the campaign so I doubt they'll make it but one could hope.

 

[The_Proletarian]

Funded at $33,521!

It's gonna be real interesting to follow the development from here on.

 

[0wing]

They've hit 30k and the stretch goal for female protagonist!

This late in development? Didn't the devs want to push ATOM to 2018? I guess the execution will be no better than such RPG powerhouses of today as Age of Decadence or Underrail in that regard. (i.e. the difference is cosmetic)
Can't expect harlot build of Fallout 2 fame working here.

 

[The_Proletarian]

This late in development? Didn't the devs want to push ATOM to 2018? I guess the execution will be no better than such RPG powerhouses of today as Age of Decadence or Underrail in that regard. (i.e. the difference is cosmetic)
Can't expect harlot build of Fallout 2 fame working here.

Did you read the kickstarter update about stretchgoals?

Stretch goal at $30.000: Female protagonist
It’s easy to make an automatic male to female protagonist transition, by changing “he” for “she” at specific places in each line of dialogue.

However, this is not what we have in mind. Role-playing characters of different genders should come with slightly different and sometimes even unique experiences and varied story telling. Different approaches to solving the same quest situations are also needed.

Our aim is to make certain NPCs react to male and female protagonists differently, say different things, act differently according to the gender the player picked at the beginning of the game.

This needs a complete overhaul of most dialogues in the game – a task which isn’t that easy, seeing how we already have 3000+ lines, and the game isn’t even finished, not by a long shot. However, with extra donations, it will become possible for our writer team to start working full-time to make it happen.

And when they reached the stretch goal they wrote this:

Thanks to you ATOM now have a female protagonist! Men and women both have an equal chance to try their luck in the wild and beautiful Wastes!

Both will face danger and challenges! Sometimes the same and sometimes quite different!..

Now you will have even more freedom to role-play as your preferred character! And that freedom is essential to a good RPG!

I think that answers your question quite well.

 

[Makta]

Added it to my follow and WL. Hopefully it won't end likte Krai Mira and just rot in my library. Looks interessting enough so far!

 

[lolpop109]

Holly shit this looks pretty epic !? I like the grapics

 

[The_Proletarian]

New kickstarter update for ATOM. Early-access is out october/november!

 

[MPPlantOfficial]

This game is really interesting however I'm immediately put off as soon as I start the game because the font in the dialogure box is so narrow that I have to squint my eyes. I hope it comes in bold letters soon.

 

[The_Proletarian]

New update out!

STATUS UPDATE #7

Hey, guys!
It's probably the last general update to keep you informed before the early access. Plus a couple of new screenshots!

Mysterious mines just wait to be explored!
We are proud to say, that we are closing in on a stable Early Access version. The bulk of the work has already been done, but there is still a lot of little things that urgently desire improvement.

You gotta survive somehow...
Our whole team is now dedicated to these finishing touches: we are adding new animations, sound effects, music, and items. As well as continuing the translation and spell-checking project for both the male and the female versions of the protagonist!

The part of a yet unfinished location.
We also have a small team of bugfixers looking in every nook and cranny of the game as well, so the early release would turn out as stable as possible. It's a hard job, but it is going rather smoothly.

Next week we will already feel safe enough to name a final release date in November.

Thank you for your lasting support and patience, and have a great weekend!

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I hope that this game will turn out well as I would really like to play a Fallout like PA RPG.

 

[The_Proletarian]

Yeah me too!

 

[The_Proletarian]

EARLY ACCESS - 28 NOVEMBER

Hey, guys!
We thought a lot about this and finally decided that the release date of the early access version will be 28 of November.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

First of all, we want Atom to work as stable as possible. It means that it shouldn't have any game crashing bugs, spikes in performance, and all of that nasty stuff! Will it be completely bug free? Probably not. But at least it should work as close to intended as possible!

Second, we want to revise the translation, add some necessary scenes that may occur because of your decisions in the game and also test them for possible bugs and inconsistencies.

Not to mention polishing all sort of smaller improvements to the game that we made for the past several months!

This deadline is solid and won't be moved forward no matter what!

So that's that! And now, back to work for us!

We wish you all a great weekend and as always, stay safe out there!

Post-Apocalyptic survival vehicles