Prometheus Wept

Hi-

Here's the Feb-Mar development log for Prometheus Wept, which focuses on the addition of act 1 mission 3, where you must negotiation a food shipment to ease the crisis in Sunny Pines. As always, feedback is welcome!



Key Points:
  • Act 1 Mission 3 is complete.
  • Act 1 Mission 4 is designed in depth, with an initial draft of the writing
  • Wolves have been enhanced with traits, and alpha wolves have a unique, activated skill
  • Temporary allies can now be killed and permanently removed from the game
  • Added a relationship system
  • Created final versions of Sunny Pines Militia and Rebel character models
  • Improved the code for saving characters, managing conversations,
 
Hi!

Below you will find the dev log for April 2022. I've made good progress on act 1 mission 4, where you must locate the missing Dr Kriesler by finding evidence, questioning people and searching for him. It's a big mission, which spans multiple locations and introduces two new outlaw gangs.

One of these gangs is the Blue Screen of Death Tribe. They believe the virus that wiped out all digital technology in the mid 21st century was a divine manifestation, which sought to free humanity from the shackles of technology.

How you handle act 1 mission 4 has numerous consequences. Whether or not you can locate Kriesler will have repercussions. You will also have to choose which of two factions to support, which will in turn decide which of two potential allies will join your party.



Key Points:

- 2 out of 3 maps required for this mission are complete
- 4 out of 10 character models have been created, optimised and made game ready
- Started second draft of writing
- Added 2 new outlaw gangs
- Spent a fair bit of time on unavoidable company admin work :/
- The company admin work is finished now :)

Thanks for reading / watching and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

All the best,

Daithi
 
Hi there,

I hope you're having a good day. It's taken longer than I'd hoped, but Act 1, Mission 4 of Prometheus Wept is complete. Here's the development video, and you'll find additional information below:



Act 1 Mission 4:
In Act 1 Mission4, you are charged with locating Dr. Kreisler, who has gone missing under unusual circumstances. You begin by visiting multiple locations in Sunny Pines, including Kriesler's house, to search for clues.

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Once you've narrowed down the search area with clues, you get a number of search attempts to locate the missing doctor. Along the way, you'll encounter a number of unusual gangs, who have formed as a result of bizarre misunderstandings about the pre-virus world.

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If you managed to find enough evidence, you will locate Kriesler. If not, Sunny Pines will have to do without him. Either way, you will encounter an usual entity with big plans for Sunny Pines, who will either join your party or serve as the primary antagonist of act 1, depending on your choices.

Release Schedule:
The intention is to release an updated demo for Kickstarter backers in the coming months, to participate in the Steam Next Festival in February, and to release on early access in Q1/2 2023.

Work on Illustrations:
All of the 40+ character illustrations have been improved, as have some dozens of the item illustrations.

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World Map:
Code to implement the world map has been added, as has a provisional map for act 1.

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That's all for now - sorry this update was delayed - I appreciate your patience and will check in again next month :) As always, feedback is welcome!

Talk soon!
Daithi
 
TheVigilante said:
Nah, I've been working on giving up my vices over the years :)
Click to expand...

Very good, non-committal answer. I sold my vices as I have given up on carpentry/joinery. I can't make Youtube videos at present as my old, workhorse computer died on me. I have booked a requiem mass and put a verse In the Liverpool Echo. I wasn't mourning, this morning I felt quite jolly; P
 
I'm very committed to non-committal answers. Hopefully your old PC made it to the great computer farm in the sky.
 
A very committed non-committal answer. I thought I knew you from YT mate. No problem as Daithi is a fairly common name in Ireland. Crack on. Best of luck.
 
I was wondering if you were fooling around, or if we'd met in the distant past - didn't consider the "we got the wrong guy" possibility :)
 
Hi again-

I've just completed the work for the current update. The focus has been on content, wrapping up the crafting system and adding shopkeepers. Feel free to check out the video / text info on the update, and do let me know if you have any feedback or comments.



Content: Weapons, Crafting Recipes & Perks

Eight weapons, around 30 crafting recipes and 15 perks have been added to the game, which more or less completes the content required for the updated demo.

My last game, Vigilantes had weapon tiers, and each new tier largely rendered the previous tier obsolete, or at least sub-optimal. This resulted in there being a handful of optimal weapon choices at any time. For Prometheus Wept, I'm aiming to make nearly all weapons viable for the entire game, and for weapons to have unique traits to differentiate them from one another.

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The cleaver provides greater bleeding damage, and additional damage against animals.

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Baseball bats do high damage, and additional damage when targetting an enemy's head.
A scattering of perks have been added to the game, and the perk UI has been updated. Where possible, I've made perks more deterministic, so for example, rather than a 20% chance of a free attack, every 6th attack costs no action points.

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Systems: Shopkeepers & Crafting

If you played Vigilantes, you may remember that there's a single, off-map shopkeeper in the game. Prometheus Wept requires multiple on-map shopkeepers, so I've added code to support this, to start the trade interaction, along with saving, loading and managing shopkeeper inventories. In Vigilantes, there were separate buy and sell screens for the shop and merged the old buy/sell interface into a single screen.

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I've also worked on crafting system, improving the display of information and adding the ability to upgrade weapons and armour, after they have been crafted. Some layout and visual adjustments aside, this wraps up one of the more complex systems in the game.

The main parts of work to be completed for an updated demo are balancing and testing, which I'll start working on next. I'll keep you posted on progress, and if you have any questions or feedback, let me know!

All the best,

Daithi
 
I got a bit concerned near the end. I thought the ' Trigger Happy' perk, on the 6th shot costs an OAP.
It took a minute or two to realise you never meant an old age pensioner, you meant 0 (zero) AP ;p
 
Do the dark gods dwell in care homes for the elderly? My great uncle Al died in a care home during ' The great cull of 2020'.
Hatt Mancock the ex Minister for Health now eats kangaroos' vaginas in the Australian jungle.
I would think his AP's are maxxed out.

RIP uncle Al Zheimer.
 
Early 2010's I was drunk a lot playing online poker. Not too drunk obviously. I was a fan of Brass Eye, Screenwipe and other satire but Black Mirror episodes I barely remember. I don't do Netflix but will look for Black Mirror on Youtube or somewhere. If Santa leaves money I will check out Vigilantes and stuff.
 
Hi again!

Good news! A provisional release of an updated windows demo is on Indie DB, will be available on Steam in the coming days, and will participate in the Steam Next Festival next week. Mac and Linux versions will be available in the near future. Here's a dev log covering the demo, which you'll also find in written form below.



Demo Link: https://www.indiedb.com/games/prometheuswept/downloads
Forum Link: http://timeslipsoftworks.com/forum/index.php

Can you help with feedback?
If you have time to try it out, I'd really like to hear what you think. You're welcome to reach out any way, on Kickstarter, Steam, the forums, or email. With development entering the phase of public releases, I'm going to get the Timeslip Softworks forums going again, please consider signing up if you're interested in helping with feedback and testing. Just remember to drop me a message with the email you signed up with, as I need to manually activate the accounts to stop bots flooding into the forums.

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The disappearances of the militia and the sudden migration to Sunny Pines. All the evidence points to this individual. Be they friend or foe?​

About the Demo:
The demo showcases around 50% of the first act. It's close to feature complete, with the notable exception of breaking down weapons into components. Content wise, the main questline is fairly polished, but there's not much to do outside that yet. You can expect the addition of smaller encounters and conversations to develop the world and the characters in later releases.

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The player team, kitted out with self crafted body armour and helmets.​

There's a scattering of weapons, items, crafting options and perks. There will be many more in the final game. I've completed multiple balancing passes and combat should be manageable on normal difficulty. Crafting and dialogue checks are less tuned, but if there's time before the Steam Festival, I'll have another look at these. I'm also in the process of negotiating more music for the game to improve the musical variety.

There were a couple of things I didn't get to, particularly improving automatic camera control, and some usability improvements, but it would be too high risk to try to deal with these now.

I look forward to hearing what you think!

All the best,
Daithi
 
I will help with feedback. PM me if you like. Is it just a demo you want feedback from, or a release?

Also your above post did not seem to show using the recent posts tab, I had to then find through Forums/General gaming ......., then from the list.
 
Hey William - thanks!

Yeah, any type of feedback on the demo. In the (very) short term, I'll only have time to work on more severe bugs, but longer term, I'll work on feedback on any area of the game. You're welcome to post here, or my email, which I'll PM to you.
 
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