Prometheus Wept

[TheVigilante]

Hi there,

I hope you're doing well! I've finally wrapped up “Whispers of the Old World” in which you investigate a mysterious old world bunker, and run afoul of its guardian, Hec8. Here's a brief development video covering recent work on the game, and more information can be found below.



The Mission:
Whispers of the Old World is a more story focused mission, with a number of routes through a hostile environment controlled by a deranged artificial intelligence. As such, there's a ton of scripted events, and a boss fight which can be approached in a number of ways. These two factors accounted for the majority of the time spent working on the game.

The Boss:
To defeat Hec8, you can either face it solo in cyberspace, while your allies protect you in the physical world, or overcome the automated security, and destroy the servers on which it resides. You can also opt for a simultaneous attack on both fronts. The battles on the cyberspace and physical layers are interconnected, so if you destroy a server, it affects Hec8 and any automated security, while damage to Hec8 debuffs automated security.

I wanted to avoid the boss battle being determined by the character with the highest stats, so Hec8 goes through a number of phases of attack, utilising special abilities which can be countered with your own cyberspace scripts.


Script Lab:
To make this work, I added an interface, much like the crafting screen, which allows you to create and upgrade cyberspace abilities using the software engineering skill. The file size of the scripts increases as you develop better versions of them, and the number of scripts you can load is determined by the amount of RAM in your data warfare suite.

Combat Drones:
Combat Drones have been added to supplement the static defenses provided by sentry guns. These are hard hitting units, which hover, and are thus unaffected by any tile affects, such as fire.

What's Next?
I'm currently working on the food convoy mission. This is the first mission which can be played from two sides, that is, supporting either the rebels or the militia. It's likely to take longer than a regular missions but it's unlikely to be as time consuming as Whispers of the Old World.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions, or share your thoughts on the game. Have a good day!

 

[TheVigilante]

Hi again!

I’ve wrapped up the food convoy mission, as played from the militia side. This mission puts you in charge of a small unit of Sunny Pines militia tasked with transporting a desperately needed food shipment to Sunny Pines. Below, you will find a brief summary and a dev video, should you want more details.

The Mission:
Aware of a hostile group are trying to overthrow the leadership of Sunny Pines, and running out of food, you are tasked with escorting the food convoy from Rawlston Farm to Sunny Pines. This is a combat focused mission, with three battles. The first battle introduces the vehicle escort mission type, while the latter two focus on modifying the battlefield to your advantage (through destroying bridges, placing sandbags or mines) to better defend a stationary truck from attacks.

Early Access Release:

I’ve tried increasing my working hours over the past two months, to see if it would be possible to release before the end of the year. Unfortunately, no matter how many hours I throw at it, it just won’t be possible. If you’ve been patiently waiting on the game, I’m sorry to disappoint you. My expectation is to release around Apr - May of 2024, which is further explained in the video.

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

All the best,
Daithi

 

[TheVigilante]

Hello again!

I've wrapped up the rebel side of the food convoy mission. Here, you will ambush and attempt to capture a food convoy destined for Sunny Pines. Below, you'll find the dev log in video and text format.



The Mission:
This scenario is comprised of three battles. In the first, assisted by rebels, you must halt the convoy and incapacitate as many guards as possible before it flees the map. You can carry out a variety of beneficial actions, such as chopping down a tree onto the convoy's path to occupy some of the guards in clearing it, or making caltrops to slow the truck. Any guards not incapacitated will join the defenders of the next encounter.

Using Time Units to chop down a tree in the convoy's path will force some of the escorts to focus on clearing it, rather than on you.

The second battle tasks you with assaulting an entrenched enemy at the militia outpost the convoy has retreated to. You will be joined by Gordina, the awakened, old world postal robot, who is a skilled tactician and very durable, but cannot be repaired in combat. The defenders have destroyed the bridge and your options will include searching for traps, building pontoon bridges to de-risk the river crossing, and sneaking some troops across the river bed.

Having an awakened old world postal robot on your side isn't going to hurt!

The militia have more firearms, but you have access to an off-map smoke launcher, which can deploy smoke at no cost, once per turn. After defeating the militia, your departure will be interrupted by a final attack, where you will lose the convoy if defeated. Failing to capture the convoy, or losing it will have a substantial impact on the act finale.

You have a number of options at your disposal to crack the militia outpost's defenses!

Additions:
From the start, I've operated on the belief that gameplay variety is one way to elevate the game experience. To facilitate continual gameplay variation, minor and major, a number of new features have been added.

The convoy type mission, which can be played as escort and ambusher is the most significant addition. These missions appear occasionally through the game, and will play a significant role in act 2. Changes to AI behaviour were required for computer controlled characters to balance maintaining a distance to the convoy and attacking.

The convoy's militia are much better equipped than your rebel troops

Time Units, a resource which allows you to manipulate the battlefield in your favour were also introduced. This facilitates a series of choices, rather than a single choice, being made to shape the upcoming combat, and greatly improves tactical depth. Some of the choices available in the convoy missions include blocking the convoy with an obstruction, destroying bridges, creating them, placing sandbags, placing traps and detecting them.

There are now two ways to deploy your troops prior to combat. When you have map control, dialogue options may allow you to move your characters X number of tiles before combat begins. In cases where you lack map control, or are preparing an ambush, you can use skills to unlock new tiles to deploy to – for example, by using lockpicking to gain access to a building, you can open up more advantageous deployment slots for your troops.

These recent additions all contribute to a deeper bag of tricks I can use to improve gameplay variety. It's a time consuming approach... hopefully the results will merit the effort That's it for this dev log. I'm going to start working on the finale for act 1, and worldbuilding, and will check in again in the near future. Thanks for reading/watching, and if you have any questions or comments, do let me know!

 

[TheVigilante]

Hi again,

I hope you're doing well! Work is well underway for the finale of act 1, in which you must side with Sunny Pine's Militia, or the rebels, to determine the future of Sunny Pines. Before the fighting starts, you can enhance your faction with recruitment, crafting or purchasing better equipment, acts of sabotage and more. If you'd like to be among the first to try out Prometheus Wept, you can wishlist it on Steam.

New Map Added: Homestead Heights
I've added the last of the five districts of Sunny Pines, Homestead Heights. This is the seat of manufacturing in Sunny Pines. It houses most of the worker population and the Shaded Pine, the local pub. It's a little depopulated at the moment, but you can get the idea.

Developing Prometheus Wept the way I envisioned it has proved more difficult and time consuming than imagined, so thank you for all your patience and support. There are times in development when the hill feels more steep and the rock, heavier, but that's a passing thing. Thankfully, an early access release, which will be great for motivation, isn't too far away.

Development will slow down, but not stop over Christmas, and I'll check in again around the end of January. On that note, I'd like to wish you a nice time over the Christmas holiday

All the best,

Daithi

 

[TheVigilante]

TLDR: The militia pre-finale is complete, and includes an optional combat mission which takes place on a new map, against new enemies. You can wishlist or find out more about Prometheus Wept on Steam.



Hello, and welcome to the January dev log for Prometheus Wept. I’ve wrapped up the militia pre-finale, where you will prime Sunny Pine’s militia for confrontation with the rebels. This includes improving the militia’s equipment through trade and crafting, recruiting new members, improving morale.

In the militia pre-finale, you must decide how to best allocate your faction’s cash and time.

You can also attempt to convince the mayor to print extra currency to be used in the war effort, or follow up on intel received about a rebels arms deal, in an optional combat-focused encounter. Doing so will briefly bring you in contact with one of the main factions of act 2. Each faction has preferences for the weapons they use, so there is an opportunity to get your hands on some new items here.

Attack, approach, sneak or observe. The choice is yours.

This encounter required a new map, which has been completed and is the final map for act 1. There are a number of options for handling the encounter, such as observing the group, approaching them, or attacking. If you approach them, you will discover that their goal is to deliver a crate of merchandise to you, which raises further questions on what exactly is going on.

Up Next: Militia Finale & Minor encounters
Moving on to what’s coming next. The focus for the next number of weeks will be two-fold. Firstly, I’ll be working on the series of combat focused encounters which make up the militia finale. It’s a fairly big piece of work, likely in the ballpark of 6 weeks. Second, I’m going to start addressing what I see as Prometheus Wept’s biggest current weakness, namely, a lack of things to do outside the main questline. The goal here isn’t to add large side-quests, but rather to focus on getting a decent number of smaller encounters, which breathes life into the world, and develops the characters.

That’s it for now, thank you for watching/reading. I’ll check back in next month, and if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I’d be happy to hear from you!

 

[TheVigilante]

Hi there-

Daithi here. I hope you're doing well! I've just wrapped up the militia finale – that's all the encounters designed, written, implemented and debugged across the five maps the finale can play out over. While working on the finale, I added code to:

- Allow AI characters to target objects
- Allow AI characters to spend AP activating objects
- Improve trap mechanics
- Equip a faction's troops

Olga's artwork for con man and sociopath, Ferdia Beckett. (Unfortunately, he's on your team!)​

Debugging these additions ate a fair bit of time, so I'd expect the rebel finale will be quicker to complete. The focus for the next couple of months will be the rebel finale, along with making the maps more interesting with small encounters and loot. Then it'll finally be early access time.

You can find more a more detailed outline of recent developments in the below video, or continue reading for the short version.



Artwork:
Olga has been working on illustrations for key characters and has completed the artwork for Markus Tiber, Sheriff of Sunny Pines, and sociopath/con man, Ferdia Beckett.

Olga's artwork for Markus Tiber, Sheriff of Sunny Pines. Depending on your choices Tiber can be a key ally, or an enemy.​

Militia Finale:
- The finale starts after completing recruitment, crafting and purchasing of equipment for the militia.
- Sunny Pines comes under attack by a substantial rebel force, which will attack different districts with different attacks, including a head on attack of the main gates, encouraging rioting, attacking infrastructure, and more.
- If you are defeated in any fight, you regroup with what remains of the leadership and militia for a last ditch defence. If you win this battle, you'll push back the rebels and will launch an attack on their HQ. If you lose the battle, Sunny Pines will fall under rebel control and you'll move on to act 2.

Almost there I'll check back in some time in June.

Until then, all the best, and if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please let me know!

Daithi

 

[TheVigilante]

Hello, I hope you're doing well!

TLDR: The rebel finale is complete, and an early access release before the end of the year is likely, but not definite. If you'd like further details, check out the below video or text.





Rebel Finale Complete:
I've just wrapped up the rebel finale. Your goal is to capture Sunny Pines, and the conflict plays out over up to 6 maps. If you're defeated while attacking any of the five districts of Sunny Pines, you'll have to defend the rebel base from a militia counter-attack. If you win, you can continue to fight, but if you lose, Sunny Pines retains its existing leadership and you proceed to act 2.

The rebels start out as the underdog. They are less numerous, less well equipped, and most have no combat experience. Your party size expands at this point, increased by a % of the rebels you've recruited, while the remaining rebels will replace losses, secure captured districts, and defend the rebel base.

You can capitalise on civic discontent to mobilise rioters against the militia​

Capturing sectors often provide a benefit, like an increase to party size, or seized equipment. The current gameplay for act 1 ends after the final battle. I would've liked to add the epilogue, but doing so would greatly reduce the probability of a release this year.

Early Access Release Update:
There's a fairly good chance of an early access release for Prometheus Wept this year. I've taken very few days off, to boost the chances of being ready in time.

Typically, it's a bad idea to release in the wake of a major Steam sale event, or too late in the year, as getting coverage will be more difficult. The coverage issue is likely less relevant, as Prometheus Wept isn't going to get a ton of coverage anyway. Also, if time is tight, I can buy a week or two by just releasing the windows version to start, and following up with the Mac and Linux versions shortly after release.

Yeah, you might want to move...​

Moving on to what needs to be done. The good news is that every encounter in the game has been tested, so the majority of the testing work's complete. There are, of course, any number of areas which could be worked on, but I'm going to concentrate on two. The first is balancing, particularly the combat, economy and character leveling. The second is to add some smaller encounters to flesh out the setting and characters.

All the best,

Daithi