Shelter video

Thanks :)

Most of the systems have been finished this year. We have one pending overhaul of quest+C&C system, to eliminate much of the redundant regression testing and expand it to what I perceive as real C&C - with no fake walls or randomly generated content involved.

Other than that, the rest of the systems just need to be tweaked and expanded, and we need to write an installer to work with existing Fallout: Tactics files. I know how to do that, it will just be ... work.

At some point we plan to start releasing alpha test demos. Similar to Fallout alpha demo, but in interations, taking feedback and implementing it into the next version.
 
Jump on the train

Sounds good. (goddamn Sulik)
A project as far-reaching as this has to go the distance.

If you need a hand testing or writing quests you know where to find me. Otherwise I'll be waiting for the day I get to play it!
 
shihonage, I always wondered, now it's good time to ask. What's going on in your avatar? I mean this shadow...?
 
Tactics still looks great to me - one of the best looking 2d games ever. Making it into a real RPG is like a dream come true.

The quest and the dialogue in this vid seems very simple (I guess its a placeholder), but good to see you have a working system

I understand its a huge undertaking, good luck guys! Удачи!
 
Cant wait for this to come out, looks pretty great.
Good luck guys, i really want to see this one done, so much potential.
 
Erny said:
Tactics still looks great to me - one of the best looking 2d games ever. Making it into a real RPG is like a dream come true.

The quest and the dialogue in this vid seems very simple (I guess its a placeholder), but good to see you have a working system

I understand its a huge undertaking, good luck guys! Удачи!
Click to expand...

I think tactic's graphics are a true improvement to original Fallouts' graphics. Seriously, even today FO:T looks...nice.
 
Thanks guys. Yeah the writing is placeholder, as the video says in the beginning, but we also don't believe in making inhabitants of Wasteland talk in strangely expressive and eloquent ways usually reserved for medieval RPG characters.

As for the shadow... the same shadows are present in the video. They're a bit misaligned at times, because, just like indoor reflective floors, they're a part of our engine. Tactics didn't have these things.
 
Gods of Olympus!

Say, which graphical/sound formats shall your engine use (except those used in FOT)? Also, is AA on sprites going to be supported like in FOT or not? What's with scripting, any info on that?

I really like that part with the "dynamic world" you're trying to implement (they fight, explore, rob etc). Aside from that, I wish the engine/game could be moddable to the bones...

Flip-flop-don't-stop.
 
Oh this is beyond awesome, is it going to be turn based?
Looked like action pause action when you shot the rat in the foot.
 
Thanks lisac2k, Viliny :)

lisac2k said:
Say, which graphical/sound formats shall your engine use (except those used in FOT)? Also, is AA on sprites going to be supported like in FOT or not? What's with scripting, any info on that?
Click to expand...

I believe you and I in particular had a long discussion on scripting a year ago. That didn't change... SSL (Shelter Script Language) is used for dialogue, quests, NPC reactions, various triggers, per-map NPC behavior scripting, and some other things. The combat menu is also SSL-based. SSL is a primitive programming language with AND/OR statements and condition evaluations that allows anything from opening doors to accessing stats to spawning/exchanging items to loading new maps.

Most sprites are loaded in .bmp format, sounds in .wav. Antialiasing is not a concern for us at this point.

Item stats are in text files as well.

I really like that part with the "dynamic world" you're trying to implement (they fight, explore, rob etc). Aside from that, I wish the engine/game could be moddable to the bones...
Click to expand...

It is certainly more moddable than Fallout1/2 and more "time-efficiently" as well.

And I'm not trying to implement the giant world... its already implemented. When I pull down the console screen there are messages about people fighting somewhere in the world all the time. I can leave it on for hours and they'll keep fighting and accumulating items from those that surrendered, littering landscape with corpses on the way.

Viliny said:
Is it going to be turn based?
Looked like action pause action when you shot the rat in the foot.
Click to expand...

I spent a long time on this. Implementing turn-based combat turned out to be extremely problematic when you remove Fallout's isolated, controlled environments and make the entire world ONE space.

Threat management becomes a nightmare, deciding who should be included in combat and who not. Some easy solutions may pop up into your head when you think about this, but they're deceiving. I spent months trying to make it work consistently before finally settling on a different mode.

It is PwRT. Not RTwP. RTwP has a glaring problem. It by default relies on player twitch reflexes, and then player "pauses" to do "precision management" and what not. It's kind of lame.

Our mode harkens back to Rogue. Whenever you do something meaningful, such as use an item, shoot, move, reload, the world comes alive until your animation cycle completes. When you don't do anything, it is frozen.

This way you're NEVER required to have twitch reflexes, and we have some mechanics in place to compensate for having multiple people attack you simultaneously. I.E. when you run, you develop increasing inertia (tracking "bionic man" silhouette effects appear behind you), and people's chances to hit you start to drop. High inertia also lets you knock people unconscious.
 
This... brings a tear to my eye. You returned my faith in gaming friend... May joy and happiness never leave your side. :clap:
 
PwRT sounds good, however...

shihonage said:
And I'm not trying to implement the giant world... its already implemented. When I pull down the console screen there are messages about people fighting somewhere in the world all the time. I can leave it on for hours and they'll keep fighting and accumulating items from those that surrendered, littering landscape with corpses on the way.
Click to expand...

Have you run into issues with the world depopulating before you get to certain areas because of the dynamic nature? Quest NPCs being killed off by raiders, that sort of thing? Also, the giant rats in the earlygame, once you kill them, is that it, you'll never run into a giant rat in that area again?
 
Our storyline/setting takes care of the depopulation problem when it comes to critters.

Soon we'll finish polishing it and put it up on the page.

As for "human" depopulation, the goal is just to stay close to "reality". The same reasons for which a person would survive in a "real" wasteland will keep an NPC alive in this wasteland. They're not 100% safe. No one ever is. But some are safer than others.
 
Ah, i get what you mean by turn based being tricky... everyone needs a turn and to determine who's included sounds like something that could really be a headache...


Well i hope it's fun to play and has decent amounts of content :)

Looks great!
 
Shihonage the idea of a consistent living world sounds great. in theory. But in a game only the things that player knows about matter. All this simulation is worth it when player can see it in action. And if it messes up with an important part of the game it might even seem like an odd bug - finding an NPC dead for unknown reason (similar to Fo3 NPCs falling to death in Megaton).

Its a matter of balance ofcourse. You could have a system like a radio or "spoken word" info that would inform the player of important off-screen events.
And avoid things like in Stalker - where endlessly spawning bandits would walk towards some building to fight endlessly spawning stalkers there :)
 
Any system that at some point seemed new and untried was that way because nobody took care to properly maximize its payoffs and minimize its drawbacks.

The live world system is no exception to this rule. It offers a number of advantages which will become evident later.

As for the finding an NPC dead... it's only disastrous when you think about it within the accepted constraints of existing RPG mechanics. Shelter is not limited by those.
 
Ok that combat system sounds awesome! I get what you mean about how, in an open world, it is hard to distinguish the combatants (think Den with addicts). What other games use PwRT? It sounds like a really nice system.
 
Rogue is a very good analogy for PwRT, as are any rouguelikes (nethack, etc). Basically the world is static until you act. You move, attack, cast a spell, whatever, the rest of the world goes at the same time, then it all pauses again until you act again. If you act fast enough the game seems like real-time, but you're never dying because you couldn't react to something in time.
 
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