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91

Development Log / Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 16, 2014, 11:15:46 am »

Hey guys, the new version has been released. It's available now on Steam, soon to be available on Desura, GamersGate and Groupees. For a preview of what's new you can check out this and past four dev logs.









You will now be able to travel a bit through Lower Underrail, either on foot or by train, and explore the town of Rail Crossing and the surrounding areas and face new types of enemies. The main story of the game starts in earnest with this patch, but I'm not going to spoil anything regarding that in this log .

I also did a lot of polishing of existing game mechanics and added some new ones, as well as did a fair amount of economical re-balancing. After these couple days of internal testing I feel quite content where we're at now in that regard and while there surely be some more tweaking done in the future, I don't expect to do any major work on the existing mechanics in the future. With the future patches we will mostly be focusing on adding more content at a faster rate, which will as always include more areas, quests, enemies, items, feats, etc.

Anyway, have fun guys and let us know what you thought of the changes and the new stuff. Cheers.

92

Development Log / Dev Log #26: Alternative Experience System

« on: January 12, 2014, 02:34:25 pm »

The new version is complete and the build is running as I type this. Tomorrow we'll be starting the internal testing so you can expect the new patch to go live sometime next week. In the meantime, I want to present you with an alternative experience system I implemented and the reasoning behind it.



Before we even begin I want to make it clear that, even though I consider the new system to be the "default" way to play the game, the old system is still available for those who prefer it. Upon starting a new game you will be able to choose which experience system you want to use and you can also choose between easy and normal difficulty. On easy difficulty player character will have twice the health and the healing consumables will heal for twice as much and have a lower cooldown.

With this change, I'm only trying to re-balance the experience economy and not anything else regarding the character progression. The experience economy concerns the way the player gain experience and how does that affect his character build and play-style.

Since the early development phase of the game I was set on the game utilizing this old-school linear level/skill progression system. I'm fond of this kind of system and I had a pretty good idea how I would handle various combat calculations within it. What I never liked about it, though, is how the games that implement it handle experience gains. The problem is similar to that presented in the previous dev log in regards to the trading economy. Most of experience you gain by completing quests and killing enemies. So in order to get as much XP as possible and progress through levels as fast as possible, the player is encouraged to resolve most situations by combat. With Underrail being a challenging game as it is, there exists a very real need for the player to maximize their power level at any stage of the game.

One of tweaks I did in the past of ease this up a bit was to increase the XP gain from quests and reduce the XP gain from kills. It did help a bit, but in a game which involves a lot of combat you'd really have to go to the extremes when shifting the XP gains (from kills to quests) before they actually change the nature of level progression. Otherwise, it will still be heavily based on XP from kills, you'll just slow the progression down. You could go to one extreme and say, let's only award XP for quest completion. This is one way to go about it, and certainly some games have utilized this or something similar. I personally I don't like, though. I find it a mostly boring and non-dynamic way to progress and it also encourages you to complete as many quests as possible, instead of just those you want. In my opinion, you should only have to do quests that progress the story (or alter the game world) in the way you want or have other in-game rewards you desire, and not because it's the only way to become more powerful. For me, playing RPGs is about making choices based on preferences. Anything that limits this is bad.

* * * * *

What I wanted to do is reward player with experience for exploring Underrail, fighting new types of creatures (as opposed to farming easy ones) and just generally discovering and experiences more of the game world. Without them having to make optimal combat builds or finish the quest branch that gives the most experience.



The way the new experience system works is you only get experience from collecting and studying "oddity" items. These items are scattered throughout Underrail, mostly at points of interest. Some of them are gained by killing critters and other specific types of enemies, but since each oddity item can be studied a limited number of times, you can only farm XP from a single creature type to a certain point. Also, there are generally more instances of an oddity item type placed than you need, so you don't have to have 100% exploration score to get them all. Though, some of them will be unique and only awarded for discovering special areas or defeating bosses.

The main purpose of this system is to allow players to level at a similar rate regardless of what their build and play-style is. Going through the world stealthily, guns blazing (or in some cases diplomatically) or anything in between should now earn you similar amount of experience. People who build their characters better to their respective play styles will still naturally have an easier time and be able to venture to more dangerous areas. They will still do better than those who are still getting the hang of the game - the purpose of this is not to make the game easier, just more inclusive for different play-styles.

For those who like to race ahead of the difficulty curve and like to visit higher level areas early to amass experience quickly, let me assure you that the purpose of this system is not to prevent that either. Higher level areas will hold oddity items that give more experience, so skipping ahead to those will still accelerate your leveling, though admittedly not as much as the previous system.

* * * * *

So, in any case, the new update is coming soon and you'll all be able to check out all these major changes and let me know how it's working out for you. Our focus in the months to come will remain on providing more content to the game and less so on new mechanics, but I am still dedicated to making this game as mechanically and economically sound as possible, as I feel this is just as important.

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Development Log / Dev Log #25: Game Economy Changes

« on: December 24, 2013, 11:08:16 am »

The level design is mostly complete for the new areas, but there's still some scripting and lots of dialog to be done, so it'll be a couple more weeks. Alongside working on the new content, I'm also doing major re-balancing of some game mechanics in order to improve the game economy, both in monetary sense and in other aspects. I'm going to talk about the former now and we'll leave the latter for another dev log.



The first big change I made is I limited the type and amount of goods merchants are willing to buy from you. Merchants will now only buy certain type of goods depending on what their store deals in and they will require only a certain amount of each, with exception of certain goods they will always be looking to buy (such as bullets for example). The type and amount of goods they require at the moment is randomly selected from that merchant's "market demand table" so to speak and it's reset every time the merchant restocks their inventory (typically every 90 minutes). So you will no longed be able to sell all the junk you hauled from your latest raid to the first merchant you see.

And speaking of hauling junk, I've also implemented item weight system. You'll get the progressively higher movement speed and movement point penalties the more you carry above your capacity and if you carry way too much you will actually get rooted into place. This is something I've put off implementing for quite some time because I wasn't sure it'll actually add any value to the game. I dislike these mechanics in most RPGs, especially the party-based ones because more often than not they only result in more inventory management chores without having (or needing to have) much impact on the game economy. But in certain games where exploring and scavenging are the main concepts of the game and where economy actually matters, and I believe Underrail to be such a game, I feel that liming the player inventory in some way (either through weight or space) is beneficial to the overall gameplay experience.

And finally, to go along with these changes, I've reduced the price multiplier when purchasing items. I'ts currently at 175% (down from 350%), but might change further by the time the update is ready depending on how it works out when I get the time to do a real playthrough. I've also reduced the item durability penalty to its cost and have increased the durability range of items looted from corpses (they won't be near broken all the time now).

So why all these changes? Well here's my take on it.

The way the economy works in the live version of the game is like this: loot everything, get every piece of junk. No matter if you need it for crafting or not, no matter the price, just as long as it can be sold - pick it up (basically always hit "loot all" on every container). The more people you kill, more loot you get which directly translates into more wealth so you're always encouraged to handle every situation by killing as many as possible. And if you do not play like this you will get way less loot, and because the merchant prices and item durability penalties are balanced more towards this "optimal playstyle", you can easily run into money problems.

In the new system, you'll only want to hold onto the valuable stuff and the stuff you actually need (for crafting or consumption) because you can carry a limited amount and because can only sell so much in a given time frame. You might wonder won't the weight system just encourage power gamers to make multiple trips to a dungeon to get all the stuff out and store it somewhere to be sold later when the market demand resets? Well, they can do that, yes, and it will work to a degree, but in the time it takes to make multiple trips to the same (possibly remote) place you can do more fun stuff such as exploring new areas, doing new quests, gaining XP and by doing this, you will also get new loot to sell for when the merchants reset.

There will still be more efficient and less efficient ways to make money - it is not my intention to try to prevent that. Accumulating wealth is one form of power gaming and for a lot of people power gaming is one of the major motivations for playing RPGs. I believe this new system will be more fun to play with for everyone. People who want to get as much money as possible will now try to find the most expensive stuff to sell as opposed to as much stuff, while those who take the more casual approach to the economy won't be left hopelessly behind either just as long as they scavenge intelligently.

In any case, let me know how you guys feel about these changes.

94

Let's Plays / Permission for creating videos of Underrail

« on: December 09, 2013, 10:42:31 am »

Personally, I think this is common sense, but since some companies have gone bananas in recent past and took down let's play and similar videos of their games people are understandably more careful nowadays and actually ask permission for this sort of stuff.

So, here is what you may and may not do when creating your videos:

- You may create "let's play" and similar entertainment videos containing footage of Underrail gameplay
- You may stream your play-throughs of Underrail
- You may monetize your videos and streams containing footage of Underrail; Stygian Software will not request any royalties from the profit you make in this way
- You may NOT claim authorship over any part of the game or falsely assign authorship to another company
- You are encouraged to post links to Underrail website, forums and digital distribution store pages in your videos, but are not required to do so
- You may use Underrail and Stygian Software logos to enhance your videos/streams of Underrail gameplay or to link to such videos/streams

I think I covered everything here. Let me know if I missed something.

95

Development Log / Dev Log #24: Combat Initiative

« on: December 01, 2013, 04:45:09 pm »

Hey, guys. We're still hard at work at producing new content for the next version. And while I'm not ready to show the new areas yet (except the attached teaser screenshot), there are a couple of smaller changes I wanted to talk about.



The most significant change to the combat mechanics is the addition of initiative. Character's base initiative is determined like this: 5 + agility + dexterity. At the start of the combat, each combat participant randomly adds 1-15 points to the base initiative and the modified value is used when sorting the turn order. The only exception is when the player initiates combat manually (by pressing ENTER) or by simply attacking. In this case the player will always act first, but because of this, the AP cost of the opening attack/action will be deducted from his first turn. Additionally, this also applies to some other non-combat action performed just before entering combat, such as opening doors.

Also, player will no longer be able to quickly initiated combat manually when exiting a dialog to get a jump on their enemies, but I will be going through all situations that involve dialog initiated combat to make sure the player receives appropriate initiative bonus depending on the situation. That is, if you are having a dialog with someone who is already wary of you (such as GMS hostage situation) you do not get any initiative bonus (though you still "roll" standard initiative and may in fact play first), while in situation in which you surprise attack someone through a dialog you will get a substantial initiative bonus, effectively granting you first strike.

I think it's pretty clear what the purpose of this change is - I want to remove the ability (and the need) to "cheese" your way into attacking first, while providing a game mechanic that will allow you to do this in a more meaningful way instead using your reflexes. I think these changes will particularly benefit non-stealth characters who are often hard pressed to survive when ambushed by multiple attackers. For now the initiative is only dependent on the start mentioned above, but later on I plan to add feats/abilities/psi that will allow you to increase this base value. I'm also considering adding initiative modifiers to weapons.

In other news:

• UI
• Added a confirmation box when changing video settings
• Added an option to scroll with mouse while holding the right button
• Added an option to lock the mouse to screen in fullscreen mode (doesn't work perfectly though, sorry)
• You can double click on your (non-existing) portrait to center back to your character
• Game window will no longer process input while inactive
• Tweaks
• Shroomhead feat now restores 15 psi points each time you pick a mindshroom
• Reduced base trap arming time to 7 seconds
• Reduced the range at which the traps trigger when you step into their tile (should be more consistent with visual collision now)
• Items
• Added electrical knives (same crafting mechanics like with sledgehammers and gloves)
• Added more belts (belts have fixed stats and are not craftable)
• Added bear trap - a cheap early game trap that deals mechanical damage, roots the target and inflicts a bleeding wound; like caltrops, it can be envenomed
• Added serrated crossbow bolt that deals additional 100% of original damage dealt through a bleeding wound over 3 turns, but incurs even greater damage threshold penalty than a regular bolt
• Weapons can now have varying base critical damage bonuses (for now only depending on the weapon base type, but in the future modifiable through enhancements)

Let me know what you think about the balance changes and the new mechanics. Sorry that I can't give you guys a date of the next update, but what I can say is that development speed is picking up again and we're planning to release a new town in the next update as well as bunch of new enemy types.

96

Development Log / Dev Log #23: Expanding the Business; Balance Changes

« on: October 25, 2013, 12:11:47 am »

Hey guys, here's an update on what's been happening since the Steam release.

It will be a while longer before a new version is ready, sorry. The reason for that is that I've been somewhat busy with trying to expand the business. The game did well enough on its Steam (pre-)release that I can now afford to hire some people now that will assist with content creation. Unfortunately, this means interviewing, office space hunting, taxes, logistics, and other stuff that's cutting into my development time. So while development is a bit slow until all this settles down, it will pick up pace and go even faster afterwards.

However, I did manage to add some more Lower Underrail areas and I also made a number of balance tweaks, bug fixes and the like:

• Changes
• Players will receive better armor at the start
• Added more meds, ammo and such to the starting areas
• Reduced explosive barrel health to 1
• AP cost of using light weapons (knives, pistols, SMGs or fist weapons) or unarmed attacks is reduced by 4% for every dexterity point above 5. This is very much subject to change depending on how it works out. I want to make high dexterity builds feel more rewarding and this is just the first step.
• Dogs now have 50% chance to apply Tackle effect on hit (down from 100%)
• Skill requirements for recycling items reduced
• Item durability increased, particularly for higher level items. This will make it less profitable (hopefully not profitable in most cases) to repair them for sole purpose of selling them. Also, crafters will be able to recycle them for more scraps them previously since the amount of scraps gained is based on current and max durability of an item. Rate of item degradation should remain about the same
• Mark 2 repair kits now fix 500 durability points (up from 400). Cost increased accordingly; repair kit crafting requirements and components remain the same
• Durability span of items looted from slain enemies increased to 5%-50% (up from 5%-20%)
• Bandits in the "package delivery quest" nerfed
• Minimal stealth requirements (below which player is automatically spotted) reduced
• Increased the amount of special ammo that can be found as loot
• Reduced the cost of amuples and syringes
• Reduced the amount of explosive required to craft traps (it's now same as grenade recipe)
• Increased chemistry requirements of Hexogen explosive to 50 (up from 22). Secondary explosives difficulty modifier in grenade and mine blueprint increased to 125% (up from 100%). Mark 3 grenades/mines are now crafted from 1 hexogen and mark 2 are crafted from 2 x TNT instead of vice versa. Reasoning behind these changes is that crafting high level explosives was way too easy and allowed you to obtain grenades that were meant to be used against level 20 enemies as soon as level 7 if not earlier.
• Player character will no longer obscure targets behind them when issuing offensive commands (such as attacking or invoking offensive abilities)
• Bug fixes
• Exporting a character while trading window is open will no longer crash the game
• Save/load window will no longer lose focus after deletion confirmation pop-up
• Fixed the bug that would cause optional components to give different crafting requirements depending on order they are placed in
• Galvanic vest added to random loot table (and hence the stores too)
• Added missing female riot gear spritesheets (sorry ladies)
• Fixed the bug that would cause the old man in GMS level 3 to repeatedly initiate dialog with you
• Fixed the bug in Abram's questline where you could give Garren information you didn't actually receive
• AP should now correctly be deducted when stacking up utility items during combat
• Other
• Added transition error log; it will be generated in Documents\My Games\Underrail every time there's a transition error. This should help us pinpoint any remaining transition problems
• Removed Media Player requirement by popular demand (you will no longer have to have media player windows feature installed in the next version of the game)

That's all for now. Be sure to let me know what you thought of the balance changes so far.

97

Suggestions / Problems with recycling?

« on: October 21, 2013, 02:24:40 pm »

This has been mentioned in couple of threads (some of which I cannot find anymore). What do you see as problems keeping recycling items from being useful?

I know one complaint was high skill requirements of recycling.

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Discussions / MOVED: cant complete Gorsky's quest

« on: September 27, 2013, 02:59:11 pm »

This topic has been moved to General.

http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=626.0

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General / Where do I get my Steam key if I purchased elsewhere?

« on: September 24, 2013, 02:26:07 pm »

DESURA:
The Steam-keys are now avaible on Desura:
0. Make sure you purchased the game from Desura. The Desura key you got from Groupees will not provide you with a Steam key.
1. After your Login into Desura, go to your collection
2. Search for Underrail and click Keys (or follow this link)

GROUPEES:
1. Log in.
2. Locate Underrail.
3. Click on it.
4. Get the key.

GAMERSGATE:
1. Log in
2. Find Underrail in your library
3. Click "Show Serial Key" button on the right

100

General / Live on Steam now

« on: September 23, 2013, 10:22:57 pm »

Head over to Steam discussion forums for Underrail and show it some love.

Also, I'm sure new players will have plenty of questions for those who played already.

101

Announcements / Steam keys for those who purchased elsewhere

« on: September 17, 2013, 02:12:39 pm »

Those who purchased the game through Desura or GamersGate (or in the future purchase it through the two mentioned portals) or got it in the Groupees bundle will receive a Steam key once the game is available there.

Note that it might take a day or two after the initial release on Steam to distribute the keys. Thank you for your patience.

102

Development Log / Dev Log #22: Steam Achievements

« on: September 14, 2013, 11:18:22 pm »

In the last two weeks I've been working on Steam integration, primarily implementing the achievements.



There will be 50 of them initially, but I plan to keep on adding more bit by bit with each future update. A lot of them are your usual "do something X times", but there are a number of more interesting ones and I'll also be focusing on those more in the future. Kinda wanted to get the basics done first. For those of you who are interested in Steam trading cards, I do hope to implement those at a later stage, once the character and creatures portraits are done and I have more graphical assets to work with as those require a lot.

In other news, I've also fixed a couple of bugs (along with some spelling errors, per usual):

• TNT blueprint will no longer consume excess components
• Tungsten steel boots icons added
• New lens types will now be correctly generated with quality (all the current ones in the game are base quality; I'm sorry about that, but hey, at least their crafting requirements are low )
• Crafting window will now remember what blueprint you had selected when you last closed it

Next I need to take care of some technical stuff and finish Steam release preparations. I'll let you guys know when it's coming out as soon as I have a confirmed date.

103

Suggestions / Need achievement and achievement name suggestions

« on: September 06, 2013, 07:29:30 pm »

I'm going to implement an uncertain number of achievements for the upcoming Steam Early Access release. What I need from you guys is to:

1) Name the achievements I've thought of so far
2) Suggest new achievements. I'm looking for both grindy "do something X times" ones, but specifically for the "special event" ones (e.g. "Kill everyone with a grenade, including yourself")

Anyway, here's what I've thought of so far:
Craft 30 medical items
Craft 30 firearms
Craft 30 pieces of armor
Craft 30 devices
Craft 30 cold weapons
Craft 30 chemical weapons
Craft 30 energy weapons
Craft 30 traps
Craft 50 grenades
Extract humors from 100 organs
Craft 100 special bolts
Craft 30 repair kits
Kill 100 rathounds
Kill 75 insectoids
Kill 50 robots
Kill 100 humans
Kill 50 enemies unarmed or with fist weapons
Kill 50 enemies with a knife
Kill 50 enemies with firearms
Kill 50 enemies with energy weapons
Kill 50 enemies with chemical weapons
Kill 50 enemies with grenades
Kill 50 enemies with crossbows
Kill 50 enemies with metathermic psi abilities
Kill 50 enemies with thought control psi abilities
Kill 50 enemies with psychokinetic psi abilities
Kill 50 enemies with traps
Steal 50 items
Pick 50 mechanical locks
Hack 50 electronic locks
Disarm 50 traps
Use 50 health hypos
Use 50 psi boosters
Use 30 adrenaline shots
Use 15 morphine shots
Discover 30 secret passages
Pick 100 mushrooms
Miss 20 aimed shots
Execute 10 humans
Ignite 30 enemies
Chill 30 enemies
Freeze 30 enemies
Stun 30 enemies
Incapacitate 30 enemies
Successfully restealth during combat
Kill 3 enemies with a single burst attack
Kill 5 enemies with a single grenade
Kill 5 enemies with a single psi ability
Stun/incapacitate 3 enemies in a single turn
Snipe down a full health enemy
Shatter an enemy
Kill all your enemies in a turn you began stunned/incapacitated
Kill everyone with a grenade, including yourself
Have 100 or more action and movement points combined
Deal over 300 damage with a weapon attack
Survive combat with 5 health or less
Survive combat with 1 health
Set yourself on fire
Rid yourself of poison while below 10 health

104

Site Feedback & Suggestions / We are being flooded!

« on: September 04, 2013, 10:04:33 pm »

Just so you know what's up if the site goes down temporarily (as it did recently).

The fine people at HostGator are helping me deal with the problem so hopefully we can put a stop to this.

105

Development Log / Dev Log #21: Version 0.1.9.0 released; also Greenlit!

« on: August 31, 2013, 01:23:51 am »

The long overdue update is finally ready. Also, in other news the game got greenlit for Steam distribution!



Okay let's cover the update first. It's currently up on Desura and GamersGate (soon to be available on Groupees website as well). Here's the list of what I've done since the last dev log, also be sure to also check out the previous three dev logs for other stuff that's new in this version.

• Added TNT explosive charge that can be used to clear rocks. Many passages still don't lead anywhere even if you clear them just so you know though
• Did bunch of AI work, enemies can now do the following
• Use more special attacks: kneecap shot, pummel, crippling strike, execute, heavy punch, dirty kick
• Use "yell" special ability
• Use more drugs: adrenaline, morphine
• Throw grenades: frag, HE and flashbang
• Use more special bolts: acid, shock, incendiary
• Use offensive and utility psi abilities
• Kite their target (like psi beetles do)

Here's a summary of what I focused on in this update: I've added a bunch of areas to Lower Underrail (the place where the SGS metro station is). These are just "wilderness" areas right now so there are any new quests, but monsters to fight, traps to step, loot to collect and that sort of stuff. I also add a number of items and blueprints (gloves, riot armor) which should give you more options in building your character, as well as improved the arsenal and the AI of the existing enemies.

In the next couple of weeks I'll mostly focus on Steam integration and fixing some technical issues with the game before I move back to building content.

* * * * * *

Which brings us to other topic of this dev log. So the game has finally been greenlit. It's been up there just two days short of a whole year which is longer than I've hoped, but shorter than I feared. I want to send out a sincere thank you to everyone who voted for the game and helped spread the word. With the Steam distribution secured, the future of the game is looking brighter than ever.

Anyway, to answer the questions that a lot of you have been asking me:

• I am aiming to release the game for Early Access on Steam. When exactly - I don't know. It depends on how long it will take me to integrate it and what the rest of release process is like. What I can say for sure is that this will be my priority in the coming weeks.
• If you've purchased the game through Desura I would very much like to give you a Steam key as well, but I'm not 100% sure what the rule on this are and I'll have to consult both distributors involved before I can commit to anything. Please be patient and I'll let you guys know as soon as possible. Same goes for those that purchased the game through the Groupees bundle.