Topics

121

Development Log / Dev Log #10: Wrapping up the Crafting Stuff

« on: December 31, 2012, 05:51:54 pm »

I've finished all the crafting updates for the next release:

• Renamed the "Extract Toxin" blueprint into "Extract Humour". It can now be used to extract various bodily fluids from organs of dead animals
• Creatures will now drop organs when killed. Different types of creatures (animals, insectoids) drop different organs. Harder to kill creatures have greater chance of dropping organs (e.g. rathound alpha has a better chance of dropping adrenal gland than the regular rathound)
• Added health hypo blueprint. You'll need to extract substances from both animal (cave hopper, rathounds, dogs) and insectoid (psi beetle, burrower) organs in order to create those.
• Added adrenaline shot blueprint. You can extract adrenaline from adrenal glands which are a rare drop on most creatures.

• Added chemical blob trap blueprint you can use to create acid blob traps which entangle the victim causing high damage spread over a couple of turns.
• Added acid bolts that you can create from the existing chemical bolt blueprint.
• Added caltrops blueprint. When deployed caltrops deal small amount of damage to anyone who moves over them and drain additional movement/action points. They can also be coated in poison.

• Added plasma pistol. It can be created from the existing energy pistol blueprint. Plasma pistols are high-damage energy weapons, but consume a lot of AP and energy when used which makes them a good
• power attack weapons (aimed shot /execute), but not the best damage per turn weapons. They deal equal amounts of energy and heat damage.

* * * * *


I've also added Morphine Shot to the game. It reduces damage taken from any source by 50% for 3 turns, but after it expires the user will take damage equal to 50% of their missing health. Basically, you can use it to absorb good amount of damage over 3 turns, but you better make sure to stabilize before it expires. It's also a good way to survive between health hypo usages in difficult fights.


* * * * *


I will be tackling the creature respawning feature next, and then I'll fix the problem with certain kills not giving XP to the player (damage over time effects, explosive barrels, etc). After that there's a couple minor tweaks and bug fixes to handle and the next release will be ready.

Happy New Year everyone and see you in 2013.

122

Announcements / Underrail entered Groupee's Build a Greenlight Bundle

« on: December 24, 2012, 01:45:29 pm »

If you haven't still picked up the game, here's an opportunity to get it cheap with some other games during this week with the latest Groupee's bundle.

Also, if you haven't already, please greenlight the game on steam.

Cheers.

123

Bugs / Report spelling/grammar errors

« on: December 22, 2012, 04:11:04 pm »

In this thread you can report spelling and grammar errors that you encounter (dialogs, item descriptions, etc). I'll update this post to note which ones I corrected, so please check it out before posting an already reported one. Forget it, can't be bothered to keep a list, so feel free to double post.

Thanks for the suggestion, Spinewire.

124

Development Log / Dev Log #9: Importing Characters and More Crafting

« on: December 18, 2012, 10:38:57 pm »

Alrighty, now that the stuff around alpha release finally settled down a bit I was able to get some real work done again.



I've added export/import character options so that you can restart the game with an existing character (and all their equipment) in the future updates. This ties up to what a lot of you have been asking about - the saved game compatibility between releases. Well, the saves usually won't be 100% compatible. I won't prevent you from loading your old saves, but your saved state might miss a dialog/quest flag, an object you should have picked up earlier, a new NPC that have been added to an area you already visited, etc. So in short, you can load an outdated save game and mess around with it (it shouldn't crash or anything), but if you for some reason can't progress with the quests, I won't be able to help you with that.



Next, I've added an option to autosave on transitions for those who sometimes forget to save for a long time and die 5 areas later, losing all of the progress. I don't advise you to use this feature at the moment, because saving is a bit slow right now, especially when you get later into the game and you'll be changing areas frequently. But if you want it it's there. Also, you'll now have the option of using 'rolling saves' which means that the game will retain your (one) previous quicksave and autosave instead of overwriting it.



Now some gameplay changes.



I've changed the way the lockpicks and haxxors work. Lockpicks are now spent on successful lockpicking, so they work as a resource. They have distinct power levels and icons (+0, +5, +10) and are stackable. Haxxors work similarly like they did before, but also have distinct power levels and icons and require energy (batteries) to use.



Next up is the blueprint for chemical pistols that you'll be able to use to craft guns that fire various chemicals in various forms, if you have sufficient chemistry skill that is. A chemical pistol has two major components - collector, which determines the type of substance you can load into the weapon, and dispenser, which determines the way the gun fires the substance. For now you'll only be able to create Acid Blob Pistols, but there will be more in the future. There's also "Chemical Ammo" blueprint to accompany this. If you have sufficient biology and chemistry skills you'll be able to extract acid from acid mutants and make ammo from it.


* * * * *


I'm aiming for a new release somewhere around New Year. Not sure if it's going to be before or just after though, we'll see. It'll focus mainly on crafting. I'll be adding blueprints for new interesting gadgets as well as some existing stuff that you can't craft at the moment, such as health hypos.

Another major change will be adding respawn timers on creatures in certain areas. This will serve two purposes. First, if you ever find the yourself too weak to progress further with the quests, you can spend some time and hunt through the lower level areas. Now, I'm not saying this is something you'll have to do. The game won't ever require you to grind anything. However, the combat in this game tends to be a bit hard at times, so if you're not that good at it, you'll have this option. And secondly, you'll be able to return to previously visited areas to obtain crafting materials if you're missing on some of them (like you already can with the mushrooms).

That's it for now. Let me know what you think of these changes.

125

Announcements / Made it to Top 100 of Indie of the Year competition. Vote and help us win!

« on: December 11, 2012, 01:33:44 pm »

We made it to the second phase of IndieDB's Indie of the Year competition.

Help Underrail win in its category by voting here: http://www.indiedb.com/events/2012-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100

Look for: Released Games of 2012 -> Role Playing -> Underrail

Thank you for support, everyone!

126

Announcements / Underrail released on Desura and GamersGate!

« on: December 06, 2012, 12:45:52 am »

Underrail alpha version has just been released on Desura and GamersGate!



If you want to know what's new in this release (since the demo) you can go check out the dev log posts from the last couple of months, but let me just quickly recap the highlights:

• Huge new urban zone consisting of 8 areas
• Big new 'dungeon' consisting of 6 areas (twice as much as the last one)
• A couple of 'mini-dungeons'
• New quests
• New feats
• Traps skill
• Some updated game mechanics
• Re-balanced economy
• Food
• More weapons and armors
• Updated crossbows (feats, special bolts, damage boost)
• Various other smaller stuff

127

Announcements / Indie of the Year

« on: November 30, 2012, 12:41:00 pm »

Vote for Underrail in IndieDB's Indie of the Year competition!

128

Development Log / Dev Log #8: Alpha Release in Testing

« on: November 29, 2012, 12:45:42 pm »

Finally it's complete. All the content I wanted to put in for the first commercial alpha release is in and we're now doing last bits of testing (getting our faces melted in the needlessly hard dungeons and toning the stuff down)



If you want to know what's new in this release you can go check out the dev log posts from the last couple of months, but let me just quickly recap the highlights:

• Huge new urban zone consisting of 8 areas
• Big new 'dungeon' consisting of 6 areas (twice as much as the last one)
• A couple of 'mini-dungeons'
• New quests
• New feats
• Traps skill
• Some updated game mechanics
• Re-balanced economy
• Food
• More weapons and armors
• Updated crossbows (feats, special bolts, damage boost)
• Various other smaller stuff

Also very recently I've changed pickpocketing mechanics a bit. It's not quite where I want it to be yet, so I'm going to revisit it sometime after the alpha release for sure, but I think this goes a long way in making it not completely useless. Namely, pickpocketing doesn't require stealth anymore and is just directly checked versus the target's detection. So you don't have to invest into two skills anymore and you won't be always detected because pickpocketing takes so long and stealth works terribly when you're too close to the target. In any case I'll be keeping an eye out for it, so let me know what you guys thought of this change.

Anyway, the testing is underway and after that I'll be sending the build to distributors for publishing and hopefully it won't take too long before it will be available for purchase.

129

General / What level was your character at the end of the demo?

« on: November 25, 2012, 12:41:05 am »

I'll be doing some tweaks to the XP calculations soon and I'm curious what level did you guys manage to reach in the demo? Also did you clear out all the hostile areas including the burrower caves?

NOTE: This should not include experience you might have gained from killing friendly NPCs in the SGS, you sociopaths!

130

Site Feedback & Suggestions / The spam

« on: November 16, 2012, 05:54:18 pm »

The spammers are going crazy today, so I tightened the anti-spam protection a bit.

I hope this will do it.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience this will cause to legitimate new users.

131

General / MOVED: Do you believe in UFO?

« on: November 13, 2012, 02:50:41 am »

This topic has been moved to Discussions.

http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=138.0

132

Development Log / Dev Log #7: More Quests and Feats

« on: November 10, 2012, 02:00:35 pm »

I'm almost done with quest implementation for the new areas. There's still a couple smaller ones to go, as well as some support scripting and dialog to do, but that shouldn't take more than couple of days. After that I'm going to start the work on the next 'dungeon' area and that will be the last bit of content for this release.

I do intend to revisit these areas post-release and add more quests, but for now this will do.



I've also added some new weapons and armors:

• One new model of each firearm type: pistol, SMG, assault and sniper rifle
• One new crossbow type
• Knives and sledgehammers made of tungsten steel
• Tungsteen steel armor
• Regenerative vest that slowly restores health but consumes energy (can be used in creation of tactical vests or steel armors)
• Acid resistant leather armor (this will be useful in the upcoming dungeon)

Then there are couple of new feats I got to implement. It's not much because this release I'm more focused on new areas, so expect a lot more in the future updates. I implemented a couple of melee feats because they were sorely missing in the demo:

• Pummel - sledgehammer attack that takes the target off balance, negating dodge and evasion for 2 turns
  
• Crippling Strike - unarmed or knife attack that deals 125% damage and reduces target's strength by 2 (stacks 3 times).
  
• Dirty Kick - Unarmed attack that deals damage and stuns the target for 1 turn (double that if the target is human male)
  
• Hit and Run - After you kill an enemy, your movement points are restored to 25 (or your maximum, whichever is lower)
  
• Yell - You attempt to reduce offensive skills (guns, corssbows, melee and grenades skills) of all surrounding enemies by 20% of your intimidation skill
  
• Shroomhead - You regenerate psi points in presence of mindshrooms when below 35% of your maximum psi
  

All in all, this version is nearing completion and it will be done by the end of this month for sure. Can't say exactly when it will be release for alpha purchase, as I don't know what the process for that will be, but it can't be far off now.

133

Development Log / Dev Log #6: Food and Balance

« on: October 25, 2012, 09:56:38 am »

I'm currently mostly working on area designs for the new release. By the end of the week I should have most of it in place (except the new dungeon which I'll tackle later) and then it's time for quests implementation.








* * * * *


I've added food to the game. You can consume different meals to gain (and sometimes also lose) different base stats for 5 minutes. You can only have one type of food buff on your character at any given time. Here are the meals I've prepared so far:

• Rathound Barbecue: +1 strength
  
• Cave Hopper Steak: +2 agility
  
• Burrower Burger: +2 constitution
  
• Eel Sandwich: +2 dexterity
  
• Junkyard Surprise: +(1-3) random stat, -(0-3) random stat

* * * * *


I've also added a couple easy but important changes to game balance and mechanics.

First of all I changed a bit how stealth works. You'll still be detected over time depending on your stealth skill, enemy's detection, lightning and positioning like before, unless your stealth skill is too far behind the enemy's detection in which case you won't be able to hide from them at all. This will be indicated with a silver eye above the detecting character and the true-sight is now represented by a golden eye (previously silver). The problem was that even the non-stealthy characters were using stealth excessively to move around undetected (and have guaranteed combat initiation) and it worked as long as they didn't stay too close too long because of the way the revealing speed is capped. This change should prevent that while not changing how stealth mechanics work for stealthy characters (those who invest in stealth skill and wear light armors).

Also another minor tweak to stealth - I've added a notification when you bump into other characters and fall out of stealth for that reason. Some people were confused as to what was happening, but keep in mind that if they can't see you their pathfinding won't tell them to go around you.

I increased health scaling with levels, for both the player and non-player characters. Previously, the damage from weapons and other sources was far out-scaling the character health as you progressed in levels which ended up in very volatile fights. This change should ease that up a bit while keeping the early game unchanged. Keep in mind, though, that damage is meant to out-scale health to a certain degree because characters also have access to tougher armors and other protective stuff as the game progresses. Because of this change I've also increased the amount of health that hypos and bandages restore.

I've also doubled the psi point pool as well as psi restoration from psi boosters (also psi boosters now require three mindshrooms to make). This will allow the player focusing on psi abilities to have more sustain in combat. Some people felt like psi points need to regenerate over time, but I want it to be a resource you have to manage just like ammo and batteries. I'm considering adding other ways to restore limited amounts of psi outside of using boosters, though. We'll see.

I've significantly increased based damage multiplier of snipe ability so it should now be more powerful than aimed shot in the early game as intended (since it's a one time opening ability requiring stealth). This attack can no longer critically hit, though.

Keep in mind that none of this is set to stone. These are the changes I've arrived at by watching other people play and from hearing the feedback on the forums. Once the new version is released I will continue to keep an eye out and make changes for the sake of fun and balanced gameplay as best as I can.

134

Development Log / Dev Log #5: Improving Crossbow Play

« on: October 11, 2012, 01:44:44 am »

One of the common complaints in the demo, and one of the things that I personally wasn't very happy with, is how the crossbows were playing out. Using crossbows as primary damage source was practically impossible, so I've taken some steps to bringing the crossbows up to par with firearms and making them a viable alternative.

First of all I've increased base damage of crossbows, so their straight up damage per turn potential is now about the same as 7.62mm pistols (which is another weapon class with 2 attacks per turn). Originally I kept the crossbow damage lower as I wanted to emphasize their special bolt attack strengths, but I went a bit too far there and they ended up being too weak, especially in the early game before the player could pick up any special bolts. Also, because crossbow attacks already incur more of mechanical damage resistance (125%) and have no way of overcoming that in regular attacks (no armor piercing rounds) there is no need to penalize them further by assigning them lower base damage.

The second problem was a lack of multi-target special bolts, so now I've added two of those. They fulfill similar roles but in different ways.


• Shock Bolts - These bolts inflict additional electrical damage to the primary target, stun it (works on machines as well) and then jump to nearby targets dealing smaller chunks of damage (no stun on secondary targets) in similar fashion as strikes from Shock Sledgehammer.
  
• Incendiary Bolts - These bolts deal heat damage to the target and have a chance to set it on fire, dealing more heat damage over next couple of turns (and, of course, panicking the living targets), but the bolt also burns everything it comes near on its flight to the primary target, dealing smaller chunks of heat damage. Keep in mind that this bolt is doubly useful against enemies that fear fire (such as rathounds).
  
As for the price and drop rate of these bolts, that's something I'll have to fine tune through testing.[/li]

Both of these type of bolts can also be crafted if you have enough skill points in electronics or chemistry respectively.

And the last thing I've added is the Special Tactics feat which gives you the ability that you can activate while you're out of combat to make your next special bolt attack cost no action points. The point of this is to give crossbows some burst potential in fights that you initiate.

I hope you guys like these changes and that they'll get more of you trying out crossbows in the future.

135

Development Log / Dev Log #4: New Skill: Traps

« on: September 28, 2012, 12:19:35 am »

Originally I planned to add traps to the alpha demo but ended up postponing that to get the demo out earlier. They're in now, though.



There are currently three types of land mines you can rig up: frag, high-explosive and EMP. When they're triggered they have same effects as their grenade counterparts. You can also craft these yourself if you have high enough chemistry/electronics. There will be more traps in the future and not all of them will be mines.

Except rigging up the area before a battle and luring your foolish enemies into minefields, I figure trapping will also be very useful in eliminating patrolling enemies. At least those not skillful enough to spot and/or disarm your traps.

Speaking of NPC behavior, I've also introduced a new concept to the game called zone control.



I was thinking of how the game should handle player criminal behavior such as murdering people through various means. And more specifically, I thought about how NPCs should react to you placing traps everywhere and turning their private quarters into mine fields.

I want to prevent exploits such as carpeting an area with traps and killing off high level non-hostile NPCs in the middle of their home base without triggering hostilities and then promptly looting their kickass gear. But on the other hand I want to sometimes allow player to use traps as an assassination mechanism where it's actually appropriate as I think that can be a lot of fun. Ideally the NPCs would be very smart and once a trap has been set off they'd start an investigation and look for a culprit, etc. However, Underrail is not a simulation game and that kind of AI programming is way out of the scope of the game.

So I went with a simpler solution which is to tag each area with certain control level - full, partial or none, which indicates how safe it is for the player to mess around with traps (and in the future murdering, etc) and how the controlling factions of the area will react to your shenanigans.

The UI shows the zone control indicator in the upper right corner and you can mouse over it to see what sort of action you can get away with and what is too risky in the current area.

As far as traps are concerned:

• In fully controller areas (such as SGS station) if someone from the controlling faction detects your trap, you'll immediately get in trouble with that faction;
• In partially controlled areas you'll only get in trouble if someone from the controlling faction sets off your trap
• In uncontrolled areas you can set traps as much as you like and if someone happens to set it off and get killed, no one will be able to trace this to you

One thing to keep in mind though that regardless of the zone control level, if you try placing traps too close to someone, they will take offense, or at least disarm them if they have appropriate skills.