Thursday 31 January 2019

Sprint Round Up - 30.01.19 - The FIRST Sprint of 2019


Hello hello, here is your regular sprint round up of development through January!  Read on to find out what we have been up to, and if you are one of our backers on the FIRST ACCESS level, what you can expect to see in the latest build update!

Content (Level Design and Art)

  • Work on workplace level design and early game tutorialisation, mission scripting and character conversations
  • Wrote some new AI states, goals and actions for a nuetral NPC character (using our new moddable, data driven AI behaviours) 
  • Worked on existing geometry in the Workplace level to get it closer to a completed level
  • Paper sketches of new level designs
  • Started grey-boxing on new levels 
Greyboxing a new level

Gameplay and Mechanics

  •  Design work for data view & app use cost changes

Controls and UX

  • Added a crouching first person camera:  the look from point is no longer parented to the rig, which improves camera targeting
  • Reworking of character controller and camera to give finer control
    • Now players have better control of jogging and sprinting both on controller and keyboard and mouse using Space/ B to jog, and repeatedy tap to get a sprint burst 
    • Crawling animations and controls have been fixed to work properly and feel nicer
    • There is a crawl sprint too!
  • Turn animations and transitions in blend trees have been sumplified for better control overall but smoothing and polish is needed still for smaller movements (some finer turning / control has been lost and is to be fixed in next update)
  • Started converting various UI elements to better font rendering and animation systems
  • Support for displaying controls as icons in middle of text in the UI
  • Rebuilt the AppWheel UI to better handle adding and removing apps
Converting the UI to Text Mesh Pro

AI

  • AI function to prefer or avoid particular devices.  Example:  the coffee offer message, sent to a guard, will reduce the cost of the UseCoffee Action, meaning that Guards prefer that Action and will go out of their way to use it rather than alternatives.
  • Added an optional personality requirement to have actions that are only runnable if an Agent has a particular interest (or not!)
  • Added stats to the Agent definition
  • Added generic actions to the Agent definition
  • Added responses (to other Agent's actions), adjusting Agent stats
  • Added reactions (stimuli in the world can thereby adjust Agent stats, based on personality)
  • Added an audio attribute to actions in agent definitions, to be played when they are performed

Modding tools and Lua API additions

  • Added support for loading apps from your current mission (as opposed to the global Apps folder, or app mod)
  • full screen modal window, 
  • Updated gizmo icons in LevelKit
  • Correct scale & rotation for bounding box when editing mission triggers etc.

Bugs fixed

  • Fixed a shader problem introduced after updating Unity

Other

AND:  WE MADE THE BRIT LIST!
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/01/11/games-of-2019-british-games 


Thanks for reading, look forward to seeing you next time!


If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

Thursday 3 January 2019

Happy New Year from Semaeopus!

Happy New Year

2019 is here and we are thrilled to welcome it!  There are so many exciting things to come in 2019!

Before we move head on into the new year - we just want to pause and reflect on all that came our way in 2018.

We did a quick recap in our December newsletter, but upon reading it back, realised we missed out some seriously significant moments. 

Without further ado, here are our highlights of 2018:

1.  Rich and Sarah attended GDC for the first time - an eye opener!

2.  The team demoed at PAX East as part of Figs and Co!

3.  Made our print debut with a double page spread in GamesMaster magazine 

4.  Semaeopus was named as part of Creative England's 2018 CE50 cohort
 
5.  Attended EMF Camp with a base at Milliways!

6.  We brought a fun new artist on board - shout out to Sophie! 

7.  Rich started streaming and we launched our DISCORD!
 
8.  Gave talks at GameDev Camp and IndieCade
 
9.  OFF GRID was featured in InsideIntel, a modern art show on privacy put on by the CIJ

10.  Spoke at  Sweden Games Conference, and won the Indiecator award in the form of a giant cheque!


11.  Ran a successful, overfunded Kickstarter campaign​ - hitting the first stretch goal! 

12.  Announced the line up of real life hacker characters to feature in OFF GRID!

13.  Semaeopus won the first ever UK Games Fund Smart Studio Award
 
14.  Kicked off our new and *exclusive* FIRST ACCESS programme


WOW.  What a year 2018 was!  Thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us and helping us make all of this happen!

...and now it's on to 2019:  GOOD THINGS ARE COMING!

We wish you all the very best in the new year!

THANK YOU!

The OFF GRID Team

If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!