Sprint Roundup: Spring Forward

Welcome Folks and Happy 2021, and how good does it feel to be finally well out of 2020?!

Thanks for bearing with us while we got this you, we missed December's update, but here we are, back in the swing of things, and so finally here is your back-to-regular dev update!

 Give me an 'A', give me an 'I', what does that Spell?!

On the last sprint roundup we mentioned that we started to work in some improvements in the AI to give more flexibility to the NPCs. So what exactly are these improvements? To start, some bugs were fixed, some unused features were removed and others simplified. But the main thing improved was the possibility to change, add or remove any aspect of the NPC behaviour in run time, like, for example, actions and goals, and with this came a round of improvements on our AI debugging tool, the AI Explorer:

 

The default way to change any NPC behaviour is still as it has always been, changing the world states.  Only in specific situations should changing the goals or actions be needed, but this is now possible by adding or removing them during runtime and allows for much more complex behaviour. Changing Goals should be used rarely, as it is seen as a more permanent change to the NPC behaviour. It's important to keep the following concepts in mind to understand the best way to change an NPC behaviour:

 

"World States" represent everything that the NPC knows about the world and themselves, for example: The guard must see the intruder before doing any action to try to catch it.  Changing world states in order to evoke a reaction is the first thing you do. 

"Actions" are the available skills and resources that an NPC has, for example: A guard should have an action to use a taser or other resource to knock out the intruder, and so accomplishing his goal. Changing actions is the best way to change what an NPC has the potential to do.

"Goals" describe the intentions or beliefs of the NPC, for example: the guard should always have the goal to catch the intruder, because it's his job, if this goal is removed it means that the guard lost his faith or belief in the job. For this reason goals are the last thing in NPC behavior you would consider changing as you are fundamentally changing them as a person.

 

Being able to alter any of these at runtime means NPCs are now more flexible and give more options to design new levels and scenarios, that is noted especially during the gameplay because now its possible to change its behaviour at any time and you don't have any restrictions in relation to what was initially defined in the NPC, so that means that a NPC now can use picked up objects, learn new skills, change their main objective, among other possibilities, it really is much, much more flexibility.

But of course this flexibility also means that is important to be careful with the complexity of the NPC definition, it could get a bit confusing in the best way to accomplishing some results and also could be hard to track why the NPC is behaving in some way. So to simplify we think the best way to approach the changing in the NPC behaviour in runtime is trying to change the world states first (but being careful to not have to many different states), next is the actions (that are especially handy for use specific items and skills), and the last one is the goals (that need to be used very carefully because a minor change can change the NPC behaviour drastically). Hopefully this model will provide some exciting opportunities for us in design and for modders too!

We also replaced the old Lua API call for altering a character's motivation value with a new generic system which allows for checking, and setting, any of the stats an AI might have.

The U in Usablility

Since the last blog post, we've spent some time fixing some usability issues on the UI side. Mainly, we've added automatic scrolling to UI for use with gamepad controls, removing the need to use scrollbars, which then simplifies the navigation across the UI. To go with that, we've updated lots of the UI across the game, also fixing some selection issues and improving on the mouse cursor autohide system to further smooth the controls and especially switching between input methods. While these might not sound like big changes, they certainly have made the user experience a lot smoother...

Paperwork for a good cause!

The start of a new year always brings a lot of paperwork, with our financial year end timing in to the calendar one.  It's a lot of shifting numbers on spreadsheets but the nice thing is that in the UK, with the fantastic BFI's support, we actually get a credit back on money we have spent on development each year though the Video Games Tax Relief scheme the UK government runs. Pretty good stuff.

 

We have had some work for hire that we have fitted in in a couple of places, Pontus has been doing research and development on an unnanounced project of a developer friend of ours and Rich ran a lecture series on Blender basics and specializing in Character animation for the MA Character Animation course at Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London.

We also managed to garner some more funding for some R&D work from one of our long term partners Creative England, which has been super exciting - PLEASE don't jump to any conclusions from this but we have been researching how well our procedural message generation can be evolved to be able to handle languages other than English...

 

No Tofu!

As mentioned above, we have been working out how our generated content will work in different languages and doing some R&D on non-latin alphabet/writing system support.  This is all quite exciting stuff, and warrants its own dedicated post at some point, but... essentially, OFF GRID's game mechanics depend on key words in data and meta-data generated by NPCs, and the fact that there is text in the game that is generated at all creates and interesting problem to solve when it comes to localisation.

 

At this early stage we can't specify any particular languages, in-fact we can't guarantee it will work, or that there will be any other languages than English in the game, but we are laying the groundwork to see if possible and have embarked on some research work to see what those possibilities are, watch this space!

The Beginning and The End

Some of you who have played alpha builds, or demos at some point may have seen the intro cutscene to the game (it's the one that some of the clips in the trailer on our Steam page come from). One of the things we have been working on is making this part playable and more of a mix of small cutscene sections intertwined with basic tutorials and gameplay. We are believers in making sure that everything in the game story is told via gameplay and the environment as much as possible, so we were keen to make sure that the very beginning of the game sets the scene while still adhering to this principle. 

 

 

 

Unity's timeline is the powerful tool we have been using to achieve this, but we have had to do some real hackery to get it to play nice with interactive sections rather surprisingly.  When you couple that with tying it into our lua commands for writing missions, objectives and triggers and you start to get quite a complex section of the game to assemble. It's coming along nicely though, and they say the first 30 seconds, and 30 minutes of a game are the most important to focus on to keep players intrigued, so we have been happily dedicating a lot of time to getting this to all feel right. It's also certainly something we'll be counting on you, as our players, to play and give feedback on ahead of full release. Looking forward to seeing what you think!

 

We've also been fine tuning and cleaning up some of the content in the later game and making some more complex puzzles and hacks. The wierd thing about editing content is sometimes you can make more of something, in this instance we needed to make sense of one of the final missions, and actually breaking it into two seperate missions works better.  Without giving any spoilers, one of the planned missions is now giving a 2-for-1 value!

 

Changelist

Content (Level Design and Art) 

• Design for the Harbour level passenger terminal / offices building
• Replaced messages that were written for old SMS system with proper single-message conversations
• Courthouse initial puzzles done 
• Taking the scene from prototype to production and playable instead of just a cutscene
• Broke up Court House Level into two levels

Controls and UX

• Autoscrolling in UI
• Usability improvements especially on a gamepad for any scrolling UI
• Greatly improves device UIs since it means we can make their scrollbars un-selectable on a gamepad, simplifying the navigation in that window

AI 

• AI Goal and Action improvements for flexibility
• AI Debug system improved (with more information and in a clear format)

Modding and Lua API additions 

• Lua API support for setting/getting NPC AI stat values
• We used to have AI.AlterNPCMotivation(name, value) specifically for setting motivation stat value, this replaces it with a generic AI.AlterNPCStat(name, stat, value) usable for all the stats an AI might have
• Lua support for Unity timeline and firing Lua functions from it (use wisely!)
• Lua Console app for testing any line of lua anywhere in the game
  

Bugs fixed 

• Bug fixes related with the AI and save system
• Fixed issues with mouse cursor autohide/show system when switching between mouse/kb and gamepad controls

Other 

• Year end accounts and VGTR
  
• A few small work-for-hire jobs
• Blender for Animators Lectures
• New Ideas Fund application and grant

 

Hopefully that catches you up on OFF GRID development. It's been a tough 2020 for us, especially the second half of it.  Safe to say, the world has been turned upside down and that had an impact on some of our families and how we managed running businesses and looking after our loved ones. Obviously OFF GRID is continuing development but running behind at this point, luckily we have at every turn been ahead of the punches and come up with game plans to make sure we could continue sustainably, and deliver OFF GRID come what may.

For our little studio this has meant tightening our belts at the couple of junctures when we have found we were behind our anticipated milestones, tightening scope, bringing in some part time work-for-hire contracts to top up the coffers, and scaling the team down so we could operate in a lean and efficient way. The knock-on effect of shrinking the team for sustainability is it means things take longer, but it has the benefit of meaning you can roll with the punches and survive more easily.

The three of us, Pontus, Andre, and Rich are still working hard on dev, bringing you the best game possible, and one thing is clear, with our great little team, OFF GRID is going to be everything it deserves to be, and that you deserve it to be for supporting us. Thank you so much and looking forward to showing you more over the coming months!

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!

Sprint Roundup: Meta work

Welcome friends, time for another sprint update!

 

 

In the last couple of sprints we did a fair amount of checking existing game systems, making sure everything works as intended, and adding some long-planned polish here and there to make those existing features look and feel better. Most visible changes from player's perspective would be improvements to how meaning and use of metadata is communicated to the player, with better messaging about what data has new metadata, making sure player knows when they gain new metadata, and making the effect of collecting data about someone more visible in the UI.

One of the improvements we did was the addition of the save slots, we believe that this change will make the save system cleaner and quicker to use. Each slot (the current number of available slots is 3, but that value can be increased before launch) can have one manual save and one auto save, also the difficulty option will be associated with a specific slot, to give the option to have different game states with different difficulties at the same time, every other game option will be general and not associated with a save slot.

Improving the AI system is another important feature that we worked on in recent weeks, it's still a feature in development so we will talk more in-depth in the next sprint roundup, but essentially we felt the necessity to change the NPCs behaviour in the middle of a mission in a more flexible way, using the specific agent Lua script, doing that in an easier and transparent way. This will be a powerful tool to us and modders, to change the AI in a more dynamic way, but also it will help us to debug and improve the NPC behaviours in a faster way. For example, with this we can give a NPC a taser in the middle of a mission to attack the player. We'll have a full update on this topic on the coming weeks.

On the art front we have been importing a load of art assets into the project and reorganising our source files. We've been reworking all Existing LUTs, essentially cleaning up any old redundant character textures. 

Whilst we made these changes, we updated the wiki to reflect which LUTs are working and a preview of their appearance, this should help to visualise the vast variety of LUTs we have in the game for modders to choose from.

On top of all this we've been looking forward with some funding applications for some interesting post release collaborations we have in the pipeline. We've also done a lot of back end organization work, we moved cloud provider for our documentation for the studio, and it takes a surprising amount of time to make sure everything makes it's way over to a new system properly, and when you move stuff you realise you have a bunch or organization to do at the same time!

In the latest game and Levelkit build : 

So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools?
 
Content (Level Design and Art) 

• Dynamic light cone mesh for flashlights (no more flashlights clipping through walls!)
• New gates, fences, light models, concrete barriers, road/sidewalk parts etc added to LevelKit 
• New character LUTs have been made based on the older designs that work with the new LUT template

Gameplay and Mechanics

• All game systems will now only display a character's name if the player has actually learned the name from metadata or not.
• Targeting system will show if a data point has new metadata the player hasn't found yet. (also cleaned up the target info window a bit)
• Data download notification shows the amount of new metadata gained from the data.

Controls and UX

• Save slots added

AI 

• Improving and fixing various issues on the AI system such as NPCs being able to move form neutral to adversarial mid mission
• Setting and changing NPCs actions and goals were improved
• Cleaner NPC animation state machine setup

 

Modding and Lua API additions 

• Changes made on agent Lua script to allow for more flexible modding of AI
• Lua track for Timelines (run any Lua command from a timeline - DANGER!!)
  

Bugs fixed 

• Character LUTs were not assigned correctly if only color or only smoothness/metallic was defined in mission Lua script.
• SocialInventory was not assigned correctly so all collected metadata was just sent to void
• Lua API was not handling null/nil values consistently, some API calls returning a nil value from Lua side as a nil, and others as null.

Other 

• Funding applications for post release DLC
  
• Cloud and documentation migration
  

That's it for this update, we'll be back again soon with more, in the mean time stay safe folks!

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!

Sprint Roundup: Spring Character Cleaning!

May we welcome you to the latest OFF GRID devblog!  As always, there are continuous improvements being made, and we hope you enjoy hearing about it all. 

Improving User Experience

The last two sprints have seen improvements in the user experience for players, but even more so for modders.  That also means it helps us in making content - as we use the same tools ourselves.

Most noticeably for everyone, the look and feel of the data view has been improved.  This makes it easier for players to find and access the data they want in the levels, making the whole experience of targeting data feel better.  For anyone with access to our LevelKit and modding API, we have been rewriting lots of our API to simplify the scripts, make sure different functions use consistent syntax, and can be used everywhere.  This reduces the amount of information modders need to write, and automates more of the level setup steps on engine side to reduce the amount of things content creators need to handle.

Character Updating

Another major task has been coordinating work by a few of us on characters, their accessories, LUT colours, and how the prefabs are organised for all of this.  We finally removed the last remnants of prototype characters that have been in the game since day dot too.  It has been liberating to do some spring cleaning!  This has also meant that the full remit of characters in all colours, shapes and sizes are now implemented across the game, AND they can be tweaked and modded to your heart's content!  Next up is fleshing out the rest of their personalities and conversations!

New characters have entered the building!

Character customisation - accessories, hair, and colours can be changed.

NPC Direction

NPC direction has been improved when performing certain actions, like interacting with a device or walking through various points.  As the navigation mesh system isn't made to have an agent to face a certain orientation or to be in an exact position at the end of its path, it's needed to tweak the object direction and position with code, and at the same time control the animation manually to make everything seems as fluid as possible.    The facing orientation is really important in patrolling because it's a game design pillar for stealth games to control where the player can navigate through a level.  It's also important when the player is interacting with devices - for the animations to seem correct, the NPC needs to be in a certain position facing a specific direction.

We also added a gizmo to help us visualise in the level each direction the NPC should face at certain points such as interacting with interest points, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Arrow indicates the direction this non-playable character should face.

This helps us and modders to line up the characters correctly when setting up the patrol routes and interactions.

Improving and cleaning the NPC creation system

This is really Phase One of a bigger feature and task that we are going to talk more about in the next blog post, but for now we are going to focus on the NPC part of it.  We are developing a more flexible NPC system to have various types of NPCs with different action, behaviours, or items.  It's really important to have diverse levels, and also to give good tools for the community to create dynamic mods.  In terms of developing the game, this is also really helpful to us because it's a good opportunity to improve and clean some code.  This has already resulted in improving the AI search actions and debugging the code in a faster way.

What will you see in the next build? 

Expect a new build for all of you FIRST ACCESS folk next month - we'll give you a heads up as soon as it's done.  Here are some of the changes you can expect to see:

Characters

• All protoype characters removed and new characters implemented across the game
• Characters available in all colours, shapes and sizes now in game - ready to be tweaked and modded as you please
• Improved creation of NPCs:
• Ability to create different types of NPCs with various actions and behaviours in a flexible way
• Some components are added in runtime, using the information in Lua scripts
• Simplification, merging, and removal of some NPC scripts

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Support for scheduling things to happen based on date / time (in addition to the existing "do after X seconds" option)

Controls and UX

• Fixed issues with data view visible range and actual targeting range not matching
• Improved visibility of data & data trails
• Fixed data view range not always resetting to minimum correctly
• Fixed data view shader using negative transparency with missing/bad UV's on meshes

AI 

• New system to control the NPC direction at certain actions:
• It improves the movement before the NPC interact with a device
• Gives more control in the guard's patrol
• Gizmo added to visualise the desired direction 
• Cleaner organisation and seperation of NPC functionality, which should make debugging various parts of the codebase easier

Modding and Lua API additions 

• Lots of Lua scripting API cleanup, with more consistent and less verbose syntax for things
• Requirements for level creator / modder to set up certain things have been removed and are now handled automatically instead

Other tasks and upcoming events

• Rich did a presenation on modding and mod communities for Tentacle Zone :  
 

 
• We submitted to Steam Games Festival - fingers crossed!
• Moving and tidying of all Semaeopus and OFF GRID organizational documentation to a new system

Tonight (Wednesday the 20th), we will be demoing OFF GRID and our Milliways mod during the World Game Night:  Made in London Edition event put on by Playcrafting.  If you're free, join in - this session is all about UK games and their makers!   Check it out:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-game-night-made-in-london-tickets-102541967786 

Thanks for reading!


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!  Thank you!

Sprint Roundup - 30.05.19 - 'Fluttery' will get you everywhere

It's that time again: here is your regular sprint round up of development! Read on to find out what we have been up to...

"UI the long face?"

As promised as one of the stretch goals in our Kickstarter campaign, we've now added our in-game short message social media app, which we've decided to call "Flutter."

Some 'fleeting' in action

Similar to our existing SMS system, it sends procedurally-generated messages using the profiles of non-player characters in the levels. In addition, it sends messages from the rest of the people in the the game world. PLUS we've made it Lua-scriptable (even more so than the SMS system is), and added support for sending custom messages, both from our own game systems and from Lua scripts. So, the messages the player sees can actually provide some useful feedback about something you've just done in the mission, or reflect on some previous choice you've done during the game. They may also help explain what may be going on in some NPC's AI mind at the moment...

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!

STREEEETCH GOALS!

How fun it is to be talking stretch goals!  Stretch goals are a tricky thing, especially with this amount of time left: it’s plenty of time for a nice little burst of activity, but it isn’t ages either…

We wrote a little bit about our attitude to stretch goals yesterday here, and so, building on that, here is our plan…

We’re not gonna go mad, but we do have a few nice ideas that we’d like to put out there and see how people respond to them, and if they prove popular, we have further things to expand upon based on uptake too.

We’ll be revealing 2 possible stretch goals to start with, and then revealing a new one each time one is met (if they are met!).

To start, we have these stretches for you:

Stretch Goal #1: In Game social media feed!

How about it: an in-game, fictional social media app that does some world building and can provide hints for both narrative and mechanic discovery?

We are on our way already with this one: the campaign currently sits at £20,593 so we’re 13.5% toward it already! :)

Apps...

This will give you more insight to what's going on in the game world outside (rather than just what's going on in the mission you are playing), through a short message-based social media feed. Not unlike certain real-life one with a bird as their logo.

We feel this is something that would make the OFF GRID world feel more alive, *and* that we can do without it affecting our release schedule since we already have built similar tech for other parts of the game. The feed would be a combination of procedurally generated messages from the "outside world", pre-made story telling messages, and ones created as a response to player's actions and choices in the game. This would also create an additional way to learn about people in the levels, and perhaps gather some useful information as well. After all, people post all kinds of things on social media!

To go with this, we'll add a new limited edition tier to our campaign, giving you an opportunity to create your own message and have it included in the game.

What might you put in there?! Get to thinking - it’ll be up on the reward section once the stretch goal is met!

(We reserve the right to veto inappropriate or ill-fitting content of course, but will work with you to get everything edited into something that will work with the message generation system we use.)

Stretch Goal #2: New hackable interfaces!

Now this one is niiiiiice!

The game currently has one device user interface (UI) which represents something you'd have as a back-end settings menu on a device. With this stretch goal, we'll add some new ones to represent the front-end side, what any normal (non-hacker) user would see when using a device.

...after all, all the devices in the game are actually used by other characters too, and surely they aren't doing it by hacking to their back end settings menus like you are! So the player should be able to see the same end-user side as well.

We think this will make for some potentially interesting variations on hacking techniques and puzzles too.

Let’s do this!

“How?” you say...

• Tell others that you’ve backed OFF GRID and want to see it go further!
• Tell your friends they might like the game too!
• Post the campaign wherever you hang out online
• Do you write about games? We’d love you to write about OFF GRID!
• Do you stream? Stream the demo and talk about the campaign!
• Retweet, share, and like our posts as much as you can
• Start thinking about what social media message you want to adorn OFF GRID with and back the new tier once it's unlocked!

If you haven’t already, and you like what we do, back us at any level you can! Remember, if you are tempted by the stretch goals and have already backed, you can up your pledge too! Even just by £1! Every single little bit helps!

THANK YOU BACKERS! 

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!

Off Grid Sprint Update 03.05.2017 - #Winning

Our favorite part of April?  Bagging the Game of Show Award at Bonus Stage!  It was pretty sweet to take part in the coolest new indie games showcase to start - but to take home a prize?!  Awesome. 
We even got a trophy!

That was a great start to the month, but so, so much more has happened since then.  We’ve worked hard on improving the stealth element of gameplay, added to our level kit architecture, worked hard on the save system, and have gotten busy making more levels.  Read on through for all the nitty gritty and make sure you get to the end - there’s even more good news!  :)

Sprint Update 30.09.2016 - BIOS-ecurity hazard

Hello, hello!
This sprint we’ve been hard at work extending some of our core systems and playing with hacking NetDevices. There has been some great progress on how the interactions with internet enabled devices around the level will produce gameplay and we have developed a couple fo new features that we are excited to show you! Read on!

Sprint Update 09.09.16 UI so serious? :)

It’s been a funny old sprint this one really, obviously going on ‘holiday’ didn’t get in the way of us continuing to crack on with development and so although we were spread over some 6000 miles the 3 of us managed to put in some fairly exciting changes even while away visiting family on various continents.

Sprint Update - 26.08.16 - Lua to the moon!

Hello folks!

Apologies for the delay, we all went on holiday at the end of the sprint and there was some confusion as to who had written up their part of the blog post!

:P

So sorry if you have been achingly awaiting a dev update, it is finally here, and you’ll have another one in short succession at the end of the current sprint to make up for it!

Off Grid Sprint Update 11.12.2015 - File transfers

Our last sprint was mainly about building the simulation of mobile and wireless networks, how devices connect to them, and converting all out existing data systems to send the data through these networks. But of course the goal wasn’t just for the existing things to work with the networks, there was a bigger reason why we needed to build that simulation…