KickStarter Cyber Knights: Flashpoint - the latest tactical RPG from Trese Brothers - now available on Early Access

[agris]

For anyone following this more closely than me (read: barely): is there object and cover penetration for munitions? That couch should be torn up by anything other than the most lightweight rim fire hollow point.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[santino27]

Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/cyber-knights/posts/2947330

Update #35
September Progress Report

Cyber Knights,

September is here and autumn is just a few weeks away. As the seasons make their steady progress across the year, we continue to make steady progress on Cyber Knights: Flashpoint. As we hit each new milestone, our work and focus shift from one area of the game to another and September is a month of changing priorities.

We’re still hitting updates every 2-4 weeks here on Kickstarter, but if you want to keep up with us more regularly, we’re putting extra emphasis this autumn on connecting with our fans on social media. In addition to our regular @Tresebrothers on Twitter, we’ve launched a new cyberpunk focused account, @CyberKnightsRPG. Plug in to see the latest concept art, gameplay previews, news & interviews, highlights from the forums & discord, shout-outs to other awesome cyberpunk creators, and more. If you want Cyber Knights on a drip, follow us here:

https://twitter.com/CyberKnightsRPG

Big Summer Milestones
All summer long we have announced major milestones and our progress on the game’s foundation components and infrastructure, as well as new features and stretch goals. In the June Report, we shared the exciting addition of multiple language support in the game. In July’s Update, we shared that with your funding we were able to license and integrated top-tier audio middleware Wwise from Audiokinetic, giving us features you’d expect from AAA games like dynamic audio, game-state reactive music and a fully 3D sound stage for combat. Finally, in August’s Update we announced the support of cross-platform cloud save that will let you backup, restore and sync your games across any number of machines and devices. Along the way the art team has completed a major milestone -- the concept art team is now completely done! All remaining work is now in completing all the game-ready 3D assets and final animations!

Of course, as we are working through all of these major items progress is being made on the core gameplay, a new saved game format, the character professions that will be offered, the intricacies of the battle map, cover, safehouse, sight lines, stealth and more.

Integrating Systems
September is a month of change and integration. The majority of the game’s systems are now in and functioning per their design. The process of plugging them together and tightly integrating them has begun. For example, you can now train your teammates in their second Jobs. Some of those Jobs -- like Hunder or Hacker -- require certain cybernetic enhancements -- like an Evo Rig or a neural nanowire interface. If you need a new implant to train in a Job, you can go to your Safehouse’s medical clinic and pay for a new implant. Now, such surger properly takes your character out of action for a while and you have to advance the game clock before they are available for a mission again. Advancing the game clock also lets your workshop run, which might produce your new rifle scope from the blueprint you fed into it. You can snap that rifle scope onto your current AR for some extra optimal range and drop into a mission and the rifle’s 3D model will rock that scope.

That might all sound very ho-hum, that’s a game -- but it's a critical turning point in the game dev cycle to move from isolated play loops to integrated play loops. There are months of work still to go but the shift to integration is a big one.

Spoiler

Job Skill Trees
As August closed we were digging deep into the variety, mechanics and balance of the starting Jobs that are planned for the game’s alpha. The last few months have allowed us to build out a new, powerful and dynamic Talent implementation. Now we’re working at a detail level to spec out the separate functional domains within each Job -- Soldiers can have a territory control focus while Knights can build to be powerfully anti-drone -- as well as the exact active and passive Talents for each of these domains and how they intersect.

We have drawn on inspiration from other deep RPGs as well as our previous games like Templar Battleforce to craft a powerful skill tree system for Cyber Knights: Flashpoint. As your characters level, they will gain points to spend on the skill trees of either of their 2 Jobs. Each node on the tree can grant a wide array of bonuses, including training in new active Talents (you pick when to use them) and passive Talents (they proc automatically on game events). Other skill tree nodes can grant permanent bonuses, such as improvements to weapon accuracy, increased movement speed or additional attribute points. As you craft your build, you’ll also seek out nodes on the tree that can change the meta of your active and passive Talents, increasing their use refresh rate, increasing their max use count, increasing their effects or even adding completely new aspects to their effects. Soldiers can quickly snag a solid active Talent that increases defensive bonus from cover and buffs critical hit percentage, but by investing down one branch of your skill tree, you can change its aspects. On one node, you might alter the Talent to allow you to also recover Recoil, making it perfect for on-the-move mercs who dash between cover, hunker down and still need to take accurate shots on the same turn. Down another branch, you might alter the same Talent by increasing your overwatch angle of fire while reducing your movement rate, improving it for mercs who are more defensive and more focused on territory control than rapid advances. You’ll be able to plot your own course through the skill tree, picking one, both or neither of these nodes with your points.

Let’s just say -- we cannot wait to see what characters you create with this new system.

As we know the structures of the trees and their bonuses will be some of the most revised and tweaked data points in the game up to and through the alpha, we’re building to be flexible and ready to adjust the meta without a lot of groaning and pain. Just another place where Cory’s 10 years of data-driven game development is helping us cope with big systems and large data sets without losing our agility.

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
As always, we’ve included the progress bar infographic to ensure our progress and commitments are clear. With this update, we’re excited to say that three of the big art stretch goals have been completed.

Both stretch goal dog breeds -- the Support Beagle and Fast-Attack Shepherd -- have now had both their 3D models fully completed and their animation packs done as well. They’re ready to join your hunder in the game! We’ve crossed these off the list in the progress bar.

The original cyber lynx cat has now completed its animation pack which is supported by a beautiful 3D model. This goal had been planned under Alpha Access but has been completed early. The cyber snow leopard also has a completed 3D model and is waiting for its animation pack.

Both the stretch goal Support Drone and Scout Drone have completed 3D models but are waiting for animation treatment similar to the previews we checked out in the last update. The Battle Drone’s high poly 3D sculpt has just started. These are close but not ready to be struck from the list.

We’re making continued progress on the 50+ backer faces in 3D. This game is going to have a lot of face options!

The next set of items to flip will be more completed art stretch goals -- we'll probably be marching right down the list. For every new strike off the list, the closer we get to alpha!

Streaming on Twitch
You can find Cory (and sometimes Andrew) on the Trese Brothers Twitch where we are streaming game development, answering questions and talking about the studio Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4PM EST.

Thank you for your support!

Andrew & Cory Trese

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[santino27]

Art heavy update today, and release date delay announcement: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/cyber-knights/posts/2973187

Schedule & Q3 Progress Update

Knights and Backers,

Our goal with our Kickstarters has always been to provide top tier communication to you, our backers. So, with that said, we’ll jump right into the schedule update as we wrap up Q3 2020.

Schedule Update
Far too many Kickstarters wait until there are already major problems to update their backers. As we wrap up Q3 of 2020, we want to share our realistic estimates that it is now more likely that the Cyber Knights Alpha will start in Q1 2021 rather than late 2020.

As many other game and movie studios -- big and small -- have found this year, it has been challenging to keep to previously planned schedules. There are many reasons for the slowdown including COVID-19 which has impacted not only on our team but each of our partners. We’ve also made some decisions this year to focus on refining and expanding parts of the game’s foundation, which has traded some time for significant future benefits of features and speed of delivery. This includes rebuilding our UI kit, adding cross-platform cloud sync capability, language translation support and integrating Wwise to achieve both reactive and dynamic music/SFX.

To help everyone stay on the same page, we’ve updated the Progress Bar to reflect the revised timeline. With every update we will continue to share as transparently as we can about any schedule changes and will always post the most up to date Progress Bar in each update so these milestone dates and progress on stretch goals and rewards are all clear.

September Progress
A delay in schedule doesn’t change the fact that we are working tirelessly to bring this game to the alpha phase as soon as possible. While it may feel like a set back, at this stage it is far more important that we take our time and get it right than to try to rush it to make up for lost hours in 2020.

We have been cranking -- September has been a month of major progress. We’re integrating systems while adding and pruning others judiciously to ensure the best flow and focus for the gameplay loop.

One example is the formal addition of Blueprints, a type of item that is the plan to build another item. While we had planned for blueprint-like features within the story and crafting, they’ve recently gotten the upgrade to full system. They are now first class citizens with all the necessary bells and whistles to buy, sell, loot, steal and craft items from your blueprints in your safehouse or through a crafting-focused contact.

Mergers and integrations of systems and continued refinement of the gameplay loop is naturally pushing us to take stock of the original prototype content -- weapons, armor, monsters, everything -- that we loaded into the game and balanced. To prepare for the larger content build out that is to come through the alpha, we’re diving back into our balancing tables, statistical models and equations. One example here is the massive pricing matrix that we are building out to preplan the relative price of all the types of resources, rewards and challenges in the game. This work is necessary in order to be certain that the scaling and balance of mission payments to maintenance cost to your stream of upgrades is balanced and fun. The starting point to this on-going exercise was to peg the basic mission payment at $500. If level 1 weapons (which you have) are $100 and level 2 weapons are $200 then you could finish your first mission and upgrade two weapons. With minor medical treatment is $10, medium is $50 and major treatment is $250, if your team got banged up a bit on the mission, your ability to purchase the 2 weapons might waver. And with level 1 armor costing $200 and level 2 armor costing $400 which means you could ... this table has many columns, rows and internal calculations! Weapons, armor, gear, items, grenades, medkits, cyberware, drones, dogs, cats, safehouse upgrades, matrix hacking rigs, mission rewards, blueprints, medical treatment, recruits ... oh my!!

Spoiler

Patrol, en route.
We’ve been working on the battle map to bring better visualization to the active elements such as Overwatch, sight lines and cover. The AI’s sight lines have especially helped us fine tune the stealth and sneaking game and will be important parts of the gameplay. By improving the rules and raycasting used to detect players we’re getting entirely consistent and logical results.

Grenade!
Now that the AI understands cover and the optimal ranges of their weapons, they are running around in much more dangerous fashion, ducking behind barricades and taking flanking positions to flush your team from cover.

Get your style on
As always now, everything we add further expands and deepens the animation controller which has blown up the monster you see below. The overwatch animation transitions have just been added and we’re prepping to add step-out from cover, which will be another major chunk.

Animation control just keeps growing
The art team is finishing the Skyrise stretch goal environment now with just a few more props to go. The concept art for the Streets environment is complete and the hard surface modeling team has transitioned to bringing those gritty pieces to life.

Street Building Concepts

Modular 3D Street Buildings
Progress and more progress! We’re preparing in October to reconvene the Executive Producers team to give a gameplay-focused preview and to gather early feedback from that excellent team.

Cyberpunk Day is 10-10-2020 - join us for a game preview and Dev Q&A stream!
For everyone who's a genre fan or wants to dive deeper, join us and a coalition of authors, musicians, filmmakers and more in celebrating all things cyberpunk on the first World Cyberpunk Day, 10-10-2020.

The day will be a hashtag-driven (#CyberpunkDay) celebration, with people sharing author readings, film highlights, new music, and more -- just check the hashtag link above on the day, or follow @CyberpunkDay for the "official" highlights. We'll be joining in the festivities by streaming a game preview and live Dev Q&A at 3 PM Eastern; add it to your calendar and check @CyberKnightsRPG for the link to watch.

Join us in celebrating all things cyberpunk!

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
As always, we’ve included the progress bar infographic to ensure our progress and commitments are clear. With this update, we’ve completed a few more of the art stretch goals that are between us and alpha. Your support on Kickstarter gave us a significantly expanded art budget to add new character outfits, drones, dogs and even cats! We’re getting closer to completing all the art assets required for those even if some of them (such as cybercats) still have significant game dev needs to be game-ready.

The art team has now completed both the Street Outfit and Military Outfit stretch goals and they are looking awesome, as shown below. All four of them offer a lot of new versatility to the outfit options. We hope you like the look of the street berserks and the career mercenary outfits.

The new Corp Outfits are still in their high poly phases but will be heading to be prepped for the game and textured soon.

We know a schedule slip is never something any backer wants to hear. We appreciate your patience and we will keep marching to our commitment to make this amazing game for you!


Thank you for your support!

Andrew & Cory Trese

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Infinitron]

Now on YouTube:

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[baud]

they got a new trailer. Most of the elements were already shown on twitter, though

 

[Lyre Mors]

The concept art really isn't bad at all, but their 3D modeler just isn't bringing it out well in the actual game. Really hate that plastic looking cartoonish aesthetic they got going on.

Still very much looking forward to the game itself, though. Was just hoping to see a little bit of refinement and progression on the aesthetic side of things.

 

[Serious_Business]

This looks pretty sweet. I really quite liked Templar Battleforce, in fact I'm a bit dissapointed that this new game isn't in the same universe. But otherwise I'm sure this will be a blast, these guys know what they're doing, especially in termes of character systems.

 

[agris]

Nano-radiation

I hope there isn’t too much scifi babble in this, it takes you right out of the atmosphere and into clowntown.

 

[santino27]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/cyber-knights/posts/3007898

October Progress Report

Knights!

Cory and I are beyond excited about the progress we’ve made on the game over the past year. Sometimes it is easy to get stressed about individual milestones and internal delays, but as we hit our stride in Q4 of 2020, we are taking a moment to look back with deep gratitude for all that you, our backers, have given us. Cyber Knights has now been in the works for almost two years if you include all the planning and build up to the Kickstarter and the wild ride since. But we’ve been dreaming about it for a lot longer. This game is built on a campaign world more than 10 years in the making, and each of you who joined us as backers have become part of this decade-long journey.

We have such a dedicated team of creative people who have put so much work into making this game a success. Along the way we’ve gained new partners, new allies, new team members and more. So -- while there are still mountains to climb -- we want to once again, say thank you to the Cyber Knights team!

Our commitment is to keep you updated on progress continually, even if nothing earth shattering has happened. We’re making steady progress toward alpha, building out systems, playing, testing, iterating to improve.

Iterative Deepening
Our promise to you is to create complex systems with extreme replay. One of the ways we have always achieved that at Trese Brothers is to practice an iterative style of development. We trained in this style for years working with larger teams and razor-thin deadlines in the enterprise software world. It has served us very well in game dev and so in the month of October we’ve been doing a classic iterative “deepening” pass on some of the game systems.

In October, we’ve been revisiting the distinct planning phase of missions and working to make the breadth of pre-mission advantages even more exciting and impactful. When we set out to iterate on a system, we look specifically for ways to increase player agency and help the system cleave closer to the original feeling we wanted it to create -- in this case, the pre-heist planning before the high-tension mission. As we find with many deepening passes, the new planned improvements are going to expand and make this part of the game even more important, fun and impactful on how your team approaches missions. Our focus here has been how to allow your pre-mission planning to alter a mission's structure so that if you plan for it, you can choose different entry points, skip certain segments and avoid or hunt out optional challenging objectives.

And, while it may not seem like the most likely component, we have been revisiting our movement and pathing system. It is a key component that underpins everything -- from assisting a player find the right cover position to driving enemy patrol paths and hunting behavior. We’ve found consistently over the last few months that we are bumping up against the edges of what we can achieve with Unity’s built-in navmesh and pathing system. In this deepening pass, we’re coming back through to replace the movement and pathing system with a best of breed 3rd party component -- the A* Pathfinding Project -- that promises to provide the APIs we need to smooth out those edges and open up new capabilities for smarter AI movement, better handling for flying drones and improved assistance to the player when entering move orders.

Spoiler

Art and Music Milestones
The art team is approaching an important “alpha ready” milestone, meaning they will have completed all of the art that is planned to be rolled out during the alpha phase of the game. This is a massive achievement with thousands of 3D pieces included from environments to weapons to faces. We’re exceedingly proud of the work they have done and can’t wait to start the next phase of the project which will be to take alpha feedback and gather the “Early Access ready” project manifest.

On the music side of the house, both the Skyrise and Safehouse tracks are now in composition. We’ll share more soon but we are working on some exciting directions for the Safehouse tracks, including bringing on voice talent for one track and using a vocoder to punch up another.

Executive Producers & Patreon Meeting
The invitations for the next Executive Producers meeting have now been sent out. We are bringing together this team to do a deep dive into Cyber Knight’s multi-Job system and all of the abilities that they can unlock through their advancement trees.

This week we will also be sending out an invitation to our 102 supporters on Patreon to join us for a separate meeting that will dive into the same topic. This is a special reward offer we have extended to our patrons who have supported our studio for a long time, many giving a small monthly pledge for years. If you’re interested in helping the studio continue to grow beyond Cyber Knights and like digital rewards and sneak peaks, you might consider joining us there!

https://www.patreon.com/tresebrothers

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
In updates we always make a point to include the progress bar infographic to ensure that our dates, progress and commitments are clear. With this update we’ve completed two more of the art stretch goals that stand in the way of the alpha. As the art team nears their final milestone of alpha-ready we’re closing in all of the art stretch goals coming to pass.

The art team has recently completed the Attack Drone and Support Drone stretch goals and they are looking awesome, as you can see below. These additional drone types greatly expand the options of chassis that we will be able to include in the game, making the drone pilot all that more fun, and the enemy drone fleet all that more terrifying.

The heavy chassis of the support drone is slow moving on its hover rings but is capable of packing powerful weaponry as well as extra gear and powerful buffs and defensive maneuvers.

The lightweight chassis of the attack drone is built around its weaponry, speed and jets. Targets are spotted, hunted and eliminated.

Thanks for your on-going support,

Andrew and Cory Trese

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[santino27]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/cyber-knights/posts/3034093

November Progress Report

Knights and Backers!

It is a thankful time of the year and we’re taking some time to reflect on all the support that you and our wider community have given us over the past decade. That last part can be kind of hard to believe -- that Cory and I have been creating games professionally together for ten years and as a hobby for our entire lives. We couldn’t have done it without you, without our repeat Kickstarter backers, without our Patreons and without our entire community. Thank you all for what you’ve given us, which has allowed us to give you these games in return!

Executive Producers #3
In November, we held the third Executive Producers meeting to give a demonstration of Cyber Knight’s multi-job system and its job trees. We looked closely at the Vanguard’s job tree and did a bit of leveling up to show the tree in action. Then, we took the Vanguard out for a spin in a small stealth level and used her Talents to dodge patrols, knock out security systems, jack a terminal and then quietly executed two guards who were too close to our objective. There were some rough spots -- as stealth gameplay is a hard system to get just right -- but we all had a blast and the demonstration generated a ton of useful feedback and questions.

Our executive producers are our “first line alpha team” who receive early presentations of the game’s features in action and who we rely on for invaluable early feedback. We’re looking forward to scheduling the fourth session soon! The more EP meetings there, are the more you know we're closing in on alpha :D

Spoiler

Recent Press
We’re excited to share that Cyber Knights: Flashpoint has recently been featured by the some gaming sites that we love --

In our first appearance on the site, PCGamer's Jon Bolding shared Cyber Knights: Flashpoint and discussed the game's design approach and unique take on cyberpunk in the year 2231. It’s been a dream of ours for a long time to be featured on top-tier gaming sites like PCGamer and we couldn’t have gotten up there without your support!

We also had a chance to sit down the GamingOnLinux team and discuss how Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is both classic and innovative within the tactical turn-based genre and what it has been like developing indie games over the past decade. So, check out “A chat with Trese Brothers the makers of the upcoming cyberpunk Cyber Knights: Flashpoint”. The Linux gaming community may be small, but they are mighty and we’ve been proud to bring all of our Steam games to Linux over the years.

Steam Autumn Sale
Every year, we bring some of our best deals out for the Steam Autumn Sale and this year is no exception. While you’re waiting for Cyber Knights, we’d highly recommend you check out its extremely well reviewed tactical predecessor, save 60% on Templar Battleforce. And don’t miss a chance to sail the stars as an intergalactic bounty hunter, spy or space pirate. Save 50% on Star Traders: Frontiers where you can see the true depth of our idea of endless replay and how we lovingly support our games after launch.

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
We always include the progress bar infographic to make it easy to check on our progress and where we are at with all commitments, rewards and stretch goals. With this update, we’ve completed one additional art stretch goal -- the new scout drone chassis. Coming in hot on 3 rotors, the tri-scout is equipped with powerful comms and sensory equipment making it a real boon to your team to gather battlefield intel or a real threat to expose your team and leave you in their sights.

We’ve also made a minor adjustment to the progress bar graphic to be sure the timeline of dependencies is clear. We are working our way from the top to the bottom. Therefore, we have moved the Pen and Paper RPG reward to the bottom of the stack to be sure there is confusion that the alpha will not launch until that campaign is scheduled and completed. We're getting there!

Thank you again for all your support!

Andrew & Cory Trese