KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[Jaesun]

 

[ArchAngel]

Moar like Escape from New York.

The marketing blurb said no escape from the island :D

 

[Prehistorik]

The title reminds me of Silicon Dreams.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Holy shit, this sounds awesome! Just my kinda game.

 

[rohand]

I trust those two to pull off a good cyberpunk game
That first art at the official website gave me a Blade Runner / Snatchers vibe

 

[roshan]

So, 3d gameworld ( maps ) with 2d character models + fixed perspective ?

Kinda like the opposite to shadowrun ( 2d maps + 3d character models + fixed camera ) ?

I think Shadowrun also uses 3D maps but this is not obvious if you enable orthographic projection. Copper Dreams should be something like Shadowrun with "pespective projection" enabled, but with an actual Z axis.

 

[Abu Antar]

I liked Serpent in the Staglands. If this is a crowd funded project, they'll have my money.

 

[ArchAngel]

I liked Serpent in the Staglands. If this is a crowd funded project, they'll have my money.

And my Axe! Ups, wrong movie.

 

[Got bored and left]

Kewl! Liked SitS quite a bit, and this sounds just as intriguing. Will keep an eye on this project.

At this rate, we're gonna need developer mugs for Joe and Hannah!

 

[Excidium II]

I think Shadowrun also uses 3D maps but this is not obvious if you enable orthographic projection. Copper Dreams should be something like Shadowrun with "pespective projection" enabled, but with an actual Z axis.

Yeah, but I think he means in the way the grafics assets are produced with polygon meshes vs 2d pictures, cause technically all jewnity games are 3D as far as I know

 

[Rahdulan]

Imma watch this.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Looking forward to this one, I liked Serpent more than PoE. I have faith in you Whalenought_Joe and Hannah! (no pressure )

 

[Sensuki]

Jim the Dinosaur I saw your post in the shoutbox from last week. The game will be turn-based, but with simultaneous real-time resolution. It's slightly different from phase-based where everyone acts at the same time. It's this weird middle ground between turn-based, phase-based and real-time xD

Units will roll for initiative and be placed in a turn order, each turn will be separated by a discrete unit of time.

When the game comes to a player unit's turn, the game will stop and wait for player input. When the player issues a command to their unit, the game will play out the unit's issued command in real-time until the next player unit turn where the game will stop and wait for player input again. When a unit has completed their turn, they will go back into the wait queue.

It's still a turn-based game because each unit will have their own discrete turn and the game stops and waits for a player's input on their turn. The game is bereft of the time-critical element that many people dislike about RT/wP combat. The staggered simultaneous real-time resolution of unit actions is different though and one of the things I've been focusing my feedback on is helping to make sure that the game takes advantage of the strengths of this unique combat system.

Recently in another thread I gave an example of how the use of grenades will likely differ from straight turn-based (or phase-based). In turn-based games usually you select a grenade, click where you want to throw it and the animation plays and you deal some damage to targets in the area of effect. In Copper Dreams, grenades will take time to throw and time to explode, so if you just throw a grenade at some enemies, they might move out of the AoE explosion radius if their turn is coming up soon - so you will have to use strategy, tactics, movement and positioning to make your grenade throws count.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Cool beans. If I understand it right, then it's p. much what I think of as the perfect combat system. Phase-based + something that simulates reaction speed (and in a way better fashion than initiative in TB ever did). Aysnchronous phase based is where it's at yo.

 

[Sensuki]

I think the limit to player & AI input makes it a bit easier to design for than RT/wP. Units can only make one decision on their turn, rather than loops constantly running updating their decision making. Likewise, players can't correct their actions once they've issued their units commands.

I really hope it works out because this could be some nextlvl shit right here

 

[ArchAngel]

I hope our two person dev team are up to the task. It seems it might be too complicated to do properly for just two people doing something totally new. It might also turn out that options available to players on their initiative are too simple.

SitS has combat implementation that had problems and could have been done better, you could see they had a good idea but not enough people to do proper iteration process that something like that needs until it is made "perfect".

Now with going with something completely new for this game and again something innovative, I am afraid it will have same problems. I would rather see them iterate on SitS combat and make it awesome or use tried and tested TB for this game and then try to innovate for next game in same engine.

 

[Sensuki]

I don't necessarily think it is about number of people - it's how well executed the ideas are. Styg executes ideas very well all by himself.

They obviously learned a lot from developing SitS, which was a big step up from their previous games.

One change to Whalenought's dev process is they are getting feedback a lot earlier in the design process (which they mentioned they would do in various interviews). With SitS the game was opened up for feedback during the beta. This time they're obtaining some closed feedback from the prototyping stage.

I'm sure Joe will eventually pop in to tell you whether or not they think it's making a difference.

 

[Jimmious]

I don't know how it will turn out finally but the battle system sounds like what I had in my mind as the perfect RPG battle system for many years now.

 

[Infinitron]

Cool beans. If I understand it right, then it's p. much what I think of as the perfect combat system. Phase-based + something that simulates reaction speed (and in a way better fashion than initiative in TB ever did). Aysnchronous phase based is where it's at yo.

"Asynchronous turn-based" is probably the best term they can they use to describe this in a way people will understand. I wouldn't call it phase-based since to me that implies giving orders to everybody at the same moment.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

It's really just turn-based but with actions that can span more than one turn which is unusual.

And with simultaneous resolution, which people don't really think of when they hear turn-based.

They could also call it real time with forced asynchronous pauses and locked out player input

 

[Infinitron]

Yes, they span more than one turn of all the turns, not just the turns when the character who effected them receives new input.

The decoupling of turns as input window and turns as action window.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

To make a spergy overview with plusses being overlaps and minusses differences:

rtwp:
+ synchronous resolution
- uninterrupted planning

phase-based:
+ synchronous resolution
- synchronous planning

turn-based:
- asynchronous resolution
+asynchronous planning

so going off Sensuki's comment, they could just sell it as the perfect mix of each system come to save crpg's.

 

[Sensuki]

It will probably look kind of similar to RTwP with forced autopause with regards to how the game looks at a glance, but it is definitely turn-based. The AI gets turns but the game will not stop to wait for their input by default as it will be processed automatically. There may end up being an option to toggle a short wait for AI input though.

I think the most important difference between turn-based and real-time for most people is the difference of player input. Turn-based is not time-critical and the game stops and waits for player input. Real-time (with pause) has a time-critical element. I think this game will be more popular with those who enjoy turn-based combat than with those who prefer real-time combat, but we'll see.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Wait, so there's a timer limit on the player's actions after all? I don't get it, why introduce such a twitchy element? not even rtwp has that as you can wait forever during pauses if you feel like it.

or what else do you mean by this:

Turn-based is not time-critical and the game stops and waits for player input.

 

[Sensuki]

What? There's no timer. Where did I imply that?