darkexecutor2

Early Special Agent Report and Poll #1

Published: April 28th 2020, 6:58:44 am

Hey guys! You are Special Agents, so probably you love this game a lot and I promised to deliver other news to your tier earlier than to others. So this post will start my series of posts about the far future of the current game and its sequel, which is in the pre-production/planning stage right now.

First, let’s start with the perspective of the current game. As you noticed, I added Chapter 4 and 5 backgrounds into this build 0.31 to save my time on importing and tweaking these assets, so after finishing Chapter 3, which will be hopefully done for the next version 0.32, I’ll do a public demo to attract more people and then the work on Chapters 4 and 5 will be done. They are shorter than the Paradise and have more action-related gameplay than undercover missions. I will not spoil the ending of the current game in this series of posts, hopefully, you will see it yourself this summer.

However, here is our current state of planned romance routes for the VN part, and also you can add some HCGs which will be required for Chapters 4 and 5 gameover scenes to these numbers. 

 

As you see, lots of stuff has either to be cut from this side and/or some extra magic should be done to get funding to do these pictures. 

So it means that something remarkable should be done to attract more audience to the current project. Some developers start different projects in the middle of developing their current one, but I don’t consider this as good developer practice. I want to have the main plot finished in the current game and as you see, we’re closer and closer to that point after the first year of this campaign. Some developers completely remake their games in the same game version, but that’s another bad developer practice, IMHO.

The plot of the current game was designed from the start in such a way that it could have a sequel. Also, current missions and romance structure allows doing polishing, adding side missions, new sex scenes, and new scenes to the VN part, too, even after the ending main plot. There should be some proofreading done on the English part and localization to other languages, maybe map editor for VR missions, etc.

So the only viable option that I see is starting very early planning, discussions, and very early prototyping of the sequel which will not only fix current fundamental game design mistakes, but it will attract a new audience to the current game, so it will finally have more content, too. Creating a game universe is an interesting thing and it motivates me and everyone to do our work, I guess.

The plot of the sequel will be tightly connected to the current game and the name of the sequel will be “Guilty Force II: The Lost Love” 

My goal is to keep and improve all good features from the current game in the sequel and remove or change features that didn’t work well in the current game. I have my own list of mistakes and other stuff that I would like to change in the sequel.

Inventory system, upgrades, hacking, and gun customization work good and they should be improved, extended, and have better UI, that’s what I think for now. 

The rest, however… Let me put a list of what I would like to change and why:

1. Storytelling/Dialogue system. One of the reasons why the sequel will be done in 3D is the gameplay and storytelling. The current game was planned as a hybrid of a platformer and visual novel, but people don’t like to read long texts for briefings and romance routes, I guess. Having well-designed short cinematic dialogue cutscene in 3D allows creating better-written sentences while making them shorter. Ordering full voiceover for this is cheaper, too, because VNs tend to have lots of text compared to 3D cutscenes. I tried to estimate how much money would cost to make a full voiceover of the current VN part and in-game cutscenes, and I experienced a nightmare after that.
2. Adding tabs “Tasks” and “Notes”. Too much text of the in-game cutscenes and silly puzzles - that’s what having notes will help to avoid. Extracting data from the terminals like in Deus Ex and finding some notes to solve puzzles and discover backstory - that’s what I want. It will help to avoid writing passwords for the terminals on the walls and making stupid conversations for guards like “Hey, do you remember password XXX to that door?”. Having the “Tasks” tab will help to create a simple quest system and provide better navigation for the player.
3. Custom controls should be available starting from the first demo and the control scheme should be simplified/modernized. The next build 0.32 will hopefully have custom controls and I’ll be able to save some useful code from that for a sequel. Also, the sequel will have more Metal Gear/Mass Effect-like controls in general, it’s relatively simple to do that for 3D because I can look at their example. Quick access panel will be replaced with a modern “quick access wheel” for choosing abilities and items. You will be able to use numeric keys for it the same way as you can now, too. It will be expanded to 8 slots instead of the old 6. 
4. The golden palette will be replaced with shades of blue and etc. Current feedback tells me that people want more Metal Gear and Mass Effect style than Deus Ex, so be it. The sequel will focus on several locations in the Solar system and it will have more stuff related to space, so it’s logical to have a more common sci-fi color palette for these things. Currently, I consider using something like this:

 and some HUD mockup from existing grey box prototype of the game:

5. Quality over quantity of the characters in the player’s team. Kira Liu will remain the main character of the sequel, however, the current game has too many characters in the team who weren’t properly written and the player doesn’t interact with them too often, but my time and funds were spent on them. The player will start with only two new characters in a team and we’ll make polls about the characters which will be brought back in 3D from the old team if the sequel will attract more people to the campaign. The players will decide who we need to bring back into the sequel. It would be nice to bring back everyone, but considering that we do this on a very very tight budget - I’ll have to prioritize and rely on the community to help with this issue.

6. Replacing fist fighting with a multi-functional knife. If you lose Kira’s clothes completely in the current game, she will not be able to stun enemies from the back or execute them. I want to fix this, so the player will always have a multi-functional knife option, the idea is close to Stun Knife from Metal Gear 4 - it can kill and stun, depending on the player's decisions. Another reason is animations - I don’t have a department of animators like Konami to make CQC, but I can make some effects and tricks with this knife. 

7. The Command Center menu will be replaced by walking inside your spaceship in 3D like in Mass Effect. The game will be done in 3D, so it’s natural. The new ship will use updated/remade designs of all rooms to make them more related to each other in one style. You will be able to select the missions the same way as you used a map in ME.

8. Separating watching player’s sex scenes from action gameplay. It’s the most controversial game design decision, but let me explain how it works. Decoy devices with sex scenes and romancing your companions will not go anywhere, it will work the same way as it worked before. The goal of stealth-action games is to reward stealth and non-lethal approach instead of letting the protagonist being discovered and stunned. So what I would like to do is to make a play rating/ranks similar to Metal Gear, which will reward the player with Perfection Points after the mission completion depending on stealth/non-lethal walkthrough. These Perfection Points will be used to unlock new sex scenes with Kira and other girls in the in-game VR gallery in the game. You will be able to use cheats to watch them if you want. You will be able to re-play existing missions to gain more Perfection Points and resources if you want, too. Watching these sex scenes will be implemented like in simple 3D sex scene simulator game, so you will be able to switch the camera views and do other stuff. The main goal is to allow players to fully dive into the stealth-action gameplay by playing with two hands and watch sex scenes without a rush when they want it without playing a solo on the keyboard. Another benefit of this feature is that we can make sex animations not connected to in-game enemies at all - tentacles, orcs and other stuff not related to the lore of the game will be okay because it’s an in-game VR simulation that doesn’t happen in the real world of a game. There will be polls about what animations will be done in each batch when the sequel development will start at full throttle.

That’s the main list of fundamental changes in the sequel’s game design for now. Please let me know what you loved the most in the game or what you hated the most. I found some decent TPS cover shooter template with some basic cover functionality implemented, but it still needs prone movement to be added and instant takedowns, as well as interaction with dead/stunned bodies, etc. I updated the current game engine to Unity 2019.3 so I’ll be able to re-use some code for inventory/skills/gun customization and etc. to merge it with the template that already has its own well-tested movement, shooting, interaction with covers and other code. The common data container will be re-written from the old Singleton pattern to the new Dependency Injection pattern, I guess. I have suspicions that it was the main reason for different crashes during the loading of the current game. 

Our portrait/HCG artist, Ilano, is working on a reference sheet for Kira’s 3D model in a sequel, too. He draws good reference sheets, so he will continue working with me on a sequel, too, which will allow keeping consistency with existing main character designs. I constantly keep in touch with all voice actors that did main roles for the current game and I think there will be no issues to work with them on a sequel when it will be required. There will be another experienced 3D character artist invited to make character models for main characters, though, his name is a secret for now.

Our 2D in-game character artist, RoboticRevolt, stays with me, too, we have some small non-action 2D game prototype in mind, but I want to finish the main storyline of Wish of the Colony first, then switch to its support/polishing, and making The Lost Love plus this new 2D project. I view the current global situation as an opportunity to fix my previous mistakes, work more, and attract more audiences.

My current priority is to finish the most difficult part of the current game (Chapter 3) in the next build 0.32 and then everything else will go smoother. 

Here is some very important art direction question: what character and art style do you like more for 3D hentai games?

There are different ways to handle material setup, art direction, and everything else depending on the task. I like the art style of Dead or Alive game series, but it’s somewhere in between these two styles. This question is not urgent and the results of the poll will be collected on the 28th of May.