In-engine render, custom scene
With April coming to a close and spring officially in full swing, we’re here with another monthly Cyber Knights: Flashpoint update. Just like today, Much like modern times, spring means extra rain in the 23rd century but it's a much more dangerous prospect under skies brewing with nano fallout. Especially for those living outside of the dome in the Wards --
In a joint venture between McKellen Heavy Industries and Matsumoto Global started 11 years ago, major new exterior sections of land have been reclaimed for habitation. Each measures roughly 8 square miles and are situated to the west and north west of the city center. As nano pollution has been slowly dropping since 2203, these areas are now deemed habitable due to high walls, massive blower units that vault pollution overhead and low range ionized shielding. Even with these precautions, Ward 4 and 7 are deemed the worst available above-ground habitation in the zone and each is home to roughly 1.5 million hardy souls.
In April’s recap progress report, we’re sharing some of the major progress we’ve made this month on the march toward alpha, highlighting our recent Twitch dev streams and sharing some new texturing work for the Chromehawk Starting Weapons reward.
Also, while we haven't finished a fulll integration, the animations to pet each individual dog breeds are now done. You can’t actually initiate a pet in the game yet, but the animation is more than half the battle. Below is a low resolution clip of the animation in our animation review tool --
The cats do not seem impressed --
April Progress
Throughout April, we've stuck to our 4 focus weeks but we are completing more and more work at a broader level to improve the balance and cohesion of the content that will be in the alpha game. For example, we've been constantly tuning the exact balance and progression of the early game weapon's dealers and prices to make sure you can sink your teeth into upgrading your gear, have access to interesting options but don't have access too early to too much.
For our focus weeks in April, we've (1) completed a major rebalanced of the Talent set in the game to carve out space for special surge Talents -- are free to use, instant and powerful (but, like all Talents go on cooldown) -- which allow team members to have turns where their power level really surges (yep, exactly as it sounds), (2) improved the equipment and loadout system to better support saving, renaming, changing loadouts and even sharing equipment between loadouts on different characters (please wait your turn, only one at a time, you mercs!), (3) expanded the cyberware offering to support all 12 cybernetic slots (Skin, Spinal, Deep Brain Interface, Fast Brain Interface, Skeletal, Hands, Vision, Ocular, Heart, Lungs, Skull and Muscular) and upgraded cybernetic implants to allow them to grant their own unique surge Talents along with more constant buffs, and finally (4) dedicated a week to designing and improving our mission set as well as making needed improvements to the environment theme kits (industrial, street, skyrise, tech lab) to better support key tactics concepts like cover, stealth and line of sight (more metadata, varied physics raycasting for each).
In-engine render, custom scene
Weekly Twitch Dev Streams
Both Cory and I are now active every week on the Trese Brothers Twitch channel showing off different angles of the game’s development. If you’re looking to keep a more active pulse on the game’s progress, stop by at 4 PM EST on Tuesday (Andrew) or Thursday (Cory) to check out what we are working on! Recently, I’ve been showcasing visual customization options in both characters and weapons while Cory was working on the cyberware design and implementation last week. If you can’t make the scheduled streams, you can always check the VOD afterwards on the channel.
Here are some of our recent videos to check out if you need to catch up:
- Sharing the process to create Kickstarter 3D face rewards
- Creating a scene showing Rio in action, our archetype Vanguard character (see at the top of this update)
- Working on cybernetics catalog for the game
- Most recently, attaching scopes, silencers and other mods to weapons
If you aren’t watching Twitch but are still looking to a close lock on our progress, join us on our official Discord server or follow @CyberKnightsRPG on Twitter.
Executive Producers #6
Our sixth Executive Producers meeting is scheduled for next week in early May. From now until the alpha release, we are working to schedule monthly meetings with the Executive Producersto showcase our constant progress and ensure we are getting that stream of early, detailed feedback from our biggest backers. We will include an excerpt of the 6th meeting in our next Kickstarter update.
Reward and Stretch Goal Progress
As always, we include the infographic of our progress to ensure it is clear where all of our commitments on stretch goals and rewards stand. With this update, the only change is that we have marked the Chromehawk Starting Weaponry reward as “In Progress” state, as the art team has returned to working on the stylish look and textures for these powerful starting weapons.
Also, we are still delivering 3D backer faces, so if you haven’t received your email yet, we thank you for your patience. We’ve been putting extra effort into getting them perfect, so each one now takes more than an hour to set up, record and deliver to the backer. They are coming!
