KVASIR is heavily inspired by stealth adventure games like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell. And one of the coolest mechanics we noticed there that was so rarely use elsewhere is the "environmental awareness". Meaning how much you blend in and how easy/hard it is to spot you.
Here's an example from Splinter Cell that we used in our documentation:
1. VISIBILITY METER
In KVASIR, the visibility meter (aka light indicator) reveals how visible you are in the environment.
At first it was just how much light are you under right now (hence "light indicator" title). But then we realized that player's visibility should depend not just on the light around you but also on your opponent's sight radius.
And different opponents will have different sight radius and reaction time. So you'll need to stay in the shadows to outsmart them.
We also have a couple of shorts on the youtube channel, made for the single purpose of adding vids to our steam posts. But turns out Steam doesn't support shorts. So I'll just drop the link to the playlist (but you also can follow us onTikTok):
Since we already made the technical component to track visibility, next we'll have to painfully tune it in every single location.
The challenge here is make the intuitive visibility equal the component's state. E.g. there should be no cases, where the player's sure they are standing in the shadows, but the visibility meter is half-full etc.
2. SOUND METER
Just like with light, we also incorporated sound detection. Of course, the opponents will react to sound, so the speed with which you move and the surface matters.
In our original concept, sound meter shows two values:
- player's sound level
- background sound level
Background noise = any noise that is NOT made by the player, having less weight the more distant it is to them.
As long as the player’s sound is not higher than the background - they will not be heard. The rest also depends on opponents hearing radius.
It took us quite some time to figure out how to use the wavy visualizer that we wanted in UE - the one you can see on the vids. So right now it only shows how much sound the player makes. And based on our playtests we'll see if we even need the added complexity of background sound level.
That's all for now.
You can support us on ko-fi and make the release date a bit closer.
Your balkan dad wishes you a good weekend!
meanwhile dad himself:
