Hi guys!
Please allow me to introduce myself, since it is the first time that I have spoken about the project. I'm the "new" Programmer of RIOT – Civil Unrest and I've been working on the game for about a year now. I'd like to update you all on the state of the project; especially everyone that has been waiting since the original crowd-funding campaign. You are all understandably irritated and disappointed by the constant delays but as the development of the game is now at a good point I’d like to share with you some of the reasons for the slippage.
When I initially began working on Riot, my initial brief was to complete the work of the previous programming team, who for one reason or another had left the development. The game had already had close to two years of coding put into so it should have been a quick and simple process to complete the game.
However, when I opened their project, I found myself in front of this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=578016396At first glance things don’t look too bad, I guess. BUT the code had major faults: Increasing the size of the crowds significantly reduced the frame-rate to an almost unplayable level; animations randomly stopped working; physics were completely absent; no AI; proportions and perspectives all wrong; so many things started and not completed…
For a couple of months I tried working on the old code in an effort to rescue something satisfying. It became apparent that in order to succeed it would be necessary to abandon the old game engine and start afresh. The original code was just so inadequate and riddled with problems that continuing with it would not allow us to create the kind of experience that I imagined, and certainly not the game that Leonard had in mind.
So together the team made a difficult decision (which I still consider the right choice). To redo all the engine and the programming from scratch.
The game as it is today is the result of my work from March 2015 until now. I’ve committed myself to the game tirelessly, working day and night. It been no easy ride, RIOT – Civil Unrest is an extremely complex game.
Starting from scratch hasn’t been a walk in the park either and in order for you to understand the delays further I’d like to list a few of the complications and challenges that the RIOT – Civil Unrest team have had to face.
- Every person you see in the game is composed of a set of layers, chosen at random to ensure variety: skin, clothing parts, equipment, accessories etc. Each layer is composed of 1550 sprites (because of the huge amount of animation). Counting that a character has on average almost 10 layers, that's around 15500 sprites for animating a single character. Put maybe a thousand characters on the screen, and you can see the enormity of task in hand. A normal game engine just couldn’t manage them directly and we’ve had to crate a purpose built rendering system to handle them all.
- The game uses 2d sprites with 3d dynamic lighting, including the 3d shadows projection. To make them work with a 2d pixel perfect graphics is an extremely difficult job.
- Each character has its own AI based on a multitude of factors: anxiety, courage, aggressiveness, discipline etc. Each of them ends up having their own personality. The mass of people that you see moving is not just a "swarm" of characters, they are handled as unique entities. Each character makes its own decisions based on the situation, has its own physics properties, its own intelligence and behavior traits.
... And I could go on and on, because every aspect of Riot is really huge.
I wanted to share with you a more recent video made up of footage I took just this week. It is important for me to know that you understand the game is not the result of three years of development. Instead it’s result of my efforts over ten long and hard months. Of course, it’s a team effort and the game’s benefitted from added magic from Z4G0, author of Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space (his vision has been invaluable as has his help with shaders and fx (his Molotov cocktails and the rain fx are something unique). Let’s not forget Leonard’s uniquely beautiful pixel art too.
[URL]http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id= 578022696 [/URL]I don’t want to deflect the blame for RIOT – Civil Unrest’s delay. Yes, it would be easy to whine and say, "Hey guys, don’t blame me for the delay, this is a fault of those who worked before me!" - Actually just the opposite is probably true. The delay is mainly MY fault! I want RIOT – Civil Unrest to be the game it deserves to be - not something incomplete and disappointing. I will continue to dedicate all my time on it until it's finished.
I am lucky to work with a monstrously good team. Leonard and Z4G0 are so talented that it's hard to consider them humans, and we will do our best not to disappoint anyone’s expectations.
Thanks for all you patience, your friendly Rioter programmer,
Trigghy
So, to clarify (as mentioned in the FAQ section pinned to the top of the discussion page), the whole project has been rescheduled and restructured. Release is set for the end of April 2016.