Introduction
Hey everyone. We actually waited two weeks(2 Days early lol) to release an update, we're pretty proud of that. It's sometimes difficult not to release an update whenever, because we love sharing our progress and getting feedback from you guys. Development progress from these last two weeks is not as substantial as the few previous ones as our game engine has been crashing constantly, as well, it has just been extremely slow.
Dynamic Artificial Intelligence
Dynamic Artificial Intelligence is in it's very early stage, we just started working on it about one day ago. We thought we would include it to get some feedback on the concept. Although there isn't a lot to it, it's still quite interesting. Northern Regime will include a variety of different soldier camps posted along the landscape. Camps will either be; friendly, neutral, or hostile. When approaching a hostile camp they will shoot on sight with no questions asked. Coming across a neutral camp will be slightly different, If your weapons are holstered they will not engage in combat. You're free to walk around and explore their camp at your own will however, if you do pull out a weapon, accidentally or on purpose they will attack right away. We will be sure to expand on the different scenarios and approaches the player may take. For instance, you may pick up one of their items from the ground causing them to draw on you. The idea of maybe jailing the player depending on what he/she did or how he/she acted is in the air. The third camp is friendly, no matter what you do they will not attack based on their loyalty to you or your faction, however, attack friendly and even neutral soldiers will decrease your reputation substantially.
Reputation & Role Playing
It's been decided to bring back reputation and how apparent it will be in Northern Regime. Reputation and Role Playing are going to play a very large part in the players experience. We already touched on this in the section above, basically how your reputation decreases, but we are going to open it up and get in depth. If your reputation is absolutely terrible even friendly factions will be inclined to attack you. Camps and various soldiers will not be the only groups that reputation effects, Northern Regime is also going to involve; Traders, travelers, bounty soldiers, lost citizen's, homeless soldiers, and a few more as we progress. None of these groups will attack you, especially if your reputation is good, even if your reputation is extremely bad as they will fear you even more, however, there is the perk of them having the random chance of giving you items if your reputation is higher than normal. When approaching a random traveler or any character described above, having poor reputation they of course will not attack you, they will act kind and offer various items they have, seaming as if they like you but inside they are more fearful than anything else. These AI groups will dynamically wait for a good chance to attack you, whether it's when you holster a weapon or turn your back. Everything you do in the world will substantially effect your game play. The more evil of a character you are the harder it's going to be to actually play Northern Regime comfortably. Of course you will always have the option to increase reputation based on different tasks you take and items you give to those who need them the most. Even hostile factions can be turned to neutral and maybe even friendly.
Real World Location
It's pretty tough to design a large open world game, talking about time consumption and also even realism. I've never been the best at designing realistic landscapes and areas in games, to fix this major issue we decided to take data from a real world location in Northern Dakota(Where NR Takes Place) we took that data and inserted it into our game engine and actually created a world from it. This means Northern Regime actually takes place in a real world location. Not only is this much, much faster, it's also way more realistic. It's quite interesting too, I find myself just wandering around the map for hours exploring unique locations and different landscapes. I feel like I am actually walking through beautiful North Dakota. I hope players will really enjoy this and get immersed in it's uniqueness.
Procedural Texturing
Another thing that has helped us a ton is procedural texturing. just like building a real world, texturing would take months especially to get a realistic feel and once again something I am not really good at. This procedural texturing is not completely random, it's more so based on the height of the terrain. The higher you go, the more rock and snow you'll experience. the lower in altitude you travel you'll see increased grass and decreased snow. It's never going to totally feel realistic but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Procedural Objects
The world as it stands right now is about 60 kilometers in radius, and around 40 miles total. This creates a somewhat large complication. Placing loot, enemies, camps, etc. would take a very, very long time, time that could be spent in a more important function. A solid compromise would be to randomly and procedurally generate all of the enemies and objects. This may make it feel a little more realistic and definitely more unique to each player. However, procedural generation is really complicated and takes a lot of brain power. We already have a solid idea on how to do it. It's not going to be entirely random or totally procedural just to make it a little easier on us. We have already started on this generating pretty smalls objects like guns, coffee, and water cantines. This is actually fairly easy so I'm sure created other objects won't be the most difficult thing in the world. The worst outcome will be bugs like objects glitching in the ground causing frustration. We are going to make sure it works properly before we release.
Animals, Nature, And The Ecosystem.
Something we feel like will really make Northern Regime a different and unique survival game is how everything in the world is connected. We don't want to create a generic survival game because let's be honest, there are way too many out there. I'm not trying to slander survival games because I really do enjoy them I just think we all need something else on the table. I am going to use some information in a response I made to someone who started a discussion on this subject. Animals will be quite dynamic in a few senses. Regular gun fire will be a cause to deter animals from your area. The more gunfire in a particular area will cause serious migration. If you are a trigger friendly player odds are you will struggle to find animals to hunt. Another dynamic is excessive hunting, increased hunting in a location will cause other breeds to avoid those areas and take paths else where. Not only does this decrease your chance of finding animals to hunt it will also decrease the population and the likelihood of animals breeding. So Here's another dynamic : Having too many animals in your area will actually cause a decreased amount of plants and plant like resources. There's a plant in Northern Regime that is used to heal and replenish hunger, by adding it to boiled water then drinking. Deer and Moose are actually very likely to eat this, which may cause you to die. The more plant you yield will cause the animals of the area to have less food leading to starvation and death. It may sound extremely hard but really it's not that bad it just adds something strategy inducing into the game-play. Everything you do will directly effect the ecosystem.
Summary
Two weeks is a pretty long time to wait for an update, the reason why there is so much to touch on. We may have missed quite a few things but will be sure to include them into the next update. We hope you guys enjoy what has been added. If you want more constant updates you can follow our blog. If you want to check it out, it covers a lot of what I just talked bout with images and videos. Thank you everyone!
http://www.northernregime.com/aga-blog