Hello! This Sprint Update is a long time coming - there's been a lot going on, including a successful Kickstarter! Successful Kickstarter has a nice ring to it, eh!?
If you followed along with the Kickstarter (and hopefully you did!) you will have had a lot of updates to read in the meantime. Nevertheless, here is the detail of what we have been busy with throughout this epic sprint as we prepared for and ran our first ever crowdfunding campaign:
AI
- Pooled dictionaries in AI state
- Immutable AI state
- Inevitable fixes for above
- Extra cost for guards using stairs
- Fixes to AI planning
- Fixes for OffMeshLinks / AI using doors
- Tracked down a bug relating to door GUIDs / saving and loading
- Noise documentation
- Updated AI used in the Harbour scene
- Fixed a drone navigation crash
- Added mechanisms for AI to prefer particular devices based on their personality
- Added mechanisms to allow AI Actions based on their personality + Documentation for this
Controls
- Added UI to remap controls in main menu
- Checked/updated all control settings & defaults
- Limited repeat rate on analog gamepad sticks when moving around UI
- Added dataview range control on mouse & keyboard
Apps being configured: choose if you want them available in the app wheel or radial menu.
App system
- Completed new app system
- added App system Lua API
- unavailable apps are now hidden from Apps menu
- If app can't be added to either appwheel or radial, it's now hidden in the App Menu (for exaple the password cracking is currently an app, but shouldn't be controlled by the player directly)
- Apps are added to AppMenu, AppWheel and Radial menus when the app becomes available
- Only execute currently selected app (instead of all active ones) when selecting a target+app in radial menu
- Update loop for apps (so apps can run in background and do things continuously/over longer time)
- Apply app action cost (both per-action, and for app cost over time for a continuously running app)
- Status windows for apps
- Support for displaying an icon and/or a piece of text
- Support for changing icon & color
- Rewrote Light Monitor app using new API
- Created "Send Data" app (lets you send a file to currenlty targeted chaarcter or device)
Lua API additions
- Lua API for audio RTPC
- Added normal (scaled) time support for scheduler API
- Added notification messages to UI Lua API
- Player API additions to get social profile data for currently targeted character
Bugs fixed
- Player character walking/crawling sounds get swapped after crawling first time
- Removed hack that re-assigns all materials in scenes (original Unity issue that required this has been fixed so the hack isn't needed any more)
- 1st person targeting should maintain the direction player is currently looking at
- Character profile data displays color codes in UI rather than colored rich text
- Fixed notification message UI animation setup
- Fixed file viewer not displaying images
- Fixed card scanners missing UI markers whe usign the Help app
Apostle level
- Checked all atmos colliders, added new ones where needed
- Blocked staircase from lobby to 1st floor
- Blocked door in 1st floor that would otherwise allow player to skip half of the floor
- Checked navigation layers
- Checked colliders, changed some to simpler ones, added some that were missing
- Fixed colliders with negative sizes
- Fixed typos in some device scripts
- Checked all doors and assigned correct door groups and access levels
- Removed drone from rooftop
- Replaced a few hunded cardboard box models in level with prefab versions
- Fixed missing/wrong static tags around the level
- Removed some leftover invisible collliders blocking player and the AI movement
- Fixed props not correctly aligned to walls/floor
- Redesigned first floor of Apostle HQ
- Implementated new hackable device
Art
- Creation of activist and hacker characters
- Prop and asset creation for new levels
- Set dressing and environment art for the Apostle level
Models of the real life hackers featuring in OFF GRID.
Other
- Enabled ultrawide display reoslutions
- Added headers support in popup menus (menu item with no function becomes a header automatically)
- Added splash screens when starting the game
- Data colors now ignore alpha value set in scripts and instead use pre-defined opacity to make sure things look correct in data view and in UI
- Opened studio Discord!
- Built a new website for the game
- Quick update of studio website with new Semaeopus logo
Kickstarter
Updated build for Itch.io demo
- Removed options menu from build
- Removed other levels from the build
- Forced loading straight to Apostle level in demo build
- Added Kickstarter campagn ad in main menu
- Disabled save game loading (makes no sense for a single-level demo and would cause issues when loading a save where the demo level is already completed)
Campaign Prep
- Campaign page drafting, review, and finalising
- Reward drafting, review, and finalising
- Contact push
- Press push
- Newsletters
- Update planning: every 3-4 days to all channels
- News release drafting
- Daily social media scheduling
- Streaming planning
Events and promotion
- Game Dev Camp, Lisbon - Rich and Steve spoke
- IndieCade, LA - Rich spoke
- Sweden Games Conference - Rich spoke, Off Grid demoed within Indicator and Off Grid won the Indicator award!
- Inside Intel, London - an art exhibition on privacy & surveillance
- PlayUK, a videogame curation put on by the British Council in Macedonia
- Dev Space Winter Mixer, London
- Closing party and livestream to countdown to the Kickstarter campaign's end!
The final moments of the Kickstarter campaign!
Whew! A long list to match a long, bountiful Sprint!
To top all of this off, the team travelled to Dundee, Scotland last week to attend the UK Games Fund Awards. Semaeopus was nominated for the 'Smart Studio' Award, and we were looking forward to a fun celebration together after the month of hard graft. When the category for 'Smart Studio' was up, we were absolutely stunned to hear 'Semaeopus' announced as the winners!
Award winners! Sarah, Steve & Pontus pictured with the award presenter.
A successful Kickstarter, two new awards, and loooooads of new supporters - we are so grateful to each and every one of you that has helped make the last couple of months so successful!
There's been SO much going on - expect to hear more from individual members of the team as we each wrap up from the last couple of months.
What's next?
It's onwards and upwards now. We're working on getting our FIRST ACCESS programme off the ground. Anyone that backed at the PENTESTER level or above can expect to hear from us soon about what is to come.
One of the two main goals of the crowdfunding campaign was to provide a bit of additional resource to support more open production of Off Grid. We're busy getting our ducks back in a row after the Kickstarter, and can't wait to move forward with you all behind us.
THANKS EVERYONE!
The Off Grid Team