The following article is an accompaniment to this recent video of Brigador Killers to explain in plain text what is happening on screen, as well as add a few other minor details that couldn't be squeezed into the footage. Please note that everything you see in this video, particularly the UI elements, are still subject to change and should not be considered final.
[All footage was captured in-engine via OBS and edited via DaVinci Resolve.]
00:00-00:19 Introduction
The video starts with a brief clip of a Fork mech stomping about an industrial area shooting at some NosPol cops. As the cops are shot at you may notice that they hit the ground due to the game's "suppression" system, which is where enemy NPCs can do certain behaviors like this because of their proximity to incoming gunfire.
What's also briefly visible, but not covered explicitly in this video, are the suite of new death animations for all the enemy NPCs. When the infantry-scale NPCs die in this video, you may notice that they do so in slightly different ways.
Lastly, a blue timer is visible at the top of the screen. Currently, this is just counting up how much time has elapsed since the level loaded. It is intended to have a utility later down the line, but for now it's of no importance.
00:20-02:32 Inventory and containers
Every unit in Brigador Killers can have its own inventory. This goes for both the player and the NPCs. These inventories have a specific amount of storage space on them. When the player opens up their inventory, it can be seen that there is a value of 0/100 on the backpack, while the chest rig has a value of 0/20. This means in total, the player has 120 available points of space on them for firearms and ammunition.
The player then makes their way over to two nearby containers - one containing ammo, the other containing firearms. Since the player is in proximity to both containers, the player is able to tab between the two chests (1/3 and 2/3 respectively, with 3/3 being the ground around the player) and tabs over to take out a "Catfish" pistol via the left mouse button.
This pistol is brought over to the backpack, which changes from 0/100 to 15/100, meaning the gun is now in the player's possession. However, this is only the storage space on the player character. To equip the weapon, it needs to be placed in one of the first two slots next to the backpack (the third slot is for weapons like grenades, which are not shown in this video). When a gun is equipped in slot 1 or 2, the respective number illuminates in the top left corner to indicate this. In addition, each weapon has its own silhouette for that slot.
A second pistol called a DROBAC is equipped in slot 2, and ammo is taken out for both weapons so they can be fired. In this case a stack of 9mm FMJ is brought over for the Catfish, and .45 ACP for the DROBAC. The player quickly switches to slot 2 by pressing 2 on the keyboard, raises the weapon and shoots off seven rounds to show off the ammo counter and the subsequent reload animation.
After this segment, the player demonstrates that they can drop anything from their backpack or equipped weapon slots right onto the ground from the inventory. While we can see the dropped items in the "ground" inventory on the right hand side of the screen, we can also see the items themselves fall away from the player in the footage.
This doesn't mean that the player needs to always be opening and closing an inventory screen to pick up weapons and ammo. As shown in the footage, when the inventory screen is closed and the player mouses over items on the ground, a pickup prompt appears.
If the pickup keybind is tapped, the item will quickly go into whatever space is available on the player. However, if the player holds down the pickup prompt, the gun will be equipped immediately after a brief period of time.
Moving on from the player-specific inventory, the footage returns to the original point that every unit in the game can have its own inventory. To prove this, the player shoots an inert cop NPC and walks up to inspect the corpse to see that it is carrying some .45 ACP. If the player happens to use something powerful (e.g. an explosive, or a very heavy vehicle at speed) and destroys an NPC leaving nothing to inspect, then the contents of that NPC's inventory are instead dumped onto the ground as shown in this section.
02:33-04:11 Free aiming, lock-on and focus
When the player has a weapon equipped in slot 1 or 2, they can press the right mouse button to bring the weapon up into the aim, which causes a dotted blue aiming line and a white reticle with a green dot to appear where the player's mouse cursor is on screen.
The aiming lines for weapons in Brigador Killers have been altered to be a series of dots that stretch and contract to give an indication of how far away the cursor is from the player. Not all weapons are perfectly accurate, and accuracy decreases over greater distances.
In addition, when free aiming like this, the game's camera switches its focus from being centered on the player to extending away from the player.
The green dot that appears while free aiming indicates where bullets are expected to land. If this dot turns red, then someone or something is between the player and the mouse cursor location, and the dotted blue aiming line also grays out. Where the bullets will then expect to land is wherever the white reticle is along the dotted aiming line. This is demonstrated in the footage by the aim of the pistol being swung back and forth around a shipping container in the street.
The video then explains the lock-on aiming feature. By mousing over a hostile NPC and pressing a keybind (in this case, lock-on has been bound to C on the keyboard but it can be bound to whatever the player prefers), the player locks on and the NPC gets a red overlay similar in style to the old Fallout games.
Once locked on, the player can freely move around while keeping the sights trained on the locked-on enemy, and the lock-on is only broken by either pressing the keybind again, breaking into a sprint, or killing the NPC. This lock-on feature was covered in a previous post.
Focus, however, is new. When the player crouches down as an infantry unit, the camera zooms out and they get to see even more of the area around them than they would from just using the free aim. By combining focus, free aim and lock on, the player can better scout out hostile enemies from afar.
04:12-05:56 Vehicle engine noises
Since the player can get into and out of vehicles, these vehicles engines now have ignition, idling and shut off noises. In order of presentation in the video we hear:
- Motorcycle
- Varlet (aka Tuk Tuk)
- Rennpappe sedan
- White panel van
- Ovo electric car
- Swat APC
- Betushka tank (aka Betka)
- Forverkhuhn mech (aka Fork)
- Dozer
- Rounder tank
What's not being shown explicitly are the individual tyre and track noises of each vehicle on different surfaces, but doing so would cause the length of this video to balloon. Instead this section of the video closes on the Rennpappe crashing into a building and making an all-new impact noise.
05:57-06:11 Updated infantry renders
For quite some time the game has contained a few placeholder units which were pallete swaps of the same NPC recolored in photoshop. These pallete swaps have finally been replaced with renders of their intended forms which the player walks past. You may recognize some of them already, like the yellow raincoat civilians in the first game, but a few of them are entirely new to Brigador Killers, such as the Nossian Corvids and the Chobbers. We'll leave it to you to guess which is which.
06:12-07:37 One more thing…
As a small bonus for sticking it to the end of the video, the player walks across a map and hits an invisible map connection trigger volume that transports the player to the inside of an underground bar. Upon loading the bar - which is its own separate level - the game is instructed to trigger a playlist which contains a short new track composed by Makeup And Vanity Set called "DustBoy".
We hope you have enjoyed this quick look at the state of Brigador Killers. Stellar Jockeys expects to update the build in the next couple of weeks, and owners of the Itch build should get a notification via email whenever a new download becomes available.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/