Earnest, loyal, and doomed. Loyalist Infantry is filled with a dying breed of hard-asses. They’re a dying breed because most of them get killed, because they’re infantry on a battlefield crowded with heavy metal. That doesn’t stop them sneering at basically every other branch in the military. The way they see it, everyone else is trying to hide their deathwish behind armor plating and hardshields. The grunts just like to get there faster. -MB
In last month's post we talked about how one of the problems we wanted to address was how aiming generally felt bad. This was in part due to the player having to stop-and-start the process of aiming and shooting which was not at all fun. We think we're a step closer to achieving that with what we are tentatively calling "aim glide".
Long time readers will know the drill but for new readers: what you see below is not indicative of the final product. The keen-eyed among you will likely notice shadows popping in or other sorts of graphical artifacting - rest assured there are plenty of things you can't see that also need smoothing out. All music in this video is by Makeup And Vanity Set and the first track is an alternate version of the track "Strange Bedfellows". As for those asking "Wait, who's Dave?" - the answer lies further down.
📺OPEN THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND READ ALONG
🌆BKTEST Allprops Sady (00:00-03:51)
Such allprops levels exist in Brigador but we hide them away from players. As developers we use them for all sorts of testing purposes such as checking whether a particular level's lighting works with the assets, or configuring the damage values required to destroy a particular prop. Also they all get lined up neatly in up to four rotations.
"Sady" is one of the initial locations where the action of Brigador Killers will take place and its architecture is intended to reflect what its inhabitants do and what sort of activity goes on there. We currently leave it up to you the viewer to speculate on what that might be.
At the end of the run-through, Dave walks through a short diorama to show off how some of the props might be arranged.
🌃BKTEST Allprops Mar Nosso (03:52-08:44)
"Mar Nosso" is another one of the starting locations of Brigador Killers. Geographically it is adjacent to Sady but as can be seen from the architecture and palette, it sits in stark contrast.
Dave does a quick circuit around another diorama at the end of this segment.
🏭BKTEST Allprops [Unnamed Location] (08:45-11:51)
Deliberately left unnamed, this location is not one of the first places players will explore in BK. Like with Sady, we're going to let you wildly speculate on what the place is and what is the function of all of the pipes coming out of the buildings.
🎯BKTEST Dave Animations & "Aim Glide" (11:52-13:57)
"Dave" is the internal nickname for the loyalist infantry unit that you can fight groups of in Brigador, seen below.
Dave retains the name but their appearance has been given an overhaul for BK, as well as new animations. You will briefly catch Dave reloading and crouching in this footage. This version of Dave has also had changes made to their movement and aiming.
This segment starts with Dave moving in a somewhat stilted orthogonal, eight-directional manner as they walk around in a circle. When the player pushes left mouse button, Dave raises the rifle to shoot, and we can see from the tracer fire that it still follows these rigid directions. However, around the 12:30 mark, we demonstrate the new aiming change that we're calling "aim glide". Unlike last time, Dave can now walk and shoot a lot more elegantly than what we saw last month with the Carmine suit footage.
How the player does this during gameplay is hold down the right mouse button. When this happens, Dave's aim will change from the eight-directional movement to smoothly point their gun wherever the player's cursor is aimed whilst still retaining the ability to move around.
As a result of this change, we end up with a much less static feel to the action and decide to take Dave back to the shooting range to try out the movement against some stationary and not-so-stationary targets.
There's still a few things to iron out and even new animations to add for Dave, but we're quite happy with how this movement change has panned out.
⛄A FESTIVE ANNOUNCEMENT
Starting tomorrow (Thursday December 1st) we are having a sale over on our merchandise store all December long like last year. Enter promocode HOLIDAYS2022 at checkout to get 20% off your order. Please note: minimum order value of 8 USD required. Promotional code is active from December 1st until 23:59 CST, December 31st, 2021.
