So its been a while huh? Im sure a lot of our eager fans are curious what we've been doing over the last year or so since the last letter so I'll run you through everything we have to date and explain a few things we are working on and beyond.
What is Cepheus Protocol?
Where other zombie games in the genre have asked "How will you die" (Project Zomboid), Cepheus Protocol dares to ask "How will you survive". Giving you the tools of a recently created new branch called CERC its now your job to tackle how to handle the spreading Pangu Virus. We are dedicated to continuing to work with our community to keep refining Cepheus Protocol till its a true gem.
It should be noted that while we embrace critical feedback it should be given in a manner that is respectful and conductive of actually having a conversation. I.E Don't say X is Bad fix it. Say X is bad because of X,Y,Z . Then we can start to have a meaningful conversation. It should be noted naturally all suggestions cannot be implemented but we will keep them in mind for a possible addition in the future depending on scope budget etc.
A Year coming to a close
Over the course of this year we've had a lot of successes and failures. We successfully were able to implement Weapon Damage graphs removing player confusion on how some guns were better then others when it came to ranged damage,
Revamped the entire gameplay UI/Minimap and Main Menu's making them more appealing to look at. We do plan on doing some color tint adjustments to the icons based on feedback to make them a bit more colorful but that wont be coming for at least 2-3 more months. We pushed the new Stationary Avenger Turret and tons of other features in 1.2-1.3.
Features that were left on the wayside
Sadly we had to make the decision to remove "factions" (Piece & Natalie) for the time being as they were not where we needed them to be and we want to regroup on them potentially in the future when we have access to more resources. As the project Director i have to make extremely hard calls on a daily/weekly basis that hurts me to do so but in the effort of keeping us on schedule/budget of what we promised for having coop and our campaign out by 2024. Sadly this was also extending to removing the feature of allowing players to set "genders" on solders and instead we went the typical route of every other RTS where X unit is always X gender and Factions being disabled.
To run through the basic math the initial characters were created from asset packs from our EA launch great for "starting" but they provide no identity to the game. Currently the Assault is the only mesh "final" besides all the vehicles. Each new Character roughly cost 2k + the fee for swapping the male base to a female. When weighting the cost of this vs having more units like the Abrams and shifting that money over to programming for more bug fixing it just made sense on paper. Really does suck but we are a self funded indie studio with Developers backing the project so we had to make the decision.
Dynamic Civilian Groups
As a compromise we pushed Dynamic Civilian groups as they could be implemented and give the player more difficulty as we flesh them out. They didnt have the upfront cost of being distinctly different Meshes/having unique vehicles so we figured this would help in the aspect of simulation.
First off by treating Civilians badly Militias will form that hate you and will hunt you down, secondly when we added the diplomacy system/trading and lasty when we add the ability for them to upgrade their arms receiving RPG's to battle the upcoming Abrams/CERC medium armor as well. Civilians will continue to receive updates in the future as we work to better simulate them from a Pandemic standpoint.
Currently on our backlog for them is:
- Civilian's can be given orders when allied with
- Civilians can give you zone missions to farm rep with them
- Civilians have improved abilities to barter with other groups and form alliances with AI groups
So what's left on the Roadmap?
As it stands we are currently in 1.3 as noted in recent patch notes on Steam/Epic we are almost halfway through 1.3 with the Aircraft Carrier being one of the hardest technical feats we'll be tackling in the weeks to come. After that is wrapped up we will make the decision to either revamp the Operator or put him off for a few more weeks and instead focus on the Doctrine/CERC polish with the DNA Research tree work.
From a community standpoint im quite sure im reading the room correctly when i say they would much prefer this route. So i'll detail both so i can bring you folks up to speed.
Doctrine/ CERC Polish
- Modular Abrams added that you can customize (Different armor loadouts like ADS, Cage Armor)
- Helicopters gain weapon packages, Machine guns and Rocket launcher packages (Blackhawk & Littlebird)
- Helicopters get a brand new flight AI
- VTOL added as a late game extremely fast Jet that can transport units very fast across the battlefield
- Mines will be removed from being built as one offs and instead you'll build a vehicle that you "zone" an area and he'll keep that field saturated automatically
- Individual mines will be moved to the Sniper
- Engineers will gain 2-3 pet turrets they can build(Think Aliens disposable turrets)
- Current Turrets will be removed as buildable emplacements and new ones will be created that are far superior (Think Prototype Turrets)
- Helicopter Physics
- We are still debating more airstrikes/call in's
Yes your CAMO DLC"s will apply to all future CERC Vehicles
DNA Research Tree
- We will be adding a Mobile Research Atlas that can deploy in Contagion zones and farm DNA it must be protected at all costs and you'll have to escort it back to your base if u wish to keep the spoils
- DNA research tree will be added making the approach of researching the Pangu Virus a more "involved" process requiring you to make tactical decisions in terms of do i increase my filter levels so i can stay in Contagion zones longer or do i research say a treatment that makes your units less likely to be infected when Meleed? The choice will be yours
Operator Changes
- We will be taking what we learned through prototyping CPO to fully implement a modern shooter approach to the Operators third person mode. Please note this game mode was made for fun to just benchmark and see what we could do to make a better Operator. (See video linked below) We likely will make a spin off in the future with the "Operators' on steam at a latter time themed around 3 deferent unique gamemodes but thats a topic for another day.
- We will be adding the ability to pick and choose Operator abilities and call in as many as your population will allow to create persistent Heroes that "lead" the way
https://youtu.be/p0ULGHmjP1Q
Infected AI & LT AI
- The big whammy! We will be focusing a few weeks on each AI on their own hunting down bugs naturally
- Each LT will gain the ability to be repurchased like Winters allowing Chelsey to bring back her fallen Hero's they will each own territory outlined on the map (Think Warlords of New York Division 2)
- Each LT will be based on different archetypes of gameplay. I.E Stealth/Support/Attacking directly and be given new abilities to reflect that
- Chelsey will be getting boss states as with the LT's to make them a lot more knowledgeable of what to do in certain situations. I.E Retreat/Call in help /Disguise herself
- We will be tackling the Infected can climb buildings prototyping we did years ago and roll it out on the larger map. At the time the tech was quite buggy on our larger map so we've had to delay it. If it doesn't work out of the box we'll have to engineer something custom.
- Infected swimming is still on the fence with the implementation of the carrier i haven't made a final decision yet but its being discussed internally.
San Francisco North
- Is on hold till modelers are freed up so they can move back to figuring out that island and getting it textured and fully playable. We only have 2 level designers/Modelers we moved them over to working on vehicles and such for the time being since these beasts can take up to a month per one because of the sheer amount of detail that goes into them.
Coop
- Well at this point we will be spending a few weeks to months ironing out bugs in secret for coop tests we'll be doing internally.
- In a way we'll be also secretly streamlining some code for modding/readability since once we add coop we dont want to be stuck with outdated approaches . An example would be how we do the command bar system at the bottom right we've leaned a lot between our release and now and this is an example of a very dirty system we will rip out and redo so its easier for us and future modders to work with.
- We will standardize some approaches to how we created vehicles to make them easier to work with
- We will implement GAS for all unit abilities so that aspect of replication is just done for us. Its basically a gameplay abilities framework we didnt know exsisted till very recently so we want to port vast aspects of the game to it so it makes our job of replication/coop much easier. Give you an example Remnant 2 uses the system and Fortnite since its so modular and easy to create new stuff from the tutorials we've sourced.
End Year Developer Progress Report
As we do every year i will be putting up a "Developer Report Poll" towards the mid part of December for our fans to vote on anything they would like to see in 2024 or even for us to consider beyond our EA release date. We thank you guys for your continued support and patience! You will be able to rate our development over 2023 and give an honest opinion of what you liked/disliked either anonymously or leave your contact details so if we have questions we can contact you.
Also feel free to drop into our Monthly AmA's this Saturday!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/3896239307766160089
Next Letter to the Producer
Currently we are working speedily towards the completion of Pandemic Mode that will end roughly around 1.4 for our Early Access phases of development. Then we will start work on the campaign and start preparing to leave EA hopefully at the end of 2024
I will be following up again right before we go radio silent to revamp and we get the game ready for coop. So next time i post one of these keep a lookout!