Our Biggest Update Yet | Devlog #5 | We The People

What's your favorite part about the Devlog? Ours is split between: 1. The Guitar, 2. The new Mag Check with Diegetic UI, 3. Implementation of our new Sound System, or 4. The Recoil.

Several questions for the team. 1st will we be able to hot key 1st aid items or the grenades if in pouches/vest? 2nd, you mentioned going from standing to prone, will we be able to do partial to full lean actions? 3rd, for plate carriers, will we able to swap the plates out in the field or have to wait till we get to base? 4th how many maps in total are you expecting to release in the game at game release?

Man I would love to do level art on a game like this using nanite and lumen!

Okay, unless America has been invaded by foreign troops, you'll want to make sure most of the firearms are semi-automatic-only, as there just aren't many select-fire weapons, unless they are taken from Police Stations, Military Bases or National Guard armories. Any AK variant will probably be semi-automatic-only, because you won't find select-fire versions of those in Police Stations, Military Bases or National Guard armories. You'll want firearms from Kel-Tec, Ruger, Browning, Canik, Beretta, Hi-Point (both pistols and pistol caliber carbines), Palmetto State Armory and Smith & Wesson, in addition to all of the many AR-15 variants. IWI Tavors are less common. MP5 variants are pretty rare here. Select-fire weapons that are likely to be more common would be Glock pistols with "fun switches". You also might have AR-15's that are equipped with modified triggers that fire two rounds with each trigger pull. If your game is awash with full-auto capable weapons, rocket launchers and grenade launchers it just won't feel like America. Still, it is possible that players could take a firearm to a RARE gunsmith who could modify the weapon to allow full-auto fire. Also, rifles and pistols from California will be limited to 10-round magazines. Suppressors will be less common, but not impossible to find. The challenge there will be finding a suppressor for your caliber and that fits your muzzle device. Smoke grenades, teargas or pepper gas and stun grenades might be possible to find, but fragmentation and incendiary grenades will be much more difficult to find. Also, rifles must have 16 inch long barrels or a shorter barrel with a pinned and welded muzzle device totaling 16 inches in length. Shorter-barreled carbines are possible if they are equipped with "pistol braces". Far Cry 5 felt less like America because of its ridiculous weapon selection, so I hope you get this right.

It’s been a hot minute

The recoil rework looks dope. Ik it said kitted but it looked pretty close to how a real m4 would shoot. The guns look absolutely beautiful. I’m excited for the variable crouch too. Lastly I do like gun malfunctions. Maybe it’s my terrible luck but Tarkov had so many gun malfunctions it felt as if my gun had no gun lube

Erik cooked with the inventory rework!! Everyone cooked

Weapon malfunctions purely for the immersive aesthetic is simple….do what Red Dead Redemption 2 and Stalker do. You can clean your weapons (that should start to look noticeably dirtier) and get some slightly better performance out of them that feels closer to fine tuning than game changing (like red dead redemption 2), but it shouldn't be something that happens at a hyper fast rate, so you do not feel the need to constantly manage it….also add some cool cleaning animations for each gun instead of just a menu prompt. From here if you really let your gun get dirty there will be a threshold where it will start to jam (like far cry 2, stalker, or fallout).

This I think is best because you get the immersive feel of maintaining your gun as it feels more 'yours' alongside whatever customization, but you also have positive incentives to do so such as a nice performance boost and cool animations that way it doesn't feel like tedious chores and still provides interesting engagement with the mechanic whilst having negative impact such as a slight degradation of performance stats and possible jamming. Best of both worlds.

Also, I would recommend more than one animation for jamming simply so it doesn't get stale….nothing crazy, just a few of the most common ways to clear malfunctions like dropping the magazine and racking the slide/charging handle or mortaring the rifle etc…..this was my biggest issue with Stalker 2 seeing the same animation every time.

This looks dope! Subscribing

Crytek laid off some of their people not too long ago.. may be try and snag a few of those people to help the game? 😀

1. ( 2:06 ) I think malfunctions need to be either part of the gameplay, or not present at all:

Setting the player expectation might be the biggest thing here, where if the player is using bad ammo in a bad gun, they expect a malfunction to happen, that way, tailoring their playstyle to fit their kit if they are thinking properly, this adds the strategic thinking about kit considerations to operational style I think y'all are seeking.

If the player has a 90% durability BCM rifle, running military issued m855, the chance has to be < 1% if at all, asserting the value of good quality kit and keeping your baby well fed.
Else if the player is running a budget Frankenstein with a red charging handle and some real goofball shit hanging out of their rifle, while having a full mag of "whatever-the-fuck-I-could-get-off-this-other-dude" they should be warned by the game and expect a mag to run with a few bolt action sequences in the middle of the dump.

This way the guy that finds a built up SOCOM rifle can be allowed to feel like the operator he is hoping to play as, and the garbage rod enthusiast has to tailor his expectations of combat, and prepare to fight with his downsides accounted for, maybe in a more guerrilla fashion to hope to score a jackpot.

Otherwise if player expectations are not tailored, and malfunctions always have a chance to happen/ they never happen until they always do, you have a frustrating, confusing and anti-Player mechanic, that will generate plenty of feedback and cause some of your customer service or community managers to deserve a raise.

2. ( 3:16 ) I mean if y'all are hiring for design roles 😉

3. ( 4:27 ) The M4 showcase y'all demoed and the recoil system:

Animations look great, surprisingly good animation speeds that most seem to miss nowadays.

Recoil:

In my humble opinion, the demonstrated "amount" of recoil is almost good, the way the animation flows is flat and boring.
Through personal experience with many many shooters, milsim and otherwise, AND my experimentations of the many tries at procedural recoil systems I've made, I have found that a few keys to recoil jump out:

1st is the follow through, where the character shoots, the gun recoils, then it falls back into place, BUT, it does not fall directly into center, and instead bounces down overshooting and then correcting itself to center. This motion gives many games their "realistic" feeling recoil, such as Ready or Not, Insurgency Sandstorm, ARMA Reforger (to a degree, they have some other things playing into it). Real shooters don't lock onto target, their guns don't take recoil then reset to center, instead, good shooters account for the predicted recoil and use their muscle memory and fast reaction times to break a shot after the rifle settles back down from the recoil. In the case of ready or not, the gun never settles in the middle, giving the player a very strong connection to the rifle as a physical object in the world, not just a part of their camera.

2nd is the motion, The breakdown is that the rifle after fired moves: Backwards, then it contacts the shoulder causing it to fly up and right, then it simultaneously begins to correct back to center in all angles (forward, down, left), until it lands in the middle then causing the overshooting described previously.
The backwards movement implies the punch of the gun, such as a .50 BMG in Insurgency Sandstorm FUCKING FLIES backwards, as it should.
The backwards speed implies the punchiness of your gas system, the aforementioned .50 BMG in sandstorm, FUCKING FLIES backwards at a slower perceived rate than some of the lighter recoiling rifles, due to its long bolt cycle, adding to the sense of a more sluggish weapon, in the case of an AR-15/M4 rifle, the movement is small, but very fast, due to the Direct Impingement system's fast, punchy action, with low recoiling mass of the smaller bolt carrier group.
The Up and Right motions are indicative of the handler's skill and the overall recoil of the gun, and MUST BE CORRECTLY RATIOED WITH THE REARWARDS FORCE!!!
The follow through or overshooting adds a sense of presence for the gun, it is there, no denying it. It is not part of your camera, it is a physical real object, you can work around it but you have to consider it. If the gun always settles down in the center after a jolt (your current recoil system) it just looks like a screen obstruction on the way of my shooting, not a tool my character is wielding.

4. ( 8:12 ) I think y'all's inventories look good, they're just misguided.

It seems there is a lack of design not a lack of technical skill in your approach to the inventories, they look good, just don't look like they fill a purpose, they seem soul-less.

I think the challenge there is finding pillars for the Player-UI-Item interaction triangle and defining them clearly before moving to a technical vision.

What I mean by all that gibberish is: Define what the player needs of the inventory, and the items. Considering their interactions with small, big, complex shapes and big size variations. Is your player going to interact with things smaller than 1 slot? Consider making your slots smaller to fit that. Do your inventory sizes need to follow container size? such as backpack sizes or other pouches? Consider a dynamic sizing system vs a static one, where the grid is allowed to grow to fit more items if the user adds small items that take up a slot but don't fill that much container size. Some list inventories are good. Tarkov does grids very well. Arma Reforger does separation of concerns very well too, though with some visual garbage that takes about 2 full play sessions to understand.

Another thing with your UI design is its size, it looks too large, especially the slots and gear icons. Considering the elegant look Tarkov has where its slots are small and almost seem to represent a measurement (though they don't really), the spacing between pocket slots, thick borders and large slot squares takes away the elegant, "well engineered" look that other games have.

My suggestion for this one is giving the user plenty of space to see things, but keeping slots tight, concise, sort of a "give me what I need and nothing else" look, this screen is supposed to not exist to the player, as good UI is imperceptible, this is supposed to just blend right in, give me the info I need and disappear. So try to fit all my containers in it such as my rig and bag, then just open space for other additions later.

Considering this section is a bit misguided in design, expect changes later down the line, make the whole thing concise so you have space for those changes, if it all fits inside one of the thirds of the screen, let it be so!

5. ( 9:13 ) Due to the concussion of the pressure, I think a long lasting suppression effect would play well here, considering the design of the effect itself.

The suppression effect can be used GENERALLY to indicate the character's confusion and fear/stress, so that when being shot at, the player has that tunnel vision of adrenaline, keeping them confused and stressed. Considering that major design queue, applying that effect to other circumstances and using those other circumstantial effects in addition is just great design, using the consistency of the effect to make the player "feel" the same way as the character. If a grenade went off in the same room as me, MY BRAIN WOULD BE FUCKING SCRAMBLED! So some double vision and lots of "suppression" would play SUPER well there IMO.

6. Overall:

The game looks like it's coming along. The art is top notch. Environments are cool with an amount of repetition but man your designer is kick ass.
Mechanically the game looks a little misguided, design wise. It seems that a list of cool features was conceived early, but a cohesive, "game design pillars" type of deal wasn't thoroughly considered.

I think that as you guys sink deeper than just "Make an inventory system" or "Make grenades" and you get to approaching those systems like their own projects, to really make features that stand out, a little more thought and design should go into them. I'm talking "What do we want to achieve with this feature?", things such as the inventory are a huge part of gameplay, so just "copying" another good one can cause some level of noise* in the design, so taking a step back and measuring the goals you have with a specific feature is a great way to get out of that confusion y'all pointed out at ( 7:30 ), probing the feature through deeper, more abstract and conceptual questions can lead to more consistent and wise design choices later on.

Noise*: where someone had an original idea that was clear, and the more copies there are, the more mutated it becomes, to eventually just not being good anymore.

This missing piece in your team would be the job of a Systems Designer/ Features Designer/ Gameplay Designer, which is something I would love to work as 😉 😉 😉

For the youtube commenters: Please leave feedback of what y'all think cuz together we can make this game a certified banger.

I'm so excited and i'm glad this project is carrying forward. I'm excited for your team and cant wait for the future.

Ok that's cool and all but I saw better from a mobile game company that went to show off graphics and gunplay 10x better and that was still a massive flop (Grey Zone Warfare), so where's the gameplay and what's its performance on what specs? Also make anything HUD/UI minimalistic and easy to interact with and readable almost every single game that does that comes out a million times more profitable because it isnt constantly taking up 30% of your screen and annoying to look at and navigate, plus nobody worth a damn says "UX" so drop that fancy bs term industry leeches use.

Please just lower the guns abit in the view model and abit more to the center like single player tarkov realism mod

Recoil looks great btw