The New World - Status Report & Art Pipeline

[Silver]

There is another The New World update. This one addresses where the game is at and the art pipeline, showing the process behind it.

Our next milestone is the combat demo (don't ask me when), which is practically a game in itself as it requires pretty much everything: the character system, the combat system (attacks and NPCs' AI and pathfinding), the armor system, the gadgets, inventory, two hundred items (give or take) just to get the ball rolling, the interface, and god knows what else. It's a very complex task with a lot of moving parts that take awhile to define and even longer to implement. Here is Nick's status update:

Now, more detailed changelog since end of June:

- The core element of combat system - attacks, stored and edited in a data table. Open "AttacksDB" asset in Content\Gameplay\Combat\Attacks\ to check it out. Configure an attack, then when editing a weapon, assign all the attacks it supports;
- General TNW animation system setup;
- Game states and player input states: game running, paused, busy (like when you see the hourglass cursor). The AI shouldn't think when the game is not running, the player shouldn't spam commands when PC is in the middle of attacking, that kind of stuff;
- Interactive cursor, proper cursor scales and hotspots;
- Setting up the human animation state machine. Simply put, it's a network of nodes and connections between them, where a node is animation type (idle, aiming, attacking, dying, etc) and the connection is a rule which controls the transition between nodes;
- Added idle animations, implemented triggering idle variations;
- Coded in combat structure, phases, implemented combat start/end;
- Added pistol and rifle animation sets;
- Implemented relative aiming and full body rotations towards enemy, wrote a framework of math functions to support that;
- Unified the world interactive objects within one class hierarchy;
- Pathfinding update: made characters path around each other in realtime movement, instead of bumping into one another. Finally got to implementing characters occupying (owning) tiles in the combat mode (see red squares on grid), updated grid object instanced mesh components to visually reflect that;

As you can see, most of this stuff sounds pretty basic, but every item on this list is a leap forward and a critical piece of game infrastructure.


Now that "where the game's at?" question has been answered, let's look at our art pipeline. Years ago Brian Mitsoda asked me about our art pipeline. I proudly told him that our pipeline's name is Oscar, but that was a long time ago and things have changed since then:

Step 1 is a rough Excel layout:
[...]

More information.

 

[luj1]

Looking good. Hope it's not CYOA like AoD and more combat focused.

 

[screeg]

Looking good. Hope it's not CYOA like AoD and more combat focused.

You hope it's... more combat focused, because AoD didn't have enough combat?

 

[rjshae]

That brothel is a little weird looking. Does this society include slavery?

 

[daveyd]

Looking good. Hope it's not CYOA like AoD and more combat focused.

So basically you want it to be more like virtually every other RPG? Then why not just play literally any other RPG?

Also, AOD can potentially have a great deal of combat if you play as a mercenary or assassin. While it's entirely possible to have a combat free playthrough as a merchant / loremaster / grifter / drifter, even then you could choose to join the imperial guards (with enough STR IIRC).

Anyway, ITS will probably release something like Dungeon Rats using the TNW engine to help fund their next big RPG.

 

[VDweller]

That brothel is a little weird looking. Does this society include slavery?

No slavery. These aren't cages and the women aren't slaves.

 

[joxer]

No slavery.

That's a shame, but okay. I love games that include slavery, but that doesn't mean I can't stand those without it. I'm not reverse Polygon.

 

[rjshae]

That's a shame, but okay. I love games that include slavery, but that doesn't mean I can't stand those without it. I'm not reverse Polygon.

Well if there isn't an economic motive for slavery, then it probably wouldn't happen. Presumably machines do most of the heavy lifting.

 

[Ripper]

I hope no-one ever stumbles into Joxer's porn folder.

 

[luj1]

So basically you want it to be more like virtually every other RPG? Then why not just play literally any other RPG?

Easy there, I actually liked your CYOA booklet. Maybe I just don't want AoD on a spaceship however.

 

[joxer]

I hope no-one ever stumbles into Joxer's porn folder.

You sure you don't want Microsoft and their win10 spyware, Origin and their what's going on checking the machine while idling, to have nightmares?