Copper Dreams update #32

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SasqWatch
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I received this earlier today:


Hope everyone is safe and healthy. Our Steam page is up! With a demo! This is the intro-dungeon of the game, acting as your brief exposition before getting to the city and playing with some of the systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwQV52CE72w
We'll also be sending [all] backer tiers the build alpha/beta backers currently have, which will continue to be updated with the remaining game for testing, so be sure to download that one when we send them out if you eventually want to be testing all of it, it would be great to put as many of you through the grinder as possible when we're ready. We will make an announcement when we send those out.


Alpha/beta backers, your current build will turn into this demo tomorrow, and then we'll be expanding that into more of the game in short order for you to check out and then proceed with new stuff.


E3

We were just on PC Gamer’s e3 show which is wild, and are working with some wonderful folks at Modern Wolf to bring the game to every human laborer on earth and the offworld colonies. They’ve been incredibly kind and a joy to collaborate with.


Here's nice interview we had with PC Gamer!


There are a few channels opening to talk about the game, and if you have any suggestions, feedback or ideas that you’d like to talk to us directly about, as always, just fire it up on the newest forum topic we’ve setup for you on the site (let us know if you want some help with your sign-in), there’s a demo topic up now! Or email us. Or come visit, we’re vaccinated and chilling in chicago. Or sometimes we yell at the clouds on twitter.


Current Feedback Notes:


Aiming turns
The aim menu got a bit more love. We talked about it in brief here. It wasn't too fun to navigate in that toggle mode we came up with, and instead designed something more passive. Holding shift, you can rotate your character sprite and visualize their perception cone, and whatever tiles or targets land in the cone will be able to have an aim modifier applied to it (or dodge or block, but those are different actions). If you want to start attaching an aim mod to your next attack, just tap the skip-turn button as much as you want until it maxes out. You can do this in preparation of attacks, or get a quick advantage in combat until a gap is closed. If you attack a target outside that established vision cone, or if you rotate again, any aim buff is lost. Functionality is quite similar to something intuitive like aiming in Deus Ex, but with turns.


Roll info
While flipping through actions a menu now displays dice roll percentage ranges for whichever action you’re doing, time in turns it will take, and which Study it comes from. It needs to update and adapt depending on where you are hovering around the screen for light/darkness/height modifiers and everything in-between that can influence a roll.


Driving
Driving will have a turn-based mode during any combat scenarios, which the demo avoids in any case. Physics are a little wacky atm and will get updated, but cars are mainly for getting around the open world quickly, and combat will still have this option. This will allow you to just click a destination point within your sight radius and start moving the car in a single direction, allowing you to move quickly or ram into enemies, while leaving right-click open for attack rolls. Companions in the vehicle will start attacking as they can with melee or range, which they currently do.


Talking Heads


We just finished a walkthrough video of some of the demo, and will post that soon. We’ll be saving you the trouble of an hour long video of us blabbering, so we’ll be editing it down in some off time over the next week or so. It’s mainly focused on system design and gameplay you can mess around with in the demo, so if you find the whys and hows interesting it should be informative, or something to fall asleep to.


We also started organizing the ruleset-guide on all the rolls, items, stats and wounds. We’re doing it in a way that will also allow it to be accessed from within the game, too. This will be convenient if you’d like to reference something and nice for us if things change, it’s pulling from the same rules that the game uses for rolls and checks so updated are automatic. This will be the digital equivalent of the one we print for some of those rewards, just minus some pretty art.


Thank you all, the game couldn’t have gotten here without your support.


Stay safe, cheers!

Hannah & Joe
 
Joined
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Cool.. I'm downloading the demo now.

It's sort of confusing though that they're still referring to the game as Copper Dreams in the Kickstarter updates.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
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It's certainly confusing, that's for sure. You never know when they actually wrote the update and when it was issued, there could have been a substantial delay, or something. At least work continues!
 
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So.. I tried it. Not really sure what to think tbh. It's an extremely short demo though. Finished it in a little over 20 minutes.

You start out with 2 characters and pick up a third about halfway through. You only control the main character directly though. Also, there are three pregenerated characters to choose from when you start the demo or you can make your own. I went with a premade one.

Definitely not a fan of the graphics. Way too pixelated for my tastes. I felt like I was straining too much to make things out.
 
Joined
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Perhaps things will change before the game is actually released. Twenty minutes does sound rather short for a demo, that alone is fairly disappointing.
 
Joined
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Yeah, the demo doesn't really demonstrate much.

Initially I found it hard to tell what was something that you could interact with (the indicators aren't as overt as I'm used to). Also, character management was a bit of a mystery. I couldn't work out how to get my inventory up at the same time as the other character's, so couldn't give them a weapon. I ended up dropping a weapon and noticed later on that they were carrying it, so I'm guessing they randomly picked it up at some point.

Still, I'm hopeful...
 
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