Vigilance- Dev Diary

Hey there- as I mentioned some time ago, I was working on what amounts to the framework for a superhero-themed x-com style tactical game a while back, so I wanted to pop in and mention there's been some progress.

EDIT: Public releases are here. You'll need an up-to-date Java Runtime Environment installed, but otherwise it's platform-agnostic.

Video Diary 1
Video Diary 2

Please excuse my stutter and numbing, leaden monotone. (If you want to get an idea of what the long-term production values should be, there's a couple of other videos on the channel, and you can check out deviantart.)

https://s24.postimg.org/rbwckjryd/Sc...t_19_20_39.png

What I have working at the moment:
* Tactical combat overlay
* Crafting and equipping of items
* Construction of regional facilities and overall cash-flow simulation
* Training of new perks during 'free time'

Mostly working, but disabled for the moment until I can iron out some bugs:
* Procedural mystery/plot generation to link events together, and detective work to piece them together.

Planned:
* Motives, reluctance and initiative to give the agents moar feelz, plus berserk/panic effects
* More content in terms of tilesets, events, abilities, items and tech tree
* ???
* Profit!

Looks promising!

What engine are you using? I've been working with GameMaker: Studio for a bit over a year. Made a platformer (kinda janky), ARPG (quite janky), and currently working on a regular RPG (shaping up). Next I'm thinking an SRPG.

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Originally Posted by danzibr

Looks promising!

What engine are you using? I've been working with GameMaker: Studio for a bit over a year. Made a platformer (kinda janky), ARPG (quite janky), and currently working on a regular RPG (shaping up). Next I'm thinking an SRPG.

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Just the basic 2D graphics libraries included in standard Java, so it's more-or-less-entirely custom-built. (My previous game project was built on top of LibGDX, but I eventually wound up writing my own shaders, UI widgets and bone-animation system, so I could probably have gone straight to the OpenGL bindings with minimal fuss.)

Public releases available here, for anyone who wants to poke around. Source is here.

Oh man, it's awesome to see finally see a physical... material... shape of this concept game.

I still think that you don't really need to do the tactical turn based rpg and just focus on the strategic sim map, but you're the dev and it's up to you what you want to make :p.

But seriously, it's great.

Cheers! I find the tactical gameplay is giving me the most instant gratification at the moment, but I'll be fleshing out the base-building and detective-work mechanics over time.

I'm hoping to have a modest update before the end of next week with a proper directional-cover system, with maybe a few extra gadgets and abilities. (I'm hoping to find some quasi-plausible justifications for using crossbows and batarangs wing-blades, like launching throwable items or aiming around corners.)

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Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster

Cheers! I find the tactical gameplay is giving me the most instant gratification at the moment, but I'll be fleshing out the base-building and detective-work mechanics over time.

I'm hoping to have a modest update before the end of next week with a proper directional-cover system, with maybe a few extra gadgets and abilities. (I'm hoping to find some quasi-plausible justifications for using crossbows and batarangs wing-blades, like launching throwable items or aiming around corners.)

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Well if you're concerned about "power level," if you're setting it in not-DC as opposed to DC (which it looks like) it'd be as easy as the power level of this setting isn't actually that high. Not-Superman can fly and bullet proof but can still be knocked down by rpg launcher, for example.

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Originally Posted by Fri

Well if you're concerned about "power level," if you're setting it in not-DC as opposed to DC (which it looks like) it'd be as easy as the power level of this setting isn't actually that high. Not-Superman can fly and bullet proof but can still be knocked down by rpg launcher, for example.

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Adding more metahumans or spellcrafters is a long-term stretch goal (starting with not-black-canary, not-zatanna, not-katana and possibly a heavily nerfed not-manhunter and/or not-etrigan), but that's a while down the road. At the moment, balancing firearms vs. other weapon types is the problem. (Simplest answer is probably that guns are so powerful they're likely to kill perps from bleeding, which drives down trust levels.)

Some complications with family (and my lamentable tendency to get stuck in peripheral debates) is slowing me up slightly. I'm planning to put up a new video and public release in the next day or two, but for now just a status report:

New training system allowing for selection of a 'goal ability' to work toward (and there's an actual 'tech tree' for the purpose.)

https://s17.postimg.org/mwpty5l3j/tr..._framework.png

Thin, partition-style walls and doors are combined with a directional cover system, similar to the new X-Com. Couple of new gadgets (like the bolas) or training perks (like flesh wound) are included, plus various bug-fixes.

https://s14.postimg.org/z8irfsku9/cover_and_scenery.png

EDIT: Bottom pic disappeared for some reason, added fresh version.

Took a little longer than I thought, but I used the time to chuck in a number of other bug-fixes and minor UI additions. New public release is here, video diary here.

I'm going to try and revisit the 'detective work' mechanics again, see if I can't iron out some of those wrinkles. If anybody has suggestions for gadgets or perks they'd like to see in the meantime, this might be a good time.

In the longer term, I'm a little worried that the timescale for investment projects is likely to be too long relative to the spacing between crime events. Base facilities in X-Com typically complete in no more than a month, but factories and schools could take a year to construct. Maybe you'd enter a sort of 'time acceleration' mode once all the current gang-bosses are behind bars, allowing a couple of months to pass before another breakout/crimewave occurs? (Think what you could do with 18 months of clean streets.)

I actually need to implement a prison/trial/sentencing system for that, of course...

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Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster

Took a little longer than I thought, but I used the time to chuck in a number of other bug-fixes and minor UI additions. New public release is here, video diary here.

I'm going to try and revisit the 'detective work' mechanics again, see if I can't iron out some of those wrinkles. If anybody has suggestions for gadgets or perks they'd like to see in the meantime, this might be a good time.

In the longer term, I'm a little worried that the timescale for investment projects is likely to be too long relative to the spacing between crime events. Base facilities in X-Com typically complete in no more than a month, but factories and schools could take a year to construct. Maybe you'd enter a sort of 'time acceleration' mode once all the current gang-bosses are behind bars, allowing a couple of months to pass before another breakout/crimewave occurs? (Think what you could do with 18 months of clean streets.)

I actually need to implement a prison/trial/sentencing system for that, of course...

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You don't need to build thigns from scratch in real life. Maybe it's repurpoesment. Like, there's this empty building in this dangerous neighborhood, and you can repurpose it as factory, or school, or research center, or what else.

That's an interesting idea, particularly if you were dealing with an area of urban decay- i.e, an existing facility that went bankrupt or was vandalised.

Part of me actually likes the idea of a campaign spanning decades of time, since you could eventually implement aging and offspring and other dynastic-soap-opera elements of the comics, plus plausible rates of tech development within the larger society. (e.g, gradually moving to Bruce-and-Terry in a cyberpunk environment.)

I don't think I'll have a new video this weekend- I need to take some time to plan out updates to the detective system properly, and I'll probably implement those changes on a separate branch.

I've been doing some napkin calculations in grapher about the game's overall difficulty curve, assuming 'organic' causes for crime rates and the nastiness of opposition increasing over time. The results look plausible, but slight changes in some of the numbers yield massive imbalances, so it might be a bit brittle.

https://s11.postimg.org/6qypo20qr/cr...ulty_curve.png

For next weekend I might make some modest adjustments to the default actions system (e.g, merging fire+strike, along with guard+overwatch, depending on the weapon equipped), and allow for queueing of crafting-tasks. (I've also commissioned some new tile-set art, so I should have that to show off.)

Okay, late as usual, but quick update: I have made those modifications to crafting and weapon-toggling, and there's been a good deal of background work on the detective mechanics. I think I just need to flesh out the UI a bit more and they should be ready for action.

https://s17.postimg.org/hse4bqhcv/Ne...ing_System.png

Some of the new environment art has taken longer than I hoped, but I do have a small sample:

Spoiler

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https://s17.postimg.org/vxjxdjqe5/ci...set_mockup.jpg

On another note- I've been contemplating whether I should do the PC-representation thing and make not-Robin/not-Nightwing explicitly native american? It's a hard-to-please fanbase, but I feel like the general animistic-totem overtones of superhero getups are too obvious not to comment on.

Moderately busy with course-work, but the UI for detective-antics is more-or-less done- just needs a shakedown for testing purposes. Hoping for a demo video middle of next week.

https://s23.postimg.org/wq0gsyg17/de...UI_excerpt.png

Oh, speaking of tribal superheroes- while I'm pretty familiar with the 90's TV version, I completely forgot about The Phantom, who was apparently adopted as an icon by New Guinea highlanders. (Also, fun fact- Swifts are the only birds that echolocate. Like a dolphin.)

I've been giving a little thought to the scope of phase 1 content (in the sense of, 'this should be enough to get kickstarted'.) I'm planning to have 8 primary heroes, together with 8 villains in 4 factions (a mastermind and a lieutenant or two each.) It'll be a while before a get them all fleshed out, and I'm sure I'll be making revisions as I go, but for now I sketched out some concepts.

https://s30.postimg.org/et9gppnj5/villain_sketches.png
https://s22.postimg.org/hf8e5ou4x/extra_heroes.png

Spoiler: Hero Perks & Motives

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Phobos
  Claws Out-    bonus lethal damage while unarmed, bonus to climb
  Flight Path-  improved use of wing blades, gliders and jets
  Sound Science- bonus to research & forensics, free sonic helm
  Aura Of Fear-  bonus to questioning and panic effects
  Justice Served    dislikes getaways, especially of repeat offenders
  A Coward's Weapon  will not use guns or lethal force vs. the unwary

Deimos
  Packing Heat-  better ammo conservation and firearms damage
  Resilience-    reduced odds of critical hits, faster recovery
  Aura of Fear-  bonus to questioning and panic effects
  Boys In Blue-  bonus to persuade cops or share evidence
  Justice Served  dislikes getaways, especially of repeat offenders
  I Am The Law    dislikes illegal methods or payoffs

Black Swift
  Staff Combat-  bonus aim and guard chance with blunt weapons
  Flight Path-  improved use of wing blades, gliders and jets
  Dynamic Duo-  bonus to all sidekick assignments
  Urban Tribe-  bonus to canvass near areas with a Swifts Camp
  Life Is Sacred  will not use lethal force, including vs. animals
  United Front    dislikes infighting and dissent

Dr. Yang
  Packing Heat-  better ammo conservation and firearms damage
  Anonymous-    bonus to undercover work, less chance to spook
  Cypher Expert- bonus to scan, wiretap and database checks
  Off The Grid-  bonus to canvass in lawless areas
  Meant To Know  seeks out clues and new technology, likes education
  Anarchist      dislikes taking orders and distrusts officials

Alamo
  Bullseye-      bonus aim with bows and precision firearms
  War Paint-    bonus to stealth and disguise attempts
  Inventory-    extra use of all charged items
  Survivalist-  bonus to canvass in rural or park areas
  Bare Necessities  dislikes extremes of wealth and poverty
  Anarchist        dislikes taking orders and distrusts officials

Pythia
  Cypher Expert- bonus to scan, wiretap and database checks
  Acrobat-      bonus to learn all reflex-related skills
  Spinal Port-  bonus to use cybernetic items, free neural jak
  Intel Club-    bonus to canvass based on region education
  Social Justice  dislikes violence against minorities
  United Front    dislikes infighting and dissent

Cambridge
  MI6 Tactician-  grant extra AP or combat buffs to agents
  Bedside Manner-  help agents to recover or de-stress
  Estate Manager-  increase funding from specific regions
  High Places-    bonus to persuade officials & socialites
  Debt Of Honour  always keeps word and returns favours
  Family Values  extra value placed on old relations

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Spoiler: Villain Perks & Motives

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Moretti
  Legitimate Business:  Faster investments, resistant to investigation
  Hired Muscle:        Additional Bruisers, especially as bodyguards
  Tommy Guns:          Gangsters and Hitmen have bonus ammo and damage
  Stuffed Mattresses:  Better black market sales, more secret funds
  Hands Clean:          Caution motive magnified, avoids direct involvement
  Family Values:        Sensitive to relatives/allies' needs and betrayals

Schrödinger
  Traceless IP:        Bonus to data crime and hideout security systems
  Deal Broker:          Bonus to persuasion and escaping conviction
  Patent Pending:      Chance to hinder or steal from rivals' tech research
  Self Promotion:      Bonus to gain political office and invest in fronts
  Monopoly Capitalist:  Greed motive magnified, especially for tech/industry
  Social Climber:      Sometimes invests in education or charity events

Snake Eyes
  A Rigged Game:        Bonus income from gambling and extortion
  Street Cred:          Bonus to intimidate and find rivals' hideouts
  Long Shots:          Bonus to marksmanship and low probabilities
  Hear Them Fall:      Immune to concealment from cover or darkness
  Debt With Interest:  Revenge motive magnified, especially vs. mobsters
  Lucky Seven:          Chance to release hostages and forgive offenders

The Meme
  Infectious Charm:    Bonus to persuasion skills, chance to gain copycats
  Viral Media:          Bonus to data crime, brainwashing and public ransoms
  Dopamine Pathways:    Immune to normal penalties for fear, guilt and pain
  Eureka Moment:        Chance for spontaneous bonus to new technologies
  You Only Live Once:  Impulse motive magnified, indifferent to collateral
  Why So Serious:      Targets admired rivals, spares entertainment venues

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Whoa! Apparently there is already a TBT street-level-vigilante focused game out there, with a strikingly similar title and premise. I think I have enough distinct features to set the work apart, but some rebranding might be in order at least. Have to see.

There's also Night Vigil that came out last year, but it dabbles more with the glowy superpowers. For your rebranding, what do you think of cold war era "ala Watchmen"? The government may mandate your team to track down communist spies on top of your regular crime fighting activity, and that could be the plot of the campaign. And why not throwing in a few extra-terrestrials, rosswell style, into the mix?


Also I've played your prototype, it's very raw actually, but I believe it shows potential with its stealth approaches and quick takeovers. Also, the lethal violence is a cruel but interesting dilemma: it can saves your ass at times, but at what cost?

I'm not very fond of the city building game, it feels too loosely connected with your super vigilante team (and in fact you don't use the same budget for the two). I'm very eager to test the detective system, that seems to fit much more into the theme. Maybe the heroes could engage in other city related actions, like a crime prevention campaign at schools, or contracted guard duty for companies (Dollar Bill!)...

I've just thrown a quick look upon your heroes' perks lists, and it's maybe just an idea but I believe there's too much perks for each heroes, while most of them are just bonuses and not very unique. I'm guessing that using fewer but more impactful perks could reinforce the specificity of each hero, like carrying one more item, going through opponent's occupied tiles or a second wind after being knocked down (or more creative stuff). I'd like to point ou Invisible Inc. which I believe did a good job on making each of its character playing special.

A few ideas without particular order:
-Fighters should use an empty adjacent tile to evade the attacks, it will make positioning more important during the melees, and surrounding an opponent may become fatal.
-Maybe characters could perform special team actions? Like a combined attack or the classical "heroic bullet shield" from movies?
-What about a "X hit combo" system where each successful punch adds up to the chances of performing a special heavier melee attack?


Apologies for writing a wall, I might just check later how the game evolves (do you plan to include multi-level battlegrounds?) and good luck with this project!

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Originally Posted by raaaahman

There's also Night Vigil that came out last year, but it dabbles more with the glowy superpowers. For your rebranding, what do you think of cold war era "ala Watchmen"? The government may mandate your team to track down communist spies on top of your regular crime fighting activity, and that could be the plot of the campaign. And why not throwing in a few extra-terrestrials, rosswell style, into the mix?

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Well, I was planning to include a Manhunter-expy at some stage... But frack, two superhero-style TBT games with 'Vigil' in the name? *sigh*.

I'm glad you liked the turn-based elements, rough as they are- and yeah, the tradeoff between restraint and survival is supposed to be one of the foci for gameplay. I'll check out Invisibles Inc. if I get the chance, and I quite like your perk suggestions. (An earlier version of 'Evasion' actually used empty space to dodge attacks, so I might just re-use that.)

I'm somewhat loathe to give up the city-building aspects, mainly for thematic reasons, but the same broad circle of life from X-Com- that missions impact regional stats that impact funding that impact spending on gear/goodies, which in turn impact missions- should remain intact.

3-dimensional areas are another long-term stretch goal, and I've shaken out most of the bugs in detective work (though it's going to be pretty bare-bones at first.)

In any case, thanks for all the feedback- I appreciate it.


EDIT: I think I might actually hold off on updates for the next couple of weeks, but we'll see what happens after that.

I never did manage to get a proper hang of the combat/driving mini-games in Covert Action, but happily the wiki gives a complete breakdown on criminal plots, mission sets and individual sub-steps, so I should be able to adapt a significant portion of those. My rough plan is to break down environments into a couple of categories, with a set of crime-types that are typically (though not exclusively) associated with each. That means there's only a dozen or so environmental tile-sets that I need to work out for now (maybe with some 'urban renewal'-style upgrades to boost living standards.)

Slum Areas	Tenement, Warehouse/Docks, Casino/Brothel/Funhouse	Hideout Raids, Petty Crime, Smuggling, Market Buy/Sell, Manufacture/Forgery
Civic Areas	Prison Yard/Asylum, Police Barracks, Courthouse/City Hall	Jail Breaks, Bombings, Assassinations, Plant Evidence, Dig Dirt
Business & Culture Areas	Penthouse/Mansion, Museum, Bank, Factory, Chemical Plant, Business District	Robberies, Data Hack, Kidnappings, Bribery, Blackmail

On a tangential note, I found this article on clustering analysis of new york neighbourhoods rather interesting. The persistence of localised sub-cultures is apparently quite striking.

I must say I'm amazed on how far you've gone with this, lacuna! Sorry that I haven't been helpful or even commenting. But at least you should know that I'm watching this with interest.

Cheers. (I did spend a little time playing around with Daily Cthonicle as well, and it's not a million miles away from the concept, so thanks for pointing it out.)


On a more technical note, it's dawned on me that the reason detective work has taken so long to debug is that it inherently revolves around ignorance, doubt and uncertainty, particularly as presented to the user, which makes comprehensive testing rather tricky. I eventually sat down and wrote some quasi-intelligent automated test routines to follow investigations from start to finish, so I can be a little more confident in making further changes. (Bob Martin is quite entertaining in general- if you plan to do coding, it's worth watching some of his talks.)

Glad to hear that you're making progress.

Your advertising for Bob Martin got me. But as a very noobish developer (web), his blog post are throwing me lots of concepts that I don't have yet. Where would you advise a beginner to look at for understanding the basics of test driven development? (sorry for being off-topic but... you started it! :smalltongue: )

I've been in the industry either part or full-time for about ten years now, so a lot of what Bob's talking about here is both fairly non-technical and rings very true to me. I'm afraid my experience with web development is pretty minimal, so I'm not certain how well your favourite languages/frameworks/DBS would have built-in support for TDD, but the basic objective is simple: You have code which automatically verifies that your system is producing correct results in all the ways that could matter. (He outlines a specific mantra for doing so here, along with an explanation of the benefits. I haven't quite gotten into this habit yet, but to paraphrase:)

* You write as much of a test as is needed to make it fail (including failure to compile.)
* You then write as much of the code as is needed to make the test pass, and no more.
* You look for opportunities to clean and refactor.
* You back to step 1 and repeat.

It's important to note this does not mean you will necessarily have a test (or Gods forbid, batteries of them) for every last function in your code (for example, if function A will always call function B and relies on it to perform correctly, then testing A should verify B.) In general, the functions that your tests plug into should adhere to the interface of your public API for dealing with, say, external clients or other code modules. You want thorough coverage of required behaviour, not implementation.

* You can sanitise, refactor, extend or replace code, and if it breaks, you will immediately know what caused it.
* The requirements of testing force you to decouple, so that modules can be verified in isolation before being assembled.
* The suite of tests functions as a kind of documentation for the system API, which is fully unambiguous and 100% up-to-date.


I might have a new video at some point over the weekend. We'll see.

I finally find his "bowling game kata", and the step-by-step demo made the whole concept clearer to me. I'll have to learn to break my code into units for testing though. Thanks for your explanations!

Well, I've gone far too long without an update, so I'll keep this brief and to the point:

* I've hit my budget limit when it comes to paying for content development, as it turned out that environment tilesets were slower and costlier to create than I had initially hoped, even with fairly minimal production values. I'll need to accumulate more savings before I can try to tackle the project in earnest again, and that might not happen this year.

* I had a chat with the developer of Vigilantes, and it appears that he's doing most of what I planned to, is way way ahead in terms of development and exposure, and might still have a hard time breaking even. So I'm not sure I really have a useful niche here, relative to other efforts.

* After repeatedly bashing myself against the problem, I am getting absolutely no satisfaction from the detective work. I've invested enormous effort in the technical implementation and it still feels rickety and contrived. I could try to cut down the complexity or excise it entirely, but maybe I'm going about it the wrong way.


At this point... I'm inclined to conclude that I'm in a hole and should stop digging. I might finish up with one more video and leave it there for the forseeable future.

Ow, okay. I totally get it.

If you ask me, you should maybe leave the tactical combat part (the niche that's taken by vigilante) and just work the strategic/investigation city map, make it closer to black closet and daily cthonicle than x-com. But you know my preference from the beginning :smalltongue:

Well, good luck on your future endeavor man!

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Originally Posted by Fri

Ow, okay. I totally get it.

If you ask me, you should maybe leave the tactical combat part (the niche that's taken by vigilante) and just leave the strategic/investigation city map, make it closer to black closet and daily cthonicle than x-com. But you know my preference from the beginning :smalltongue:

Well, good luck on your future endeavor man!

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Not a bad solution!

And best wishes, Lacuna :)

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Originally Posted by Fri

If you ask me, you should maybe leave the tactical combat part (the niche that's taken by vigilante) and just work the strategic/investigation city map, make it closer to black closet and daily cthonicle than x-com. But you know my preference from the beginning

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Interesting, I would first have thought of the other way (focusing on combat), but a vigilantes' investigation management game could be a very nice thing. It may need to be more story based though...

Anyway, I wish you the best for whatever you decide to do.

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Originally Posted by Fri

If you ask me, you should maybe leave the tactical combat part (the niche that's taken by vigilante) and just work the strategic/investigation city map, make it closer to black closet and daily cthonicle than x-com. But you know my preference from the beginning :smalltongue:

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I have to say I'm sorely tempted. If I just focus on the strategic map I could conceivably get all the art done myself. I've actually hacked the detective work into a more manageable state and updated the map a little now, so that side of things feels more viable.

I have enough assets now for maybe 3 or 4 proper small-scale maps, with or without procedural generation- a bank/museum/courthouse, an industrial warehouse, a small bar, and bits and pieces of corporate office. The problem is that I need to have a map-type for every building-type on the strategic level (or at least the kinds that get targeted for crimes), which would result in some awkward shoehorning.

Might be sunk-cost talking, but I rather enjoyed the tactical micro elements. Maybe... if I made the environments really small? Like 32 x 32, as in some of the original X-Com maps? Wee little bite-size things?

Yeah, after careful consideration, if I want to go down the tactical-map route I think my best option would be to see how the release of Vigilantes goes and maybe see if I can mod that into shape- being able to re-use the maps and animation assets would save a good deal of time and effort. Try to marry the best of both projects, as it were.

I still want to do one more video to showcase how the overall multi-mission 'track down the mastermind' loop would go. I have some other commitments looming large at the moment though, so it could be a few weeks before I get around to it.

Waiting forward to see it. Keep it up!