Open Development Week #39: Everything on Schedule!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 02:58:19 PM

Hey Hunters,

How have you been? It was Father's Day this weekend here in Brazil, so we all spent some time home with our daddies. Those who did not have daddies spent some time playing Monster Hunter World, which was also good. All in all, a great weekend over here!

Speaking of great, I have some great news: everything is going smoothly since the last update and we are even a bit ahead of schedule!

AI Progress

Our AI base is pretty much complete. We are now testing and polishing its behavior, but we won't spend more than the remainder of this week in it. It absolutely does need some more spit and polish to it, but we need to keep our promises with you and move forward to new features.

With that said, the current AI is everything we wanted: well-built, fast, scalable, and all-around solid as a good foundation for the gigantic castle of cards that will be all of the different enemies and bosses in the game!

The biggest differences you will notice on this week's update will be that they switch targets much more efficiently, making online play a little less exploitable, and they can jump around! It is pretty amusing to see the Ducans jumping on top of high ground to fire at you - we will all have to adapt our tactics, I guess!

Minor fixes and polish

Roni has been taking some time to fix and improve old things in the project, and the game is overall less buggy and more stable.

Chief among the changes is the much-requested "Sprint Cancelling". Yes Hunters, you can now cancel your Sprint by attacking with any of your equipped weapons. This is a huge impact on how the game plays and feels, especially for gamepad players. We apologize that it took so long, but we are happy to finally deliver it to you!

Art Direction Progress

We've been reviewing and improving our overall art direction for the game, focusing on the environment art and the visual effects.

We've made a lot of tests and Betu is working on new concepts, but overall our goal is to soon reach a point where we finally have a solid technical and artistic direction for how we want our environments to look.

On the following weeks, expect texture changes, environmental effects such as fog, clouds, dust and rain, as well as lightning and time-of-day effects to shake up how the game looks and feels - hopefully it will look ten times better!

What's Coming Up?

We are very much on schedule, so expect this to be our Roadmap for the following weeks:

Next update (August 17th): new AI update !

Elites and Progression Update (August 31st): the new Elite enemies will come for the Ducan faction, and for the first time you will be able to progress through levels 1 to 20 in Relic Hunters Legend, changing your loadout, becoming stronger and facing 6 Missions with varying levels of difficulty.

After the August 31st update, we will focus on Gear drops and Materials, as well as our Weapon systems.

Celestino's Last Stream is Today

Not everything is good news, though. Today we say goodbye to our dear friend Celestino, as he will be leaving the Relic Hunters team for a new opportunity at another company.

He will be streaming one last time at today's livestream, at Noon Pacific Time. 

He will also hand out some goodbye gifts, so don't miss it!

We are live every Tuesday at Noon PT on Twitch! http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #38: AI almost done!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Aug 07, 2018 at 02:43:09 PM

Hey Hunters,

It feel like forever since last week's update! I know I've been a little less active on Discord and chat in general, but that's only because we have been focusing so hard to make sure that this will be the last update before the AI is done!

Current Build still not on Steam

We decided NOT to upload the current build update to Steam for you Founders. The reason is that the new AI is still not able to cast skills. So while we managed to make significant progress code-wise with the AI, and how it is much better-designed in every way... at the end of the day, the actual gameplay experience was a clear downgrade from the previous builds.

So we decided to keep this one internal as we stress test it for bugs and stability. Our current goal is to have the AI fully implemented for next week's Update.

This week we are working on making the AI use skills. The difference now is that they will use exactly the same skills as the players do, using the exact same code and tools. This is huge for our production - it means that every skill "building block" that we create for players could be recombined in enemy skills, and vice-versa. This is almost complete and will wrap up this week.

We are also working on making the enemies JUMP! Yup, you heard that right - no more will the Ducans (and Kami!) be relegated to chase you through ramps. No more will they stop at the insurmountable obstacle that was chest-height cover!

Starting from the next update, enemies will know how to hop over small obstacles in their path, and they will also be able to do bigger jumps to find high positions. Watch out for those jumping Ducans!

Progress on Environment Art

We have also been working on bringing our environment art up to the quality level that we want. Art has improved significantly over the last few weeks, but we are still far from happy with where it is.

Our goal is to have a single "100% done" stage that we can use as benchmark when developing the next areas.

Betu and Mari have been sketching and making lists of all the small and big things that are wrong with our current environments, and we are excited to work on the changes!

What's next?

After these basics of the new AI are in place, we won't be tweaking it further any time soon! We promised you that we would focus on Progression, so that's what we will do. Polishing the AI behavior and making it more detailed and fun can wait until other major systems are in place.

The roadmap is currently this:

Next update (August 17th): new AI update

Elites update (August 31st): the new Elite enemies will come for the Ducan faction

Progression Update (September 14th): for the first time you will be able to progress through levels 1 to 20 in Relic Hunters Legend, changing your loadout, becoming stronger and facing 6 Missions with varying levels of difficulty.

Join us NOW for our Livestream!

Our weekly livestream starts... NOW! Join us at Noon PT on Twitch, where we will be playing the live build, chatting and making average jokes. Don't miss it, it is right here: http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters ! 

See you soon!

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #37: AI, Good News, Bad News
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 02:15:00 PM

Hey Hunters,

We've been hard at work on our new AI systems, and making great progress! We also have a bit of good news, and a bit of not-so-good news - keep reading and you'll find out which one is which.

AI Progress

If you've been following our weekly updates, you know that we have been working on our new AI systems for quite a while now. It finally feels like we are at the end of the process!

It's been a balancing act. Our commitment with you, our Founders, have been to focus on Progression systems before polishing gameplay and combat. So as much as I'd like to keep working and polishing AI behaviors for another month, we are just establishing a solid technical foundation to build upon later. 

So as soon as the AI is fully playable, we will move on to adding Elite enemies, doing Stat Progression, Loot and Weapon drops. Basic AI functionality will be released with this week's new Steam build, and the full package is coming on the one after that.

We are working on Raff (finally!)

In the meantime, Betu has been working on one of the community's favorite Hunters: Raff!

If you remember from last year, we had her playable at one point. After we decided to move from hand-drawn animation to using dynamic Spine motion, we had to scrap all of the existing Hunters and re-do everything from scratch. Seven is also one of the previously-playable Hunters that are still not in the game after the animation change.

The change was for good, though. Look at how fluid and awesome these are looking:

(In case you're wondering, the reason why she is missing her arms and hair is that they are dynamically added by code when the game is running!)

Welcome Pedro to the team!

We have a new Relic Hunters team member: Pedro Falcão! A friend of ours for quite a while, Pedro finally joined the team officially to work exclusively on lore and storytelling. While the fruits of his work will take a while to be seen by you (we don't want to spoil story too soon!), rest assured that they are in good hands.

Pedro wrote the Chroma Squad comics, and was going to write our own Relic Hunters comics last year, but had another work opportunity that took up all of his time. Not today, though - today, Pedro is ours! Welcome to the team <3

But we are also saying goodbye...

With a heavy heart, we are saying goodbye to Gabriel Celestino, our Community Manager. He will be leaving for an opportunity at PAIN Gaming in 2 weeks.

Celest has been a loved member of the team, and I am sure you folks in the community loved him too. You will me missed, man!

We are looking for someone to replace him, but it won't be easy. I will be taking over the Stream and Community for however long it takes after he departs, so rest assured that you won't be abandoned!,

Tune in for the last few Celestino streams!

Celestino will still stream at the same time next week and the week after that. Let him know how we were all thankful for his work!

Our weekly livestreams happen at http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters every Tuesday at Noon PT.

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #36
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 10:45:38 AM

Hey Hunters,

It's been two weeks since my last update! How time flies :o

We've been banging our heads against the w... uh, I mean, working on the game non-stop since the last update. It's been challenging, to say the least, but I feel like we finally made some solid progress. Here's what's been going on:

New Pre-Alpha Build is Up

If you have Alpha access and haven't already, check out the build we put out last week! We have (mostly) fixed the crazy enemy spawns that were happening on Skirmish, and also included a lot of new art, including dozens of new environment assets and new tilesets!

Working on AI

The bulk of our work in the last few weeks has been AI. Not only have we updated the game to the new version of Unity, we also started our quest towards making AI code from scratch using our new fancy tech (ECS/Job System).

Turns out it was super hard!

But we are FINALLY making some progress. Here are some cool things coming on the next updates:

• AI is a bit faster now, using multiple CPU cores (but we still have much work to do);
• AI now has a Threat system and knows how to switch targets dynamically in multiplayer matches;
• AI knows how to seek cover, and how to run away from players - and some enemies will (not all of them!)
• AI can use Skills just like players do - in fact, they can use the same skills with our new tool, which will allow us to make new skills faster for everyone;
• AI knows how to behave differently depending on the Game Mode;
• AI can have special behaviors such as trying to stay close to their squad, or seeking cover when their shields are down;
• AI knows how to target their own allies to use support or healing skills;
• And last but not least, AI knows how to jump and how to fall from high ground!

Whew! That was a lot of stuff. We were crazy to think we could get this done in 2 weeks, but hindsight is 20/20.

What's Coming Up?

AI is our current goal because it will allow us to make new enemies faster and more effectively. So expect most of the new AI systems to come on the next build (August 3rd), with the remaining ones following the week after.

After that, we are going to focus on the Elites and the Progression systems - meaning level scaling, stats, weapons and random loot drops!

Our goal is to have a "Progression" build on August 17th. The scope of this build will be similar to what we had envisioned for the ill-fated "June Update" last month, with you being able to level up your Hunter from 1 to 20, gaining power in the process, and advancing through our 18 Missions. Elite enemies will make the difficulty more interesting in Hard and Epic Missions.

Livestream TODAY!

And, what do you know, I'll be joining Celestino in about an hour on our weekly Livestream (every Tuesday at Noon Pacific Time). Be sure to tune in to check out the new build, ask questions and see what's coming next in Relic Hunters!

See you soon!

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #34: AI Systems, New Unity
over 7 years ago – Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 10:36:09 AM

Hey Hunters,

How have you been?

We have been tidying up our house - as in our virtual house that is made out of code!

Updating to Unity 2018

Finally we took the time to bring the game to the newest version of Unity. The main difference that it will make in the game is how we plan to use juicy new features such as the Job System and the Entity Component System.

What it means in practice is that we can take more advantage of the multiple cores on your CPU and get much better performance out of the game. Our goal is for Legend to run well even on mobile devices, so performance has always been a main concern for us. 

You won't see any noticeable improvements now, as we will roll out Job System/ECS onto our features slowly, but in time the game should perform a LOT better on all multi-core machines out there.

AI Work - Simple and efficient

We are finally working on AI! Our current AI code that is live right now has always been a placeholder and not particularly bright or optimized. Gabe and Caio have spent the best part of last week working on a shiny new system (and already using Unity's new Jobs feature!).

It's not all good news though: we have decided to step backwards a little bit and dial our ambition down a notch. Since last year we had been advertising "Advanced AI" as one of our core features. The plan had been to implement a robust and powerful AI system that would make enemies incredibly smart, mimicking PvP (Player-vs-Player) mechanics and behavior.

We have decided that we are already biting a lot more than we can chew with this game, and unless we want it to release in 2022 we need to start picking our fights. So "Advanced AI" is a major feature cut that we are making so we can focus on other, arguably more important bits: loot, multiplayer code, skills/customization, gameplay variety.

The current system will be much simpler, and enemies will be relatively predictable with clear patterns. This is not bad, let's make it clear - just a different design approach. Simpler enemy AI will also allow us to create more enemies faster, and being able to create content faster has always been our philosophy with Legend.

New enemies will know how to use cover a little better, and to run away from players depending on what is going on. They won't be too smart or annoying, though - it will still be a power fantasy where your small group of Hunters will battle it out against dozens of enemies!

Art Updates

In the meantime, Betu and Mari have been working on good-looking things!

Betu has designed some neat frames that will be shown around your characters' portraits. These are Gear Score indicators, and will progress based on how well-equipped your Hunter is!

The frames will indicate your Gear Score rank from Crude (top left) to Rare IV (bottom right).

Betu is also redesigning the look of the Turleks before moving on to the last Elite on our list: the Turlek tank. Expect regular Turleks to look more like members of the Ducan troops from now on:

Mari has also been working on set dressing and decorating the existing levels, which have been little more than squares and rectangles up until this point:

And that's pretty much it for this week's update! We hope to wrap up the AI code and some fixes for our customary bi-weekly update, coming this Friday.

Livestream tomorrow (July 10th)!

As usual, Celestino will be taking care of our weekly Livestream. Be sure to tune in to http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters tomorrow at Noon Pacific Time ;)

Cheers,

~Mark