Hello there. My name is Mai. Welcome to Devlog #05. Vulkanic has a lot of new cool things they want to showcase today. So please enter into your preferred state of relaxation and continue watching!
Robotic Companions
In this devlog I want to introduce to you the first robotic creature — the bull. It’s a highly developed and intelligent robotic companion which can be spawned and mounted by the players. The main advantage of the bull is its speed. By riding it you will be able to traverse the map way faster than it’s possible on foot.
For start, let's take a deeper look at how the bull's animations work. In these terms the humanoid characters and quadrupeds are very different, which leads to the necessity of creating the animation system specifically designed for the creatures with four legs. In fact programming animations for quadrupeds is significantly harder than for a character with two legs. When the bull is walking on the unflat surface it’s body rotation has to be adjusted, the legs have to be accurately placed on the ground, and the feet have to be aligned with the surface. A system was made that traces the floor in 8 different locations and performs various calculations in order to adjust the bones movement.
You can mount the bull from 3 sides: left, right, and back. Same applies to dismounting, while riding you can tell your character to dismount the companion in a specific direction. This might be crucial in battle because this way you can quickly hide behind your companion and use it as a natural shield. The bull can turn left and right, jump and move with different speeds, such as walk, trot, and gallop. Speaking in general it was decided to make the movement responsive despite it being a separate character with a possibility of it’s own will. Have no worries, it won’t kick you down. By mounting the bull your character completely overrides its functionality and makes it a very reliable companion.
The logic that allows you to interact with the companion in order to mount or dismount was built on top of our existing interaction system which was already used for interacting with the doors. However it was improved compared to the initial version. The interaction logic was moved to the server for better security. Additionally it was encapsulated in a separate component which can be easily added whenever it’s needed. For example if a character has to be controllable by the player and needs the ability to interact with other objects we can simply connect the mentioned interaction component to the character class to quickly receive access to required functionality. The same approach will be applied to other features such as the ability system, building system, in-game shop and so on.
Just like the interaction system, each of them will be modified to work as a separate module. Since it’s planned to have a lot of different character types this approach grants a lot of flexibility and allows to endow each of them with a needed functionality. The modular way of structuring the project proves to be very useful for this purpose and becomes more and more crucial as the codebase grows.
As you probably already know there will be two simulation modes in PROXIMA: a true PVP multiplayer experience Terra Control, and a narrative driven co-op mode Intrusion, featuring a robot troop management system as well as an extensive open world with a lot of things to do. The robotic companions will be highly relied on in both of these game modes. While in Terra Control the companion will be mostly limited to traversing high distances in the simulation world, in Intrusion it will have the ability to execute your commands such as following you, protecting an area or attacking your enemies. But this is something we will show you in upcoming weeks and months.
Now as the base for the riding system is finished it can be reused to quickly iterate other types of robotic animals. The Vulkanic development team always thinks in advance, so they designed the system to also support different drivable rigs with slots for multiple characters, such as aircrafts, boats or cars. What drivable rigs would you like to see in the game? Share your ideas in the comments!
Spectator Mode
While working on robotic companions, the development team realized that every different type of character needs a different camera position and the switching always needs to be smooth and seamless. So they spent some time playing with different perspectives and controls. This provided a good opportunity to iterate the first version of the spectator mode along the way. Because if you can observe any character while you control it, why not make it spectatable at any other moment of time?
As a result Vulkanic added a feature that allows switching the perspective to another player. Thanks to the unified animation system, the appearance of the spectated character is as precise as viewing your own. This mode is commonly used to let players spectate their allies or enemies while the player character is dead. However the developers of the PROXIMA simulation plan to go further and allow players to switch to spectating their teammates at any time. This may be especially useful in battles. Because exactly seeing what your robotic allies see, can give you a tactical advantage.
But that is not all. The separate free perspective mode was implemented. It allows the spectator to freely roam around the map to see the ongoing action from any possible side. The free perspective mode was used to capture footage for this devlog and will be actively used in upcoming videos as well. It will also be available in-game to provide a tool for capturing footage for in-game events. It will be iterated upon, and features commonly used in photo modes will be added as well. So whether you wanna capture cinematic footage or create amazing looking screenshots you will have an extensive tool to do exactly that.
Building & Resource System
One of the most important game features that has been introduced to the game in the past few months is the building system. It empowers players to build impressive structures on any relatively flat space on the map which is not occupied with other objects such as trees or large rocks. Also there is another requirement for it — your team needs to control the territory where you want to build.
Building is a great way to get protection or create a good firing point. Bases will play an especially important role in Intrusion where you will often need to fight big hordes of enemies.
Each building part costs a certain amount of metal. Currently there are 8 different building parts, but this number will drastically increase in the future, also it will be possible to buy and place various props. In any case building is not cheap so you might need to cooperate with your teammates in order to construct bigger bases in shorter amounts of time. In order to build you need metal — one of the in-game resources. You will be able to collect metal by holding control over territory. Simply put, the more areas your team controls the higher the metal income will be. Additionally you can obtain a certain amount of metal by killing other players and robotic creatures. It’s planned to have other resources besides metal in the game but I will tell you more about it in the upcoming devlogs.
Intrusion Voiceovers
Before I say goodbye to you, I wanna quickly share some more progress. Vulkanic has officially started working on the first act of the Intrusion campaign. The script for the first act has been finalized. Same for the dialogs. All voice lines used for the first act are currently being recorded. Here is a small snippet of them. Don't worry there will be no story spoilers here.
Besides dialogues and voice lines for action events and cut scenes there will also be voice lines for certain events in the game. Like when the weather state is switching or Mai wants to do a special announcement. These kinds of voice overs will be used in both game modes, and add to the overall immersion of the simulation.
Check the video to hear the voiceovers.
Thank you for reading and see you in the upcoming devlogs!
— Mai
