Before we jump in to the news we just wanna thank everyone again who voted for our us in the IndieDB 2023 awards! For those who missed it, we made it to the 8th place in the category Best Upcoming Indies!
Check out all the other amazing games that made it to TOP 10 here.
Allrighty now the blog post part.
We've made great progress this year and we would love to share it with you all! As you can see we included a new screenshot that shows a real world envirnonemnt of the main game. All people that played the Prologue probably know that it was set in a simulation environment. That simulation has great popularity in all nations of ALTERA. [spoiler]The Prologue ends with the player being hacked by the main antagonist, a mysterious villain, METALGRAVE.[/spoiler]
For the main game however things will be different, visually speaking. The visual style of the main game is a mixture of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic elements. And before you are getting sad: no, the robots did not fully disappear. Introducing human characters and "other" ones is one of the main goals for the main game.
To give you all a better understanding of the lore and world of ALTERA please read this overview:
The world of ALTERA is set in a alternative fictional universe. Humans, animals and machines on this planet lived in peace and harmony for many hundred years. But METALGRAVE does not believe in the progress that was achieved and wants to erase all technology from ALTERA.
The main goal of the players is to form a faction, recruit soldiers and put and end to metalgrave and his morbid plans. Unlike the Prologue, in Act 1 of the campaign the player is sent to a remote island formation, which serves as a home to the numerous refugees who fled from another universe.
The unvierse of ALTERA is far developed and many technological inventions have been made. The many different species that live on the planet all take advantage of this progress. On the surface there are no wars, no unimplyoment and no big issues that plague the many nations of ALTERA. However all this came at a great prize. ALTERA’s history is serveral thousand years old. And across the centuries there was a great effort to hide and burry all wrong doings of the past.
That and much more will all be uncovered in the campaign.
Human characters
The implementation of the first version of human characters is nearly finished. The human characters are currently playable and most of the animations are working. The animation system itself got numerous improvements and polishment.
More Ballistic Weapons
We have started implementing more baliistic weapons to the game. The first ones are M4A1 and AR-15. You can expect around 12 new weapons in the upcoming playtest.
Realistic recoil
During the Alpha stage many of you gave us feedback regarding the gunplay. The main point was there was a need to improve the recoil. With the new procedural system the recoil now looks and feels much better!
Sleepdealer animations
The Sleepdealer animations have been also updated and now are much more realistic. The shooting mechanic was reworked as well. Now you need to pull the string by holding RMB first and then release it to shoot.
Character level and skill system
We have implemented the skill system, which allows you to enhance stats of your troop commander, using skill points. Those are obtained by leveling up.
Your troop gets experience by killing enemies and executing other actions in the game world. The skills allow you to increase your health, stamina, sprint speed, reload speed, decresase recoil strength etc.
All soldiers besides the troop commander invest their skill points automatically. All the enemies will also have unique skill combinations, and their level will vary, which will make some of them dangerous opponents!
Stamina system
The energy has been renamed to stamina and now plays a much more important role for your gameplay. You lose stamina by sprinting and using the Sleepdealer.
Take a look at the stamina bar, the level is decreasing when pulling the string of the Sleepdealer. When the stamina is at the minimum it's no longer possible to shoot.
Fall damage
Now you receive damage after jumping down from height.
On the gif below you can notice that the health level slightly drops after landing. Bigger heights will cause much higher damage.
Faction system
Now you can position friendly soldiers near the towers or do the opposite and command the stationed units to join your troop. All those soldiers are part of your faction and the more towers you have the bigger your faction can be. You can always check how many soldiers you have and where they are positioned on the new faction screen.
Units stationed near the towers will protect their tower from enemy attacks. This process will happen automatically even if you are far from a tower.
At any point of the game you can return to any tower in order to help your factions soldiers protecting the area (or just go there and observe what's happening from a safe spot ???? )
Troop commander death rules
When the troop commander dies, you need to select a soldier from your troop and assign it as new commander. But this costs a lot of money so we recommend you to watch out for your commander carefully. If you dont have money to assign the commander, you can still do it but you will get in financial debt. You can also always assign another unit to act as a new troop commander.
Other changes:
- Inventory items are now displayed on the bottom of the screen so you can always see what items your controlled soldier has.
- Maximum troop size is changing based on have many other players joined you in the game.
Also, as a bonus, here's a screenshot that teases the new redesigned main menu. Just ignore the UI bug haha.
