April 15, 2021: Chief Chat Notes - "Tsi-Hu Quad Squad! Bullets flying everywhere!"

Status
Not open for further replies.

Faeryl

Omni Ace
Staff member
Community Manager
Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
921
2,615
93
Planet Earth, USA, East Coast
discord.gg
#1
CHIEF CHAT BRIEF SUMMARY FROM TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2021
Update via Chief Chat:

==== MAIN POINTS ====
► New Demo was dropped! If you were here when the demo was first dropped, please download the newer one!

If your a Backer, To find it, it’s labeled [LATEST] Squad Demo on you account in downloads!
[https://my.em8er.com/downloads]


==== GENERAL POINTS ====
► Grummz: “Current builds in progress: build with 1st art pass, with a 2nd pass of art coming in (don’t expect everything to be super polished), but working on the game play along with the community.”


==== DEMO CHANGES ====
Additions:
► Tsi-Hu have HP bars!
► Head shots (aiming for the head is an easier kill!)
► Tsi-Hu’s states or “thoughts” are listed above their HP! This aspect may or may not remain temporarily.
► Pulled in Tsi-Hu aggro distance (will not attack you until your within a certain distance).
^ Since Tsi-Hu attack distance is now closer it “should” push players to engage at a closer distance.
► The assault rifle has a little bit of target accuracy stat.
^ Grummz: “It’s not aim assisting you at at close ranges, it makes your projectiles a little bit bigger the farther they are away from you so that when you are firing at distance, you have a better chance at landing a shot. (it’s not by a huge amount, we control the amount of target accuracy each weapon has (might be a craftable feature).”
► The Tsi-Hu now move in squads of 3 (each squad has a “commander”)!
► Hooked up Harry’s predictive firing shot capacity so that the Tsi-Hu have a much better chance at hitting you now.
► With the assault rifle when switching to first person and aiming at something (like a rock) you will notice we have “bloom” (the spread of the weapon) and that there's “kick” (rise).
► With the plasma weapon, the entire camera moves with the “kick”.

▼ Fixed: ▼
► Changes in dash (camera moved in 3rd person)

► In order to make aiming easier, and the Tsi-Hu better targets, we made the FOV 90 degrees, instead of 110. And we moved the camera closer to the MEK.
^ If you don’t see it, open your options, go to Gameplay, and scroll down until you see these set right (name and number below):
3RD PERSON HORIZONTAL FOV 90
3RD PERSON VERTICAL FOV 58.7
CAMERA Y OFFSET 151

► Increased run state FOV by about 5 degrees, and upped the run movement 50 units, 50 cm/s
► Tsi-Hu hit box problems are being addressed.
► Changed Over Thrust. It now picks up a lot of speed over time [may allow use on the ground (skim mode?)], possibly knock enemies aside. In the future?)
► Plasma cannon has gotten a huge update!
^ It is no longer infinite, and is essentially a 5 shot cannon before needing to recharge (from its energy pool found above your jetpack fuel bar)
^ Damage has been increased as long as it’s a direct impact!
^ Longer range! With more gravity drop off.
► Increased the speed of missiles, so they now have a snappier feel now.
► Tamed the missile spiraling, so they don’t spiral quite as much
► The Tsi-Hu spread out when spawning! (They don’t bunch up anymore!)
► Assault rifle no longer sprays side to side (while shooting).


==== FUTURE PLANS ====
Squads and invasion planning
^ Grummz: “The Tsi-Hu are going to be moving In squads of 3 loosely speaking. This is going to be part of the AI hierarchy That Nizuul is building. We’re gonna have squads of 3 that have their own sort of tactical low level AI but there's also going to be an encounter manager for the entire rift encounter that manages the squads and sort of directs them as a unit. So you’re going to see more intelligent behaviors at a squad level, and then when invasions happen there's going to be a general AI sort of like a commander in chief that's going to direct the invasion against players and player bases and they command the different encounters and the encounters filter commands down to the squads. This is all part of preparation for invasions where we do a hierarchical AI system.”

► Deciding encounter sizes (picking numbers for how many Tsi-Hu to 1 player).
► Tuning weapons and their accuracy.
► The Dev Team is hoping to have a build next week with more tuning.

Damage Types
^ Grummz: “Remember the damage types that are coming into the game and that's another thing were going to implement there's kinetic damage, energy damage, and splash damage. So the plasma’s an energy weapon and the assault rifle is kinetic, so ones going to be effective against shield’s and the others going to be more effective against armor or hard/soft targets. We haven't quite decided what that is yet, but there's going to be additional differentiation between the weapons.”
► Dynamic scaling to how many players is going to be needed.
► Another thing that we’re working on is the personality of the Tsi-Hu, right now they are using a combination of mocap and stock animations. But it’s really cool when you pair up a special animation when they hide behind cover, because you would know what they are doing or thinking.
► Glory kills, we always wanted glory kills, I’d like to get those going.


==== Q & A ====
► Q: Are there plans to implement an actual skin for the plasma cannon?
Ronyn: Yes, there is a plan for that, we will get to it.

► Q: Do you know how to play Guitar?
Grummz: I do! I would say I’m a basic to intermediate player! I play a lot of 80’s stuff, like I like Van Halen, I like White Lion, I like Dire Straights, things like that. I don’t play metal, I don’t [...?]


► Follow up Q: Have you written any of your own little tunes yet?
Grummz: I’ve written music in a high school band. It’s really dreadful. You’ll never hear it [laughter].

► Q: Are you using Voice Meter?
Grummz: Yes I am!

► Q: I know you said before PvP is not a focus, but was wondering if any “competitive/rank” aspects would be in the game?
Grummz: There is a sort of PvE competition, I’m kinda fascinated by the idea of groups of people competing to see who can build up bases and terraform zones more, who can contribute more to that and having a leader board for how many resources you contributed to a base or how many improvements you helped create, that type of thing. But I would say its competitive PvE, hows that?

► Q: When do we get our heavy frame?
Grummz: When we reach 1,500 Patrons!

► Q: When can we use PayPal for the Patron subscription?
Grummz: You can’t use PayPal for the Patron subscription right now, I’m sorry. We use Stripe, so any regular credit/debit card will work. PayPal only works for Newcomer packs right now and upgrades. It’s just because its really tricky to program 2 different payment systems for a subscription system. There's a lot of logic there that's not an issue for regular packs. You can use PayPal or Stripe for backer packs – regular credit cards but, when you talk subscriptions they have to sort of sync up.

► Q: How is the scale in EM-8ER?
Grummz: The scale is going to be bigger than I first thought. At first I thought the current demo is pretty big it’s a 4km by 4km zone, and it feels too small, because we have flight, we have gliding. So the zones will be bigger, they will be much bigger to accommodate not only your travel speeds, but also things like Kaiju, we plan to have really large kaiju in the game.

► Q: Have you designed the EM-8ER version of the Battleframe Station?
Grummz: No we have not.

► Q: Any update on possible player housing that is customizable?
Grummz: We haven't even announced housing in EM-8ER yet, that's a post launch feature. We’re an MMO but were a small team, so were going to focus more on the invasion system and resource gathering.

► Q: Can you toggle the dynamic FOV? Makes me feel sick.
Grummz: Yes, we can make it a toggle, something you can turn on and off.

► Q: Is it possible to change cross-hair position?
Grummz: We’ve been playing with it, how do you guys prefer it, a bit higher like before, or lower like it is now?
[Insert your feedback here! https://forums.em8er.com/threads/squad-demo-feedback-thread.1937]

► Q: Is there weapon lock on for your targeting onto a single target or location?
Ronyn: Ah. Being that EM-8ER is a true shooter, we aren't likely to see that kind of thing implemented. At least not for gun play.

► Q: Will thumping change at all from what it currently is?
Ronyn: Yes quite a bit. Thumping itself is still an early iteration that isn’t feature complete.

► Q: Will the general be omniscient or will it have an intel system?
Grummz: You know in most games they are omniscient just because it’s a lot easier on processing if the AI cheats and can see everything. An intel system would be interesting because that implies that there could be intel units in the field that gather scouts and things, maybe take out the scouts you kinda blind the general a little bit.

► Q: Will there be a story or lore for this game or is it going to be more bare bones?
Grummz: Yes there will. How much of it actually makes it in game depends on budget, and how well we do on Kickstarter, but actually we’re writing a novel for it so there's a lot of lore. Monthly Patrons have access to Chapter 8 and farther, along with a vision book on what the game is going to look like!

Read Chapters 1-7 for FREE on your downloads page:
https://my.em8er.com/downloads
Check out the unedited version of the Vision Book here on the Forums: https://forums.em8er.com/forums/vision-book-project-proofing.28
Want to read the Vision Book and more lore? Check out the Patron here: https://my.em8er.com/perks/campaign/7

► Q: Can the view distances for the rifts be bigger?
Harry: It seems the scale of the world is not really congruent with what you see with the character. So you see an open field and suddenly at a fairly close distance something pops in right? So I was thinking we increase the relevancy distance so that you see more of the actors, more of the stuff happening, So we reduce the pop ins basically.

► Q: Can we have a “Restore default” added to the settings?
Harry: Yes that is something I wanted to add, but I’m too lazy. It'll be done eventually.

► Q: Can the T.H.M.P.R thump longer in one spot?
Grummz: He will eventually. When we start to build the T.H.M.P.R encounter, the actual thumping encounter will last for a lot longer. There will be multiple waves attacking you and different types of things attacking you, and the challenge will get harder and harder until we have a mini boss appear that basically goes to town on your T.H.M.P.R. Then you have to sort of assist as these 2 sort of titans battle it out in order to see if you can save your T.H.M.P.R. So yeah, the T.H.M.P.R encounter will be longer than the actual length of the T.H.M.P.R encounter. The T.H.M.P.R encounter length is dictated by the player, so the player can choose to sort of do very short ones and not risk a lot, because the waves get harder and harder, or they can try to push it to the maximum time for those really rare juicy resources that pop out at the end. And that determines the T.H.M.P.R encounter length.

► Q: Will the frames have like a super ability?
Grummz: Will they have ults you mean? I don’t know, never thought about it. We will consider it.

► Q: Will Michael Bross music be in the Kickstarter Slice?
Grummz: Yes! In fact I was thinking about putting in some of the rough compositions sooner rather than later. But I think Michael would want to wait for the final composition.

► Q: What is the long term appeal of this game?
Grummz: Well the idea is that the game continuously expands as we continue to add new zones and players continue to terraform them. And as you unlock more of the world your tech-tier advances which allows you to unlock higher tech trees in the game, and if you fail to defend it territory can be lost, and your tech-tier falls. So its kinda like this push-pull, and the idea is to add more and more of these zones over time. Whats the end goal? Well it’s like anything else progression is a big part of it. So you want to get to max tech tier, craft as many frames as you want for different play styles, or focus logistics or mining or just focus on combat.

► Q: Is the environment going to be adapting as well... ie will we have seasons?
Ronyn: No talk of seasons, but the terraforming process will have an impact on the environment we play in. EM-8ER will change from a snowy terrain to something more tropical based on certain factors.

► Q: How will loot work?
Grummz: Well the foundation is your skill. This is an action game, right? It’s very much skill oriented, shooter oriented so your gonna have to get good at movement, your gonna have to get good at shooting. The combat is inherently action oriented. The gear enhances that, gear will give you a power boost for sure, there will be a sense of progression. There will be a power curve but there's going to be a skill based component to as many as other things we’re gonna add.

► Q: Do you have any thoughts on any sort of booths or auction house system yet?
Grummz: Yeah I think we will have an auction house. The entire economy of this game is the resources and parts. As for shops? I don’t know, I think that might be a future update.

► Q: Any hope for LUA (a coding language) plugin like Firefall?
Grummz: Well unfortunately I don’t think so, because we use the Unreal Engine, and Unreal’s UI system does not support LUA scripting in terms of UI customization and things like that. Unfortunately I think that's beyond our resources.

► Q: Will we be getting some version of the Firefall abilities?
Grummz: Yeah! For people who are Firefall fans we want you to be able to craft the Firefall abilities that you enjoyed! [We will be getting ALL the Firefall abilities, in some form or another and some that are unique to Em-8er as well!]



==== QUOTES ====
"The DEEPSTRYKE is in the bed, This is known.” ~ Ronyn
“We fought for that butt!” ~ Grummz
“I think the uh, the Bunny has shown a reasonable bounce, and I think that's important for the development of the game.” ~ Ronyn
”Yes Grummz is flashing the Twitch community.” ~ Ronyn

==== THANK YOU’S! ====
► Fai’s thanks round 1 winner! “Brosef”
► Fai’s thanks round 2 winner! “Nubbun”

==== FUN STUFF ====
► Grummz loves games made by the Coffee Stain studio!
► Harry hates the word bounce confirmed.


Missed the Chief Chat and wanted to listen in?
Here’s the Twitch VOD Link!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/988557179

Remember for any comments and bug finds from this demo leave your feedback and thoughts here!

https://forums.em8er.com/threads/squad-demo-feedback-thread.1937
 
Status
Not open for further replies.