Cyberpunk '97 -Episode 1- New Build Available

Started by Axelord1942, Mon 07/10/2019 14:54:54

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Axelord1942

Inspired by pretty much every piece of cyberpunk media comes Cyberpunk '97!  Explore a new, yet familiar future where corporations run everything and everyone is miserable!







https://imgur.com/a/RacM5ol

The idea struck me while making a mod for doom 2 (can you tell?)  While that mod is dead in the water, this is alive and well!

This will be a three episode story, with the first and third stories being more narrative-driven and the second-one being more open-ended.
Episode 1 is currently around 30% complete and the demo is in a more or less playable state.  Check it out at https://axelord1942.itch.io/cyberpunk-97episode-1-demo  :-D

You play as a survivor of one of the recent megaquakes and have relocated to a new city with no job, no money and no friends.  You will struggle overcoming (or ignoring) the trauma
that led you where you are as you use your wits to get ahead in this unforgiving world.  Will you be a law-abiding Citizen? Or will you adopt less scrupulous tactics, stealing and hacking your way
to the good life?  Will you choose to uncover the secrets of the world's third-largest corporation?  Hell, if you want to forego all that intrigue and just get a job; do it!

Current planned features that are in development but missing in current build:

-ExtraNet: The world will be full of extranet domain addresses that the player will be to look up on their Personal Electronic Assistant.
-Hunger: You gotta eat.
-Simple skill system: Rigging (low-tech engineering), Streetwise, Subterfuge and Security.
-Playing as a woman not finished yet, may crash game.


The workflow on this thing is stupid but I, for one reason or another, am quite pleased with this monstrosity...I just hope someone else finds something to like here!
Right now I would suggest not using the Personal Electronic Assistant as it is currently undergoing an overhaul.  For now just use the "R" key to bring up a recipe list once it is charged.
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Deabriel

I'm curious if this will going to be commercial or not. Because if it is, the title background screen is from the game Murder by Peter Moorhead, and you will receive a C&D.


After than that, it's interesting, good luck with your project.

Axelord1942

Quote from: Deabriel on Tue 08/10/2019 06:26:53
I'm curious if this will going to be commercial or not. Because if it is, the title background screen is from the game Murder by Peter Moorhead, and you will receive a C&D.


After than that, it's interesting, good luck with your project.

I have no intentions of making this commercial; I've created a bunch of assets myself but the rest are all borrowed from various sources.  Most of the textures are from Duke Nukem 3d, Doom 2 and Shadow Warrior.

Thanks for taking a look!
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Olleh19

The guys face on the ID with the hand "check in" needs to be blured. It's to sharp, it jumps out of the image and looks bad.
Other then that i have nothing to say rather then good luck! :)

Axelord1942

Quote from: Olleh19 on Tue 08/10/2019 14:04:13
The guys face on the ID with the hand "check in" needs to be blured. It's to sharp, it jumps out of the image and looks bad.
Other then that i have nothing to say rather then good luck! :)

Thanks for the tip! I'll go ahead and run the layer through a filter.  (laugh)
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Axelord1942

Man, it's been a while.  :-[  A lot has changed since I posted this.  My devlogs on itch.io are a little more current, but I'll try and sum it up as quickly as possible.  Scrolling through this original post was entertaining since:

1. I forgot I was even gonna put hunger in the game
2. The Personal Electronic Assistant proved to be a nightmare.
3. Playing as a woman is still a little buggy

Some of the major design changes are as follows:
Complete redesign of the PEA interface.  The short version is that I streamlined something that I made complicated for no good reason. The robust answer is that I had originally set the PEA interface in it's own instance, separate from the live game world.  In theory this was going to make it easier to compartmentalize changes to the interface and allow me to keep certain scripts from becoming overly cluttered.  This backfired and ended with softlocks as my design didn't allow me to use certain shortcuts that ended up being exactly what I was missing.  Furthermore, I was determined to make using the PEA feel as analog as possible, with the player having to access menus and functions within the PEA/instance itself.  This bloated and I ended up with a keypad to navigate a set of five options on five/six different menus.  This was extremely cumbersome.  Not only was it frustrating to get it all working right, this experience was not adding the flavor I thought it was.  I decided to axe the menu system altogether, and after a quick redesign I ended up with this:

Most, if not all the same functionality has been retained in this new gui.  The recipe list was also de-instanced and merged with the new gui, as well as character information and stats (which previously had been non-functional).

In addition, this also means that the systems for skill leveling/usage are in place and ready to go. :)

     2. Player Input, Occupation system and Rank system are finalized.  Player Input right now is limited to entering the character's name during creation but will be expanded upon to include running InfoSearches on conversation topics and hacking.  The Occupation mechanic is exactly what it sounds like; at some point you will have to get a job.  This will affect dialogue options and interactions in the second chapter (more on that later).  The Rank system will be a reflection of your actions in New Jakarta.  Spend too much time sneaking around and you'll be known as a thief.  Eventually this rank will combine with your occupation, so you may be a "Burger-Flipping Sneak", or a "Shady Repairman", or any other combination.  Currently this will only reflect the highest number/rank among a pile of hidden stats but I'm toying with the idea of it displaying a combination of the top two in addition to the occupation, with the end result being something along the lines of a "Sneaky Custodian Tech Wizard".




     3. Female content/interactions are now active.  The only exception is interactions with GOLIATH, which are on the to-do list.

     4. Restructuring of the story/chapters. This game is a mess under the hood; I'm not going to sugarcoat it.  My original plan was to have Chapter 1 end in a "open-world" setpiece which allowed the player freedom to roam around the Zone and get into the core gameplay loop.  This has proven unrealistic; what I'd need to write would wreck havoc on the code I've written so far and to be frank there's no need to put myself, and this project, through the hell of redesigning all the scripts to allow for this.  The elegant solution is to move the goalposts, obviously.  Instead the transition between chapters will also mark the transition between gameplay styles, with the first being a linear experience and the second being more of a sandbox.

    5. Randomization of certain events.  At first certain units would be accessible and others would not and that was that.  This felt too rigid, so now 90% of doors are randomized to either open or short-circuit (they are currently weighted to open more often than not), with the unit beyond the door also being picked randomly from a pool of available units.  Potential loot will be randomized as well, although key items will be found in the same locations and will be excluded from the random rolls.


That's all the major changes, which constituted the bulk of what needed to be done for this to start nearing completion.  Still a few big to-do's left, but they just need love and time.

    1. Finish GOLIATH AI's dialogue and speech.
    2. Connect the elevator and lobby (easy-peezy)
    3. Autosave system
    4. Cutscenes
    5. Character transfer system a la Quest for Glory and Mass Effect.  This one will be tricky, but the idea is to produce a string of text/numbers that will allow you to port your character into the next chapters.  This is the big one, and the one I will likely leave for last as it would be used between all the chapters.  If anyone has any tips or even alternatives to porting a character I'd love to hear it!

I was convinced this would be done by the end of 2020  (laugh). Oops?

That being said, Episode 1 is almost done and most of the framework for Episode 2 is in place so development should go much smoother.  I'll be pushing an updated build of the demo sometime this week, looking forward to the feedback!

-Axelord1942


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Axelord1942

Brand spanking new build available for your perusal!  New UI!  New Stats!  Some of the same old bugs!

Story=95%
Graphics=85%
Puzzles=75%
Scripting=80%
Music/Sound=70%

Still some work left to do but it's all currently in progress.  I'm expecting this to be complete in 2-3 months and I'm looking forward to it!




Some older shots of the exterior of the building.  Most of Chapter 2 takes place outdoors.  Creating the city has been painstaking but enjoyable.

See you in New Jakarta!
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SarahLiz

Hey!  This looks really good, I’ll check it out!  Good luck completing the 1st part, I’ll be looking forward to playing it...

Axelord1942

Quote from: SarahLiz on Sat 06/02/2021 15:42:45
Hey!  This looks really good, I’ll check it out!  Good luck completing the 1st part, I’ll be looking forward to playing it...

Thanks!  I'm actually moving through the last of it fairly quickly so it should actually be done sooner than I thought!  I'll probably end up releasing one more fully polished build of the demo alongside a devlog outlining changes fairly soon. 

Feel free to give me any feedback!   :-D
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Axelord1942

Nothing too fancy to report, still chugging along working on it.

Got a trailer together though, so that's something at least. :D



Demo still up at https://axelord1942.itch.io/cyberpunk-97episode-1-demo

Thinking there might be one more update to the demo before I stop updating it so that the full release has something to offer anyone that's played it.

Hope everyone is doing well!
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