Chornobyl Liquidators News

Hello!

So as mentioned last week, we are back with fresh dev-log no.2 :)

Today we’d like to share with you our current inventory design. Or rather a character status screen combined with inventory. In CLS we’d like to go a rather old-school way of presenting the UI in the form of nice 2d, ‘hand drawn’ elements - inventory below and dosimeter last week where examples of this approach.

Below you please see the screen as it looks like now.

PART 1: Inventory screen



Obviously you see a lot of different bars and details on it.

Let’s break them down one by one:


In this screen you can see the items which are currently equipped or are being worn by the player. This area is divided by the parts of the body - so we have head, torso, legs, hands etc.

Each individual part of the ‘armor’ player wears delivers him some level of protection against outside dangers. These protections sum up - making the global protection the player has.

Some items also get damaged from the same sources (the more something protects players from certain damage source - the less it will get damaged from this source). When item gets worn down - its protection capability and other values dropdown. The combined protection the player has is presented below this screen in the form of bars:


Now going to the right side of the screen:


Aside from providing the player with protection, the clothing also provides him with means to carry his equipment around.

Each armor piece may provide a certain pattern of slots - which are able to accommodate items of various sizes which the player ha decided to take for the mission or picked up along the way.

As you can see we get detailed information in regard to the weight of the clothing pieces and items placed in its slots - which gives us the total weight of the section.

Note the bag on the bottom - this is the bag which player carries in one of his hands - thus the extra slots provided. This means though that he won’t be able to use two handed tool now. In such need the bag can be dropped on ground and will then work as portable stash.



These bars and values represent how effectively the character is able to move around and perform actions.

Total efficiency (TE) is the most important thing here - it is a result of character’s combined encumbrance (in relation to his personal ‘max convenient weight’ limit), his satiety (which drops down with time, based on characters activity) and accumulated radiation dose.
Total efficiency can also be directly boosted or lowered due to temporary effects (such as coffee or chemicals).

The value of total efficiency not only governs how fast the character gets tired doing stuff (every action or step has a certain stamina cost assigned to it which is affected by TE) but also certain animations or oven movement speeds or camera inertia are connected to it.



Finally in the top-left you can see the character’s overall health - which consider as general ‘possibility to go forward’: combining both physical and psychological factors into one bar.

Above are a short bio on the hero we are currently playing as and some general information on date, time and accumulated funds.

PART 2: Item descriptions

Now - the inventory contains items. When you hover your mouse over a certain item you see this:



These are item description windows containing all the information you need regarding the piece of equipment.

Note that the contents are contextual - the type of information given depends on the type of item you’re looking at. In case of tools it will provide information about its purpose or whether it requires any sort of fuel to operate (like certain cleaning agents), in case of armor its protections, wearing convenience and slots provided.

So - that will be all for today :)

What do you think about this inventory system design? Please share your thoughts in the forum thread dedicated to suggestions on the game:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1113010/discussions/0/1742268706827793597/


Take care and see you all next week :)


Take care Liquidators and see you all next week :)
CLS Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113010/Chernobyl_Liquidators_Simulator/

This is our very first dev log for Chernobyl Liquidator Simulator - a game that we’ve been working on for quite some time. As you probably guess - with this entry we would like to start telling you about it’s features (and needless to say we’ll do our best to provide you with some fresh info every week from now on), but first of all let’s introduce ourselves a little.

We are a small yet experienced team of polish game developers, comprised of all major specialities such as game and level design, programing, art, animation or UI design. Most of our members have extensive game dev background and multiple released projects under our belts. And those of us who do not (yet) - more than make up for it with talent and dedication.

Considering the setting our game is placed in - we’d like to put upfront that our biggest inspiration by far is what has been achieved by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of titles released something like 10 years ago by GSC Game World. We’d like to draw from the atmosphere and some of the gameplay principles of these fantastic games and bring as much of it as possible to contemporary technology that Unity engine provides us with.
Moreover some of our members have spent countless hours in past participating in the still-living modding scene of Stalker - having worked on some of the most acclaimed projects released to date.



So to say the least we have a quite strong picture in our heads of what a game focused around Chernobyl and The Zone should be: an immersive, atmospheric, complex, open FPP experience filled to the brim with this elusive ‘Eastern European’ spirit. This is our ultimate goal and we’re doing our best to get as close to it as possible. Which as you can imagine - is quite a task by itself.

Inspirations aside though - we’re working on a different project and there have to be some key differences between our title and these great games. Let’s point them out in short.

First of all the Zone is ‘fresh’ - the catastrophe has only just happened and people have only just left - there is no overgrown vegetation everywhere yet and severe decay has not yet touched every single human-made object throughout. No - we’re looking at a failed socialist paradise, an utopia that has only just ceased to be. Everything looks somewhat ‘new’ yet hauntingly empty. And deadly in places - due to the contamination from the just exploded reactor you can see still burning in the background.

Secondly - we have to approach the topic somewhat more seriously and have no real space for any sci-fi elements. We’re dealing with a ‘real’ Chernobyl catastrophe, which has not only claimed quite a few human lives outright but has also been a real trauma to millions. And even more has suffered (and still are suffering) severe health issues due to this disaster. It’s clear to us from the very beginning that a game based on such events needs to deeply respect these notions.
We should also never forget about the Liquidators themselves - there have been about 800 thousand people participating and risking their lives during the liquidation. We’d like to pay homage to their heroism and sacrifice they made for the good of us all.

Thirdly - we are making a simulation game about the liquidation action. Nothing more and nothing less. That means no combat - our goal is to decontaminate the environments (and perhaps do some side-activities) while doing all that is possible to stay healthy and protect our character as much as possible from the effects of radiation and other environmental hazards. This also means that we’ll be doing our best to make the game mechanically as deep and challenging as possible while sticking to realism whenever we find it doable.



In the end, I’d like to add that it’s great to finally be able to start showing you our work. However please be patient with us - we only want to give you a glimpse at things that are somewhat polished and actually presentable, so it might take us a while to be able to show you any actual gameplay or maps that we are building. This time we’ll surely come thought.

For now please enjoy our first entry which is the presentation of our hud Dosimeter.

Cheers to you all!
Chernobyl Liquidator Simulator team

[h2]Dev log #1 THE DOSIMETER[/h2]

Every game which is focused around a nuclear disaster should have a properly modeled radiation system and a way of feedbacking player about the level of radiation he is standing in and how much of a threat it is to him.

In our game every single spot on all of the maps has some level of gamma radiation assigned to it. In most cases it’s just a regular (albeit heightened) background radiation which is harmless to our character in the timescale the game takes place.

However there are also alfa, beta and gamma hotspots (usually created by overlapping fields of various irradiated elements scattered nearby each other or clouds of dust filling the air of some closed off room) which are way more dangerous

Player is informed about this danger by a variety of means, with the most important one being his suit-attached dosimeter which we have integrated into the hud.

Its current version looks like this:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As you can see the dosimeter has two separate pointers:

the black one shows the amount of combined environmental radiation that the player is surrounded with - its end of scale is 200 x 1000 Roentgen / h - which is an extremely deadly environment, able to incapacitate a human being within seconds of exposure
fortunately we have a green pointer - it gives us an information of how much of this outside radiation is able to penetrate through character’s protection and actually affect his organism
the additional indicators below the pointers mark other environmental hazards than the radiation - that includes high temperature, bio-chem hazards, electric shock and low oxygen level.

In CLS you’ll have a variety of ways to protect yourself from radiation as well as other harmful influences. But remember - preparation and careful equipment selection is always the key…

Take care and see you next week!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113010/Chernobyl_Liquidators_Simulator/

We have recently started our official discord server where all information about the games we create will be available soon.



The server will also be a place where you can ask questions in chat about your favorite games or take part in our giveaways.

Discord Server: https://discord.gg/wvDMppM

Best regards
Chernobyl Liquidators team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113010/Chernobyl_Liquidators_Simulator/