Diplomacy is Not an Option News

Good Lords, fair Ladies!

Today we continue the story of making the cutscenes in Diplomacy is Not an Option.

Last time we stopped at the concept art stage. Allow us to proceed, shall we?

The task of the concept artist is to make the first impression of the character's look and to make him fit the script. For example, if the character is physically weak, but the script requires him to carry a weapon, it is necessary to understand what kind of weapon he can use - definitely not a heavy two-handed sword. It is also important to take into account the accordance of the drawings to the DiNaO world. If we're introducing a rebellious peasant in the cutscene, he should look about the same as he does in the game itself.

Concept art is not only about the characters, but also about the environment. At this stage artists also draw the details to help the Player to understand where the action takes place. The artists, with the writer's assistance, decide, for instance, what paintings hang on the wall in the Lord's chambers and what color the tablecloth in the King's throne room is.



When the concept art phase is passed, the modeling of the characters and environment begins. And don't forget about animation either. Thanks to the sketches, the technical requirements for each character's model are clear to the people in charge. For example, our Lord always sits with his back to the camera. Which means he doesn't have to walk around and wave his arms around. In addition, this means that the main detailing of his image falls precisely on the mantle, the back of the crown, and his haircut.



Each scene is created by hand, and most of all it resembles a movie shoot. Once the "pavilion" is set, whether it's the Lord's chambers or the ocean shore, the lights are adjusted, angles are selected, and characters are arranged. When the shooting is done - we get the same clip that you see in the game. With one slight difference. There are no text lines in the filmed and rendered cutscenes.

As you know, our game has no voiceover. The characters talk to each other via text bubbles, just like they do in comics. The next task is to place the desired lines in the cutscene editor and set their duration and timing. The only difficulty we may encounter at this stage is the difference in the number of characters and the duration of the phrase that may show up in the translation. The default version is the English text version, but often it happened that even the English lines had to be slightly changed to make the meaning of the texts remained consistent in all languages.

In conclusion, we'd like to say that the making of the game is a collective creative process. Not all of the solutions that look good on paper can be transferred to the sketch language. And not everything that looks cartoony works as well for the low-polygon graphics and slowed-down manner of in-game cutscenes. At each stage, something adds, something disappears.

We hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you very much for your attention.

Yours, the Door 407 dev team

Good Lords, fair Ladies!


Once again we decided to share with you some details of how we create Diplomacy is Not an Option. Let's talk about the cutscenes that you can watch at the beginning and end of the campaign missions.

Like a lot of things in collective creation, it all starts with writing the script. However, there are many "buts" to consider. In the case of DiNaO, the script may be subject to adjustments, for example, if we realize the difficulties of implementing a certain victory condition. Or, when a game designer gets an idea on how to make a mission more interesting. Information about an upcoming or completed mission (and the mission itself) is also a part of the narrative. Accordingly, changes in the mission lead to a rewriting of the cutscene script.

But let's stick to the main topic, shall we? The mission settings are approved and the script is written, presenting both, the general storyline and the compositional properties of each cutscene. Now it's time to make some sketches.



Why do we need these silly cartoons, you may ask? Here comes the answer. Artists do the modeling and draw the environments. With these sketches, it will be easier for them to understand the characters, the composition, and most importantly - the timing (for example, how many seconds the characters look at each other in prostration). Before starting to "shoot" cutscenes, a spreadsheet is also made. Based on the sketches, this table reflects the times and durations of the characters' lines. At the sketch stage, we also cut off excessive script details. The cartoon author has to ease the task for artists. Sometimes the same joke can be shown more simply with the help of the language of the visualization. So many of the minor details from the literary version of the script meant to create a mood or add piquancy may be changed.

Finally, the artists step in. This is the most time-consuming and labor-intensive stage. First of all, it is necessary to create the concepts of the characters. Let's say without spoilers, most of the characters in the cutscenes are the same. However, some of them make their appearance in the game once or twice. And they should be modeled with the same neatness as the main characters.



And this is where we stop for today. Rest assured we'll continue to talk about the making of cutscenes a bit later.

Yours the Door 407 dev team.

Good lords, fair ladies!

Spring has sprung, nature is coming to life and the birds are singing more cheerfully than ever. All this inspires us to further develop the single-player campaign. Also, thanks to the spring, or rather to say the seasonal Steam sale, Diplomacy is Not an Option is at a discount again! Hurry up, because we're leaving Early Access this year. A trailer awaits you soon. In the meantime, buy DiNaO for yourself or your friends! After all, spring is the time to give joy to each other.

Yours, the Door 407 dev team.

Friends! From February 27 to March 6, Diplomacy is Not an Option is 20% off. If you haven't purchased the game yet, now it's your chance.

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[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Greetings. One year ago Diplomacy is Not an Option came to Early Access. We're celebrating this milestone with a new trailer and this dev-blog, where we'll break down just how much the game has changed in the past year. We also want to tell you how the final stage of Diplomacy is Not an Option development is going. Warning, long read ahead.

When our game saw the light on February 9, 2022, it was full of bugs. Some of them were annoying and some of them inspired us to bring new mechanics to the game. Diplomacy is Not an Option has always been and will remain our beloved child. During the past year, we've been supporting the game with patches and hotfixes. Let's take a brief look back to remember what it was like.

In February, two weeks after its release in EA, the first update rolled out. We did some work on the bugs, but the game's difficulty was not exactly welcoming. This is why the "City of Joy" mode was born, bringing DiNaO as close as possible to a spectacular city-building simulator. As for now, we're working on a new difficulty level for even more casual play.

In March and April, we analyzed our community feedback, and concluded that players wanted to focus on the broad strokes of combat, rather than get bogged down in minutia. Excessive micromanagement is annoying. Out economic layer and the interface required significant improvements. We began work to hammer out these problems in May.

With the second major update we switched to using a Universal Render Pipeline, improving the image quality. DiNaO gets a table of records and Endless Mode layouts with new enemies. (At that time, we thought that the Endless Mode was going to be the heart of the game in Early Access stage, but our players wanted something else).

Our biggest takeaway from feedback on the May update was that players wanted victory conditions, which just didn't happen in Endless mode. To fix address this, we launched Challenge Mode in June. With the same update, we also implemented a photo mode, promised way back in the Spring. In addition, we added tools for the more convenient army and economy management. Improving the interface is a constant effort, and one that continues to this day.

In the August update, we expanded the range of troops under the player's control. In response to complaints about the lack of content, we added the Foot knight, Horse knight, Mounted archer, Axe Warrior, and 'Burrdam Chimera' units to the roster. Of course, that's far from the end of it, and we're currently working on long-awaited traps and enhanced defenses.

In August, we completely overhauled the research tree, adding new technologies, and changing the effects of some existing research. We took this opportunity to tweak, tune and rework key parts of the game's economy too.

For October, we rolled out our Halloween-themed update. Along with new Challenges and Endless mode variants, the Undead joined the fight. We also did a lot of work improving the physics. Explosions get epicenters. Projectile trajectories become more predictable, increasing the accuracy of many types of troops. October was an intense month of development for our team, and we hope that no other month will be quite as nerve-fraying as that one.

The December update was dedicated to improving the late game. Resource starvation and repetition are addressed. Infinite sources of iron and stone are added to DiNaO. We also rebalanced the chance of obtaining Soul crystals. With less micromanagement required on the economic side, we bumped up the complexity of enemy waves in Endless mode, increasing the strategic skill ceiling. Finally, the long-promised mountain models were added, and we are extremely proud of them. In fact, we might never stop bragging about it.

While our focus was on survival-style gameplay, January's feedback made it clear that players want a Map/Scenario Editor and more story-driven Campaign missions. For this reason, in 2023 we changed our policy of releasing major updates at regular intervals to make these two most requested improvements happen.
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A little bit about the development of the Story Campaign[/h3]

DiNaO was designed as a survival game. Hunger, disease, war with vastly superior enemy forces, and other hardships of medieval life were supposed to be the main and only obstacles between you and victory. We had planned several factions for you to fight against, each with special abilities and thus provide mission variety. The first draft of the script contained twelve missions, and story branching that only affected cutscenes and dialogues. But we wanted more from the campaign, so we increased the mission number and added a wider range of objectives, necessitating a completely rewritten script. Here are a couple of examples of the challenges we faced.

Let's start with victory conditions. A pretty typical mission objective in the real-time strategy genre is to get your squad from point A to point B. In the case of DiNaO, the question arises: how long will that journey take, especially given the procedural map generation? Won't your squad die from starvation or disease on its way?

Imagine you have to storm someone's castle. There are archers and catapults on the walls, and your troops are trying to break through the enemy's defenses. But all the enemies currently in DiNaO are designed to lay siege to your base, rather than playing any kind of defensive role.

We are currently experimenting with all sorts of victory conditions, and have already found a number of solutions that will allow us to deliver a full and traditional RTS campaign within our gameplay framework.

Also, a few words on the story and artists' work. Given the ballooning scale of the campaign scenario, the number of cutscenes has (to put it mildly) increased dramatically. It's worth mentioning here that every cutscene is bespoke animation. After shooting, we need to bring add sounds to the cutscene and adjust the timing of lines so players have time to easily read them in all supported languages.

Now that we've lifted the veil of secrecy a bit over out processes in creating the Story Campaign, it's high time to answer the big question, "When?", and yes, we know you've been waiting ages for it.

At the time of writing, (February 9, 2023), our final script is finished. Several victory conditions have been coded in, and the vast majority of the sketches and concept art are done. Some cutscenes have been shot, but there's still a lot to do. We have no idea yet what difficulties we are going to face. But you've our solemn promise on one point: Diplomacy is Not an Option will launch out of Early Access in 2023. Once we've hit our stride and got a clear idea of when the end is in sight, we'll announce an exact release date. Between now and launch we'll also be updating the game with patches and hotfixes.

The full release will include the vastly larger and more involved Single-player Campaign with at least two distinct, game-changing plot branches. The launch version will also include the Map Editor, new biomes, new enemies, new Challenges and Endless Mode layouts. We've also got some surprises that we're not ready to announce yet, so stay tuned for more in future dev blogs.

Thank you very much reading all the way to the end – we know it's a lot. We hope this answered at least some of your most burning questions, and clarified our vision of DiNaO's future. One last thing to say. Without you – our players and fans - Diplomacy is Not an Option would not be the game it is today. We are very grateful for your feedback and suggestions, your loyalty, and your patience. Thank you helping us to understand how to make our game better. See you soon!

Yours, the Door 407 team