CONSCRIPT News

Good evening soldiers! Time for the monthly update from the trenches. My focus over the past month has been to greatly improve the combat in Conscript.

In the latest update I go over how I've accomplished this, along with a brief overview on some brand new mechanics and weapons. One particular mechanic will resonate greatly with fans of Resident Evil 4!

Unfortunately I also have to announce that I'll be delaying the game to Q1 2022. This will help ensure the game ends up the best it possibly can be without any cut corners.

You can check out the full Kickstarter devlog right here!

As always, make sure to follow the Conscript Twitter or join the Discord for more frequent updates.

Over the past few months I've been hard at work on Conscript. The game is coming along at quite a rapid pace, although there is still much to do. I've been fixing common gameplay criticisms from the October demo, whilst creating new weapons, areas and enemies.

You can check out the finer details of what I've been working on in my Kickstarter updates.

Kickstarter February update is available here. Give it a read!

And, I've also just realized that I forgot to mention the last devlog back in December - so you can check that one out here.

And if you haven't already, make sure to follow the Conscript Twitter or join the Discord for more frequent updates.





Thanks everyone! Keep spreading the word about Conscript to fans of classic survival horror. The more attention the game gets, the greater it can be!

ATTENTION CORPORAL!

The new and improved CONSCRIPT demo is available now on Steam!
The demo contains the entire first area of the game - the trench. It is a fairly large chunk of gameplay that can take anywhere from 45 - 90 minutes (depending on your classic survival horror skills). It's completely free, available to everybody and will remain up until launch. Not only that, but I built it to be highly re-playable with bonus weapons and costumes to unlock. Who will be the first skilled enough to S rank the highest difficulty?

The demo is only currently available in English, however I am working on a patch that will include extra localization, so stay tuned for that!

If you find a bug, please email [email protected] detailing what you found. If you can, try and replicate the bug to try and find any common variables between occurrences. Pictures and videos help tremendously, as does copying the error message that appears. Thank you.

One last thing...

Alright soldiers, listen up!

As we know, I don’t have the backing of any large publishers or specialized marketing teams as of yet. Frankly, this means that exposure continues to be my biggest challenge as a developer. This is purely a one man operation, which is why I need your help! We need to spread this new demo around as much as we possibly can. Know a streamer or content creator that would like Conscript? Tell them! Have a friend that’s into history or survival horror? Let them know! With the help of all you, I am certain that Conscript can become successful - but I can't do it by myself.

Thank you! I can't wait to hear what you all think of the new build!

NEW DEMO RELEASE INCOMING!

Over the past few months I've been working non stop on a new demo revision for Conscript. This new build is a refined version of the Kickstarter demo from back in June - with smoother gameplay, unlockable extras, QOL improvements and a larger suite of options to play with. I'm currently tidying up last minute bugs and sorting out some balancing issues. Granted no major bugs pop up in the next few days, Halloween will be when the new demo launches. If anything disastrous happens, I will launch on November 11th instead (Armistice Day). If there are any delays, you will all be the first to know.


Here are some of the things I’ve been working on, all of which will be available in the new demo to see.

New animation pipeline:

Part of this system recode is a new workflow for creating animations. Having this new system in place will make creating future content much easier for myself! One such new feature is unlockable costumes! For the longest time I thought that implementing alternate costumes was not really possible due to the fact that the game is actually sprite based - but I found a way! A true survival horror staple, I’m sure you’re all happy to hear this news.

Here’s a sneak peak at one in particular for the final game:



Change unlocked costumes on the fly!

History fans will recognize that this is the French Army uniform from 1914 - before being swapped out for the Horizon Blue style uniform later in the war. This happened largely due to the bright flamboyant reds being too easily visible from a distance. I actually had to write an essay about this very uniform for my last semester of university, so there was no way I was leaving it out of Conscript. Let me know if you have any ideas for historically relevant alternate unlockable costumes for the final game.

This new system also made it possible for me to actually have the gas mask be visible on the player character. A nice little touch!



New weapons:

I can now create weapons at a much faster rate. Here’s the latest - the trench shovel. During trench raids, soldiers would often have no other weapons at their disposal other than basic tools lying around.



Any other WW1 themed melee weapons you’d like to see?

Melee improvement:

Melee weapons now have a weak and strong charged attack. Charging up a strong attack results in double damage and a guaranteed stun - at the cost of precious time. You will also have to watch your spacing! This change helps add a little depth to melee combat, which was lacking.



QOL improvements:

There are probably too many of these to name, but I’ll list off a few:

The specific player location in a room is now visible on the map:
The itembox has had a revamp, and now supports taking/depositing specific amounts.

Other small changes:

Items can be auto-combined from simply placing them over each other in the inventory.
Health items can now be used straight off the ground without the need to backtrack to an itembox incase you were full.
Inventory mouse controls have been streamlined considerably.
Many UI assets and icons have also been cleaned up.
The notes, options, inventory and map screens have also been refined.
And more!

Multiple save files:

Admittedly, this feature is long overdue - but it’s here now. It essentially works identically to old school Resident Evil.



Infinite ammo:

The stretch goal we reached back in June has already been implemented and will be available in the demo. It will have to be unlocked though - and I’ll leave that part a secret. Here’s a look:



In this game, it functions as a normal item. If you have it in your inventory, you will be able to reload as many times as you want.

Enemy type revamp:

I’ve also been working on some new enemy types…

Here we have a new standard shovel soldier:


These are probably the easiest enemy type - although they can still deal large damage in groups.

And of course, here is the iconic masked trench raider equipped with his raiding club:


The trench raiders are now a higher tier enemy class - and will prove to be quite a challenge to take out. They are fast, and hard hitting - so it may even be best to just avoid them. You'll also notice they have new sprites that are more historically accurate in terms of colour schemes and equipment.


Oh, and one more thing I should mention about the trench raiders... they can now sprint.



You better watch out!


I am also working on a rifleman enemy class that can attack you from range, although I was not able to complete and balance them in time for the demo unfortunately. Here’s a sneak peak:




That's all for now, keep an eye out for the new demo coming soon!

Hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. I’ve been hard at work getting a new demo revision ready for October, probably some time close to Halloween. This will be an upgraded revision of the Kickstarter demo build, with extra features and options.

MAIN MENU

Here’s a look at the initial main menu for Conscript. I find it quite atmospheric and have found myself just keeping it on in the background while I work. The last menu for the previous demo was quite rushed so I’m happy with how this one has turned out.



ACCESSIBILITY

Recently, the topic of accessibility has been on my mind. As a developer it’s easy to find yourself resisting against a player’s ability to alter your “vision” of the game. I can understand this sentiment - as I’m somebody who holds my project VERY close to my heart. This topic was inspired by a conversation on the Conscript Discord where I was asked how accessible the game would be. My immediate internal reaction to any questions relating to adding a new unplanned feature is generally “isn’t my damn Trello board already big enough??”

After some reflection and research however, this is a silly way to look at things. Yes, any new feature takes hours or even days to implement - but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. For example, as a developer I end up putting in many extra days and weeks trying to get the game on different online storefronts or even other consoles, all in hopes of trying to expose the game to more people but I would never question this time as anything but time well spent.

Accessibility is the same thing really. There are extra hours of work I can put in to ensure that MORE people can be exposed to the game and enjoy it. So that’s what I’ve been doing, even if it has meant putting extra work hours in every day for the past few weeks.



VISUAL OPTIONS



Something I wanted to solve was text readability. There are now a variety of settings to adjust different properties of the text in-game.

You can now choose between HD and pixelated fonts. Even though low-res pixel font is coherent with the general art style, it is not the most legible typeface to read. Now you can have the option to “HD-ify” the font, which makes for greater readability.




For those with dyslexia who may have trouble discerning between serif style characters, you can now opt for a simple sans-serif font style OR use Open Dyslexic font. This can also be toggled between HD or pixelated.



Open Dyslexic toggle:



Text colour can also be changed between white, yellow, green, red or blue.



This is applied to all standard text throughout the game!

And finally, the background opacity of the standard textbox can be customised from 0 to 100. If you are struggling to discern between the text and background it may be easier to have this on 100 so the text stands more.

I feel like all these extra little options will solve the text readability issue for the majority of players. Any colour specific elements will also have non-colour related visual indicators. They are small changes but hopefully go a long way for some.

There are also some extra little visual accessibility options for those who may have trouble focusing on certain elements of the game’s artstyle. You can now zoom the camera in up close to our protagonist, and also alter cursor, crosshair and interaction icon properties such as size and colour. HUD opacity can also be lowered, but it is set to 100 by default.



The screen blood that appears when you take damage can also be turned off now, as can any bright flashes in the game for those who are photosensitive or epileptic. For those who don’t enjoy screenshake, that can be turned off too.

It hasn’t been implemented yet, but I am working on having brightness and contrast settings too in the future. Even though the game won’t feature much voice acting, I am going to work on having subtitles available not just for voices but also for any kind of hard-to-read environmental text.

AUDIO OPTIONS

Nothing too fancy, but you can now adjust SFX, music and master volume all independently. This required a rework of the audio system so it was actually quite challenging, but happy to have it completed and working.




BLOOD TOGGLE

Blood and gore effects can now be toned down substantially, although it will be left on by default. The reason I decided to include this is because there may be some who are more interested in exploring the history of Conscript without the intense and bloody combat . In my opinion, Conscript is equal parts a history game and a survival horror game, so there will be cross pollination between those two demographics. Most of you will probably leave this on but it’s nice to have it there anyway.




DIFFICULTY MODES

During the Kickstarter campaign, we reached the stretch goal for two difficulty modes but I am going to include some extra ones in the final game. There will now be six difficulty modes in total.



Training (Assist Mode)

This mode will feature checkpoints, increased health capacity and player damage will be increased.

Recruit / Soldier / Veteran

These three will be the standard easy/normal/hard sort of thing from every other game in existence. Enemy damage and item quantity variables will be the main differences between these modes.

War Hero

This will feature more “realistic” elements from modes like Resident Evil Remake’s “Real Survival” difficulty. Item boxes will be unlinked from each other and limited saves will be mandatory. It will contain the same gameplay modifiers as Veteran mode.

Grognard (French for “old soldier”)

This ultimate challenge will include all the features of War Hero mode but with PERMADEATH. Yep, you heard right.


LIMITED SAVE TOGGLE

Limited saving has always been controversial. The reason I opted for this old-school survival horror mechanic is because it introduces a risk/reward style of gameplay where players generally try and squeeze in one extra “task” before the next save, leading to extra hard decisions being made during gameplay. Understandably, not everyone wants to deal with this though. Despite this being the intended way to play, it will an optional toggle at the start of any Conscript playthrough. Note that on the very hardest difficulties it will be mandatory however.

Here’s a look at the game parameter screen before you start a new save:



You will also have the ability to toggle off Kickstarter backer easter eggs if you so wish.

CONTROL SETTINGS

Any action that requires you to hold a button - such as aiming and running - can now be toggled with one button press instead. You can also turn off mouse support to play the game with a keyboard only.



CONTROLLER REMAPPING

Full control remapping is now available for both keyboard and gamepad control schemes. This was a complicated and time consuming thing for me to implement but I’m glad to finally have it available.





Hang on a second… did the inventory just change?

BAG STYLES

By far the biggest feature in Conscript history....



This was a fun little extra I decided to make when I was testing out the flexibility of the new options menu. Admittedly it has nothing to do with accessibility, but it is related to the options menu! You can now change the colour of the inventory background. You will be spending a lot of time there so I figured it would be cool to give some small level of customization... there may even be some extra unlockable styles in the full game! Any ideas for patterns or designs?



MISC. SMALL QOL CHANGES

• You can now go straight to the pause/options menu from the overworld without having to go into the inventory.
  
• You can now use healing items straight off the ground without having to pick them up.
  
• A quick melee feature is available, so you can assign a melee weapon to a separate key. useful for breaking barrels without having to waste time in the inventory.
  
• Combine-able items will now be combined just from placing them on top of each other.
  

So that’s what I’ve been working on the past few weeks! What do you think? I know menu heavy things aren't exactly the most marketable features, but I felt it was important to share. Are there any other reasonably in-scope accessibility options you all would like to see?