Let's start with the attribute system. I've already discussed the traits/attributes that I'm including in the game. Today, I will share more information about it and a few GIFs to show the effect it will have on the gameplay.
There are two types of attributes:
Primary: Stamina and Health
Secondary: Bladder, Hygiene, Hunger, Smoking, Alcohol, Drugs
We now have multiple effects to show if the player is running low on any of the attributes. For example, for low Stamina (wobble effect).
When a character drinks too much alcohol
After consumption of pills
In the past, I've written about how I'm planning to deal with Smoking, Alcohol & Drugs. They are unlockable with levels attached to them. For example, if a player smokes, only then do they get the Smoking attribute.
Here are the withdrawal symptoms for each of them. They are animation effects with adverse effects on other attributes. For instance, if you have diarrhea, your character's Bladder attribute will keep falling down quickly. For insomnia, even when you go to sleep, your character will be forcefully woken up after a few minutes. As I said, I don't want to keep punishing players, but neither do I want to encourage the consumption of these substances. Don't worry, there are ways to fix them. You can have non-alcoholic beer or nicotine gum to reduce symptoms and slowly bring down the level, or you can keep buying and consuming them. The end result will be an accidental death with a heart attack or cancer (this is an extremely rare scenario, though). I will keep improving and changing these features during Early Access with your participation.
WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS:
Smoking withdrawal:
Slower stamina recovery or reduced maximum stamina until the craving is satisfied
Increased appetite and weight gain
Alcohol withdrawal:
Nausea and vomiting, with appropriate animations and sound effects
Headaches, represented by the character holding their head or squinting
Insomnia
Drug withdrawal:
Insomnia, leading to slower stamina recovery when sleeping or resting
Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
Abdominal cramps
Fatigue and sleepiness
Ragdolls:
The game now supports ragdolls, bringing out realism in the player's falling animation. It looks natural when someone pushes them or collides with them while running.
UI Improvements:
We now have a nice circular tab for the inventory system.
You can easily consume items or trade them with other prisoners.
Each character attribute will have its own indicator. You can see the current state with nice transitions.
As shown in the below GIFs, once the player goes to sleep, their other attributes like hunger, hygiene, and bladder will pop up. They are tied to the time system in the game.
MISC:
I've added a face mask. If you are going on a raid or going to commit a crime, it's better to wear it before doing so, as it will make your character anonymous. You won't have to worry about payback from rival gang members or the police.
The interaction part is also done. Each and every character (player & AI) can now sit on a chair, use the toilet, sleep, and perform all interactions.
We also have an FOV slider for the camera and settings to let you control almost all graphical aspects of the game.
Added a blood effect when you hit a player in the head. Looks cool, lol.
Another simple but amazing addition is to let the player control the camera distance.
The player can do exercises like weightlifting. There are a total of 4 different exercises included in the game for now. Doing them will improve the stamina level of the character.
Here are the items you can buy from other prisoners:
- Candy bars (Snickers, Twix, etc.)
- Chocolate bars
- Protein Bars
- Canned Food (Veg/Non-Veg)
- Apples, Pears, Peaches
- Biscuits
- Beer, Whiskey, Rum
- Tonics, Health tonics (different types to cure different traits like diarrhea, etc.)
- Non-alcoholic beer, Nicotine gum, Ginseng or valerian root supplements
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Performance Improvements:
- Each character will consume 15 fewer draw calls. I've finally figured out a way to fake shadows for each character. It will be helpful for anyone running the game on low-end hardware. Also fixed shadow culling, so no more shadow pop-ups, and it looks much more natural.
- Added vision to each character, which also helps reduce the overall load on the CPU and GPU.
- Added an LOD system for the motion matching system. It helps a lot when we have multiple characters on the screen. The work is multithreaded, so they will be more efficient.
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I've submitted the game build for playtesting. Hoping to get it accepted by Steam sometime next week, so hopefully, I can start playtesting soon.