Instruments of Destruction News

Today is the day. 1.0 is now live. If you haven't seen the new trailer, here it is:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I'm sleep-deprived and stressed, so I'm going to keep this brief this time. I'll post again next week once my nerves calm down. It's been a ton of work to get this game done. As in the most hours I've ever worked. I just really wanted to get the game done, and to make it the best I could.

It is now done (for now). I will fix bugs. Next week if they're not urgent, sooner if they are urgent. I will add a few more parts and probably more bonus vehicles, sooner than later. Beyond that, I'm taking it easy this summer, going a couple trips, and Alan and I will work on the console ports.

So this is it. Launch day. Sorry this is short, but you don't need to read about the game. You need to play it. I hope you have fun :)

- Luke

(NOTE: Currently looking into an issue with AMD GPUs. Will get that fixed ASAP.)

Let's get the important stuff out of the way first, then I'll ramble on about the game's history, evolution, and what's left to do.

Instruments of Destruction version 1.0 is releasing on May 10th, 2024 (aka 37 days from now). Version 1.0 will include a main campaign with around 50 missions and a separate high-score challenge for each mission. In that campaign, which is designed to be enjoyed by players of all ages, there's no vehicle building required. The secondary campaign, which focuses on teaching the vehicle building mode and more puzzle-style objectives, will have around 25 missions (and 25 challenges). Plus, Sandbox mode will always be there for your mayhem needs.

Other big additions include professional voice acting for the main 2 characters in the game (see below for more details), full text localization into 12 languages, a few new graphical features, and more optimizations. And of course there will be a large number of bug fixes and other minor improvements to vehicle building and some vehicle parts.

We've also got a new trailer announcing the release date. Check it out here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Before going over the remaining work, let's rewind and see how the game evolved over the course of development:

A Four Year Journey

It's been over 2 years since Instruments of Destruction released into Early Access, and 3 years since the game was announced. I started working on it in January of 2020. It wasn't called Instruments of Destruction at the time, but instead "Debris Inc" The short description for the initial concept doc that I wrote up at the time:

Debris Inc is a physics-heavy destruction-based game. Take down a series of increasingly complicated and interesting structures using a variety of unique vehicles. At the same time, try to avoid doing too much damage to the surrounding structures.

The full doc is only a page long, and a few details are off, but for the most part the description matches how Instruments of Destruction has turned out. The big omission is that there's no vehicle building mode mentioned, as constructing your own machine wouldn't be added until a few months later. The game underwent a number of direction shifts early on, but ended up back where it started, with the addition of vehicle building. There's also less of a focus on "avoiding damaging surrounding structures", though that is an objective in quite a few missions.

The game released into Early Access in March of 2022, and at the time the most comparable game was definitely Besiege (but with modern vehicles and more detailed destruction). However, when I released the game's original Early Access Release Date trailer in February of 2022, another game was mentioned even more often than Besiege: Rare's classic N64 game, Blast Corps. I knew all about Besiege, but had very little knowledge about Blast Corps, other than vaguely being aware of its existence. We'll come back to Blast Corps in a bit, as I wouldn't really pay attention to that for a while.

Over the next year or so in EA, most of my focus was on adding to the vehicle building experience, which meant adding more parts and more powerful editing capabilities, but very little in the way of making the vehicle building more user-friendly. There were some new missions added, and a lot of cool new physics toys and ways to make crazy vehicles, but I really didn't have a cohesive plan for how to finish the game.

I made multiple roadmaps, including plans for a combat-focused campaign with roguelike elements, but I didn't really feel good about where the game was going. It had lots of potential, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. In early 2023, I finally played Blast Corps through Xbox GamePass. Even though it looked dated to my eyes (I'm not a fan of blurry textures), it was also very clear to me: Blast Corps was more fun to play than Instruments of Destruction.

It wasn't really the moment-to-moment gameplay or missions itself that stood out, but the simplicity and flow of the whole experience. It felt rewarding and things moved quickly between missions. There was a variety of vehicles and objectives, and missions were quick and fun. I needed to bring that flow and experience to Instruments, and let the standout elements of the game shine through. For Instruments that means the campaign should focus on vehicles, destruction, and physics.

Fast forward 6 months and the game was featured at the PAX Rising Showcase in Seattle. The new campaign with pre-built vehicles was pretty rough, but things went well. Lines were long, players were returning to play multiple times, and I heard the word "satisfying" a lot. I felt like I finally had a path to finishing the game.

There were some other things to take care of, including redoing the build mode UI to support gamepads and adding a bit more atmosphere to the game, but I finally felt like I could imagine what the final game would look like. And it is remarkably like the original description, though with a lot more "vehicle variety" than I imagined.

The Finish Line Approaches

As of April 3rd, there are 41 playable missions in the main campaign across 9 regions. There are 2 more regions left to finish, and I expect those to go relatively quickly. The secondary campaign will be the focus after that. But those missions are far easier to make than the main campaign's, as they don't require a vehicle, and many will be based on previously-created missions. After the missions are playable, completing the story and writing dialog is the priority. Everything right now is focused on getting what needs to be done so that voice recording can be completed.

We're working with a voice director for the two main story characters: Hendrix (formerly Jenkins) and Mr. Sharpe. We received over 100 auditions for Mr. Sharpe, and over 200 for Hendrix (yes, that was way more than expected). I listened to all the auditions last night, and it was a bit overwhelming to narrow down the field. Final selections will be completed this week, but recording won't happen for a couple weeks at least.

Alan has completed all the technical work for making localization updates a lot easier, along with getting in a number of optimizations and adding support for some graphical features (such as game-resolution scaling). There's one more important optimization to make, but after that he'll be helping clear out the bug backlog and adding quality-of-life features.

Many of the challenges (and vehicles for those) still need to be completed as well, but they are lower priority due to the bottleneck with voice recording. Some of those challenge vehicles will be variants, while some will be unique.

As we've added more missions, we've gotten feedback from playtests that players *want* to use the same vehicles more often. We're not doing that exactly, but we are standardizing the control schemes a bit more, and doing more vehicle variants than originally intended. So the "Roller" (names are subject to change) from mission 2 is seen at least 3 more times in various forms, for instance, and the Shover from mission 4 has at least 2 variants.

My goal has been to have a hugely varied and interesting line-up of vehicles, and we're still hitting that mark. I can't think of any game that has more unique usable vehicles (counting built-in but not user-created ones), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think the one area where the final lineup is a bit lacking is in the walker category. Making good walking mechanisms that can move moderately quickly and not look janky is very difficult (without animating them in a separate program). I hope to add more walkers in challenges, but my engineering skills seem to reach their limits when I've tried to make them so far.

As you can see, there's still a lot left to do, but the most difficult parts are behind us. I apologize that we've not been responding to feedback or questions lately. Our focus is squarely on getting 1.0 finished. Even if we don't respond, we are doing our best to keep track of all the bugs and suggestions.

If you're wondering if you should buy the game now or wait for 1.0: I'd recommend wishlisting it now, and buying it when 1.0 is released. The game will get a 15% discount on release, and buying it on release day will result in a far more satisfactory experience. You can buy it now if you want to see the beginning of the game, but keep in mind progress in the campaign will be reset for version 1.0.

Thanks again for the patience and support! The finish line is just over the horizon.

NEW STUFF
- Added new mission: Down Town to Main Campaign (and two new vehicles)
- Added optional output to Attacher part
- Added terrain-based vehicle height adjustments when entering build mode (so vehicles aren't under the terrain)
- Made zoom in/out function the same in most camera modes
- Added SHIFT+ENTER as a shortcut to use the build camera position as the orbit camera position
- Optimized level loading so ground is not regenerated unless necessary
- Added new "Use AZERTY" option to auto-swap A-Q and W-Z for built-in vehicles
- Added shortcut: Hold SHIFT to skip to any mission on the map (on the map screen)

FIXES/TWEAKS
- Fixed all sorts of problems with loading/saving steam workshop structures and maps
- Force Repuslor parts to always show their local orientation when selected
- Fixed camera-relative movement when camera is facing kraken (A Sticky Box mission)
- Fixed camera rotating too fast as you zoom out, particularly in the editor
- Fixed bug with going into options submenus and camera Y-axis no longer responding
- Added some more safety checks to build mode to try fix an issue with playing custom islands from the editor
- Fixed changing starting position of springs/pistons not updating connectors
- Fixed changing Max Spd setting Min Spd to 0 on Effects part
- Fixed changing starting position/etc forcing other angles to 0 for no reason
- Starting angle can now always be changed on rotating parts, even if something is connected
- Fixed an exception that could be caused by Kraken mega-explosion
- Fixed an issue with loading structure-dense levels directly from Sandbox mode
- Minor tweaks to UI/font rendering (a little less jagged at high resolutions)
- Fixed a minor layout issue for the Lifter (Tentacles Incoming mission)
- Fixed an issue where the last 8 keybinds would reset when the vehicle was loaded

Version 0.501 is now live on Steam. Here's the changelist:
* Revised Options menu layout (scrolling list, shortcuts to sections, descriptions of everything)
* Changed mission map display to show thumbnail images
* Changed local/built-in vehicles to show/use thumbnail images
* Improved functionality/usability of capturing thumbnail images for vehicles/etc
* Added thumbnails to missions and mission vehicles
* Significantly improved smoke rendering speed by rendering it at a lower resolution
* Added environment smoke to 2 dust-storm missions
* Added smoke rendering options for quality and environment smoke
* Smoothed out camera zooming and fixed some other camera issues
* Added voice volume ducking and other sound options
* Fixed a variety of bugs/issues

0.501 doesn't have a huge changelist, but some of the changes were significant, and the smoke rendering optimization was a big challenge that both Alan and I took multiple stabs at to finally get it all working the right way. The options UI and map UI changes may be more apparent, but those were relatively quick tasks in comparison.

The map UI in particular I'm not 100% satisfied with, so version 1.0 will look a bit different than what you see in 0.501. How it'll be different I'm not exactly sure, aside from it being more animated/rewarding when you return from a mission.

There will almost certainly be a version 0.501a (and maybe 0.501b), but otherwise this is the last update before version 1.0. I still don't have a solid date on 1.0, but late April is still seeming like a reasonable time.

There will be additional news posts here despite the lack of new builds after this week, with the next one very likely to be about the Release Date Trailer.

PUSHING TOWARDS 1.0

The Release Date Trailer will be the start of the promotional push leading up to version 1.0. The goal is quite simple: Have the biggest 1.0 launch day possible. The best way to do that is to have the best game possible, and to build excitement so that everyone wants to play it on launch day.

I think we have a good plan/design to make the game the best it can be, and there is a plan for a good amount of promotional stuff as well. I've never enjoyed promotional work that much, but it can be rewarding to talk to journalists/streamers/etc directly, so I try to focus on that aspect. I'm also getting help from a few people, so I don't have to do everything myself.

There's a lot of work to do, but I'm looking forward to getting it all done. Thanks for all the support along the way!

-Luke

Version 0.500 is now live on Steam! This is the biggest update yet, and the last major one before version 1.0. Part of the reason it's such a significant update: For the last 4 weeks, and until the game is done, Alan Lawrance (lead developer of PolyBridge 3, lead designer of Red Faction, and overall amazing programmer) has joined the "team" at Radiangames. Alan is awesome, and we hope to keep working together far beyond Instruments of Destruction. On to version 0.500:

I have not been keeping a full list of the changes, but here are the major elements of this update:

• New Campaign missions and challenges and vehicles
  
• New Build & Destroy missions and challenges
  
• Sticky Bomb part, build mode tweaks/fixes, and other part improvements
  
• Destruction improvements and optimizations
  
• Improved mouse controls
  
• Visual changes (smoke particles, UI rendering)
  
• New environments (and new main menu music)
  
• Initial pass of story elements
  

There are now 11 near-final missions, challenges, and associated vehicles in the main campaign. Two of those missions are essentially the same as previous ones, with 9 new missions joining them to form the first 2 regions of the game. The other 6 missions are still available, but most of those will undergo some significant changes or get removed from version 1.0.

On the Build & Destroy campaign side of things, there are 5 new missions/tutorials and challenges. These new ones are less-directed tutorials for the most part. The almost 2-year missions from previous versions are mostly still available, but they are going to be significantly updated or removed for version 1.0.

Rather than go on more about the rest of the new features, I want to also want to go over what's to come, both in the short-term and the long-term.

THE SHORT-TERM

In this case, short-term means the next week or two. There will be some follow-up improvements that Alan and I will make, with a focus on more performance optimizations and a number of UI updates. A new options menu is the biggest new UI thing coming soon, though the campaign map and vehicle save/load stuff will also get some big changes. The new smoke particles will also receive some performance optimizations and other changes so they don't impact the framerate so much at higher resolutions.

After these smaller updates in the next couple weeks, the game will not receive any further updates prior to version 1.0. We'll still be looking for mission feedback and any bug reports as we approach 1.0, so please keep letting us know what you guys think.

THE LONG-TERM

Here's the plan for the rest of the game prior to version 1.0:

• A lot more (30+) Main Campaign missions, challenges, and vehicles
  
• A lot more (15+) Build & Destroy missions and challenges
  
• Localization for all the text (not voice)
  
• Removing/revising some old missions/islands
  
• More varied Sandbox-only islands
  
• More mission types and objectives (esp. combat-oriented missions)
  
• Real voice acting for Jenkins and Sharpe
  
• More optimization
  
• Simple intro and ending animations for both campaigns
  
• More special events/weather (meteor shower, for instance)
  
• More ways to customize vehicle appearance
  
• Lots of bug fixes
  
• Replacing or updating a lot of the bonus vehicles
  

NOTE: Campaign progress will be RESET with version 1.0.

Basically there's a lot of missions left to do, which is actually not that scary, and a wide variety of smaller tasks that are needed to finish up the game. Nothing is especially risky/difficult, and it's far more fun to work on the game now than it was 4 months ago (hello build mode UI redo).

The scary part is that this is the "real" first part of the game, essentially, and I hope people like it. There will be some nice complementary elements that get improved, like the UI, and the writing/voice acting, and maybe some other things. And I haven't really playtested anything recently, but in terms of gameplay/missions/tutorials/etc, the first part of the game is "ready". After 4 years of development, the game is almost done. There will be some updates after 1.0, but unlike Early Access, I know what I want the game to be, and this is it.

So when will version 1.0 be out? I'm not sure yet, but there will a release date trailer posted here when that's all figured out. That trailer should be out by the end of the month if all goes well, and for the release date, April feels like a safe bet, but you never know.