What's Coming In Our Next Big Update (105)
[h2]Howdy folks![/h2]
It’s been a little quiet from us the last couple months here on Steam so we figured it was time to give y’all some details of what we’ve been cooking up. Our next update, 105, is going to be one of the largest H3 has ever gotten, and we’re just deliriously excited by what it’ll be bringing to the game, and you folks in the community. If you'd like to check out some feature previews, there's some relevant devlogs below, along with TL:DW summaries of the pillars of this update.
[h2]Gameplanner[/h2]
Update 105 is all about finally realizing the Gameplanner system, an idea we had several years back about a suite of tools and toys that would enable you to design more of your play experience in H3. From something as simple as laying out a custom configuration of Steel Targets in your favorite range, to elaborate scripted combat scenarios with Sosigs, to entirely new ideas of gameplay using H3’s guns, agents and massive object library.
As you might imagine, this is quite the endeavor, which means that the time between updates is going to be a bit longer than usual, and we’re not going to be publicly testing this in as WIP of a state as we have in the past. So to keep you folks entertained, we’re going to be doing a series of these announcements to whet your whistles, starting with this one!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Toolbox & Pistools[/h2]
The core of the update revolves around a new system that will be available in all Sandbox scenes in H3: The Toolbox. This handy dandy non-euclidean storage device created from the Wrist Menu, stores a set of Pistools (sorry, not sorry on the pun), which are your construction and manipulation toolset for making Scenarios in Sandbox scenes.
There’s a set for building that allow you to remotely Move, Rotate, Clone, Delete objects, as well as locking them in the air, toggling their interactivity and visibility. And there’s a set of utility Pistools for measuring things, clipping through the level, and setting up all sort of pathing and volume logic which is critical to our upcoming Event System system. Speaking of….
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Event System[/h2]
Paired with this is H3’s approach to object-to-object communication, called the Event System. Think about this as like a bunch of radio station channels. Objects of various kinds can be tuned to channels, and other objects can send Events (numbers) on those channels. At its simplest, you could say setup a button that resets all your targets for you at once, and a second button that enables a random group of them for you.
The system when done will be composed of dozens of objects including switches, buttons, levers, logic nodes, number generators, triggers, sensors, spawners and destroyers. It’ll allow you to spawn and configure sosigs to fight for or against you.
Setup a button that resets all your steel targets. Use Object Spawners, timers, and scoring systems to make yourself a Watermelon slashing game. Or make a horrible Rube Goldberg device that spawns, kills and flings Sosigs into the air. Your imagination (and perhaps your CPU power) are your only constraints.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]New Levels[/h2]
And of course with all this work into new systems, new toys, we know what’s really needed is new places to enjoy them! That’s why this update will be coming with a whole mess of brand new Sandbox scenes! These scenes are being designed around the Gameplanner system, and so are designed as multi-use ‘blank canvases’ for your imagination.
And for those of you who’d rather just boot up H3 and have something ready at hand to play, we’ve got news for you too. Each of these new scenes will have a bunch of built-in scenarios including target sequences and sosig-centric mini-games. This tooling isn’t just for you folk, but is being designed for us to use internally in finally fleshing out some content we wanted to build in the past (like more Meat Fortress Game Modes). Instead of hard-coding that sort of thing, we want to tool-a-fy everything as much as possible so that you can build & remix things to your heart’s content.
[h2]More To Come & Release Date[/h2]
I’m sure you have plenty of questions regarding the scope of this all. How many levels? What sorts of toys are coming with this? Will there be GUNS too? Can I share things I make with other users? We’ll have more detailed answers for all those questions in the coming weeks as we do more announcements and devlogs on our road to Update 105, so stay tuned!
With all that said, we know the last thing y’all want to know is when you can play with all this! Many things are still up in the air, but our goal is to have a first experimental public build by the end of August.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope this MASSIVE TEASE of what’s to come in H3 has y’all chomping at the bit. As I said at the beginning of this post, this is going to be one of the most significant updates to H3 in the history of the game, and is what we feel the final realization of the Sandbox side of the game, and a natural destination given the origin points of the project.
We wish y’all a Wonderful Summer!
–RUST LTD
It’s been a little quiet from us the last couple months here on Steam so we figured it was time to give y’all some details of what we’ve been cooking up. Our next update, 105, is going to be one of the largest H3 has ever gotten, and we’re just deliriously excited by what it’ll be bringing to the game, and you folks in the community. If you'd like to check out some feature previews, there's some relevant devlogs below, along with TL:DW summaries of the pillars of this update.
[h2]Gameplanner[/h2]
Update 105 is all about finally realizing the Gameplanner system, an idea we had several years back about a suite of tools and toys that would enable you to design more of your play experience in H3. From something as simple as laying out a custom configuration of Steel Targets in your favorite range, to elaborate scripted combat scenarios with Sosigs, to entirely new ideas of gameplay using H3’s guns, agents and massive object library.
As you might imagine, this is quite the endeavor, which means that the time between updates is going to be a bit longer than usual, and we’re not going to be publicly testing this in as WIP of a state as we have in the past. So to keep you folks entertained, we’re going to be doing a series of these announcements to whet your whistles, starting with this one!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Toolbox & Pistools[/h2]
The core of the update revolves around a new system that will be available in all Sandbox scenes in H3: The Toolbox. This handy dandy non-euclidean storage device created from the Wrist Menu, stores a set of Pistools (sorry, not sorry on the pun), which are your construction and manipulation toolset for making Scenarios in Sandbox scenes.
There’s a set for building that allow you to remotely Move, Rotate, Clone, Delete objects, as well as locking them in the air, toggling their interactivity and visibility. And there’s a set of utility Pistools for measuring things, clipping through the level, and setting up all sort of pathing and volume logic which is critical to our upcoming Event System system. Speaking of….
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Event System[/h2]
Paired with this is H3’s approach to object-to-object communication, called the Event System. Think about this as like a bunch of radio station channels. Objects of various kinds can be tuned to channels, and other objects can send Events (numbers) on those channels. At its simplest, you could say setup a button that resets all your targets for you at once, and a second button that enables a random group of them for you.
The system when done will be composed of dozens of objects including switches, buttons, levers, logic nodes, number generators, triggers, sensors, spawners and destroyers. It’ll allow you to spawn and configure sosigs to fight for or against you.
Setup a button that resets all your steel targets. Use Object Spawners, timers, and scoring systems to make yourself a Watermelon slashing game. Or make a horrible Rube Goldberg device that spawns, kills and flings Sosigs into the air. Your imagination (and perhaps your CPU power) are your only constraints.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]New Levels[/h2]
And of course with all this work into new systems, new toys, we know what’s really needed is new places to enjoy them! That’s why this update will be coming with a whole mess of brand new Sandbox scenes! These scenes are being designed around the Gameplanner system, and so are designed as multi-use ‘blank canvases’ for your imagination.
And for those of you who’d rather just boot up H3 and have something ready at hand to play, we’ve got news for you too. Each of these new scenes will have a bunch of built-in scenarios including target sequences and sosig-centric mini-games. This tooling isn’t just for you folk, but is being designed for us to use internally in finally fleshing out some content we wanted to build in the past (like more Meat Fortress Game Modes). Instead of hard-coding that sort of thing, we want to tool-a-fy everything as much as possible so that you can build & remix things to your heart’s content.
[h2]More To Come & Release Date[/h2]
I’m sure you have plenty of questions regarding the scope of this all. How many levels? What sorts of toys are coming with this? Will there be GUNS too? Can I share things I make with other users? We’ll have more detailed answers for all those questions in the coming weeks as we do more announcements and devlogs on our road to Update 105, so stay tuned!
With all that said, we know the last thing y’all want to know is when you can play with all this! Many things are still up in the air, but our goal is to have a first experimental public build by the end of August.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope this MASSIVE TEASE of what’s to come in H3 has y’all chomping at the bit. As I said at the beginning of this post, this is going to be one of the most significant updates to H3 in the history of the game, and is what we feel the final realization of the Sandbox side of the game, and a natural destination given the origin points of the project.
We wish y’all a Wonderful Summer!
–RUST LTD