New Real to Life Sounds (Sirens & Horns), Realistic Hoses, New AI & More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8D3skQaBGA&lc=Ugz_jlyBK6SA6PVrULN4AaABAg.9GU2VcR6tGr9GUg4q2aNtJ
Hello everyone, my name is Raf lead developer of EmergeNYC. I'm really excited to walk you through all of the things we have been working extremely hard on since our last development update video 3 weeks ago. This year I have really been able to tone all my skills as a game developer in all aspects (modelling, coding, animation) etc. This means the sky's the limit and virtually any idea I come up with or suggestion from the community, I am able to translate into the game as a functional mechanic. A lot of this update has been new additions such as the wildfires, and new game mechanics, however a huge portion of what is coming is polishing and complete reconstruction of some of the previous game mechanics to be more user friendly and functional. In this video we are going to go over a few different things. Completely new vehicle sounds which include exact replicas of real life sirens, engine sounds, and other vehicle sounds. Our redesign of the firehose mechanics into the most realistic fire hose mechanics in any firefighting game. New Real Time Strategy Emergency 4 style gameplay with new AI Commands and smarter AI. A more intuitive inventory and Item system. New Police Precinct, Hospital, and Firehouse interiors, and a lot of new neat additions to the game. The video will be time stamped to allow you to navigate to certain sections easier.
Hoses
The hose system has been plagued with bugs, poor optimization, and just a completely unrealistic feel to them. Most games which have any firehose mechanics generally “cheat” when it comes to creating these mechanics by using procedural infinite hose that has no feedback, limit to how much you can stretch, or any indications if the hose has water.
I redesigned the hose mechanics to encompass all of these aspects. While performing more reliably, and causing less stress on the player’s systems, the hoses now simulate tension meaning the player can no longer infinitely stretch a single length of hose to reach the fire and will be stopped from moving further once the hose is completely stretched. The player will also feel drag and heavier movement depending on whether or not the hoseline is charged with water or not. The Engine Company backup man now has purpose. If he is behind the Nozzle man on the line, the drag will be reduced significantly and the pair can move the line quicker. The hose behavior has been designed to look more realistic with more believable bending and stiffness when the hose is empty or full. Additional changes have been made such as when dropping a line while equipped with the nozzle, the line will be dropped with the nozzle attached so that any other players can easily pick up the nozzle where it was dropped. When deploying attack line from the hose bed, a nozzle comes pre attached allowing for the nozzle man to quickly grab the line and the nozzle simultaneously and have water on the fire quicker. The entire system is still a work and progress and I plan to make sure it is fully functional by the release of the update.
RTS AI
A huge motivating factor in the development of EmergeNYC was my previous modding experience in 911 First Responders. This is where the seed for EmergeNYC was planted and I always envisioned EmergeNYC to blend the 3rd Person and First Person with the Real Time Strategy point and click style gameplay of 911 First Responders. This update will introduce the first major building block in EmergeNYC with AI to make single player and multiplayer a less hands on experience and more of a management, dispatch, and command experience. The existing vehicle AI have been improved significantly to ensure that the AI will reach their destination successfully. You can specifically place exactly where you want your selected truck to park even up to the angle that it parks. A unique audio clip taken from real life recordings will play when the unit has accepted the run. Many of the commands inspired from our Emergency 4 mods have been added including speed controls to control how fast the vehicle drives, rapid deployment which will quickly hook a supply line to the nearest hydrant, stretch an attack line, attach the attack line to the rig, and begin pumping water all with one click of a button. The Spray Deck gun command on the Engine Companies allows you to simply click where you the water to be directed. The new auto ladder command lets the player click on any window or rooftop and the ladder will automatically extend to the exact point you have set. The scene light will even automatically aim to where you have pointed the ladder.This is useful when you want to save time, or maybe need a way out of a hairy situation.
Items and Inventory
I wanted to make the inventory and item system a little more user friendly by adding hotkeys to pick up items off the floor or quickly equip them from your inventory rather than having to navigate to each one through the radial menu. This will help you save time on the fire floor.
Gauges
The driving experience in EmergeNYC is a major part of the game and improving many aspects of this was high priority on my task list. Working gauges now show you your speed and RPMs as well as other useful information such as what gear you're in, if the blinkers are on or off, and eventually things such as low fuel, overheating from damage, and more. 3D Animated gauges are now on every fire truck in the game.
Sounds
While that is a nice addition, thanks to our new developer in training program (Ill touch base on this at the end of the video)EmergeNYC has made a huge leap in immersion with this update with brand new vehicle sounds. All engine sounds and siren sounds have been completely redone. Teaming up with our new developer LC, we spent close to 2 weeks focusing on seeing how we could improve the sounds of EmergeNYC which are a huge part of the immersion. Using real audio clips and recordings as well as reference from the actual sirens being created and countless hours of tweaking, we have been able to create virtually the exact sounds going into even the smallest details. We have added rumblers which the FDNY has recently begun to put on all of their trucks. If you dont like the sound you can easily turn it off. Each company has a unique airhorn sound and engine sounds are correct corresponding to which engine the unit uses in real life. Every truck sounds different. We dramatically improved the Q Sirens and have included different model mechanical sirens ranging from the Federal Model 28 , older Q Sirens, and newer Q Sirens.
The sirens also switch between automatic modes more realistically. These changes may seem like they are not important however these really enhance the immersion of the game and we know they will be a player favorite.
Steering Wheel Support
Steering wheel support is now native in EmergeNYC with a quick setup allowing players to hook up their peripherals such as pedals, steering wheels, and other external inputs. Here you can see LC using his complete setup to play EmergeNYC.
Interiors
In this update we went back and finished any interiors that had not been completed yet, this includes the Montgomery County Fire stations as well as the Police Precincts and Hospital Interiors on each map. Each having a unique look.
Several new features have been added to enhance the multiplayer experience and make it easier on all players. A new player list shows who is loaded and still needs to load into the game, a new score system will be added where things can negatively or positively impact your score for example how many fires you put out will give you a higher score versus hitting traffic or parked cars will decrease your score. A Respawn option lets people teleport back to their firehouse with one click and returns all items and systems back to normal for a quick pack up if you prefer not to wait.
Multiplayer Optimization
To address your concerns about Multiplayer and optimization I can guarantee you there will be improvements all across the board and it is one of our top priorities along with all game breaking issues. I play multiplayer 90% of the time so I know how important it is to the core concept of the game. If you watch the video you can see steady frames all the way through and most of the video was shot in Multiplayer. The complications arise from having to network all the data from all players across the network and the more players you add into that equation the more data it needs to pass and performance issues arise. I am skilled enough to not rely on a hired developer to assist me with any of these issues anymore and can now figure out the best ways to get the best performance on my own. That’s why this update has taken so long, the end point here is the more time worked on this before release the more solid and stable end product and more satisfied less frustrated and disappointed players
Thank You!
Thank you for the support and the patience especially. I know I have kept you all waiting but I promise you I have been working my butt off every day 24/7 even spent the entire days sifting through hours of footage and editing this video while away visiting family. I bought my pc with me in a checked bag to keep working while I’m away and my monitor broke in the process and had to buy a new one. Goes to show I’m not letting anything stop me from trying to get this update pushed out as soon as possible. I want to make sure everything that I’ve shown you guys works as it should with no major issues. There are still things to address and some could take me 5 minutes to fix and others a few days. So that’s the reason I don’t want to give a release date but ideally I am personally aiming to release by Christmas week. I cannot make any promises though so do not take that as a solid answer.
Hello everyone, my name is Raf lead developer of EmergeNYC. I'm really excited to walk you through all of the things we have been working extremely hard on since our last development update video 3 weeks ago. This year I have really been able to tone all my skills as a game developer in all aspects (modelling, coding, animation) etc. This means the sky's the limit and virtually any idea I come up with or suggestion from the community, I am able to translate into the game as a functional mechanic. A lot of this update has been new additions such as the wildfires, and new game mechanics, however a huge portion of what is coming is polishing and complete reconstruction of some of the previous game mechanics to be more user friendly and functional. In this video we are going to go over a few different things. Completely new vehicle sounds which include exact replicas of real life sirens, engine sounds, and other vehicle sounds. Our redesign of the firehose mechanics into the most realistic fire hose mechanics in any firefighting game. New Real Time Strategy Emergency 4 style gameplay with new AI Commands and smarter AI. A more intuitive inventory and Item system. New Police Precinct, Hospital, and Firehouse interiors, and a lot of new neat additions to the game. The video will be time stamped to allow you to navigate to certain sections easier.
Hoses
The hose system has been plagued with bugs, poor optimization, and just a completely unrealistic feel to them. Most games which have any firehose mechanics generally “cheat” when it comes to creating these mechanics by using procedural infinite hose that has no feedback, limit to how much you can stretch, or any indications if the hose has water.
I redesigned the hose mechanics to encompass all of these aspects. While performing more reliably, and causing less stress on the player’s systems, the hoses now simulate tension meaning the player can no longer infinitely stretch a single length of hose to reach the fire and will be stopped from moving further once the hose is completely stretched. The player will also feel drag and heavier movement depending on whether or not the hoseline is charged with water or not. The Engine Company backup man now has purpose. If he is behind the Nozzle man on the line, the drag will be reduced significantly and the pair can move the line quicker. The hose behavior has been designed to look more realistic with more believable bending and stiffness when the hose is empty or full. Additional changes have been made such as when dropping a line while equipped with the nozzle, the line will be dropped with the nozzle attached so that any other players can easily pick up the nozzle where it was dropped. When deploying attack line from the hose bed, a nozzle comes pre attached allowing for the nozzle man to quickly grab the line and the nozzle simultaneously and have water on the fire quicker. The entire system is still a work and progress and I plan to make sure it is fully functional by the release of the update.
RTS AI
A huge motivating factor in the development of EmergeNYC was my previous modding experience in 911 First Responders. This is where the seed for EmergeNYC was planted and I always envisioned EmergeNYC to blend the 3rd Person and First Person with the Real Time Strategy point and click style gameplay of 911 First Responders. This update will introduce the first major building block in EmergeNYC with AI to make single player and multiplayer a less hands on experience and more of a management, dispatch, and command experience. The existing vehicle AI have been improved significantly to ensure that the AI will reach their destination successfully. You can specifically place exactly where you want your selected truck to park even up to the angle that it parks. A unique audio clip taken from real life recordings will play when the unit has accepted the run. Many of the commands inspired from our Emergency 4 mods have been added including speed controls to control how fast the vehicle drives, rapid deployment which will quickly hook a supply line to the nearest hydrant, stretch an attack line, attach the attack line to the rig, and begin pumping water all with one click of a button. The Spray Deck gun command on the Engine Companies allows you to simply click where you the water to be directed. The new auto ladder command lets the player click on any window or rooftop and the ladder will automatically extend to the exact point you have set. The scene light will even automatically aim to where you have pointed the ladder.This is useful when you want to save time, or maybe need a way out of a hairy situation.
Items and Inventory
I wanted to make the inventory and item system a little more user friendly by adding hotkeys to pick up items off the floor or quickly equip them from your inventory rather than having to navigate to each one through the radial menu. This will help you save time on the fire floor.
Gauges
The driving experience in EmergeNYC is a major part of the game and improving many aspects of this was high priority on my task list. Working gauges now show you your speed and RPMs as well as other useful information such as what gear you're in, if the blinkers are on or off, and eventually things such as low fuel, overheating from damage, and more. 3D Animated gauges are now on every fire truck in the game.
Sounds
While that is a nice addition, thanks to our new developer in training program (Ill touch base on this at the end of the video)EmergeNYC has made a huge leap in immersion with this update with brand new vehicle sounds. All engine sounds and siren sounds have been completely redone. Teaming up with our new developer LC, we spent close to 2 weeks focusing on seeing how we could improve the sounds of EmergeNYC which are a huge part of the immersion. Using real audio clips and recordings as well as reference from the actual sirens being created and countless hours of tweaking, we have been able to create virtually the exact sounds going into even the smallest details. We have added rumblers which the FDNY has recently begun to put on all of their trucks. If you dont like the sound you can easily turn it off. Each company has a unique airhorn sound and engine sounds are correct corresponding to which engine the unit uses in real life. Every truck sounds different. We dramatically improved the Q Sirens and have included different model mechanical sirens ranging from the Federal Model 28 , older Q Sirens, and newer Q Sirens.
The sirens also switch between automatic modes more realistically. These changes may seem like they are not important however these really enhance the immersion of the game and we know they will be a player favorite.
Steering Wheel Support
Steering wheel support is now native in EmergeNYC with a quick setup allowing players to hook up their peripherals such as pedals, steering wheels, and other external inputs. Here you can see LC using his complete setup to play EmergeNYC.
Interiors
In this update we went back and finished any interiors that had not been completed yet, this includes the Montgomery County Fire stations as well as the Police Precincts and Hospital Interiors on each map. Each having a unique look.
Several new features have been added to enhance the multiplayer experience and make it easier on all players. A new player list shows who is loaded and still needs to load into the game, a new score system will be added where things can negatively or positively impact your score for example how many fires you put out will give you a higher score versus hitting traffic or parked cars will decrease your score. A Respawn option lets people teleport back to their firehouse with one click and returns all items and systems back to normal for a quick pack up if you prefer not to wait.
Multiplayer Optimization
To address your concerns about Multiplayer and optimization I can guarantee you there will be improvements all across the board and it is one of our top priorities along with all game breaking issues. I play multiplayer 90% of the time so I know how important it is to the core concept of the game. If you watch the video you can see steady frames all the way through and most of the video was shot in Multiplayer. The complications arise from having to network all the data from all players across the network and the more players you add into that equation the more data it needs to pass and performance issues arise. I am skilled enough to not rely on a hired developer to assist me with any of these issues anymore and can now figure out the best ways to get the best performance on my own. That’s why this update has taken so long, the end point here is the more time worked on this before release the more solid and stable end product and more satisfied less frustrated and disappointed players
Thank You!
Thank you for the support and the patience especially. I know I have kept you all waiting but I promise you I have been working my butt off every day 24/7 even spent the entire days sifting through hours of footage and editing this video while away visiting family. I bought my pc with me in a checked bag to keep working while I’m away and my monitor broke in the process and had to buy a new one. Goes to show I’m not letting anything stop me from trying to get this update pushed out as soon as possible. I want to make sure everything that I’ve shown you guys works as it should with no major issues. There are still things to address and some could take me 5 minutes to fix and others a few days. So that’s the reason I don’t want to give a release date but ideally I am personally aiming to release by Christmas week. I cannot make any promises though so do not take that as a solid answer.