Brigador Killers News

For this post we want to highlight one of the less exciting things about making games from the past month and how we plan to address it. It’s often referred to as “finding the fun” i.e. the process of iterating on a set of prototyped mechanics or systems and testing them to see if it fits within the expectations of our design and achieve a broadly enjoyable feeling of “play” (also sometimes referred to as a “flow state” in more academic circles).

Our caveat like last time that what you see below is not indicative of the final product. There’s still jank like map boundaries missing allowing units to wander into the void and things generally looking “empty” while veterans of our first game will recognize reused elements.

The following video is of three short encounters on small scale maps that measure about 40x40 tiles. We also had a fourth, much larger map (around 220x250 tiles) to stress test how many things we could stick into one map, but it is not included for reasons that will be laid out in this post.
[h2]📺OPEN THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND READ ALONG[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]1️⃣ENCOUNTER 1 (00:00-05:11)[/h2]
The first encounter map opens with the player in plainclothes incognito with a carmine tac suit standing nearby. The player mouses over the tac suit to see that it is equipped with an assault rifle and a rocket launcher. Their objective for this map is simple: clear out the garrison. For this one they need to eliminate 31 targets, most of which are hostile NPCs in plainclothes (hereafter just “Dennis”), but a few are green palette swaps of the carmine that serve as placeholder for tac suit-wearing Faber units.

By entering the carmine suit, the player is no longer incognito and instead perceived as hostile to any armed NPCs, which is why they open fire. Fortunately, this exchange of gunfire will do the player no harm because the Dennises’ weaponry is not strong enough. Like we outlined at the foot of August’s post, BK now has a pierce system in effect. Or, in other words, we’re too tanky to take any damage from their puny firearms (note the health bar in the top left). That quickly changes when the green Faber suits turn up, who start plinking away at the player’s HP, forcing them to switch to their rocket launcher and one-shot the first Faber unit.

However, just 30 seconds in, we have multiple problems with how a lot of this all feels that might not be obvious from the footage. In no particular order they are the following:

• Player aim sucks
  
• Player damage output sucks
  
• Environmental props are very solid (compared to the previous game)
  
• Engagement distances feel off
  
• Reloads suck
  
• Camera sucks
  

These problems also overlap in a few ways. Because there are no reticles in the game yet, where projectiles land as the player aims isn’t great, which is compounded by both Brigador’s existing accuracy cone system and how the plainclothes units are crouched behind cover. Here’s a visualization of how that accuracy cone system functions.

It’s intentional that these props are chest-high walls, but as you can see from the footage of the player shooting at two retreating plainclothes, the bullets are “catching” on the top of the prop rather than hitting the intended targets, though the player has no such problem taking out the Dennis in plain sight to the south west. Except it’s still a problem that the player can’t see someone shooting at them from off screen - and then the first Faber unit turns up.

Depending on the Faber unit firing, they will either slowly drain a carmine suit’s precious HP, because despite the lack of distinct SFX their guns actually have higher pierce than the Dennises, or potentially destroy a carmine suit outright if they land a rocket on the player. These first two Faber units are only carrying rifles, but rather than getting into a two-on-one DPS race, the player beats a hasty retreat to… reload their rocket launcher which in this current setup takes ten whole seconds to cycle. All these factors combined result in a less-than-satisfying experience for the player.

After just an initial skirmish, the player is now down to two-thirds of their starting hit points, which don’t last and a Faber unit eventually busts the player out of their suit, only to quickly eat through their remaining hit points.

Restarting the encounter, the player decides to make use of the incognito status and scout things out. They find a muscle car to drive freely – up until they run over a Dennis, at which point the level turns hostile. The player races about to find a Rounder tank parked deeper into the encounter, and proceeds to gleefully tear through all the Faber units, which highlights another problem: the current disparity between the “fun” of vehicle-based combat, and infantry-scale combat. Compared to everything mentioned so far, the Rounder has absolutely no problem tearing through the entire encounter, even though Faber is equipped with rockets that can eventually take out the tank. Finally, after debussing from the tank in their pursuit to get rid of the last few units, the inertia on the tank and the trample system unintentionally kills the unprotected player. Oops.

[h2]2️⃣ENCOUNTER 2 (05:12-08:53)[/h2]
The second encounter opens with the player in plainclothes next to both a carmine suit and a Rounder. The player’s goal is to destroy an object at the other end of the level. Explicitly there’s two ways to go about this encounter – a combat gauntlet through the “main” route, or taking a side route through some buildings. The player opts to take the main route on foot first.

Again, we see a repeat of the same behavior of easily dispatching some Dennises, only for Faber to appear and make the player’s day worse. This time around the player loses their carmine, and opts to get the Rounder to take the side route, encountering an enemy Rounder that would give the player trouble were it not facing the wrong direction.

The player succeeds in scoring a rear shot on the spacer tank, blows up the objective, makes a mess of several dozen Faber units, and generally has a pleasant time in the vehicle. Once again, we see the disconnect in vehicles generally having a faster time to kill, while the infantry experience is much less snappy.

[h2]3️⃣ENCOUNTER 3 (08:54-12:08)[/h2]
The third encounter is the shortest of the lot, containing a mix of mostly police units, a few “personal mobility devices” and some more green tac rigs equipped with rifles or rockets. The player’s first attempt goes poorly, with their shots failing to go over the barriers and Faber eventually eliminating the player.

Restarting, the player is more careful, running around corners to abuse the AI’s method of pathfinding and being sure to prioritize the first Faber unit to turn up with an RPG. Due to all this violence, the police retreat, which shows off the flinch/flee behavior we mentioned in August’s post.

As they retreat, the player uses this breathing room to reload their RPG and extend out the camera to scout the area ahead for any units lying in wait. A lone Faber unit, likely attracted by the explosion noises, is felled by a rocket from behind and the footage ends here.

[h2]📃TO SUMMARIZE THE CURRENT PROBLEMS[/h2]
As a result of these short encounters, infantry scale combat feels bad. Chiefly the reasons why are:

• Player movement doesn’t feel good especially compared to vehicle movement – we either walk/run or mostly stand still to shoot
  
• Aiming and shooting feels very static and uninteresting to engage in – this is amplified by how the accuracy system functions causing projectiles to catch on top of barriers we want to shoot over, as well as the excruciatingly slow reload times
  
• The environment is tanky – part of the joy of the previous game is that even though shots from either the player or NPCs sometimes failed to land, the environment was so fragile that something was still happening even when shots missed
  
• Time to kill is off – versus armor an on-foot player should certainly feel terrified going up against a bigger foe, but there’s a current frustration just dealing with units of the same size (even non-Faber) which can lead to the player getting dogpiled by multiple enemies
  
• Engagement distances are too great – getting damaged from off-screen sources not only adds to the frustration but also encourages the player to default to camera-optimal distances i.e. zoom out and extend the camera as far out as possible to get a bead on any potential threats
  
• Too much is going on and cognitive load irritates the player – frequently the player was trying to quickly dish out damage at approaching units, only to find that their guns had to be reloaded and their health was quickly deteriorating and had no means to counter incoming threats both on- and off-screen beyond running away
  

…But all that’s okay! Diagnosing the problem is how we approach a cure, and we already have a strong idea how to go about fixing a lot of the above.

[h2]🤔SO WHAT TO DO?[/h2]
There are a wide number of issues to deal with, but we can boil them down to four main things that we intend to do:

• A form of ADS (Aim Down Sights) along with a new type of aiming reticle – our intent is to have right click on mouse act as a form of focused aiming for the player which will involve changing how the camera operates
  
• Changes to the AI behavior of enemy infantry – these NPCs fundamentally act the same way as vehicles do which does not translate well as infantry behavior
  
• Tweaking a number of values – experienced Brigador modders will be aware that it’s possible to do many things with the data in-game, so reducing reload times and HP pools, stopping bullets from catching on chest-high walls, or changing when and how quickly enemies engage with the player is already doable
  
• Simplifying input while not overburdening the player – this point is a bit vague but one thing we might do is give the player character an additional option to “run and gun” on top of firing while either crouched, standing or walking which means new animations are required
  

Of this list, the first two are the biggest asks of our programmers. As of time of posting we’re currently working on changes to the camera system in order to accommodate this new aiming scheme we have in mind. The past month has been eventful and we should stress that this isn’t intended as a deliberate downer of a post – this is part of the process of making games.

By next month we hope to report back on how infantry scale combat has changed. If you for some reason haven’t yet wishlisted Brigador Killers – please do. As developers it helps us out immensely as we edge ever closer to 2023.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

One of the hallmarks of our previous game Brigador is its fully destructible environments. With a few exceptions, every “prop” visible within the game’s levels can be smashed through or blown up and left as a pile of debris on the ground. Here's a Touro from our first game next to some buildings showing the before, during and after effects of a stomp (right click > open image in new tab to get a better look).



[Images from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition]

How this system works in Brigador is each prop, depending on a few factors like its size and what hit it, has a couple of destruction states (or variants of the prop) that then, when damaged enough, leave a flat rubble texture on the ground tiles which the player can walk through as if it were a regular ground tile.


[GIF from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition]

We’re adding what we’re calling systemic building collapse to this existing system in Brigador Killers. Related to it is a tactic that we tutorialize in the first game: mouse-holing. As developers we give you the ability to make your own space through that game's environment and it’s up to you to make use of that space in whatever way you the player deem fit.

For instance in Brigador it’s entirely possible to just destroy one “chunk” of a building prop with certain weapons and not really affect anything else connected to or around it. If you’re accurate enough and shoot through a sturdy-enough prop with something like a railgun, you’ll carve out a neat line through it. Here’s a before and after of a typical Zeus shot in Brigador going through a couple of building props.


[Images from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition]

What you can see is a convenient, Touro-wide hole through which to stomp through as a result. Although it serves our gameplay purposes in this game, this would not really be the case in real life as can be evidenced by looking at footage of any collapsing building (volume warning ahead).
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Rubble scatters around, dust kicks up… to say nothing about anything or anyone that happens to be by a collapsing building. The structure of the damaged building is also heavily compromised and the rest of it is liable to fall as a result.

The previous approach is also not suitable for BK for three big reasons:

• The change in initial scale from vehicle -> infantry
  
• Variable zoom for the player, and
  
• Buildings are much tougher and bigger than before

So, why we’re adding systemic building collapse is because we've raised the floor on how difficult it is to knock down a single building chunk, we want to keep the landscape malleable to the player in a way that's still exciting and potentially hazardous.

[GIF from BKTEST04]

Behind the scenes, what's going on in the above gif? Imagine if you will a building and around that building it has the potential to cause damage to its surroundings when it collapses.

For the purposes of this exercise, suppose that this collapsing building will do three rings’ worth of damage. Each ring is in this example one point of damage each and each ring overlaps. For those of you that speak game development – no, we are not ray marching these rings because that would be highly inefficient for our purposes.

[If we for some reason did want to do that, we’d have to shoot out rays in every direction from the point of collapse and test for intersection with another entity and then test to check if we had already applied damage to said entity and then test against each distance value in ascending order until we find the range that entity sits in and… you get the idea.]

The central red ring we can imagine is the immediate point of collapse where the most damage will be done. Anything within the space of this ring will take three points of damage (or more accurately: 1 + 1 + 1 from all three rings). Entities in the second orange ring will take two points (or 1 + 1), and anything in the blue will take just one point of damage. Note that these values are just for example purposes – in the engine we can set the values of these rings to be whatever we want.

With all that said, what does systemic building collapse look like in action? You might guess from the image above that it’s just another form of how explosive props (such as pipelines) already work in Brigador. However, instead of shooting part of a pipeline that will almost immediately cause a violent chain reaction and take out everything else along that length of pipe, a collapsed building might only take out that part of the structure depending on the relative HP of the building segment, its neighbors and the source of damage. What that means is we’ll still be able to retain some of the plinking at one prop “chunk” like before in Brigador, but unlike Brigador when that single chunk falls it will damage the surrounding building props by its collapse. Further plinking at other now-damaged parts can result in a subsequent domino-like collapse. Let's demonstrate this in BK with the help of some HP bars on the buildings by carefully shooting at an individual prop using a Mãe Dois...

As we damage the segment, note the green HP bar and the discoloration on the building. Let’s keep shooting...

As we reduce that prop's HP to zero, it collapses and the two building props on either side have had their HP reduced by its collapse.

What we're left with here is a collapsed structure that can still serve as cover, but its height is reduced. The neighbouring buildings have been damaged by the collapse and it will not require as much effort to take them down. In addition, we see the accompanying white rubble on the ground indicating that it is traversable to the player.

One example of how we intend this behavior to manifest in BK is the player using a building as cover which, at the start of an encounter, is sturdy and can clearly take an exchange of cannon fire. However, if the fight drags on, and more and more rounds batter the building and fill it with holes, the AoE damage starts to add up and - before it's too late - the splash from just one more shot will be enough to set off a domino effect and completely take out the entire building complex. The player's cover is gone and, depending on how close a player or other ground units are to a collapsing building, the effect may even be lethal.

To give you an idea, we can violently speed this process up with our newly-revised Gravesend Pinball blasting through a set of buildings.

Take note that though the pinball itself is wide, it’s nowhere near as wide as three building props’ worth even coming through at a slight angle. Those with keener eyes will also notice the delay on the last building to collapse in the gif, along with the damage caused to the very last building in the row courtesy of the reduced HP bar (also note that the data for each suite of buildings needs to be manually configured, so part of the reason you’re seeing the same building over and over here is because the values need to be calibrated for each one).

There’s still some work to be done on systemic building collapse because, ironically, you can’t just touch one thing in game development without it affecting other things. Already for legibility purposes we realize we have to lower the “height” of the walkable rubble so the on-foot player character doesn’t get lost…

…as well as regrade the color of the rubble so it appears traversable to the player.

Though these are issues we are confident we can deal with through playtesting.

That's all for now for systemic building collapse. Next month we'll show off some new assets from our latest internal build.

Lastly, our first game is currently on sale until Monday October 3rd and we recently put up a short article about the inspirations behind that game. Enjoy.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/Brigador_UpArmored_Edition/

At the end of last month’s post, we mentioned that there have been a number of Brigador Killers test builds (or BKTESTs as we call them) put out over the past eight months. In this post we’re going to cover some of what appeared in the first three BKTESTs with a series of clips of each in the video below. Each section is timestamped and a short explainer is provided.

Caveat as before that what you see is not indicative of the final product; this is us lifting the lid up and letting you take a look at the less glamorous side of game development. That means you’ll see jank like clunky animations and weapons not mounted properly, a distinct lack of things like new sound FX, while veterans of Brigador will recognize reused UI elements.

Please also note that some of the things mentioned in the previous news post, such as the in-level item acquisition or threat response escalation systems, are not yet implemented either. However, careful listeners keep an ear out – you might hear something new in the first section…

Lastly, in terms of timeline, BKTEST01 was pushed in December 2021, BKTEST02 was March 2022 and BKTEST03 was June 2022.
[h2]📺WATCH THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH THE TEXT[/h2]
[previewyoutube]https://youtu.be/Ght6sZYWxEI[/previewyoutube]

[h2]🏦BKTEST01: ALLPROPS LEVEL (00:00-01:37)[/h2]
Various video games tend to have some form of level like this. In our case we refer to them internally as “zoo” levels (other games may refer to them as dev rooms depending on genre). In our case they are specific maps populated with every single type of a “thing” according to a particular category. This particular zoo map is every single “prop” (environmental assets like buildings or light poles) in every orientation needed, hence “allprops”. Most big props seen here are in four rotations, though smaller ones like signage (that we refer to as “minis”) will get more. The sprites for the props are rendered at a greater level of visual detail compared to the first game, though at this point in development there were no destruction sprites, so the buildings here are invincible despite being shot at occasionally.

As for the on-foot player character, this is Tactical Dennis, who currently serves as our placeholder for a plainclothes Brigador Killer with a temporary gun equipped.

[h2]🚗BKTEST01: RACE TRACK (01:38-02:31)[/h2]
As the name implies, this level is a small loop to drive around in. Visually it’s not very interesting, but this is the first implementation of two major things:

• Vehicle entry/exit
  
• Wheeled vehicle movetype
  

In BK you will be able to get into and out of vehicles like cars, tanks, mechs and so on. Currently the player character merely “teleports” into a vehicle provided they are close enough, which is indicated by the green debug circle around a vehicle (eagle-eyed viewers will also note the change in camera zoom upon Dennis entering a vehicle – a hint of things to come later).

Concerning the implementation of wheeled vehicles in this game’s engine, note that previous vehicle types were either tanks, stompy mechs, or floating agravs. Those of you who might be typing “But what about the treadbikes?” – sorry but those were technically just very narrow tanks. This is not the case for the muscle car in the footage.

With the new wheeled vehicle movetype we can do things like configure its mass, speed and acceleration as well as set the friction coefficient, the offset of the vehicle’s center of gravity and the stiffness at which it takes corners. In other words, we can recreate vehicles to handle as if they have front wheel drive or rear wheel drive. However, in this footage such specifics were not yet dialed in, so the cars appear very floaty and frictionless and can even be pushed around by the player character as if they’re on ice. It does not help that there are no engine sounds or visual effects like tread marks either. That said, because of this movetype we can do things like make the muscle car pull a somewhat convincing J-turn, which was not possible in the first game.

[h2]🌃BKTEST01: CITYSCAPE (02:32-04:20)[/h2]
This cityscape is a number of props placed down on top of new ground tiles such as the pavement and cracked tarmac, road markings, as well as grass tiles. The player character knocks over a few lamp posts, shoots a muscle car to destroy it and leave what’s called a “hulk”. They also get into an odd-looking vehicle that we use for testing purposes. Despite shooting at various things and crashing into objects, outside of the “mini” lampposts, the player can’t currently destroy anything because at this point neither trample damage nor destruction sprites are in the game.

[h2]🌆BKTEST02: CITYSCAPE (04:21-11:25)[/h2]
This build introduced a few things that may not be immediately apparent, chiefly:

• Player suit choice (which later affects incognito status)
  
• Infantry scale weaponry
  
• Running and crouching animations for on foot characters
  
• New road vehicles
  
• Morale system
  

We’re still reusing the old UI as a means to load our level. We have a new pilot portrait (whose face you’ll see on the video’s thumbnail) of “Kermit Carthew” which currently has no effect. The “vehicle” choice in the Freelance menu allows the player to choose what sort of suit they want to roll out in (plainclothes, police tactical rig, or Carmine Suit), which will affect what’s called their Incognito status upon loading into a level, although only the next build will show off non-hostile NPCs. Primary and Secondary are now weapon slots the player can switch between, and this BKTEST contains a selection of infantry-scale weapons to choose from (yes, even the Mãe Dois).

Initially the player picks out an RPG and an SMG, enters the level and we immediately see that we have actual night-time lighting compared to the previous build. The player blows up some new destructible props to drive a van through (because trample damage is still not in, so we can’t drive through), then comes across an NPC driving a muscle car. The player gets out, shoots at the vehicle and the NPC driving it bails from the vehicle, giving the first glimpse of the effects of the morale system.

[h3]WHAT IS THE MORALE SYSTEM?[/h3]
In BK, NPCs and vehicles will have a morale threshold. A simple way to think of this system is as a separate invisible health bar that, when reduced by “morale damage”, will set off certain behaviors like escaping from a vehicle or fleeing from an area. Weapons or other effects like explosions can reduce a target's morale "health". In the footage the player damages the vehicle's morale (alongside inflicting regular damage), so the driver immediately bails, freeing up the muscle car's pilot slot and allows the player to take control of the vehicle.

The plainclothes player then comes up against a small police road block, unable to run them over (because, again, this build does not have trample damage in) and gets into a brief gunfight with pursuing cops.

The player then loads in with a police tactical rig equipped with a rifle and a blooper, and drives back to the same checkpoint to make quick work of it, before driving off to find more cops to deal with, and briefly finds a police motorbike to drive before switching to the Carmine Suit.

The player loads in with the suit, a Mãe Dois and an RPG, and sets about dealing with the level’s garrison of cops using both weapons. At one point in the footage infinite ammo was toggled on in the debug panel which is why the ammo counters go into the negative values towards the end.

[h2]🔫BKTEST03: SHOOTING RANGE (11:26-14:44)[/h2]
This build specifically contained:

• A shooting range and another cityscape nicknamed the “Broken Grid Arena”
  
• Uprezzed playable versions of the Spacer Arlo agrav and Rounder tank, and the Loyalist Betushka
  
• Mousewheel zoom
  
• “Threat” indicators
  
• “Flinch/flee” behavior
  
• Trample damage
  
• “Incognito” mode and non-hostile NPC behavior
  
• Destruction sprites for props
  

Much like the race track and allprops from BKTEST01, the shooting range is a test level that deliberately has a bunch of NPCs and props lined up so that we can test various things like weapons. We also see the new Arlo, Rounder and Betka lined up.

Most of the NPCs in this test level will not attack the player because of how we have their AI configured, save for the three boxed-in Rounder tanks that do a pretty good job of killing the player very quickly on sight, which signposts another major divergence BK is taking from the previous game. Those of you used to the higher difficulties of the first Brigador will be accustomed to being fired on immediately – and how we made that “fair” was to give enemies with high lethality weapons like the Zeus a very broad aim cone – but reproducing this same behavior in BK has turned out to be extremely unforgiving. So, at the edge of the screen in BKTEST03 we’ve provided threat indicators in the form of yellow “Caution” icons to telegraph danger to the player. Other things, like firing delays and weapon spin-up/spool up for guns to simulate more “human” reactions are being worked on in order to dial back the lethality of engagements.

Lastly, in a separate pen we have a number of Dennises and Nospol cops standing around. Although they are passive, when the Betushka opens fire you will see the Dennises scatter and Nospol crouching down - this is an instance of the flinch/flee behavior, which is tied to the morale system mentioned earlier. In short, depending on what sort of combat is going on, the crowd and cops may either attempt to run away or crouch down to lower their profile.

[h2]🥊BKTEST03: BROKEN GRID ARENA (14:45-22:30)[/h2]
The theme of Broken Grid Arena is a first attempt at making a level suitable for vehicular combat. Our objective is simple - take out a number of enemy Rounder tanks. The level's layout simultaneously allows for long sightlines as well as several chances at irregular intervals to break line of sight and flank.

For this final clip the player initially starts in plain clothes to demonstrate non-hostile NPC behavior. One thing we intend to do in BK is to allow the player the ability to scout out a level’s layout without entering combat. So, the player hops on a nearby motorbike, comes across an enemy Rounder tank that doesn’t fire on us… but does run them over (because trample damage is now in the game). Oops.

Restarting, the player jumps in the Betushka provided at the spawn, demonstrates the new mousewheel zoom function, does some prop destruction and takes another route through the level. Another Rounder ambushes the player off screen so the player deploys smoke, strafes around and gets some rear hits in. The encounter is brief but just one main cannon round from the Rounder was enough to take off all the player’s shields and deplete a chunk of the Betushka’s armor, so they go hunting for another vehicle.

The player finds an Arlo agrav beside a building, so they dismount from their Betushka and hop in to encounter a second Rounder and attempts to ambush it from the rear using its superior speed.

Restarting the level, the player finds an empty Rounder hidden inside some bamboo scaffolding. With this, the player immediately ambushes an idling enemy Rounder, taking it out with one well placed shot to the rear (for those not familiar, in the previous game, enemy vehicles will take additional damage on side and rear hits – though so will the player). The Rounder is bulky, can roll through props without too much trouble, and the player proceeds to ambush a second enemy Rounder from the rear. The player then gets into a straight one-on-one with a third Rounder and restocks some lost shields.

Elsewhere in the level are a number of other vehicles, such as the Tuk Tuk, which the player briefly takes a spin in. Around the 20:10 mark, the player drives the Rounder from side-to-side in front of some props to deliberately demonstrate the lighting system the game engine has. We won’t dwell on this point, but if you’d like a little more insight, feel free to check out this brief twitter thread on the topic.

Lastly, the player takes out a police checkpoint and two more Rounders, making use of the staggered layout of the props to juke the AI. In one instance you can see that an enemy Rounder “drops” two policemen fleeing from a destroyed Rounder that the player mops up with some MG fire. With the garrison of this level eliminated, the player ditches the Rounder, finds another Tuk Tuk, and races to the exit.

[h2]🔎WHAT WE FOUND OUT AND WHAT’S NEXT[/h2]
As said in the introduction, the first three BKTESTs have not yet covered the intended loop we want prospective players to engage in. However, that does not mean we didn’t learn anything from the BKTESTs. What is not mentioned in all of the above are the various hurdles that were involved just to ultimately produce such footage.

In terms of the art pipeline, several changes to the previous Brigador workflow had to be made in order for the assets to look “good” at the increased output resolution – but this doesn’t just apply to the static props. Coupled with the different zoom, the initial attempts at processing the new vehicles (“vehicles” here also includes the playable on-foot units) at 64 sprite rotations would often give the vehicles a sort of “jerkiness” as you drove them round corners. So, in order to produce “smoother” turns, vehicles like the muscle car are actually outputted at 128 rotations. It’s for this reason that no mechs are present in these builds yet because the animations for their lower halves are going to take time to get right. On the upshot, as a result of all this new work, the speed at which outputted sprites can be added to the game is significantly faster than what it was like for Brigador.

In terms of scope, we didn’t demonstrate it in these builds but the introduction of the pierce/penetration system for weapons that was briefly mentioned in last month’s post (but is explained in more detail in this dev stream archive) has added significant breadth to the amount of data work required. We knew this was going to happen and it’s important to do the due diligence because we’re establishing a foundation for a lot of other aspects of gameplay. If we did not, it would be much harder to alter such things further down the line.

BKTEST04 was recently pushed in August 2022, and it includes what we hope is a robust implementation of the pierce and penetration system for both various weapon and unit types. To give you an idea of what was involved, look at this abridged table by our designer that reflects the current implementation of eight tiers of damage against respective armor types.

The first BK alpha is our next milestone, which we’re currently looking to deliver around Halloween this year.

Finally, you may have missed it but we’re running another community survey among our player base. It’s seven short questions that’ll help us get to know you better, with an optional form at the end to leave your email address if you’d like to be entered into a raffle to win something from our merchandise store. You will only be emailed if you win. Be quick, you only have until Thursday, September 1, 2022 to leave your response.

Take Survey

[h2]👋WELCOME CAVEAT[/h2]
Please note that at this stage everything about Brigador Killers is still subject to change. Or, in other words, this is a statement of intent and not a series of bold promises that we may not be able to keep. We also want to point out that we think it’s fantastic that quite a few of our regulars have maintained a level of enthusiasm for a sequel after so long, but it’s important that a) expectations be kept in check and b) where possible, we be transparent about what we’re doing as we go along.

[h2]📜FOR CONTEXT: A VERY BRIEF RECAP[/h2]
In 2014 Brigador (then “Matador”) started as a closed alpha.
In 2015 Brigador went into early access.
In 2016 Brigador went into 1.0.
In 2017 Brigador was re-released as Brigador: Up-Armored Edition (hereafter just “Brigador”).
In 2018 Brigador received a number of updates.
In 2019 news about a Brigador Killers (hereafter “BK”) demo at BitSummit broke.
In 2020 a well-known YouTuber covered Brigador, which contributed to us switching from BK dev back to Brigador dev.
In 2021 Brigador received three notable updates, after which we returned to BK dev proper.

In addition, between 2021 and 2022, thanks to the renewed success of our first game, we were able to grow our team to include an additional programmer and another artist. Chances are you already know of them. The programmer is the same person responsible for the Spacer Commander video you might have seen, while the artist impressed us by reverse engineering the sprite production pipeline to make stuff like this. Their addition has dramatically affected what sort of game we think we can make.

It’s now the middle of 2022 and it’s an understatement to say a lot has happened over all those years, but the short version is this: there were a number of false starts on Brigador Killers on which we won’t dwell. However, the past eight months of work has been extremely productive, so let’s get into some of it.

[h2]💭SO WHAT IS THIS GAME?[/h2]
Last month we put out a call for your questions about BK over on our Brigador page – thank you for leaving them! We’re going to lean on one such question for this section and answer some more further on:

Doctopus asked in a discussion thread:

What’s the difference compared to the first brigador game?

There are a number of ways to answer this, so let’s try to do so as fully as we can.

[h3]🎨VISUALS[/h3]
Here are some images from a recent BK test build. The environmental props and ground tiles are entirely new assets, while some of the vehicles are uprezzed versions of models from Brigador. We’ve still to redo various effects sprites – which are things like smoke, explosions, craters and debris – so those of you with a magnifying glass will recognize “old” effects assets from Brigador still in use in this test build (click to enlarge).


[h3]🔧TECH SPECS[/h3]
Brigador Killers is using an iteration of the same custom engine we used for Brigador. “Iteration” here means “several changes made to engine code in order to implement new things”, which means that, compared to our first game, hardware requirements have gone up. We don’t know about recommended system specs at this time but we are confident in saying that if your computer could only just barely run our first game, it will be unlikely to run BK at all.

One of the reasons for this increase in hardware requirements is the major graphical change that occurred early into BK’s recent development. In recent months we have doubled the output resolution of sprites, meaning you can see things in finer detail. For example, here’s the original Brigador signature Touro at three times the standard zoom on the left and the BK Touro at the standard zoom on the right but cropped (click to enlarge).


Or together in the same scene within an early test build of BK



In order to pull off this increase in visual detail the old limits on the game’s packfile were lifted. In plain terms, BK is going to take up more hard drive space than Brigador.

Other new things include complicated systems like wheeled vehicles or new variants of existing ones like gunfire influence maps. What this all fundamentally means is more math is going on – therefore a more powerful CPU and/or GPU than what you would need to meet our current minimum spec for Brigador will likely be required. We will (loudly and repeatedly) broadcast what these requirements are when we know them.

[h3]🎮GAMEPLAY LOOP[/h3]
In terms of gameplay, a frequent criticism of Brigador was something along the lines of “Cool mechs, but what else is there to do?”. This is because, once you get past the sights and sounds, Brigador is a fairly simple, arcade-like experience. Yes, there’s a strategic layer of learning how to manage enemy mobs at higher difficulties, but for a large chunk of the Brigador campaign you’d enter a level, destroy up to three types of things and leave. Progression was also fairly limited: successful missions in Brigador earned the player money, which they could spend on unlocking vehicles and weapons in the Acquisitions menu for use in Freelance mode or buying lore entries to flesh out the overall story. That’s all there was to it.

Needless to say, abstracting this way of acquiring new stuff via menus wasn’t very exciting for particular players, hence the criticism of “what else is there to do?”. So what we intend to do in BK is three broad things:

1. Scale the initial combat down from vehicles to on-foot
   
2. Merge Campaign & Freelance into a single mode where any loadout can be used
   
3. Let the player acquire unlocks during in-level play
   

Mechanically, the elevator pitch is akin to something like Hitman: Contracts meets GTA2. Your initial loadout will be limited but when we set you loose within a level, you as the player may find vehicles, weapons or items that can be acquired for current and future use. However, in order to add them to your permanent arsenal and use them in subsequent forays you will need to get out of the level alive. In addition, such vehicles and weapons will influence the force posture of enemy forces and affect a type of escalation system.

For example, you can go into a level incognito on foot with discreet weaponry and local security will not consider you a threat nor will they attack you on sight. Or, assuming you’ve unlocked it, you could strut in with a Touro sporting a Zeus and a Mãe Dois and it’s safe to assume local security are going to call HQ. Why you would go down either route depends on your objective. Maybe you’ll want to scout things out or simply jack a vehicle and book it before Nospol gets wise, or maybe you’ll need something with enough oomph to break into a Faber compound to either acquire or eliminate a high value target.

Regardless of how your recon goes, the idea behind combatting this “lack of things to do” from Brigador is to let the player take an active hand in the acquisition and behavior of weapons and vehicles within a BK level, rather than just buying things from a menu. In addition, the implication of all of the above means we need to make new weapon types suitable at the infantry/squad level, along with damage models and enemy behaviors to compliment this style of play.

[h3]🎵MUSIC[/h3]
Makeup And Vanity Set has already composed about 40 new tracks for BK. A few of them were already posted to our YouTube. Here’s the playlist of the tracks we’ve already made available.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]📖LORE/PLOT[/h3]
Spoilers for Brigador but in case you missed it, in that game you were playing the bad guy. All the Brigador pilots were mercenary contractors for an intergalactic corporation called the SNC that disrupted Solo Nobre’s government so that it could take over the planet.

The action this time around takes place some time after the events of Brigador. You’ll largely be playing as the Nobreans that survived the mess the SNC caused. The action will initially take place on the planet of Mar Nosso, which is an SNC colony and new home for several of the Brigador pilots, but you’re not just coming for them.

With BK, the wider fiction is going to be fleshed out. You’ll learn more about the enigmatic Spacer clades and the intercorporate politicking with various security companies, as well as find out what happened to your favorite Brigadors from the first game.

[h3]📚(AUDIO)BOOK[/h3]
Both the text by Brad Buckmaster and audio version recorded by Ryan Cooper of the next book is done but there's still some cleanup required on both to make everything presentable – specifically, making sure the page layout on things like Kindle is good, and double checking the mastered audio. It is also a direct sequel to the events of the first book.

[h3]🤼OBLIGATORY RESPONSE TO “JUST ADD MULTIPLAYER”[/h3]
We realize it won’t stop a particular set of people asking so here’s our response – you give us at least ten times the amount of our lifetime revenue from Brigador, and cover the costs of increasing our staff to about 50 people, then maybe we’ll talk about the idea of making a functional multiplayer mode in Brigador Killers. That’s our proposal: give us a lot – and we mean A LOT – of money up front and maybe we’ll consider it.

[h3]💻PLATFORMS AT LAUNCH[/h3]

• Windows ✅
  
• Linux ✅
  
• Mac 🤔
  

Mac OS in recent years has become an extremely hostile environment for developers. For us there are two big reasons:

• Apple declared in mid-2018 that it has stopped supporting OpenGL which is the graphics library that the Brigador engine relies on
  
• In 2020, Apple announced it was making a major shift from Intel processors to ARM-M1 CPUs
  

Both of these together mark a fundamental change in how Mac machines function. It is only a matter of time until OpenGL itself disappears from Apple's operating systems, and with it the ability to run Brigador’s engine. Though projects like MoltenGL exist, the amount of work that would be required to make a Brigador engine game functional on a modern Apple machine will likely be unjustifiable.
That said, if BK ends up doing well, we’ll reconsider our current attitude towards Mac.

[h3]🏆ACHIEVEMENTS[/h3]
Given the new systems we’re making, we’ll hopefully be able to make more interesting ones beyond “Kill X of Y” or from acquisition unlocks.

[h3]📆ACTUAL RELEASE DATE[/h3]
We want to put some form of BK out in 2023 because at some point we have to pay for the roofs over our heads. We may go down the Early Access route like before but that’s still TBD. Regardless we intend to produce a demo for people to play as well so that no buy-in is required for those on the fence.

[h2]📃ANSWERING YOUR OTHER QUESTIONS[/h2]

AdeptOfHellLife asked:

Will there be any WMD's in BK? I wanna nuke the establishment.

Modding weapon values and explosion radii will still be possible in BK via the F1 debug panel just like in Brigador. You’re more than welcome to mess around with weapon values and make screen-filling explosions, though if you crash the game as a result of doing so don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Also, any plans for trailers or demo-version, even?

There are plans to make a demo. A trailer is going to be a major marketing beat and we don’t have enough of a game yet to make one.

Will there be multiple endings to Campaign?

Telling you how it ends before it’s even started is a bit premature.

Will I pick my loadouts for Campaign missions from set options like in original Brigador or will it be like Freelance?

Like we wrote above, the intention is that Campaign & Freelance are going to be merged into a single mode. Unlocks will be tied to your actions and progression through this mode. The current idea is that the things you acquire in later levels can be used for deployment in early ones.

Will Freelance mode make a comeback?

We are not ruling out a sandbox mode of sorts, but whether such a thing will be suitable for the game we’re making remains to be seen.

Kris in a discussion thread asked:

Are we still a lone mech/vehicle or will we have allies?

For now, the idea is you’ll initially play as a member of the Nobrean hit squad, but other members will be recruited into the fold. Our plan is that each person will have a certain effect on gameplay in that some will be better at using certain vehicle types or weapons. It will be vaguely reminiscent of Hotline Miami’s mask choice system. Though it’s a direct inspiration to this game, a Syndicate-like party-of-four system is not on the cards.

Omni asked:

Is BK going to be evolution of the first game, more of the same but polished and iteratively improved, or do you plan some revolutionary changes in gameplay? Not that I expect to outright share them at this point if you do.

Aside from being able to switch between vehicles within a level, one of the most significant changes is the pierce/penetration system. Our design lead discussed it along with some other in-progress features in a June stream you can watch an archive of here
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The short version is weapons will have varying pierce values while vehicles and environmental props will have penetration values. Example: shooting a handgun at a tank won’t do anything because of its thick armor plating.

Is BK going to take place on one planet, or many?

We intend the player to start on the SNC colony world of Mar Nosso, but who knows where you might end up…

Are you sticking to Tank-Mech-Agrav trio, or are we going to see some new type, flier maybe?

In terms of things you can drive around, we have added wheeled vehicles. Physically modelling the physics of driving a car is one of the most complicated things in game dev (there’s a great GDC talk from the Rocket League devs on this subject that we recommend watching) but is necessary in order to get the right feel. We do not expect to add any sort of “flying” vehicle to the roster.

Are you planning for the game to have some kind of coop capacity of any sorts (as implied by Brigador Killers)?

No.

…I always felt like AI can be its weakest link in its chain, and I often wished it was bit smarter about things, communicating better, trying to use its numerical advantage, contain, encircle and flank me, behaving bit more like actual combat force, are you per chance aiming for development in that area?

Yes. One of the issues presented by infantry-scale combat versus vehicle-scale is people do things like take cover in response to suppression. It’s still early days but we’ve been making systems to try to reflect this sort of behavior. Please refer to this newsletter from January for additional details.

A number of people asked about the topic of melee weapons

Melee weapons aren’t being considered currently, either for mechs or on foot. There will still be a melee attack/stomp for on-foot and vehicles but we don’t intend to extend this system out.

Leif asked:

What faction will the player be working for in Brigador Killers?

You’re not working for the SNC in this game. Primarily you will be part of a Loyalist cell that survived the devastation of Solo Nobre sent to Mar Nosso to get payback.

zwzsg asked:

I know it's the future and that the spacer one uses balls not treads, but still, drifting tanks???

(Yes we are aware that a tank drifting is generally a terrible idea, usually for the treads, but we'd like to find an entertaining middle ground between players looking for cathartic release and those with lifetime passes to Bovington)


Once again, thank you for the questions. Next month we'll give an overview of what happened with each of the recent BK test builds. Until then feel free to join our Discord server and maybe check out the #becks_best channel.

What are you buyin', Brigador? First 50 orders using the discount code TEXAS7 get 15% off.

The Stellar Jockeys online store is now open with a selection of posters, patches, an official Pinny Arcade pin, and a shirt. We can ship almost anywhere, and will be updating with new stock and designs from time to time as we step closer to the launch of Brigador Killers (which you should wishlist if you haven't already).

We'd like to thank everyone who's stuck with us through the development of Brigador—we wouldn't still be working without your support, so thank you. Please enjoy what we've put together for you:





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