Killsquad News

Hello all!

Time for another dev diary. This week is a bit on the softer side, it's holiday season here in Spain so teams are slowed down a bit due to employees taking some well deserved rest.

This week a lot of work has gone into usability: tutorials, hovering information panels... tools so all the new systems are easy to understand. So for example here you can see some in-game tutorials:





In this case, these tells you about the importance of game elements. This second tutorial will make sure nobody ever asks again "what is the vector?"





Looking at everything we've done already for this update, the list is beginning to look quite good, here's all the new features:

- Dual weapons
- Weapons have elements
- Enemies have weakeness, elements and resistances
- Enemy generations with new behaviours
- Visible gears
- 6 consummable item slots to do per-contract builds for your heroes
- Checkpoints to save progress
- Shop to buy weapons and gears and consummables
- New contract browser
- Shorter contracts, more focused on new stuff
- New contract end screens with rewards
- Re-done the game Codex
- Re-done all the internal vector logic

So this is the "game logic" part of the build. The second part is the new enemies, which may or may not come on the next update. Here's the final mesh of one of them. If all goes well, these guys will be textured next week, so this is the last time you see their gray skin, we hope to show them fully textured in the next Dev Diary.





Last, but not least, here's some new art assets. These are ships you're going to see in Skua, our 4th planet, coming late this year. I hope to be able to do a major update about it soon, it's coming together nicely!



That is it for today. Next week it's enemy texture week, VFX, and more bug-fixing. And all our team will be back at work, so expect much more cool stuff then!

See y'all in the Outer Reach!!!

Hello all!

Welcome to another dev diary. This week we are bringing you two playtest videos, so you can see some of the systems we are working on in action. These are raw clips taken from gameplay sessions, so they are quite long, but full of interesting stuff.

On the first clip, you're going to see all the new UI systems: shop, contract map, equipment screens, gear on your heroes, etc. From there you'll see the squad embark in 2 contracts in a row. There, you're going to see checkpoints in action (in both instances the team gets killed by the boss and needs a second attempt to beat it). You'll also see the new reward screen at the end of the contract. During the battle, you'll see dual weapons and elemental damage. We're working to make these way more obvious visually, please keep in mind these videos are work in progress! Last, but not least, you'll see the new difficulty setting: the game is now way more challenging, as you have checkpoints and power-ups to counter the enemy strength:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The second clip is taken from a Kemmekh mission. On this one, we're showcasing the new lighting engine, with a beatiful night scene thanks to Unreal 4.25. Secondly, you are going to see a lot of power-up work, as Kosmo unleashes his power-ups on the enemies. Some of these are working as intended (Poison Area is a good example), while others are still WIP, but we hope you guys will get the idea behind this: to give players many more options to build up their hero for each contract.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

That is it for today. We really hope you see we're making solid progress, and you like the new systems. Work now focuses on VFX/SFX, balancing and bug fixing. Stay tuned for more cool stuff next week!

See y'all in the Outer Reach!!!

Hello all!

So this week's Dev Diary comes a bit late. We know, we promised "every Friday", but last Friday we had one of those gamedev-style work traffic jams, which made it impossible to post our weekly update. We're so sorry to be late!

Anyhow, here we are, once again, reporting to you, our fans.

We're happy to report the next update of Killsquad is already into playtesting. We have the following features in place:

• Checkpoints on all bosses
  
• Twin weapons
  
• Shorter, tighter contracts. Missions are now around 15 minutes, to maximize fun and reduce repetition
  
• Elemental damage on enemies, weapons
  
• Visible gears on heroes
  
• New contract browser
  
• New lighting system
  

And work still remains on:

• Items & Power-ups (this has 2 weeks to go)
  
• Permanent talismans (same-y timing)
  
• Tutorials
  

On a more visual note, we've been hard at work doing enemy generations. You know: the classic RPG mechanic where you get variations of an enemy with different behaviours and stats. So expect champions/elite versions, coming with the new enemies we've been showcasing in the last few weeks. All of this, together, will vastly expand the range of enemies and behaviours you'll encounter in your adventures in the Outer Reach. Here's some photos for your viewing pleasure:







This week, we hope to be able to share with you all a video showing you a full contract, with all the new stuff in place. Come by next Friday, we hope you'll like it!

See y'all in the Outer Reach!!!

Hello all!

If it's Friday, it's time for a Dev Diary! I am going to share today quite a few things, many of them work-in-progress. As we get closer to having a Beta, we are integrating systems, and so we can begin showing how things will work.

First of all, here's a quick clip we've done of the new UI. If you watch carefully, you'll see the weapon shop, the gear shop, the twin weapon equip, the item shop, and even the contract tree. Some things are still being worked on, but it's a pretty interesting clip:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

On the video above you'll see the items are currently placeholder. Here are some of them, in all their 3D glory. We expect to integrate them next week:



Of course, as now your weapons have elemental damage, we felt it would be a nice touch for contracts to show you their "typical" element, so you enter the contracts well prepared. So in these two shots you can see the damage of your currently equipped weapon (above) and the contract's recommended element (below)





And, of course, our art team is still working on Gears, our equipment. There's never too much of this in a game like Killsquad, here's today's batch!



On a non-visual update, here's two very important items:

1) We have shortened all contracts on Recruit, so they are around 15 minutes each. We feel less is more: shorter, more varied missions, with good replay value. Veteran will remain longer, of course.

2) You'll remember on our last Gathering we said our driving force was Progression, specifically, giving you guys more ways to customize your hero. We are already adding:

- Twin weapons
- Six item slots
- Weapon elemental damage
- Our two gears, which now become visible

Okay, I am happy to announce we have decided to add 2 more slots, which we call "Permanents" for now. Permanents are our way to give you guys more control over passive skills. In the current system, most Passives emanate from the weapons & gears. So, when you changed your weapon, you lost the passive (say, a shield passive). This put players between a rock and a hard place: you wanted to keep the Passive skill, but at the same time you need to move on from that weapon as it's not strong enough.

Wouldn't it be amazing if you could somehow "lock" your favourite passives?

Enter Permanents! You can wear two of these, and think about them like "cursed amulets": Each Permanent generates one passive, say shield in the example above. The way it works is, when you get it (for example via the Colosseum of the Unseen) the Permanent is not charged. So it will have a negative effect on your passive. In this example, shield will be *lowered*. Still, by using the Permanent and beating contracts, the Permanent will be slowly charged, and its true passive will flourish. So for example a Permanent giving you 25% extra shield, may start taking 10% from your shield, so you need to work on it to unleash its power.

We are thinking Permanents will be tied to the Unseen, so expect them to drop on Colosseum Battles. But this is still being discussed.

We feel Permanents are a great way to further customize your hero, and at the same time enhance the game's progression. What do YOU think? Post your ideas on the forums, we are always there to read them!

So that is it for today! Lots of stuff, and more to come as we integrate all game systems. We expect to begin announcing our Beta date soon. Still lots of work ahead, but the game is coming together nicely.

See y'all in the Outer Reach!!!

Hello all, another week, another dev diary! As you will see, we are making progress on all the items discussed in our last Gathering video. If you missed it, it's here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB3GlYDpsyU


1) We are working full steam on the new enemies. You saw one last week, and we bring 4 more today. Here they come!

We begin with a ranged enemy, for Wasteland07



This is a ranged enemy, for Kemmekh



This is a ranged enemy, for Palace of Pain



And here is a melee enemy for the Palace of Pain.



Expect these to drop on our updates 2nd half of 2020, to breathe new variety into the game. We're still discussing their behaviours, names, backstories. So, if you want to get involved, go crazy! Remember these are basic enemics, not bosses, so you are going to encounter them in relatively large mobs.

2) We have been working on the new shop, which you can see here. Worth noting is:
- The 2 weapon slots on the right hand side, with the elemental damage of each weapon. Remember you can now swap between your two weapons mid-combat
- The 6 item slots at the bottom, in this case, unoccupied
- On Troy's body, you can see his gears. We think they are a bit too small, what do you guys think?



3) More about the shop, here you can see the new Gear section, where you can check out all the features of each gear before buying it.



4) Talking about internals, we have completed our migration to Unreal 4.25. So expect images soon of beautiful sunsets, nights and more from the Killsquad universe.

5) And another internal item, the implementation of checkpoints is now complete across Recruit and Veteran, so gone is the frustration of being killed at the very last moment: you can now go back to the checkpoint, and take it from there.

We hope you like the progress of this week. We're deep into contract rework, balancing, and testing. If you want to know more, stay tuned next week!