[ Optional ambient background music to listen to while reading. ]
Hi everyone,
In the spirit of communication and transparency, I’ve decided to start writing monthly Development Blogs in regards to our Half-Life 2 Roleplay server. These will not substitute the occasional development updates in the discord, but will instead complement them by going more in-depth on the details and design choices, as well as some more roleplay-oriented things that would otherwise not be mentioned anywhere.
[ Footage of a new character loading screen. Duration of loading screens for non-initial loads is shorter. ]
Unfortunately, largely due to demotivation and lack of drive, nothing much happened for the better part of this month. I have started picking things back up big time though, as you may have noticed from the occasional Crowlite commit message. Half-Life 3 hype, and all.
Part 2 and Lancer 2 Port progress is continuing steadily, slowly chipping away at the many custom features the previous iteration had. After some planning, rethinking, and studying on previous iterations, Part 2 has somewhat evolved into more than a port, which is good when considering the final product, but bad in terms of a release date.
This makes the porting process itself particularly cumbersome - while Crowlite shares similarities with Clockwork and translating between the two codebases isn’t too difficult, it’s the new and improved design language that I’d like to apply into Lancer 3 that makes porting more difficult. The recurring question is: How can this specific feature be improved from Lancer 2?
[ Ground view of the City 8 citadel under construction from Part 1. ]
I feel like Part 1 has served its purpose acting as a testing ground for Crowlite and playing with a few new gameplay and roleplay ideas. As far as I’m concerned, it could be considered as a large playtest which succeeded.
Unfortunately, with nothing moving and the team not having the capacity or capability to dedicate enough time to keep the gears turning, the server currently serves no purpose other than to drain the community's funds every month. For this reason, I’ve closed the server down for the time being to turn everyone’s attention and focus towards what is most important, now: Part 2.
[ Lancer 2's Lock Busters ported into Crowlite. ]
As originally mentioned in the previous progress thread, Part 2 was going to be an almost 1:1 port of Lancer 2, but in Crowlite. However, Lancer 2 ended up where it did because of mistakes, flaws, and shortcomings. While it would be very nice to experience Lancer 2 in a less laggy, more clean environment, the underlying issues would still be present, and Lancer 3: Part 2 would land exactly where Lancer 2 did.
Because of this, I’ve decided to alter the plan marginally, and make Part 2 not only just a port, but also an improvement on Lancer 2’s design philosophy and gameplay systems, to address several flaws and issues that lingered in the past.
On the development side, this mainly revolves around making sure the server is fun and engaging from a gameplay perspective, especially during low-pop, to avoid the downward spiral that we’ve fallen into time and time again: Inactivity due to inactivity.
A comprehensive ‘Design Document’ has been created to address all these issues, which may be released once it’s further refined and finalized.
[ Lancer 3's new Crafting Menu and 'Recipe Details' panel. Recipes shown are placeholders for testing purposes. ]
Among many things, I want to improve on the existing features and address any problems that were holding them (and by extent, the server) back. This primarily relates to factions and how we make sure they are all fun and engaging to participate in, without making them an unfun chore that you have to treat like a 9 to 5.
While the aforementioned Design Document goes through all of these in much greater detail, I wish to bring up some examples:
Ministry of Possession and Assets
The Civil Workers' Union, now rebranded to the Ministry of Possession and Assets, suffered from a number of issues, including logistical issues with gameplay and a chore-like gameplay loop. To address this, Part 2 will include a revamp of how logistics are handled when it comes to stock, imports/exports, workshift quotas, trade, etc, to make these processes easier and more engaging.
Engineer Core
We’ve decided to keep the Engineer Core around from Part 1, and split the MPA (CWU)’s responsibilities with it. While the MPA may focus on more gameplay-oriented, semi-grindy gameplay, the ENC will revolve around more complicated, roleplay-oriented workshifts and jobs, to ensure it’s a fun standalone faction while taking some work off of the MPA’s busy schedule.
Amaria Healthcare
To attempt to defeat the boring reputation that the faction has received in this community over the years, increasingly advanced medical features will be introduced over time, to try and make the faction more fun and engaging not only for the doctors, but also the patients. In addition, we’ll experiment with some Amaria Healthcare-hosted work cycles (as originally intended in Lancer 2), featuring some new fabrication systems borrowed from the MPA.
[ Screenshot of the new Work-In-Progress World Map for Part 2, featuring new lore and utilizing new software for extended & improved functionality. ]
One thing that I want to try and treat differently is the lore. Previously, our general approach was to leave everything kind of ambiguous to avoid pushing ourselves into a corner. I still think it was a reasonable plan, but it didn’t really add much substance to the server. How can anyone find the setting interesting or want to contribute to it if they knew nothing about it and it was exceptionally challenging for them to find out?
This time around, listening to your feedback and internal valuations, I’ll try to create something that is actually interesting, without steering too far off the source material to the point where it risks alienating anyone. I won’t go into details just yet, but rest assured that we’ll have something fresh to play around with, in comparison to Lancer 2.
That being said, I’m looking for people to help shape the world map and the lore of Lancer 3 itself. If you have experience writing and you would be interested in lending a hand, reach out to me! We’ll take all the help we can get.
[ Early look at the new Molotov system and breakable items system for Part 2. ]
I hope these monthly devblogs will help keep you all in the loop about what is happening. I want to communicate as much as possible, and I feel like this is a good first step.
I’ll take this moment to remind that our staff applications are open; Media Team, Event Team, Faction Management, Administration Team, and even Management Team. This is a big, ambitious project, and it cannot be successful without a strong team of people behind it.
Thank you all for reading, and see you next month.