[ Optional ambient background music to listen to while reading. ]
Hello again, Happy New Year!
I'd like to open by apologizing for the delay in the release of this devblog; some real-life matters mixed with the holidays caused an unfortunate delay. Regardless, we're here now, at last, for the Monthly Devblog #2. Many, and I mean many things have changed since the last update, and while the thread would become too long if I included everything, here are some notable things.
[ Small showcase of all the IFP system improvements. Pause ambient background music to hear footsteps more clearly. ]
We've made some major strides in improving Lancer's Immersive First Person system in Crowlite, in comparison to Clockwork. Lots of small little details were added, all of which contribute in their own way and come together to improve the gameplay experience, testing how far we can go to make you believe you're truly looking at the world through your character's eyes.
Changes include new footsteps for certain factions such as Civil Protection and the Engineer Core, a completely-new, natural, character animation-based viewbob effect, a subtle FOV change and strafing effect when running, as well as some new interaction animations for doors and some other entities. There is still more in the works, but I feel like this system is in a good enough place to showcase anew, for now.
Speaking of animations, though...
[ All of the new Civil Protection Alyx animations. ]
Civil Protection now have a new 'Character Mood' which changes some of their animations to ones backported from Half-Life: Alyx. These add a bit more variety to how CP characters behave, giving each one a more unique identity. These animations are available for everyone along with all other Moods available for the faction.
But that's not all. While on the topic of animations...
[ The new citizen pistol animations. ]
Remember those citizen pistol animations that were teased prior to Part 1's launch? Unfortunately, we never got around to implementing them due to certain conflicts that they introduced with other animations. Despite our best efforts at the time, we couldn't figure out the issue.
Now, with Part 2, we revisited them and managed to get our own, semi-custom solution in that functions with no conflicts or any weirdness. The animations are now a lot smoother and realistic, the player does not look like they're holding an SMG, and the animation does not freeze in place when reloading while moving.
[ Some of the new models used for the clothing items in Part 2. ]
Animations are not the only thing we worked on this past month. When it comes to models, a large assortment of new ones have been added to the content for use with clothing items. Not all clothing items have their own unique model yet, but more are being added slowly over time to try and completely do away with the basic citizen suitcase model that's been in use since Lancer 1.
Speaking of models, though...
[ The new Key Ring item in the inventory, with 4 keys inside. ]
Since Lancer 3 is using physical keys a lot more for things like padlocks, doors, and soon more, for certain characters - such as business owners - it's bound to become quite a hustle to carry them all in their inventory, all loose, taking up visual space.
To address that, there is now a new Key Ring item, designed to hold keys. It acts as a standard bag item, but only accepts keys. What's special about this, is the item's model updates dynamically to reflect how many keys are threaded through it.
[ Two of the new attribute leveling notifications. ]
With Part 2's increased focus on gameplay features, the attributes system has been revisited to re-introduce the basic progression system that was featured in most Clockwork servers back in the day. Now, all attributes that have some sort of actual effect on gameplay can also be slowly leveled up over time, improving their effects on rolls as well as other gameplay actions.
[ The new rolling effects in action, changing depending on the roll itself. ]
One minor feature recently added that I did not feel like was grand enough to deserve its own spotlight in the development channel relates to rolling effects. With some inspiration taken from Disco Elysium, rolling now feels more reactive and plays different audio & visual effects depending on your roll, how it compares to the previous roll in chat, and how different it is from said roll.
[ A couch prop with a custom physical description applied to it. ]
Clockwork's Physical Object Description system is back and better than ever, with expanded functionality and improved graphics. In Part 2, Admins and Game Masters will be able to apply descriptions like these to physics props for use in events, decoration, or just ambience.
On top of that, this system now also enables adding dynamic use actions to these entities on the fly, which can play a sound and/or put some flavor text in the chat for the player who interacted with them.
[ An example of the new typing effect for the chat display in action. ]
The well-known chat display system has been revisited and reworked to feature a 'typing' effect, making it slowly type out the displayed text over a few seconds. Pretty straightforward and self-explanatory, but it's just one more minor feature that I think contributes to the overall experience.
[ A radio distortion effect being applied to incoming radio transmissions. ]
I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read through this. Not many people do, so I figured I should reward those who do by showing off somethings that weren't posted in the development updates channel or featured in a development update video.
All in all, progress is continuing steadily, and we're getting closer and closer to the big day. I'm looking forward to talking again in the next month's blog. In the meantime, keep an eye out in the development updates channel for upcoming showcases on larger features, not shown here.
I’ll take this moment to remind once again 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.
See you again soon.
