[Beta Release]Loot Burn Kill Repeat - Action RPG

Been working for quite some time on this game now and there's still some stuff left to do, among other things the final chapter is not done yet so currently there's no ending.
From the start it was just supposed to be a scrap project I created while learning coding and improving my 3D and 2D arts, but I grew fond of it and kept working on it.

I released a beta build earlier this week on my blog in hope of getting feedback, hear other peoples opinions. So in case someone feel like giving it a try I'ld really appreciate any thoughts about the game.

About the game
The game takes place on a space station that has been attacked by monsters and must find a way to get off the station. The monsters are mainly humans infected by an alien organism (parasite) that've mutated them.

And that's it, heh- weak story but the main purpose of the game is mindless monster-killing, there's no message or meaning or anything really that I want to deliver.

There are some RPG-influences in the game, even though it's more or less a straight-forward action game. But there are quests/missions for the player to complete, in-game bounty challenges and a xp-level-system.

A little heads-up!
Visually I've tried to create a little goofy style for the game, but there's still alot of blood in it so anyone who dislikes that should be aware of it. I've been planning on adding a game setting to allow the player to disable any blood and decapitation in the game but I haven't seen it as a priority yet.

The game can be downloaded from here (Current build 4.2.0.0 - 29 May, 2016)

Spoiler: Screenshots

LBKR on IndieDB

 

I've uploaded a new version with some improvements and bug fixes and monsters have been balanced a bit.
Also I've begun working on tiles for a scene that will be available in the next update.

Spoiler: Update Log

- LBKR Update Log v4.1.1.2 -

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30 / 10 / 2015

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AI & Pathfinding
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- Fixed issue with AI not looking at player while attacking

- Fixed grid calculation issue in tile ox_straight09

- Fixed grid calculation issues for tile ox_straight03


Balancing & Gameplay
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- Reduced health and armor values of Hypoxia Worker mob, also increased its damage stats
- Reduced armor value of Enforcer mob and slightly increased its damage stats
- Reduced armor value of Infected Engineer mob
- Reduced health value of Brute mob and slightly increased its damage stats
- Reduced health value and increased damage stats of the Gardener boss
- Reduced health value of the Electrician boss
- Reduced health value of the Machinist boss
- Greatly reduced health value of the Navigator boss
- Increased Stats Level Modifier value of Feeder mob
- Fixed issue with enemy projectiles ignoring collision with the player characters hitbox
- Increased health and reduced damage bonuses for Hypoxia mob as miniboss (Master / Champion)


Audio
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- Added Audio effect for Fighter mob attack (Massive Strike)
- Added Audio effect for Grenadier miniboss modifier

Graphics
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- Added fancier effects when player cast the ability "Bash" (Soldier class)
- Added fancier effects when player cast the ability "Scrap Junkaton" (Tech class)
- Improved most the particle effects for player ability attacks
- Added more details and depth to the Navigator boss texture
- Added more details and depth to the Infected Scientist mob texture
- Added more details and depth to Infected Grunt mob texture
- Improved a few of the players animations, also added a variation for one handed attacks
- Improved attack animations of Infected Fighters ( Scientist, Burner, Engineer )
- Improved FX for miniboss "Grenadier" miniboss modifier

User Interface
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- Implemented quest and shop dialogue into the new dialogue window. The old clumsy-looking dialogue have been scrapped
- Fixed issue with dialogue manager showing an option to view a shop inventory when not speaking to a merchant
- Bug Reporter will now notify the user for what reason the mail service is offline ( if it's online )

Game World & Tiles
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- Added multiple tiles for upcoming chapter "Armory"
- Fixed issue with monsters spawning inside a wall in tile med_straight08

- Removed duplicate objects placed by accident in med_triway09

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Added missing floor colliders for ox_straight03
- Fixed issue with rare loot chest spawning in weird rotation in tile re_triway04


Other
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- Added Game Setting for physics quality level with three modes (Low, Moderate, High).
They determine lifetime and detail level of ragdolls and smaller objects affected by physics

 

I've been adding more detail to the damage models this weekend ( now a skeleton and guts are included ), aswell as made improvements to the decapitation editor tool I've written for the decapitation of monsters. The workflow is now much more user friendly and less time consuming.

At runtime the damage models require no more draw calls when created. The mesh data of the damage models (vertices, triangles etc. etc) are stored in the ragdoll game objects so when necessary, the mesh data of a selected damage zone is added to the characters mesh and the texture of the damage models are included in the characters main texture so no extra material nor texture is necessary.






Bonus screenshot:

 

Uploaded a few gameplay videos today, still making updates to the gore and dismemberment system and improving the damage models for all characters.

A new monster has been added to the game, will take a screenshot of it as soon as I'm satisfied with the texture. It probably need some adjustments done to the animations aswell, I was in a hurry when animating it yesterday evening so there are quite alot of weird twitching going on. .___.'

 

New update with alot of bug fixes available
As mentioned earlier improvements have been made to the gore system, aswell as alot of effects and audio improvements.

Oh, nearly forgot... I've created a beast database from which the player can view and see info on each monster in the game, the entries of the database drop as items from dead monsters and can be viewed when they've been collected

Spoiler: Update Log ( 4.1.2.4 )

- LBKR Update Log v4.1.2.4 -
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8 / 11 / 2015
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AI & Pathfinding
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- Decreased chance of fighter mobs spliting in half on death ( Becoming a Crawler )
- Added a new melee monster called "Slasher"
- Increased skill and vital bonuses and modifiers for Fighter minibosses
- Increased skill and vital bonuses and modifiers for Hypoxia Worker minibosses
- Reduced health of The Gardener boss and slightly increased its damage stats
- Fixed issue where Hypoxia Workers sometimes couldn't find any projectiles to fire
- Increased damage stats for the Brute monster
- Increased vital and skill bonus and modifiers for Hypoxia Worker minibosses

Balancing & Gameplay
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- Added preset modifiers for the item generation system, so apart from randomly generated stats modifiers and gem slots there are now
items available with pre defined modifiers including event-based modifiers such as Damage Reflection
- The travel station world map will now only allow the player to travel to discovered locations
- Fixed issue with Alien Marker objects showing "(Clone)" in their interaction hint name
- Fixed issue with one of the Hypoxia Workers attacks did not fire any projectiles
- Added a beastiary which allow the player to display any collected data of monsters in the game

Audio
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- Added more audio effects for the dismemberment and combat systems
- Increased the master volume for all AI combat audio effects

Graphics
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- Begun adding more detail to damage models
- When a character lose alot of limbs at once large chunks of meat will be dropped now.
Earlier if a character lost half of its body only one single limb would drop (chest or hips).
- Limbs now spray blood on geometry
- Blood splatter size is no longer set by random, it varies depending on damage scale.
- Added particle effect for when the player use the ability Barrage (Cryptic)
- Added hint icons for the travel stations world map to show if a location has been discovered or not
- Increased the animation speed for the boss "The Gardener"
- Added new effects for Resurrection Probes, also they will only emit particles if they're the currently active probe
- Fixed issue with the Grunt monsters mesh adding damage models in weird rotations and position offsets
- Changed gib model for Fighter mobs on chest dismemberment (Gore system)

User Interface
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- Created UI for the Journal and Beastiary Lists
- Fixed issue with two Quest Hint updates beeing displayed
at once when a quest is completed

Game World & Tiles
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- Fixed issue with Pathfinding grid calculation in tile ox_straight06
- Fixed issue with Pathfinding grid calculation in tile ox_turn01
- Fixed issue in tile ox_triway03 where empty backside of geometry was visible to the camera
- Fixed issue in tile mt_crossing06 where empty backside of geometry was visible to the camera
- Added an access route from Maintenance section to the Armory.
- Fixed issue with AI spawning inside geometry in tile mt_turn02 (Maintenance)
- Fixed issue with pathfinding grid calculations in tile ox_turn09(Oxygen)
- Fixed issue with pathfinding grid calculations in multiple tiles of chapter Maintenance
- Fixed issue with the spore growths in ox_endPortal(Oxygen) not beeing
removed after the player completed the quest "Decontamination"
- Fixed issue in tile ox_triway03(Oxygen) which caused the player
to repeatedly receive "Arena Entered" and "Arena Abandoned" hint messages
- Removed duplicate portal mesh in mt_firstPortal(Maintenance)

Other
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- Optimized item generation and item mesh pooling
- Changes was made to the save/load methods of player progress, if you're using a profile created in a previous version of LBKR
the progress will be reset to the first chapter.
- Force on monster ragdolls are now applied as close as the last hit limb as possible to improve the feeling of impact.
- Fixed issue with physics objects freezing instantly when enabled
- Fixed issue with Grunt monsters ragdoll colliding with the player character

 

v4.1.3.4 is now released, for anyone interested it's available to download from this page, there's been quite alot of changes made the last two weeks.

First of, I've decided to no longer generate the scenes at runtime, the loading time of each scene was frustratingly long, and also I noticed quite alot of memory was used. The memory part was expected ofcourse but I didn't think it would devour as much as it did. Quite alot of lag spikes occured later on when the GC began it's cleaning.

All damage models for the currently implemented monsters have been finished and added to the game, a large memory leak in the blood stain painter has been repaired and alot of smaller changes have been made in all related behaviours to reduce performance cost.

Object pooling has been optimized, alot of tiles which broke pathfinding has been repaired and pathfinding agents have been improved. Both in the pathfinding AI behaviour and the main AI behaviour some minor memory leaks've been fixed aswell.

Below is the monster I spoke of in an earlier reply to this topic by the way, along with a few other screenshots taken in the Armory chapter.

Spoiler: Update Log

Update Log 4.1.3.4

 

Despite the game beeing quite violent and gritty I felt the combat in the game was missing something and didn't feel quite right. I decided to add a camera shake effect that is triggered when necessary for a greater visual impact. The video posted below is a gameplay preview in which the effect can be seen.

Also the player stamina can no longer be restored by stamina consumables, it's now restored by killing monsters.
The amount restored per monster is calculated by a skill called "Energy Claim" being split by maximum stamina/energy value to get a ratio.

This was done primarily since there were two Attributes that were more or less useless before, now instead they have been given a quite important meaning, to increase the Energy Claim skill, which if not increased will leave the player und. I also noticed that combat required slightly more strategic choices now since the players energy could be drained with no stamina consumables to restore it, so to choose the proper ability at the proper time became more important.

Video with shake effect on IndieDB

 

It's been awhile now since the last game update, I did notice a whole bunch of stuff that required some attention though before the release of the coming update.

Too many changes has been made to go through every single one in detail but to mention some of the more important ones I'll start with the performance improvements made. I noticed the level load times beeing extremely long ( sometimes up to a minute. ) so that alone made optimization one of my priorities for the upcoming update.

Optimizations​

Alot of optimizations done to the initialization of AI behaviour and game logics in general, I hadn't done much with the AI since my last major update, and alot of the functionality was built on temporary work-arounds and a massive amount of delegates to make them work, it resulted in alot of GC allocations though.

I've fixed the AI classes now to work properly and reduced the number of delegate methods to only contain what's necessary.

One of the largest performance thieves were the Corpse objects of the AI though, they generated a new mesh on startup that contained the damage model. I've made changes to the Gore system now that requires the corpse to load the damage model pre-runtime.

This required the Damage Model tool to be more or less completely rewritten, since the character meshes must be generated from the editor and saved as an asset. This method also resulted in each corpse model having alot more triangles since all damage models are combined into the mesh, however no meshes have to be generated at runtime and the only thing that has to actually be modified at runtime is the Mesh's uv coordinates.

Considering AI count in each level range in between 300 - 500 instances this cut down GC allocations and memory cost redicilously much, also level load times is now more acceptable around 4s - 8s on my computer. (As mentioned, compared to around 1 minute in earlier versions.)

Alongside those more important fixes, a couple of memory leaks have been repaired in Item and MobMod behaviours.

Game Balancing​

The game difficulty was really uneven in general so I've tried to balance the game on pretty much all fields.

Monsters armor rating has been greatly reduced, but to compensate, their level modifiers have been increased, also item tier levels are unlocked more frequently, this was primarily done to allow the game to be easier in the first game levels to allow the player to find proper gear before facing more powerful monsters.

Damage stats and modifiers have been balanced for all monsters but for miniboss generated values and modifiers some balancing is still required.

Passive item modifier values have been reduced, aswell as item preset modifier values, consumable item cooldown's have been increased and item condition-related stats reward/penalties are now set more evenly, also a limiter has been applied to avoid items with minimal values beeing generated for higher item tiers and bounty gear. Gem tier modifiers are greatly reduced.

Most of the player ability costs have been increased, also cooldown modifiers have been modified.

New stuff​

As a character profile is loaded the game will now validate any data belonging to said character to ensure they all contain the required info. Previously alot of data-loss and deprecated quest data occured on game updates, this issue is now fixed thanks to the data validation.

The Enhancer NPC can now identify unknown items collected by the player, these items usually contain a fixed modifier that gets enabled when identified and equiped. The Enhancer also allow the player to remove gems from any gear in their inventory.

2 new bounties have been added "Clean Swipe", in which the player must kill all monsters in a specified level and "Head of the Snake" with the goal to eliminate all monster officers in a specified level.

Survey bounties have been made more challenging now, with waves of monsters attacking the probe while the player's guarding it.

A new ranged weapon projectile type was added, called "Bouncer". They're primarily used by shotguns and will bounce on any non-organic surface it hits

A new equipment slot has been added "Holster". A secondary weapon can be placed in the slot, allowing the player to quickly swap between the primary and secondary weapon in combat, without opening the inventory.

This was more or less required since the ranged weapons now use plasma fuel to be fired. To avoid leaving the player defenseless if he/she runs out of plasma the player can simply swap to the other.

8 new tiles have been added to Chapter 4 ( The Bridge ) aswell as a new quest, that lead the player to discover the level "Armory"

New combat trackers have been added, also a UI pop-up now display the player's chain-kills and multi kills in combat.

I've begun fleshing out the boss fights a little, with events occuring during the battle, with waves of monsters, or traps beeing activated etc. etc. There's still alot of stuff left to do with this and it won't be finished until the coming update is released.

2 New alien Marker buffs have been added, "Energizer" ( Energy refill ) and "Claimer" ( Energy Claim skill bonus )

4 new fixed (preset) item modifiers have been added. "Magic Find Chance" modifier, "Painbringer" (Damage multiplier), "Regenerator" (Vital regeneration over time) and "Reflector" (Damage reflection)

Changes​

The player's stamina vital has been replaced with what's called "Energy", consumables can no longer refill the vital, instead it is aquired by killing monsters. The amount of restored energy points are determined by a new player skill "Energy Claim".

Some of the most notable changes done at the moment are all new UI icons for the player abilities, also the Soldier class's "Ram" ability will now inflict damage on all monsters caught in the players path.

The Tech's "Bomberang" ability jas been replaced with a set of up to 3 proximity mines that are deployable as traps. Before the update's released the final Tech ability "Sting Grenade" will be added aswell. More info on that when it's done.

Apart from the mentioned thingies above alot of minor bug fixes, improvements and changes have been made. I'll post a full update log by the time the new version is released.

 

I added the final ability for the Tech class now, the "Sting Grenade" is a cheap ability that deal relatively small damage but has a very short cooldown.
I also uploaded a gameplay video, all player classes are played in it and most of their abilities used, also there's some clips of the new ranged weapon projectiles and other goodies that's been added for the coming update!

 

Haven't updated this thread for quite some time, and quite much has happened since the last update, apart from an endless number of bug fixes and tweaking some new game features has been implemented.

Achievments​

First off, I've finished the achievment and game stats tracker objects for LBKR, there are still some stats and achievments to add, but the systems are functioning as they should atleast.

The LBKR Game Stats Tracker record the player's progression during the session, the achievment system then check the game statistics at a fixed delay to see the progress of any achievments that are still locked. The achievments can also be unlocked by activating a trigger at runtime.

As the player unlocks an achievment bonus experience and bounty reputation is rewarded, and for the more difficult-to-attain achievments, ability points will be gained.

Camera & Input​

Since I released the beta of LBKR I've received alot of feedback and critique regarding the way the player character is navigated aswell as various camera-related things.
The input is now aligned with the camera's direction, and not the PC's look direction as it was earlier.

Furthermore, the camera now has two preset settings, the selected setting is determined by the type of weapon that's equiped by the player. Ranged weapons will move the camera away from the player to give a better view of the area, aswell as to give the player time to notice and aim toward incoming enemies, whilst if the player has a melee weapon equiped the camera will zoom in.

Updated boss fights and arenas​

All boss battles in the game has received a touch-up, and all bosses are now more challenging aswell.
Apart from balancing the boss character's stats and skills, regular-ranked monsters will spawn and attack continuously during the battle. This both helps with making the fight more challenging but also prevents the player from running out of ability energy.

Four new bosses has been added aswell, each one will require a puzzle to be completed to be able to defeat them.

AI Improvements​

Flocking behaviour and avoidance has been implemented for all monster AI, monster flocking has been a major issue for me earlier since monsters in LBKR usually come running in large groups. This could often lead to the monsters getting stuck in eachother, but also to be pushed away and get stuck behind scene geometry aswell. Also some tweaking has been made to how the AI should decide their next move if no path could be found to their target position.

There are still a few situations for which the AI will be completely clueless what to do, as an example if the player use an elevator to escape and there's no other way leading to the same floor that the player's on.
I plan on making some custom nodes at such places that could allow the AI to enter vent ducts or climb on walls to reach the player's position.

Entering the Void​

If anyone reading this has played the beta he/she has probably noticed the button "Challenge Mode(N/A)" just above "Story Mode", shown in the Main Menu. Originally I had the intention to add unlockable mini-levels that, when unlocked, could be entered from the Challenge Mode, each containing a side-quest and boss-fight.

I scrapped that idea though, instead I've created keys that are dropped by a rare monster-type called "Void Guardian", the guardian has a small chance of spawning at each time a new game level is loaded. By figuring out how to use mentioned keys they will grant access to, what would've been the "Challenge Mode" levels.



This far I've just finished the first level/challenge that takes place outside the IGCC stations, introducing a slightly more open level-design, compared to the relatively narrow corridors and chambers of the IGCC stations interior.

The challenge-missions contain alot more monsters than what would be found in a story-level, also mini bosses spawn in greater numbers and monsters levels are adjusted to match or overcome the player's level unconditionally. ( In the story mode the monsters levels are adjusted to the player's level to a certain point, however each story-level has a min/max-limiter to allowed monster levels. )

UI​

Some updates to the user interface also felt appropriate so first off, the scene transitions are marked alot more obvious now, and also provide the player with more information both on the current location and the destination.

Likewise for arena-encounter hints, they take up alot more screen space now, and SFX for said event has been changed to a more distinct audio clip.
In general, interactive buttons has been given new colors to make it easier to see what can be used to progress in the UI windows.

Hm, It feels like I've forgotten half of what I was about to write here, but I'll settle with this for now. The clock's 03.00 over here and I want to sleep!

 

I've done some major updates to the inventory and journal UI windows as can be seen in the screenshots below. I felt that alot of my UI windows were really small and messy so this was an attempt of fixing it. I still have a bunch of more UI things to update and err, unmessify... though.



Some major changes was made to the item system, earlier item's could be enhanced by gems collected by the player, that approach has been scrapped completely and replaced by item modifiers. Less common items may generate item modifier slots that can be unlocked by the player if he/she spend crafting materials.
The modifiers range from basic statistic buffers to more specific bonuses like reflecting taken damage back onto attackers, health steal and alot more.

This also required some new items to be added, namely crafting materials. They've been implemented as a type of currency and will drop from monsters and loot much like the Shard/Cash currencies. There's a total of five collectable materials, one for each item rarity ranking, and their likelihood of beein dropped is controlled by the material's ranking. The most rare crafting material can only be dropped by Masters, bosses and rare loot objects.



Also I finished some textures I've left untouched for several months, I find texture painting quite boring and frustrating, sad to say, this in combination with my bad habit of leaving the textures in a "to-do-sometime-nevermind" pile is obviously not to my benefit. xD

But as I said, I grabbed myself in the collar and finished some of them, one example out of many are the texture atlas I use for some of the geometry in the "Crew Quarters" chapter. Now all signs have received content.

 

I'm currently putting alot of effort in fixing bugs, updating and improving the user interface of LBKR and adding as much content as I can before my first public release which I've decided to make within a near future.

A new race of monsters has been created and implemented, called the "Forsaken".


Added more variety to ranged weapon sound fx, ranged weapon projectile types and created a couple of new ranged weapon types aswell.
Sub-machine guns that has a rapid firerate but has reduced impact, the SMG's can have both bouncing projectiles and regular projectiles that are stopped upon impact.


Projectile Launchers that fire proximity mines, grenades, rockets and similar types of projectiles, dealing damage over an area of influence from the impact point


Minor changes made to the main menu UI in order to fit with the UI of LBKR in general.


The achievment UI window will now give information of which player character accomplished an unlocked achievment and at what date it was unlocked.


Cleaned up the player's ability UI window, still some things to fix- not to mention proper names for each ability enhancement option and to sort out the messyness of the right panel that display the selected ability's tooltip.


Completely new look for the Player Log UI. The Log now also display information of any NPC's in Secure Command that has new missions available for the player. In the uper panel local scene information will be added later, as an example, updates of mysteries or random events that have appeared on the active scene.


As can be seen, the number of log-categories has been expanded aswell to help sort out logs more easily.


Minor changes made to the Mission list UI, the mission list, selected mission window and bounty window are now enabled at the same time by default to give the player a more smooth progression.


Changes the appearance of the quick-travel UI, personally I liked the old style better but the style it has now, with a list for each chapter, from which the player can instantly see the location names, sorted in order is more logical and less confusing.

 

Just released the first (non-beta) version of the game. It can be downloaded by following the link in the first post of this thread.