Progress Report: April

Hello and welcome to another issue of Pathologic 2 Report—a post where we showcase our current progress in cool gifs!

Make yourself comfortable, ‘cause the post will be long and we’ll be happy to—

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…make a nice, welcoming game.

Um.

That was the new district-by-district system of dynamic reputation, by the way, that ensures that if you choose to go on a murderous rampage, people will remember… but not in a magic ‘stop right there, criminal scum’ sort of way. Only the local community cares, so if your reputation in a district drops, you try to avoid the place… unless you need something or someone there.

To be done: The system works as intended, but we need to balance what raises and lowers your reputation, because the townsfolk seem reeeeally unforgiving of petty theft now.

 

Picking Herbs

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It’s like Skyrim, only everyone around is screaming in horror and pain

Picking herbs, that the Haruspex needs for his concoctions, is a process that needs to be both streamlined (i.e. the player should be able to find them with reasonable ease, not waste half an hour on a single blade of swevery) and non-intrusive visually. The system we’ve implemented works as intended, throwing something more on top of visual alerts.

To be done: The system works as intended and is finished.

Craft

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Hand-made immune boosters are better than the ones you buy in shops

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But brewing more efficient, valuable remedies also takes time. Happy Farm has never been so grisly!

Pathologic 2 is a game about planning and resource management, where crucial items often have several uses. Do you drink water or use it to make a tincture? Do you drink that tincture or use it on someone else to detect early plague symptoms in them? If making a remedy takes time, how do you plan your movement around the town? What do you use and what do you sell?

The choice is yours.

To be done: The system is in place and works, it’s all about balancing now.

 

Fights

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K.O.!

Melee fights have gone through several iterations since January, with us improving the stamina management aspect, adding new hits (pictured above), and ensuring the actions of your opponent are telegraphed well enough for you to be able to react in a smart way. The fights are now working properly in the actual game environment.

To be done: One-on-one fights are fun now, but the actual action in the streets gets too chaotic in a bad way sometimes. We also feel that the player isn’t properly encouraged to utilize all options available to them, making hit-and-run tactics too beneficial to try anything else. More tuning required.

 

Odongh Fights!

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‘Aww, but he’s so cute!’ (Famous last words.)

Just like in the original Pathologic, odonghs have unique animations and hit like a truck. They can also jump at you with a bestial roar. All in all, you don’t want to mess with them (but we all know that at some point you will).

To be done: Same as above, only with a bestial roar.

 

Cool AI Shticks: Conceding

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Well played

One way to ensure the player doesn’t feel pressured to murder everyone who rubs them the wrong way is introducing the long-promised non-lethal fights.

Let’s face it: while the mood and the role-playing of Pathologic 2 may not be about fighting, sometimes mugging people makes fiscal sense. There are several systems in the game precluding you from abusing this, like the aforementioned reputation and armed NPCs reacting to your violent actions… but some players will still be tempted to resort to violence, especially in self-defence, and we want to provide a middle ground for them. If an NPCs feels threatened enough, they will stop fighting and let you mug them. No blood will be shed.

(Unless you reeeeally want that sweet, sweet kidney of theirs.)

To be done: Tuning the AI. While conceding works as intended now, the whole complexity of NPCs’ behavior is not complete yet, so we may need to change things.

 

Cool AI Shticks: Points of Interest

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Oooh, a crate! Gotta investigate that!

While we don’t want the NPCs to be overly active, they keep learning things. For example, now they feel an occasional tingle of curiosity and inspect points of interest, like crates, walls (to lean against), windows (to look out of), and, of course, the most engaging of them all: dead bodies.

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As a bonus, most of our NPCs can look like they’re going through a really painful break-up at will

To be done: More points of interest… but also less chaos and unnecessary activity. We’re in that phase now when our NPCs have learned to do cool things, but tend to do them in ridiculous ways. That needs to be fixed.

 

Cool AI Shticks: Burning People

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Job well done

The flamethrower-wielding corpsmen can now detect infection and cleanse it with fire, both in infected NPCs and you. Unfortunately, the cleansing tends to have the minor side effect of the infected person dying. One more thing to keep an eye on.

To be done: The AI works as intended, but the victim actually doesn’t burn and once, waiting half a second to catch fire instead.

 

Voiceover

The voices work in Pathologic 2 like they did in the original game, with characters uttering single phrases—not voicing their written dialogue, but expressing an additional level of character. Most Russian lines have already been recorded, but they’re not implemented yet.

To be done: Actually introduce the voices to the game. Record the English version. Add subtitles.

 

Characters and Plots

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A rather CHEEKY-BREEKY fellow

Currently, most of our resources and energy goes into implementing actual content—that is, the storyline itself. While the majority of the assets are already complete, you never know when a particular event may demand a unique animation, item, or even subsystem. After a story is fully devised and all assets are available, it needs to be scripted and tested.

And not spoiled to y’all, which is why this part of the Progress Report is brief.

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Just like your fleeting life

To be done: The task of adding more content is never done.

 

More Locations

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Kind of hard imagining a young girl living here

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You can almost smell it

The town is built completely now, except some unique indoors. Now it’s all about polishing the locations.

To be done: Polishing. Polishing. Building more indoors. The ‘burnt-out’ (post-infection) districts are still to be added. Also, polishing.

 

Less Stupidity

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How Can Stairs Be Real If Our Legs Aren’t Real

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Oh, it’s the dancing plague

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Wheeeeeeeeeeeee

Like we mentioned before, before they get smart, they have to pass their stupid phase. The really, really stupid phase.

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They do perfectly represent our modus operandi sometimes though

  • Traven Kryazhov

    тинктура – настойка, готовится на спирту или водно-спиртовых растворах, а не на воде. Настой (Infusum) – на воде…

  • Gr0tAsk

    I can’t wait for this!

  • Glx Null

    Здравствуйте ребята, добавьте пожалуйста немного “камера шейк” при ударе по противнику в рукопашном бою.

  • интересно когда выход планируется

  • kiha

    На траву наводят светлячки?)

  • Kameron Lavender

    Happy to see an update! Love the work and love you are putting into this. Thank you for this and all your hard work!

  • Medwedius

    “Можно почти услышать запах”
    Если мешки будут качаться на ветру, будет еще более крипово. =)

  • Chasmas

    Looking good! Keep up the great work! Thank you!

  • Bird Aivill

    У Вас просто ничего не получиться.
    Подняли настроение спасибо, основных персов будут озвучивать надеюсь те же люди , что и в оригинале? Или это как раз и есть пример
    новой озвучки главных героев?

  • Burthram Mans

    This rules! 😀

  • ZZmeyka

    Чики брики и в дамки X) Очевидно это Гриф?)

  • Leskiy

    Проснулся этим утром с навязчивой мыслью “А что там с Морочкой?”
    А, вроде, все отлично. По крайней мере, посмотрев этот отчет у меня аж ладошки вспотели и зачесались. Молодцы! Атмосфера складывается из мелочей и даже на коротеньких гифочка, фразочках чувствуется, что в игре все будет как нужно. Жду с нетерпением окончания проекта.

  • Недавно перепрошел Мор и понял, чего там не хватало городу. Ветра. Все таки степи и ветер тут должен быть постоянный спутник.
    Надеюсь добавите когда-нибудь хотя бы в качестве ничего не влияющего погодного эффекта.

    Но судя по времени это до 50ых годов, поэтому еще не было техники лесопосадок. Отец рассказывал, там были такие ветра, что детей могло легко сдувать и они кубарем катились по улице.
    И еще, конечно, маленькие мини-смерчи. Сам пару раз такие в жизни видел
    https://youtu.be/7FhZXRWyXSo

  • Alexander Wande

    Drag’n’drop это конечно все интуитивно, хорошо и замечательно, но сделайте, пожалуйста, для чуть более освоившихся игроков мгновенный перенос вещей по двойному клику (или вроде того), массовую закупку с shift в магазинах и так далее. По опыту, перетаскивать вещи туда-сюда надоедает чуть ли не с третьего раза.

  • Yeisha

    Спасибо вам за этот интересный отчет! Было очень приятно его читать.
    Мне очень нравится личность Исидора, но к сожалению, всю игру он был не очень живой, только слышно его иногда. Может в этот раз мы его увидим в начальной заставке или еще где-нибудь? Или узнаем о нем побольше от горожан?

  • Magnus Steen

    This looks great, I can’t wait for the full release. But one comment – having the “reputation level” appear as text when you enter an area seems to sort of take away from the immersion that made the original Pathologic so great. Wouldn’t it be better to indicate the reputation level through having people either smile at you, be indifferent, or sneer at you menacingly as they pass you? It could give a feeling of “whoa, now I walked down the wrong alleyway…”

  • Дмитрий

    Интересно. Вот что заметил (Личное мнение):
    1. Размеры объектов. Некоторые объекты, реально огромны или слишком маленькие, плохая пропорция (масштаб).
    2. Мне нестрашно! Где чувство безысходности? Опасность, мало опасности.

  • Equivalent TheIncredible

    Где демонстрируется нокаут, я так понял Тёма бьет? Рукава вроде его.
    Как насчет немного качнуть ему камеру при ударе? Типа, от души бьет, всем корпусом, не то, что этот столичный хлюпик. ИМХО, добавит тактильности удару.

  • Surprisekitty

    Please, please don’t have too many of the same character model like in the original. Seeing 2 of the same lady in the ‘stair walking’ gif brings me flashbacks.