As you can probably tell from the fact that you're at this page, we now have our store page live for "In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor."

What is this game?

In short: you get to pretend to be a raptor, but in computer game form instead of just walking on your toes at home. (Or was that just me? I'm afraid I have to admit I did the toes-thing at school, even.)

What's the plan for this space?

I've been doing a variety of dev diary posts about the game, and now those will be posted to the steam community as well as the Arcen blog and forums for the game. So definitely give the game a follow if you want to keep up with the news. Or wishlist it if you want to keep up with the news and be notified by Steam when the game comes out!

What have I missed dev-diary-wise so far?

Some pretty cool stuff! Two videos, and some substantial writeups. If you're a fan of reading nuts and bolts stuff, or seeing some of the behind the scenes bits, I talk about and show those things in pretty good depth.

• Dev Diary #1 is part of this announcement post, which also talks about our use of Unity Asset Store assets and how we do that: Announcing “In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor”
• Dev Diary #2 is a freaking hour-long video: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man. Sorry about that length -- though people have said it is interesting, at least.
• Dev Diary #3 is a video that is thankfully only 10 minutes long: More Audio And Video. On that one I learned my lesson and did some substantial editing-down to get to the good parts and avoid some tangents and places where my train of thought derailed a bit.

When can I buy this game?

That... is a very good question. We may or may not do early access. If we do, then potentially you can get into that in about a month (sometime in June).

How much will it cost?

I'm honestly not sure on that just yet, either. If we go the early access route, then the plan would be to release something that is bulky and fun, but which could be built out more. If we go that route, then we'd release it at a starting price substantially lower than what our v1.0 price would be. In that scenario, the price would gradually go up as the game gets larger and larger. If there's a huge popularity to the game during early access, then we'd probably build it out more and the final price might be a bit higher for those who don't get in earlier. Overall I don't see this costing more than $15 USD at v1.0, though, and ballpark I'm presently thinking of $6.99 for the starting EA price. If we do EA.

How accurate are your system requirements?

Very inaccurate! The minimum system requirements on the graphics card side are literally the bare minimum to actually have the game function. Below that it won't launch, but with that I'm not sure you'd get any appreciable framerate you like. The recommended system requirements are a stab in the dark based on other similar games, since I have limited styles of hardware to test on. But most likely you could get 60fps on that hardware. Figuring out the real system requirements, and having time to help optimize things for people's specific machines (whether that means options they can toggle or adjust, or code improvements or whatever) is one strong argument in favor of EA.

What sort of rig are you running?

Personally I am developing this on a GT72 6QE Dominator Pro G laptop. Crazy as it sounds, because I always built my own PCs -- I used to do that for a living, and prior to that I built PCs with my dad going back to the 386 days. Ah, sweet memories of my first pentium. Anyhow, I wanted the mobility of the laptop, and I wanted specs that were good, but not TOO good. If I was running some crazy SLI setup that almost nobody has, then I'd get a very different experience from most people who tried to play my games. As it is, it's rocking a GTX980M, and that's a bit of a jump above the average card already.

What performance do you get with that?

On my 980M, I've mostly been playing in test levels thus far, not real ones constructed and fully optimized using my custom occlusion system. Despite that, in the worst instances I'm dropping to only about 30fps, and on average I maintain a high-50s framerate. In places that are closer to approximating the actual load of a real level (read: where the occlusion system is able to properly do its job), I'm routinely getting 200fps or more.

What is the status of optimization in the game?

Premature optimization is always a bad thing, but I've also been very frustrated in the past with many early access games (or release games) that don't pay any attention to it at all. One goal of mine has been to figure out "budgets" for various things (destruction physics, camera post-processing effects, dynamic objects, particle effects, static meshes, etc) in terms of GPU/CPU latency. Overall my goal is to make it so that I maintain a smooth 130fps or more on my machine, so that lower-powered machines can hopefully maintain 60fps either at the full graphical settings, or with things turned down a bit. In my case, these performance goals actually play into level design itself. The way that the mazes are created is specifically designed around the custom occlusion system that I created, which in turn was developed specifically for this kind of game. The test levels I've been running around in and having lower framerates in have these issues specifically because they are not split up and designed properly like the procedural levels are. In a lot of cases, because of their design, the occluder has no choice but to show about 5x more of the level than it otherwise would, and that's when the framerate hit kicks in. When it's able to show just an appropriate section of the level, then that's when I'm back to 200fps or so.

Other questions?

The best place to reach me is actually the official forums for the game. I'll try to catch things on the steam community as well, but there's a much higher chance that I'll miss it for at least a few days if you're posting somewhere other than the arcen blog or forums. NB: I'm actually going to be unavailable from tonight until Monday morning -- go figure on that timing, eh? -- so I'll be slower to respond than usual. But if you have press requests, then contacting Erik at arcengames at gmail dot com will still get you in touch with us during this period.

[ 2016-05-12 13:36:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Be a velociraptor.
  
• Feel like a velociraptor -- this is our central design goal.
  
• Procedural levels: a pleasing blend of hand-crafted locales and randomization.
  
• Fight robots! Tear giant ones limb from limb, pounce on small ones, and try not to die.

Sell Me The Idea In One Sentence

If I have to convince you why being any form of dromaeosaurid is freaking awesome, then I'm not sure we can be friends.

This game is carefully crafted to give you the closest possible feeling of being one of these glorious monsters -- then turning you loose to do fun stuff. That means you don't get (or need) "frickin lasers," health upgrades, or character progression.

That said, as we know from historical documents, it's hard to be a raptor in a futuristic dystopia. Robots have guns, and you don't. Despite the fact that you're an incredible hunting machine, you've got your work cut out for you if you want to master the game.

What’s The Point?

• 1. For the pure fun of the thing. In 1993, a certain game let you be a raptor. The controls were iffy. The levels were short and static. It's very dated. Yet many of us still dust it off periodically -- just to be a raptor. Release Raptor gives you a far more satisfying, modern, dynamic experience.
  
  
• 2. For the challenge. Brutal Mode approximates what a real theropod might experience when attacked by robots. Aka, if you get shot by a rocket that's the end. You'll need to use all your raptor skills to tear your foes to shreds.
  
  
• 3. To play with kids. I want to be able to play this with my 5 year old son, but still have dismemberment (because that's cool). How to do that without blood or gore? Robots! Little robots = pouncing targets; giant mechs = dismemberment targets.
  
  
• 4. For a power trip. Brutal Mode is only fun for some. So we have Power Trip Mode, where you're on an invincible rampage. It's not about IF you can do it, but how WELL you do it. Speedrunning is encouraged. Your performance is scored and rated (avoiding hits, etc), so mistakes still have consequences.
  
  
• 5. For daily runs — maybe. My hope is to build out some daily leaderboards for both play modes, but no promises on that yet.
  
  
• 6. For the strategy of it — probably. The idea is to make these branching mazes kind of like AI War: Fleet Command maps in terms of how they provide you with opportunities. Each opportunity may increase the heat you take while moving forward, but at the same time net you some good things (thematic secondary goals like blowing up part of the facility, etc). I think I have figured out how to avoid excessive backtracking or frustration with this, but I don't want to state that as a definite feature until I have it prototyped in.

NB: Yes, we know that’s not a velociraptor (and there should be feathers).