Well, this is it. It's time to get (at least partially) serious. I've been fumbling aroud with Unreal Engine and other toolsets for the past few months and have finally set in stone my plan to use a custom game engine for Paranoia's finished release. To bring you folks along for the ride, I'll be doing development streams as frequently as my schedule allows, as I work around the clock to bring this vision to reality. A few details we should get out of the way immediately: - I am not a professional. I have no prior experience in the game industry and in fact would still be considered a hobbyist by any reasonable standard. - I am willing to be fully honest and open with any questions you have. I want to build Refractor as a brand built on honesty, no matter how cold. - The engine and all other software developed by Refractor will be open-sourced. Game assets remain proprietary so you will still have to purchase the game to actually play it. - For the time being, the streams will be on my personal YouTube channel. I am in no rush at all to get a business channel set up. Meet me here: [previewyoutube=lYeKZPPZ_-g;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]

[ 2024-03-25 00:25:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Return

Wow, it's been a long time! Over the past year or so, Paranoia has undergone a near reset. I've gone back and done a full redesign of the gameplay mechanics and a re-evaluation of the story, and I'm happy to say that it's all coming together! In the last announcement I mentioned a super abstract framework that would solve everyone's problems and make development super efficient. Well, after going back and learning a little more about data-oriented design, I can actually happily say I've thrown that in the trash. The game is being made on its own now, nothing superfluous, no side projects that have to be done first - at least until the demo drops. Here's a few more things that we're looking into:

Upcoming Playable Demo

I do PLAN on dropping a demo in time for upcoming events, but I won't make any promises, I already broke one (well, maybe two if you count the framework) and that's enough as it is. If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I'm a young guy who tends to get way too far ahead of myself! The demo right now is looking to be a short segment from the first act of the game, intended to feature almost all of the game's core mechanics, most prominently the close-quarters unarmed combat that I hope will really push innovation in the survival-horror space. The closest to what we're doing that I'm aware of is some hour-long (and mildly overpriced) DLC (which, by the way, I did play) for a game from 2017. Not bad, just not very long, so I think what we're up to is going to be a big deal.

Switching Technology

Currently, we're building the demo with Unreal Engine 5. It's likely that this will remain our engine for the game's full and finished development, but it's also just as likely that we'll be switching to an in-house game engine. We have a few reasons, but the most important one is performance. Note that if this happens there will be a fairly larger delay between the demo and the full release, because I'm writing the engine by myself, but in any case, it shouldn't be too awful. If I'm correct, the most time-consuming parts will probably be rebuilding all of the development tools and porting the content. While we do plan to go proprietary for future games, it's unlikely this specific engine will be used for them (the current working name is the Shadow Engine, but I'm not fully set on it yet), since I'll probably do a separate project for that. That's all for now! Catch you in the next update!

[ 2023-09-11 06:53:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, we, or rather I, owe you an update. It's been over three months since our last communication in the form of a rather depressing announcement that nobody asked for. Perhaps most importantly, yes, good news! I'm still alive and working on the project. This is what happens when you make the store page well before you even know what's going on with the game's framework. There's nothing quite embarrassing like having a game built and then suddenly realizing way too late into building your short pre-alpha that the framework you made intially is about as stable as a nuclear reactor built by a five-year-old. Which is to say, that it was not stable at all. It was basically glued together like an elementary schooler's first art project, because it was written a little over a year ago when I had no idea what I was doing. I've been working on the framework I mentioned at the end of the last update, trying to get that out and ready to go. In that year since I had duct-taped together the previous framework, I actually learned C++ and software structuring, and figured out everything I had done wrong. This new framework fixes all of those issues, and as I (believe I had) mentioned, this framework takes the form of a plugin for the engine, so it's reusable across multiple projects. Despite that, it's very abstract and low-level, so you're likely to not even notice we're using it. Don't worry, you won't be seeing any copy-pasting! So far it's actually coming along really well! I can't wait to show it off when I move to replace the current game build, which has basically sat stagnant since September, with this new framework. I'm sure you'll all love it! (Mainly because we'll actually be able to use it in a finished product...) Thanks for your patience and I'll see you all soon, Will Pimentel Rapidfire Computer Entertainment

[ 2022-12-19 05:53:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We have to make an unfortunate announcement regarding the current state of Conniption: Paranoia. Or, rather, I have an unfortunate announcement regarding the current state of Conniption: Paranoia.

The Bad News (keep reading after this for the full story)

To start off, I might as well say that I'm the only guy working on this game at the moment. While I do techncially have a team, it's a small team of three guys (including me) and I've put both of them, neither of which have sufficient experience with Unreal Engine as it stands, on "hibernation", since there's really nothing I can assign them to right now. It doesn't help, either, that we don't have an office, and that we work remotely from the comforts of our homes around the world. Absolutely none of this is their fault. It was my responsibility to ensure that we could make time to train with Unreal Engine and to learn the essential skills necessary for them to help me make this demo, and it was my responsibility to make this demo in the timespan given - from July, when we were notified about this, to just before October, where we could have the demo uploaded, verified, and ready to go. Neither of those happened, and I accept full responsibility for this. Rapidfire Computer Entertainment is committed to quality, and quality just wasn't going to happen as a result of my poor decisions. A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever. I extend that to demos, and I would rather our demo be "eventually good" than "bad forever".

The Good News

There's a lot of future plans coming along moving forward, thanks to this decision to refocus and allocate our efforts to other works that will make providing you a quality game much more feasible. Our team is composed primarily of artists, and I, for the most part, intend to keep it that way. That seems contradicting to what I just said about not having trained my team properly, right? Not quite. For the next month or two, I'm going to be building an extremely powerful game engine framework that will lay on top of Unreal Engine 5. This framework will enable my artist-dominated team to contribute to development very easily, allowing us to make great experiences while simultaneously allowing my team to get even better at what they are already incredibly good at. It's not efficient to stick a square peg in a round hole - I'd prefer that my artists be artists, because I can already confirm that none of them want to be programmers. I will be doing development live streams and uploading devlogs to YouTube to show my progress through this framework's development, and eventually, we'll be doing development streams and devlogs for Paranoia, where we'll be showing you just how powerful this framework will be.

[ 2022-09-17 21:16:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

We have been accepted into the Steam Next Fest for October 2022! Here, you'll be able to chat with the team LIVE about Paranoia, the demo, and really anything about the Conniption franchise as a whole. The firest playable demo for Paranoia will also be dropping when the event begins. Get ready for survival-horror mayhem as you take control of a mostly silent protagonist and investigate a relatively decent-sized house, dubbed "The Estate", forced to survive against ghosts, demons, zombies, and even other monsters. What you find there is up to you to discover, but one thing's for sure: You better be ready to throw some hands. Another demo, nicknamed "The Chapel", is scheduled to begin development following "The Estate". That one will touch on the paranormal investigation side of things, including (untested) experimental technology and hunting mechanics. No release dates promised but with an optimal development schedule I can aim for an early 2023 release window. That's all for now! Will Pimentel Rapidfire Computer Entertainment

[ 2022-07-24 08:54:31 CET ] [ Original post ]