New Offices

It's been a while since the last progress report. That's because on top of working on content for Days of Defiance, we're currently in the process of moving our offices to a new city. This is exciting for a number of reasons, but one of them is that the additional space allows us to upgrade our mocap setup. That's going to improve our animation pipeline tremendously, not just for future games but for Days of Defiance as well. Moving is going to take us a couple more weeks, though, so expect a few more gaps in the progress report schedule until we're done.

Steam Next Fest

In other news, we're getting ready for Steam Next Fest, which starts October 14th. That's also when we're going to release the Days of Defiance demo! That's right, starting next week, you can check out the game for yourself. The demo will be limited to a small part of the game world and a small subset of all recruitable characters that are going to be available in the final release. Apart from that, you can explore the demo area freely, complete some quests, and fight some bad guys.

Content & Bug Fixes

Most of the dev time was spent on new quests and coordinating voice actors. About half of all the voiced characters are done, so get ready for some snark coming your way! We're also busy fixing bugs in order to make the demo as stable as it can be. For the longest time, we've had two show stoppers on the Linux build that are gone now. They were minor annoyances, but just enough to make the game basically unplayable. If all goes well, we can get the demo out on Linux platforms, too. And that's it for this time. See you next week for Steam Next Fest!

It's been a busy two weeks. Read on to find out what happened recently during the development of Days of Defiance.

Achievements

We implemented Steam achievements! You can't see them yet, but there are 20 achievements total, including 6 hidden ones. They're a fun little challenge to help you explore everything the game has to offer. We might add more if the opportunity presents itself, but for now we're pretty happy with the amount that we already have.

Voice Acting

We also started working with voice actors to bring character barks into the game. Character what? In the video games industry, a bark is what we call those short sentences or exclamations that NPCs do to comment on the current situation or to react to player input. In your typical FPS, it's the "I've lost him!", "Throwing a grenade!", "Reloading!" that tell players what's going on with the enemy AI. In Days of Defiance, these happen when players select a character or instruct them to perform an action. They're also being played to let you know about important events, like a weapon that is jammed or needs reloading, or a new enemy that was spotted by one of your mercs. Each character has a distinct voice depending on their personality and where they come from. Barks also vary depending on a merc's mood. All barks that we've recorded so far will make it into the demo, but not all playable characters will be voced by the time the demo releases. There is also an option to tweak the frequency with which these barks occur, so if you find yourself annoyed by them or just want some quiet, you can always turn them off completely.

SAM Sites

There is a questline in Days of Defiance that unlocks air travel upon completion. Traveling by air is much faster than on ground and lets you avoid enemy troops who patrol the country. The problem with it is that it is also very dangerous. There are SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites all over Escalia, and the closer you fly to one of those, the higher the chance that they will shoot you down. If you want air travel to be safe, you have to take over those sites. They're very heavily guarded, though, so don't go in underprepared! Once a SAM site is under your control, you can deploy drones that observe the nearby area. You'll be able to see enemy troop movement from further away and even which way they're likely to be going next. If you have a skilled enough merc, that is. That's it for this time!

The last progress report was two weeks ago, so it's time for another round of insights into the development progress of Days of Defiance. We've been busy, and here's with what.

Drug Labs

There are now a number of secret labs all across the country, producing a mysterious drug that . We've also added a new quest that revolves around these labs and what their true purpose is, along with a few new dialogue lines for already existing characters to help you discover the labs' locations. You should be on the lookout for these, we promise it'll be worth it. They're well guarded, though, so it's a good idea to gear up before going anywhere near them.

Helmet Attachments

Speaking of gear, there's more of it now. Specifically, we implemented the option to add attachments to helmets. The first one of these that's in the game right now is a kit for night vision goggles that lets you see in the dark and improves your squad's vision range at night. Why is this useful? Because a regular set of night vision goggles would take up the only slot for facial gear, blocking it for any other useful facial equipment like gas masks and respirators. With the ability to attach some of these items to your helmet instead, you keep the slot available for additional gear.

Dynamic Loadouts

Lastly, and this is a big milestone, we implemented intel-based dynamic loadouts for enemy fighters. What does that mean? Depending on the difficulty setting of the game, enemies gather intelligence on your play style. That includes the types of weapons you use, the tactics you employ, and the skills you make use of. And a couple things more. If an enemy fighter manages to escape from a battle, they'll pass that information on and squads you fight in the future will be equipped with gear to counter your moves. Use smoke grenades a lot? Enemies will start wearing gas masks. Hunker down behind cover all the time? They are going to use smoke grenades and explosives to draw you out. Switching up your tactics is an important part of staying ahead now. The reason why this is an important milestone is because with this task done, we completed all the coding work on the game. Of course there are still lots of bugs to fix and the odd function to tweak, but apart from that, all that's left to do is create the remaining content: quests, dialogue and characters related to those quests, and all the locations that are still unfinished. Currently, about half of all the planned quests are done, but the remaining half comes with a lot of additional characters and locations. That and all the writing that's needed for those interactions is sure going to keep us busy for the next few months. And that is all we have for today.

This is the first progress report on Days of Defiance. We plan to make this a bi-weekly thing where we'll keep you updated on the game's development progress. We will probably miss the deadline for a few of these every now and then, depending on how busy we are and how much there is to tell. You know, making the game takes precedence over reporting about making the game. With that out of the way, here's what happened in the last two weeks.

Smoke Bombs

The biggest new addition to your tactical choices comes in the form of smoke bombs. They can be thrown as grenades or placed on the ground as traps. When triggered, they release a thick cloud of smoke that expands with time. Anyone within the smoke cloud has severely limited vision range and takes ongoing stamina damage until they eventually pass out. They're also harder to see from outside of the cloud. This makes smoke bombs a versatile tactical choice: you can use them to hide your movement from enemies or trap enemies inside to damage their constitution and limit their vision.
The only way to protect against the health effects of smoke bombs is by wearing gas masks or respirators, which have also been added to the game as a new wearable item type.

Sniper Rifles

Speaking of vision range, the game now features sniper rifles as a new weapon type. These are suited for long-range engagements and pair very well with elevated positions that let you overlook large parts of the map. The rifles we've added so far have different strengths and weaknesses across stats like weight, range, magazine size, and customizability. All of them can be equipped with scopes, which brings us neatly to the next part:

Scopes & Sights

Scopes and sights can now be attached to the vast majority of firearms in the game. They all improve a character's precision when shooting the gun. In addition to that, scopes also increase vision range, but only while aiming. A good shooter in an elevated position can overlook almost the entire map and provide valuable tactical support to team members that are closer to the action. And that's it for this time. All these features will make it into the demo that's due in late summer. See you next time!