A bit of background

If youve never heard of EMF Camp, it stands for Electromagnetic Fields and is the largest outdoor gathering of hackers, tinkerers, and all-around tech enthusiasts in the UK. Picture a sprawling campsite filled with workshops, talks, blinking lights, and people building all sorts of weird and wonderful projectseverything from DIY satellite dishes to interactive art installations. Its a unique blend of summer camp and tech festival, where the unofficial motto is: If you can dream it, you can probably make itjust bring some duct tape and a Raspberry Pi.
EMF is part of a trio of rotating European summer hacker festivals, alongside CCCamp near Berlin and The Dutch Camp (which is never content with just one namepast versions include SHA, Still Hacking Anyway, and MCH, May Contain Hackers). These camps fill the summers between the more serious, wintertime gatherings like the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Germanya massive event hosted by the Chaos Computer Club, Europes largest hacker association. The CCC itself has deep roots, founded back in 1981 at the height of the Cold War. It started as a response to the vulnerabilities in the West German governments new tech, but it quickly grew into a cultural institutiona place where democracy and digital rights meet tech wizardry and hacktivism. Fast forward a few decades, and its the beating heart behind a whole ecosystem of hacker camps, where EMF has carved out its own space. All this alphabet soup boils down to one thing: a place where hackers, makers, and dreamers come together to share knowledge, build cool stuff, and push the boundaries of whats possible. And thats exactly why we keep coming back.

EMF '24

So, this brings us to EMF this summer. There are plenty of reasons we attend these campsits the community some of us grew up in, and Off Grid as a game is, in part, a love letter to this side of hacker culture. Beyond catching up with old friends and sharing stories around the campfire, this year we had a mission: to do some structured research for Off Grid: Red Team (OG:RT), our new sub-game of OFF GRID that dives deep into teaching precise cybersecurity skills. We did a teaser announcement about OG:RT a few weeks ago [link to previous post], sharing the exciting news of our partnership and support from Ufi, and now we can finally share more about what we got up to at EMF and why we were there. OG:RT aims to build practical skills and extend the base premise of Off Grid into a companion experience, allowing players to explore infosec concepts. Right now, were focusing on a proof of concept (POC) to test whether practical infosec skills can be effectively taught through a video game. Our long-term vision is to offer a foundational learning platform with potential pathways to industry opportunities, but for now, this POC is all about refining the core experience and gathering feedback. EMF was the ideal place to start gathering feedback about the idea, pick the brains of experts, and get a sense of where current cybersecurity training is missing the mark. Well do a proper write-up about what OG:RT is in detail soon, so stay tuned! In the meantime heres what we did last summer:

Highlights from EMF 24

Workshop Fun: We ran a workshop where we played the latest iteration of the intro scene and first tutorials of the core game. It was a great chance to see whats readable, whats confusing, and what sparks curiosity. Plus, it was a blast to show off the game to a room full of friendly faces, sharing a few laughs and geeking out over the details. Lofi Mocap: Ever seen a DIY motion capture suit in action? We brought ours along and captured custom idle animations from our hacker friends who cameo in the gamelike Darren, whos always got that signature, laid-back swagger. These little touches will make Off Grid feel even more like its part of the hacker world, blending real and virtual in all the best ways. Feeding the Community: Rich also brought along his famous smoker, a beast of welded metal he first put together for EMF 18. Its become something of a tradition nowsmoking meats while sharing stories and knowledge. This year, we joined forces with the Milliways crew to keep the smoker going for four days straight, feeding hackers from dawn till dusk. Friends brought pre-marinated cuts of meat, and we kept the smoky magic alive. (You can read more about the Milliways ethos here.) Whiskyleaks: Always a crowd-pleaser, Whiskyleaks is our tradition of bringing a bottle and pouring a little liquor on the ground for our fallen and jailed hacker comrades. Its a moment of solemn reflection, but also a reminder of the resilience and solidarity that runs through this community.

Insights from the Community

We sat down with friends and expertsfolks managing security in all sorts of places, from harbours and local councils to tech giants, scrappy startups, and even nuclear facilities (yes, really). Our conversations ranged from the state of infosec to the gaps in current cybersecurity training. One theme kept cropping up over and over again: the importance of an attacker mindset. These insights were pure gold, helping us refine our questionnaires and shape the remote and more official interviews for OG:RT that followed as part of our development process. Getting to know the folks from different camps really helped us build this mod with them. C-Base for example has a ton of interesting lore and background to their community, so we know it is important to include as much of this as possible, and although the C-base village wasnt there in person this year, we brought them there in spirit. C-Base in Mod / IRL (note this is an image from CCC-Camp not EMF):

Our intern Elias scripted a section of gameplay about Chaos Post, and we were able to show it to some of the Chaos post team and get their feedback on how to make it better.

Jeans take on EMF

Going to EMF, I discovered all the things Id always dreamed about building were all here in full effect: using networks and Arduinos to build interactable games and installations. It was amazing to see them being realised. It helped me see what is possible and that there is a part of me that wishes to learn these skills. Its not just games and tech, but also food, ethics, and diversitythis brings a wholesome vibe to the place. Everyone is massively willing to discuss ideas freely with each other, and that is the essence that bubbles together a melting pot of daring and integrity. There really is a Goldilocks sweet spot at EMF whereby everyone is engaged enough to bring something; take something away; share with others; reach outside of comfort zones, all because they are interested enough in the first place to being there and thus realise everyone here is approachable and ultimately, my (your) kind of people. That being said, I took my kids, who loved it more than me! - from coding in the tent, to being free ranged and free to run a muck and take part in as much as the adults. As a parent, who worries about the onslaught of social and gaming (aka mobile gambling) kids via mobile phones, this was a great place to put the point of digital social and creativity to work! For them to see the why this stuff exists and why its fun, and what *you can do* when they grow up is just mind blowing for me. Their favourites were the *physical digital* games (see video below)

So wrapping up with some more highlights:

• Lots of play and workshops
• Highly accessible
• Great ethos (sharing | swapping culture | educational)
• The BBQ smoke
• A 'choir' room (crying, screaming, shouting, whatever your melody.)

Stef

EMF, was awesome. Id been to CCC in Germany, so I knew I was going to like EMF, but being surrounded by so much tech and crafting in one place, it was actually like being in my own nerdy heaven. Theres a lot of creative and weird things to see, with artists expressing themselves in ways Id never encountered before. I was obsessed with this Tesla coil that played music. Another big highlight for me was playing Duck Hunt on a hillside using LASERS (thanks SebLee!) We camped with our good buddies in the Millyways village, such a solid group of geniuses, where I got my hands on a Millyways challenge coin, which is a reminder of just how special this community is, and I cant wait to go back!

Off Grid:Red Team

If youre intrigued by all this and want to see how the spirit of IRL hacker culture and knowledge-sharing folds into the game, wed love for you to get involved! Fill out the form here, and well add you to the OG:RT mailing list. You might even be selected to take part in beta testing and provide feedback as we work towards creating a complete end-to-end prototype. Even if testing isnt for you, you can still join this mailing list to stay up to date on all the latest developments. Well be back soon with more updates about the game!

[ 2024-11-21 08:58:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! Weve been so busy pushing forward with OFF GRID that its been hard to find the right moment for an updatebut here we are, and a lot has happened in the last four months! We teased a bit in the interim, but now were ready to dive into the details.
First up, we had an amazing time at EMF Camp, the UKs largest outdoor hacker gathering, where we ran workshops, caught up with friends who cameo in the game (mc.fly, pathfinder, Lauri Love, Darren, et al.), and connected with the wider community. Well have a full retrospective post coming soon, but in the meantime, theres even bigger news We're extremely proud to announce weve secured funding from Ufi to develop a companion experience to OFF GRID that takes players deeper into the world of infosec (in parallel to how OFF GRID takes players deeper into the world of hacker culture). Interested? Then read on!

Team Updates

We have some team updates, our three lovely volunteers, Elias, Mellissa, and Diogo, had their work experience with us come to a close, they made some fantastic contributions to OFF GRID and the studio and its other projects at large. We have also had our producer Raquel move on to new adventures at Brazilian outsourcing giant Kokku. While well miss them, part of being a small, independent studio is helping talented people grow and take the next step in their careers. Were incredibly proud of all theyve accomplished! As is the way with chi and the movement of energy (yeah man!), we have been incredibly lucky to have new energy come in and fill this void. Weve welcomed Edvin as a junior environment artist, and long time friend Jay Springett has also joined the team. Bringing with him some deep expertise in worldbuilding and cross-media storytelling. Jay is probably best known for his involvement in Solarpunks early origins, hes also been a contributor to reports for BBC R&D and the Canada Media Fund. Hes been able to jump in and inject his operations expertise into production management and beyond for OFF GRID: Red Team, this new extension of the core OFF GRID game. Without further ado, here is what we have been up to on the core game in recent months

Core Systems

App System overhaul, part 2

Some of you might remember that we did a redesign and rebuild of large parts of the game's app system last year (if you missed that, then read more from the blog post: OFF GRID: Off Grid Dev Blog - "Still Alive and Hacking"). After that there were plenty of more pressing issues that needed dealing with first, but we finally got to doing the second part of that overhaul, dealing with how apps work in first-person mode.
As nice as the radial UI we had for selecting apps in the first person mode looked like, it didn't really fit well with how the apps now work. First of all, it required the player to first select a target, as it would then automatically show apps appropriate to that target type. However we've moved the control over which targets the player can see at a given time to the currently selected app, so that created a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here. Next, having to manage two separate lists of apps, assigning them to the radial UI and the normal app dock separately, was unnecessarily complicated. Even more so on the Lua scripting side. So it was time to clean up the design, and with the way the apps now work, we realised there was actually no reason to have that separate UI any more. We could just as well enable the one and the same app dock in first person mode as well. That means no longer having two different ways how apps work, and how they are used by the player. No need to assign them to two places separately. No more need to define if they can be assigned to dock or the radial UI and setting default states for both, resulting in simpler and cleaner Lua code for modders to deal with as well. Sounds like a win. Well, as with everything else in game dev, every solution creates some new problems of its own... The problem we now had was that most of the gameplay is designed around the 3rd-person perspective, giving the player a lot more view around their surroundings, and especially on any guards that might be approaching them from behind. Our goal for the 1st person view was always to allow the player more time to think, to search for useful data, and to take a more tactical approach compared to the direct and fast interactions the apps have (especially after this redesign) in 3rd-person mode. To help with that, after the player had selected a target in 1st person mode we paused the game time to let the player consider their next move safely. Now that we no longer select the target first we had to choose between two options. We could pause the game the moment you enter 1st person mode (but that could be way too powerful of a tool, being able to freely search and hack anything in game with all the NPCs paused. Or we could not pause the game, and lose that bit of safe time for the player to think we wanted to have in 1st person. Neither option sounded great.

Got time?

If we can't stop the time, and we can't keep the game running normally, then that only leaves one option; doing something in between. Which is exactly what we did. We slow the time. Now entering the 1st person mode changes the game to slow time mode, giving you more time to look around, select targets, and interact with them. But still not unlimited time, all the AI characters in the game are still moving around and going on about their business, so you can't just switch to 1st person mode in the middle of an open area and hack away. If there are guards around, eventually they will spot you and catch you. This solved all the problems, at least on the game design side. Changing a game that was built to either be running, or paused, to handle an extra slow time state took a bit of work and refactoring various systems.

The hidden tech behind it all

The last part of the app system changes was less to do with gameplay, and more to do with Lua scripting and other things going on in the background. Removing the radial UI already cleaned things up a bit, but we still wanted to simplify the code needed to define what apps the player should have in each mission. And we also had some unsolved situations regarding apps in modded levels, or in special cases like tutorials where one might want to override what apps the player would normally have and instead set them to specific ones. So we also ended moving defining app's starting states in the app Lua script into the mission scripts, and then added some helpful Lua API calls for setting the apps for the mission more easily, rather than having to call a state change per each app (which wouldn't even have worked when dealing with modded apps/levels, as nobody could possibly know which apps the player has in their game. As part of implementing that we needed to figure out the logic for how the player's apps are saved between missions. We needed to make sure apps given to player in one mission and the way the player has assigned them to their dock carry over to the next mission correctly, but also handling cases where the player ends up playing a mission that defines different apps/configuration, and then returning back to player's configuration again on the following mission. And of course making sure it doesn't all break if some previously used app isn't available any more (either because it was a custom app defined in one mission only, or because it was from a mod the player has uninstalled). This is all working now (apart from a bit of more work needed on our save system side), and while it all got a bit complicated on our end, the good thing is it all pretty much "just works" from the player's and even from the modder's perspective.

Layout and Props and Art?

Weve been hard at work on scripting and interactive objects, which, as you can imagine, brings its own set of challengeslike figuring out how to deal with the haunted office drawers in IntSecurs poltergeist-infested office.
Weve been fleshing out our production wiki to document everything, ensuring smooth sailing as we continue building out the game. On top of that, weve started refactoring the character customization system, making it more intuitive for building levels. Well dive into more details in an upcoming blog post, but for now, check out the new LUT layout in action on the Jen model.
Weve also added sliders to adjust body shape for greater variety in character design!
Lastly, Stef has been working on our level building updates has this to share:

Studio Announcements

Ufi Supported sidequest

Were pleased to announce that, with funding and support from Ufi, were taking OFF GRID in exciting new directions. Were developing a vocational training companion experience that will sit alongside the core game. Think of it as an ARG (augmented reality game), where we use experiences and media outside the game to guide players deeper into the world of information security, pentesting, and hacker culture. Specifically, were focusing on the attacker mindsetthe skills gap that often goes overlooked in conventional cybersecurity training. Ufi has pioneered the use of technology to advance vocational skills, coining the term VocTech to catalyse the movement. We love how this project blurs the line between fiction and reality, helping players jump down the rabbit hole and explore infosec techniques in a hands-on, immersive way.

OG:RT

OFF GRID: Red Team (OG:RT) is an experimental subgame of OFF GRID, where were testing innovative mechanics with ARG elements. The goal is to mirror real-world cybersecurity challenges in a narrative-driven experience, helping players develop an attacker mindset. Though OG:RT is currently a standalone project, its feeding directly into the development of the core game. Some features weve been planning are already in use, and the project has opened new funding avenues that are allowing us to accelerate Off Grids development. This initiative has also enabled us to bring new talent, like Jay and Edvin, into the team to help push things forward.

Get Involved

Were looking for people interested in following the development of OFF GRID: Red Team and gaining early access to our alpha builds. Some participants may be selected to play the game and provide feedback via follow-up questionnaires, helping us shape the project as it evolves. If youd like to get involved, sign up here. Even if testing isnt for you, you can still join our mailing list as part of the form, to stay up to date on all the latest developments. Well be back soon with more details on our time at EMF Camp!

[ 2024-10-12 22:04:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

The sun is shining, our team has expanded and Off Grid development is in full steam ahead. It's a good time for some updates from us, don't you think? This is a long one so here is a summary of what you'll find below:

• Pontus - On Core Systems
• Melissa - On Layout and Props
• Diogo - On Gameplay Scripting
• Stef - On New Level
• Studio Announcements - EMF Festival!

Wait did you say more team members? For the first half of this year we were joined fulltime by Melissa on Art and Diogo on Level Design. With their help we have been polishing and adding content to the main campaign in Off Grid, but more on that later. We have also been assisted by Pedro, who was with us early in the year working on scripting and tools, Elias, who has recently joined the team and is getting stuck into the Modding side of Off Grid and Raquel, our producer that is keeping us all on track! Pontus - On Core Systems Since the previous blog post, we've done a lot of background tech changes, including switching to a new version control system and remodelling our build pipeline to match, especially in the context of how our main project works with the Levelkit project we provide for modders. While not necessarily an obvious change from the user perspective, this will help us making sure we can always make Levelkit builds that match an exact Off Grid version and that are guaranteed to work nicely together. We've also already tested this setup with some internal test builds, which means a long list of various small bugs, fixed here and there, and all kinds of game features tweaked slightly. Most of them not really big enough to write about here. One of the more directly interesting ones from player's perspective is a new Tasklist app (making good use of our ongoing overhaul of the app system). As the old joke goes, "there's an app for that", and now there is one to help you keep track of your current objectives without having to go to the pause menu for that. Melissa - On Layout and Props We decided to improve the Apartment level by making new beds, furniture and personal items (clothing, shoes, notebooks, wall art, posters). We wanted the place to feel more like home and add dimension to the characters, especially the bedrooms, after all you can tell a lot about somebody by looking at their rooms! Joes room is simpler and more practical, while Jens room is messier with a mix of girly/tech stuff.
Joe and Jen's Rooms Work in Progress We also updated the vending machine art and worked on some in-game branding for food items.
New Vending Machine and Snack Art
New Coffee Machine Diogo - On Gameplay Scripting The last few months have been focused on improving the early levels of the game, and with that comes tutorialization to introduce the player to Off Grids core mechanics. A particular section to highlight is when we teach the player about being careful with the noise they make when running.
Avoid the Sleeping Guard! To better tie this tutorial to the rest of the level and to the overall story, we used it as an opportunity to further showcase the characters personalities. We start by getting the player to unexpectedly come face to face with a guard (who luckily is sleeping on the job) before having them engage in a small conversation with the always sarcastic figure of Smedley, where they learn about this core part of the game through a humorous interaction. Stef - On New Level As well as all of the above, we have been working away at a new level location: the Harbour.
So...the Harbours name is Harbour? Harbours are interesting locations, they are like a living thing, designed to keep goods constantly moving, constantly shifting, pulsing and transporting stuff around, much like a human body. We rely on them for so much, our harbours are precious, and in constantly increasing demand - after all how do you think your Temu orders are getting to you? As such, they are always looking towards technology for solutions...lovely, hackable, technology.


Here are some early screen captures of work in progress. We have some unique and interesting plans for the harbour, but we don't want to spoil the surprise too much! Studio Announcements - EMF Festival! The Off Grid team is once again joining the Milliways Village for some modding fun. We'll be using it as an opportunity to play test our modding tools and immerse our team in the world of digital security to help inspire our level design and story. Until then we are working away supporting the CCCamp Mod to show off there. If you are also going to EMF come find us and say hi! We'll be in the Milliways Village.
The CCCamp Mod If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2024-05-24 15:23:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy yall, we are probably (definitely) well overdue a new devblog update! Its been a busy time in the Semaeopus offices (I mean when is it not!? We are making a big video game after all...and funding it by making other people's videogames in parallel) but these last few months have been especially packed on the OFF GRID front. Weve built new mechanics, polished art, been on international adventures and welcomed a host of new talent onto the team. Heres some highlights:

Time For a Quick Vent

While we've always talked about trying to focus on realism, and are perfectly aware that air vents rarely are large enough for a person to fit in, what would a stealth game be without being able to crawl through some air vents?
We've had this feature planned almost from the first versions of the game, but now that we are trying to get more of the game levels completed it was the time to make sure it all actually works, and that our designs for air vent dimensions etc are usable. This has meant a fair bit of adjusting things as far as our character controller and camera behaviour goes while crawling. The movement was fine for hiding behind some cover in more open spaces, but the tight spaces and corners inside air vents are a whole different issue so a lot needed to change to make it easier to navigate your way through the vents. We've adjusted both the movement code (and controls), tweaked our animation setup, and locked the camera more tightly close to the player to avoid clipping through the air vent walls and to make sure the player has good visibility in front of the character while moving.
...and talking about good visibility, it turns out air vents are really, really dark. And keeping things feeling suitably dark for hiding, while at the same time having enough light for the player to see what's going on, can be a bit of a challenge to balance. So we've set the camera to adjust more to different lighting conditions, just like your eyes would adapt in real life, and also cheated a tiny bit by adding some light around the player. This works reasonably well, and we'll certainly get things to look and feel even better in the long run. Same goes for the movement and control. The main thing is that from now on you can finally do what every action film hero and stealth game main character has been doing for ages, crawl your way through the air vent networks in buildings to reach different areas conveniently out of the sight of the guards.

CCCamp 2023 and Modding in Off Grid

Stef headed over to Germany this year to get stuck in at The Chaos Communication Camp, which describes itself as a five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms.
While there she did a talk about Off Grids development history and the modding options we have available in game. You can watch the talk here.
Following the talk Stef held two workshops where she walked people through the modding and setup process of Off Grid, the Level Kit tools and how to get involved with a CCCamp specific mod built by Mcfly of the Milliways Village.
We are very excited to see this mod coming to life as people populate it with all the things they love about CCCamp. We cant wait to see it grow as more CCCampers get involved and add themselves to the project. Details on the Mod and how you can get involved, are on our wiki .

Modding with unityon the Steam Deck!

A highlight of the CCCamp was when two campers, who wanted to take part in the workshops but didnt have their laptops with them, managed to get everything up and running on their Steam Decks instead. Yeah, including a full download of Unity! Thats dedication to modding.
Once again thanks for your continued support friends! Lots of things are speeding up now in OFF GRID development, and with Semaeopus as a whole, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for new and more regular announcements. If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2023-12-18 17:00:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

How long has it been since we've posted something in our dev blog? 10 months?! Sounds like it's time to remedy that and give all of you an update about what's going on in the Off Grid development!
Shall we get the excuses out of the way? It's not you, it's us. Jokes aside, we have been juggling other projects to keep the company wheels rolling and put bread on our tables. This meant that we needed to take a little break from Off Grid development to focus on contract work. Ultimately that would have made for some boring and heavily redacted blog posts! (Gotta respect those NDAs!) Our bad. We never planned to be this quiet for this long, and we know radio silence is not a good look for an indie game team. So, we are sorry about that! The Good news is that not only are we still alive but Off Grid development has been picking up pace. We even expanded our team. So let's introduce our newest member:

Stef:

*tap tap* Is this thing on? Hi, I'm Stef and I'm an Artist! My background is in 3D art, VFX, production and filmmaking, so I'll likely be wearing a few different hats as and when it's needed, but for now I've been getting to know the project, learning it's unique quirks and doing some layout and modelling. I feel really lucky to be joining at this stage of development, because the rest of the team have already built so many awesome tools and created tons of processes which means I get to focus on all of the fun parts of making art and none of the pain! What a dream!

Bring life to a world...and passive aggressive post-its

A game environment should tell a story. Look around anywhere you visit IRL and I bet you could tell a lot about the people that use that space from the things they left behind. When I approach a new set piece, I try to imagine the people that use the space, are they tidy? Do they love where they work? Are they slackers or jobsworths? What about the quality of the space? Is it run down, or high tech, were the contractors well paid professionals, or cowboy builders on a budget? Knowing the vibe of the place, helps you make artistic choices, but also brings personality and character to your locations.
This is the Ascent workplace kitchen. (Work in Progress) Can you tell that the people here don't like their jobs, or each other, very much?

The Workplace

The workplace is one of the first areas you see in Off Grid, and it is a perfect setting to be playful as an artist. I love that this is a shared building of two thoroughly different companies. On the one side you have Joe's place of work, Ascent Auditing, a company that is so boring and stuffy you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd gone back in time. On the other side is FIRESTREAM (Reliable, Fast, Smoking Hot Internet), an ISP that thinks it's Google, but like, cooler, you know? When Rich and Pontus first described Firesteam to me, they said "you'll probably need to make some beanbags". So here are some progress shots of the contrasting lobby entrances.

...and now for an update from the game mechanics side of things:

Pontus:

This is something I actually started working on even prior to our last blog post, but had to push aside for some other features we needed quickly, plus the big clean-up work we talked about in the previous post. But now that we got the chance to pick up Off Grid development again it was easily the first thing on my list to deal with:

Problems with the old App system

Using apps and the data view as your main "tools" to progress in the game has always been one of the core features of Off Grid, and something we've iterated on over time a lot. The Lua scripting side for apps alone has seen some major changes over the years to get things to a point where apps have a lot of power and flexibility and as much of it as possible is on the Lua side, rather than something hardcoded by us on the game side. And I've spent *months* tweaking the tracking system to balance the time the player can use the data view, and then even implemented a second cost mechanic just for the apps themselves. But even then there were some major issues with the mechanic, and using the apps & being aware of the tracking time was more tedious than it was fun. So I sat down and started writing some bullet points about what was wrong with the apps, and what the mechanic really *should* be like instead:

• Player needs to be aware of which apps they are using at a given time
• App wheel only shows some of the apps the player has in use, and while there is support for showing a stats icon for an app, that's separated from the apps themselves, and since they aren't something the player actively uses during gameplay, it's easily ignored.
• Player should feel like using one app over another is a choice they make
• Currently the apps are just something you are required to switch on, and there rarely is any good reason to toggle them off. When you might need to do it, it feels like a chore rather than a choice.
• There needs to be a clear difference between active and passive apps
• Some apps are like tools or weapons in other games, something the players can actively *use* to do something. Others just run in the background, maybe providing some information (like the light level monitoring app), or even just toggle some game features on & off (like the Flutter and Guide apps). But how each app actually behaves is not communicated in any way.
• Cost of using an app needs to be known before using it
• Apps that have multiple possible features make it hard to show the cost, for example DataUtil app allowing the player to both download & delete data should really cost more when you do both these things at the same time to be balanced, but that's not doable with the current system.
• App options that make major difference in the app's behaviour can be lost and forgotten easily
• No (or less) options, more separate apps!
• Spectrum/DataView should not be an app, it has it's own special keys and behaviours unlike any other app
• It creates a weird requirement for other apps of always needing to combine them with another app (Spectrum) or they are useless
• It's cost is handled in a different way (tracking time rather than NetPoints)

For anyone who has actually played the game these might sound pretty familiar. And if they don't, they definitely are familiar to me based on standing behind people's shoulders and observing them play the game at different expos and events.

...and my attempts at fixing them:

To fix all this, I decided it's best to consider apps same as using different skills, spells, or weapons in RPG games etc, something the player would actively choose and switch around during gameplay based on both the situation, but also their preferred play style. This meant actually adding some limitations compared to the old mechanic, automating some things, and then adding some more features to make the apps more interesting and powerful, just in a different way from the previous system. And, ultimately, just making more apps, with more variations, and creating a path to even getting upgraded apps over the span of the game. For starters, I got rid of the old AppWheel, and instead replaced it with a fixed-size quick selection dock. This means the player is now limited in how many apps they can have available to use at the moment, and need to be more active in switching the apps based on the situation they are in the game. Which actually is an advantage in terms of being aware of which apps the player has and swapping them to others more a part of the gameplay loop. It also has the added benefits of all apps now being visible, which means things like app icons notifying the player of something are actually doable. Also, we can add some nice keyboard number key shortcuts for them...

App icons themselves also got a bit of a redesign, since they now need to make a clear difference between an active app and a passive one, and provide the player with some information about how much using the app will cost (and if the cost is by consuming NetPoints, like active apps do, or by reserving them like passive ones do). To make room for all this I moved app name to the dock side, and that also gave more space for displaying additional information and app description there. The next big change was limiting the player to using only one active app at a time. The apps are the player's tools, and following my beloved Unix philosophy, each app should do one thing and do it well. And switching to different ones for different things you do should become a natural part of the gameplay. This links with the removal of the Spectrum app to access the data view. It was always a weird thing, something you had to turn on *in order to use some other app*.* So I automated it. Switching an active app that uses data view on now also turns data view on automatically, and switching the app off disables it again, which makes it much less tedious to quickly use apps and then switching them off again, avoiding the data view timing out. I also adjusted the tracking time behaviour so as long as you don't let it time out, it'll quickly start recovering from where you left it, again making it favour quick use of apps and then switching them off again instead of just leaving things permanently on until you run out of tracking time and NetPoints. The player *does* still have the option to turn of data view, as that's an useful tool beyond it's connection to using the apps, it's just not displayed as an app any more since it never worked like any of the other apps, and now it's represented as a separate game mechanic with it's own keyboard/controller buttons like it always *really* was anyway. Beyond all this, there's of course a lot smaller changes and additions, for example I've added Lua API support for the apps to print out text into the console window next to the NetPoints/tracking meters, and set up support for coroutines with time delays, to allow for more feedback to the player directly from the Lua Apps we and modders can make. And I also made better use of the AppWindow system that was used by the SSH app in some very specific situations (you might have seen a weird window with a skull&bones background pop up briefly when trying to connect to a device that was locked, you didn't have password for it, but had collected enough metadata about the devices owner to try to guess the password). That's now available for all the apps to use. Hopefully these options will help make the apps feel more like they are actually *doing* something, and to distinguish them from each other better.
There's still some work to be done related to this, I'm currently working on Apps page in the pause menu, and how it deals with assigning the apps to the specific slots in the new AppDock. And the whole RadialUI and how it'll work with all these changes is a bit of an open question at the moment. But I've updated some of the existing apps to use the new features, split some of them into different versions (for example a data copy app with shorter range and low cost, plus one with longer range but higher cost), and even created some new more complex ones (FlutterSearch, which searches for all the valuable data of a NPC and downloads all of it, but at very high NetPoints cost, plus an app that let's you install a routing program to devices you've hacked, gaining you extra NetPoints and through that the ability to use more expensive apps for the rest of the level), and at least to me it feels like my way of playing the game and using the apps has changed and all these changes have helped resolving the old app system's issues. We'll see in the long term as more people get to test this, and as we write more new apps of course!

See you next time!

...hopefully in a lot shorter time than between this and the previous blog post :D Meanwhile, we appreciate anyone wishlisting Off Grid on Steam, and of course if you haven't done so already, you are more than welcome to join our Discord channel to chat with us!

[ 2023-04-14 14:13:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and welcome to the latest devblog. As we are now firmly into tech and feature lock and finalising all systems to help speed up developing content, this last couple of sprints we decided to get to grips with the AI and get it cleaner and easier to write and use for gameplay. It made sense to do a pass to tie up loose ends and close the door on some of the AI designs or features that had been left open ended (thanks to the modular system they can always be further added to later!). But in digging around and doing code review, we came across a few other things that deserved some attention too...

OnMissionStart()

While doing AI clean-up, we ran (once again) into the complicated mess our mission start-up process had grown into over the years, and decided it's time to give that a thorough look as well. Since this all was something that had just been built gradually as we've added new features and changed design requirements, it wasn't all making awfully lot of sense any more, with confusingly named functions both on C# and in the Lua API, half the game system starting up in an event called "OnMissionStart" which was actually executed way before the mission starts, halfway through then mission setup, before we've spawned in any characters or even started loading any save data and so on... A good months worth of digging around, and documenting the relationships between everything into a graph, and searching through the codebase for all kinds of legacy systems and checking what it's all doing, we now have pretty good documentation of all the things that happen between loading a level and letting the player in, and were able to re-organize and rename our way through it to create something that makes a bit more sense. And had a good chance to update some truly ancient systems here and there to work with same logic everything else does, and remove some that had no purpose any more. Apart form some renamed Lua API functions, this is of course all completely hidden from the player's point-of-view. But it certainly makes it easier for us to work with and keep track of what's supposed to happen, and when, and also smooth out the level start experience and even improve our fail-safe systems in case something goes wrong when trying to load a save or start a level from a mod. So while it took ages to get done, and certainly wasn't as interesting work to do as creating new game systems is, it was definitely maintenance work worth doing!

AI cleanup

In the last couple of sprints the majority of the work related with the AI all revolved around doing a big cleanup and review of all the corresponding systems. It was significantly more broad and complicated work than we initially thought, but thanks to that in the future it is now going to be easier and quicker to tweak or add new features or systems, and more importantly much cleaner for modders to expand the AI too! Some unfinished and unused systems were removed, several AI actions were improved with cleaner code, there were systems we tidied up that in the past were needed but have been deprecated because improvements in the overall game and AI design, or thanks to a more flexible agent creation system. We also had a spell bringing the documentation up to date and inline with these changes, and so OFF GRIDs wiki, especially in the agent definition page now gives a much more accurate and detailed portrayal of these systems.

Change List:

Core Systems

• refactored mission startup

AI

• Much AI code tweked and cleaned
• Global AI Systems (GOAP system and ModularAgent for when spawning NPCs)
• Agents Personality
• Chairs (for agents to sit)
• Every AI action (generic, use point and specials)
• Drone specific code
• Flashlight related code
• NPCs Animation Control
• Code related with AI using devices on amok
• Unfinished and unused AI systems and actions removed because they were outdated
• Added information in our wiki about some actions already added and overall information in the Agent Definitions page

Bugs fixed

• AI bug fixes and tests

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2022-06-01 21:25:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome back to another episode of the OFF GRID DevBlog, lots of interesting interactions to tell you all about, so let's dive right in!

You talkin' to me?

We've recently been working on some levels that have more neutral NPCs around, rather than just guards you'd need to avoid. So it started making sense to add some way of just walking to someone and having a conversation with them. And why limit that to just conversations, when we could just as well allow the level creator (or modder) to script any kind of interaction, in the same way that you can script what MissionObjects do... Turns out that this was a bit of an awkward addition at this point in development, we hadn't really planned for it when making our interaction system in the first place, it was all set up for targeting and interacting with devices only. To add to that, the setup we'd used for MissionObject scripting wasn't compatible for doing the same with characters either. So what we hoped would have been a week's work, based on everything on the outside looking a lot like what we already had in place, ended taking a full sprint worth of modifying the code and finding ways to fit this all in nicely. But we got there in the end, and luckily it all ended being as simple (and powerful) from the user's point of view as we hoped, so all the headaches trying to fit it in were worth it... If you remember from the last blog post, we worked on streamlining the way how the player interacts with devices, replacing the old Quickslot system for using an item with a device by a popup menu that opens, if/when needed, as the player tries to interact with something. Well, the same system seemed like it would make sense for interacting with characters, so we just added that at the same time. Now it's possible for the NPCs to request some item from you before they'll talk with you, or whatever the person writing the mission script comes up with. It's all very flexible, and makes for some interesting conditional interactions, task setting, and progress gating. This means a couple of additions to our Lua API, and some new stuff you can do in your mission scripts, but we'll leave the technicalities out of here, it'll all be in the wiki for anyone interested.

Re-designing Apps

Character interactions are not the only major changes we've been working on, we have a plan for a bit of an overhaul on how the apps are used in the game, aiming to make them more of an active gameplay feature and fixing some of the downsides and oddities with the current setup, as well as adding a bunch of usability improvements and ways to better communicate app states and other things to the player at the same time. But you'll have to wait a bit longer for details on that, it's pretty early on with the changes still...

"I see you over there!"

In the last couple sprints we worked on several new actions for the AI, the raise alarm action, that makes nearby guards investigate a certain point, and two actions related with the aiming phone at player action, to simulate NPCs recording the player with their phone, one action for following the player at the same time, and the other to do it standing still. Both of these actions were created out of necessity of having non-guard NPCs reacting to the player when they are in a place that they shouldnt be: for example walking in the middle of a busy courtroom. So, these actions can make the game somewhat more realistic and also create some different gameplay situations for the player. The Raise alarm action can directly affect the progression of the player, this action is responsible for emitting a noise that can alert any possible guards around a specific radius, the guards that hear this respective noise are going to investigate the noise source point (as long as their agent profile definition has the investigate action and respective goals to accomplish it). Even if the player is seen, so long as they are quick enough to move from that point without being spotted by a guard, they can continue the level without being followed by that same guard. This is fine in a sparse environment, but doesn't make sense when there are multiple NPCs of varying neutrality or hostility in the same room. The other actions, that are still in development but very closed to being finalized, are about the reaction of NPCs when they see the player in a unusual place, by aiming a phone to seem that they are recording them. This action is about giving more possible behaviors for NPCs to make the game more diverse and alive, and can be combines with the raise alarm action described above to make for an interesting situation. These actions only aim at the player, but in the future we want to create a similar action but for aiming the phone at some objects when they are not behaving normally, for example its perfect for when a soda machine is running amok and is firing soda cans. That way unusual occurrences created by the player can form a crowd or distract NPCs for a short time even if they don't have a direct effect on them. With the way NPC AI can be built out and added to by modders there could be lots of room for modders to write dynamic and emergent behaviour. And that's all for now, look forward to catching you in the next DevBlog!

Change List:

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Added Character interactions system, for speaking and handing items to NPCs

Controls and UX

• Added localisation for the UIs used for character and device interactions

AI

• Added several AI actions for aiming phone at the player to record / take pictures of them
• Added AI action for NPCs to raise an alarm in such instances (and beyond)

Modding and Lua API additions

• Added Lua API calls for checking a character's background profiles

Bugs fixed

• Various small bug fixes (profile tags and location data points related)

[ 2022-03-03 10:10:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Once again it's time for a new Off Grid development update, and we certainly have a bunch of interesting changes to the game to talk about this time!

Streamlined item use and interactions

Deciding to continue with the gameplay and user experience-improvements we started in the last sprint by adding visual indicators for game characters to better telegraph their actions and state to the player, we've made some more major changes to the the game. The old Quickslot system where the player had to select the item the player character would use for interactions beforehand, by pausing the game, and assigning an item to the character's "hand", is now gone. If that item was something that would be sued constantly during gameplay that system would have made sense, but since it's pretty much always just a single-use for a specific interaction, we wanted to replace that system with something bit more dynamic and less interrupting. Now, the whole Quickslot system is gone, and instead interactable MissionObjects (various devices around the game levels, for example), can be set to require an item or a data file for interaction. When player tries to interact with such item, we automatically pop open a menu listing items (or data) in player's inventory for the player to select what to use for the interaction. Not only does this mean that interactions now require less menu-browsing, especially if the player didn't know an item was needed and to assign one to Quickslot beforehand, but also more flexibility like being able to ask for a data file instead of a physical item. Now we also have the option for even more specific filtering in the future should we find good uses for that. For example, requesting only key files for unlocking a doors, avoiding the need for the player to search for the keys from all the data they have in their inventory. While small (but surprisingly nice feeling) change for the player, this required a fair amount of refactoring things on the game systems side, so this all comes with a bunch of changes on our Lua scripting API side as well.

Finding the needle from the haystack

Another gameplay aspect we wanted to improve on was finding the meaningful data in the levels. With metadata being more important in the game now (for example gaining enough knowledge about specific character in a level to gain access to their devices), we needed to do something to help the player spot the data worth downloading, but without having to reduce the total data in the levels. All data is useful to the player, but only some of it is worth downloading, while the rest is mainly locational information about the areas and routes different characters use in the levels. The old setup we had used different visual Data shapes for different types of data; one shape for Image files, one for text, one for SMS and so on. This is now replaced with different shapes (and sizes!) based on how *valuable the data is to the player*. Data points with only locational value are small and easy enough to ignore when scanning through the level for data to download, while the ones that contain useful information, and metadata about characters, are displayed in different and larger shapes that help them to stand out. And then there's even higher special tier for data the level's designer (us, or the modder) has specifically marked as being mission critical and that the player should always be able to spot easily. Apart from that mission critical data, the game determines each data point's value automatically and assigns the correct shape for it. While working on that improvement, we also add a bit of extra "juice" to data interactions, with some popup notifications and particle effects related to the amount of new metadata the player gained from downloading a specific data file.

New main menu

And talking about visual improvements, we've finally gotten rid of the old static background image in the main menu screen. In it's place you'll now find some animated data points and trails. This looks a lot nicer and also scales to different display aspect ratios better than an image does. There's a bit more to the main menu screen but than just animation, but we'll leave that all to the players and modders to find out... ;)

Giving the AI a break

We implemented a new AI action called RestAction, giving us one more action to diversify the NPCs behaviour. it's especially useful because it can benefit the player as well giving a more natural behaviour for the NPCs.
The RestAction has two different important behaviours. The first, more common one, makes the NPC will rest when their energy is low, so when they want to rest they'll find the closest available chair to sit on a while and partially restore their energy. The second behaviour is that if while the NPCs are seated their world state that indicates their sleepiness value is true, then they will fall asleep. The sleepiness level can only become true through specific player action, or if set so in the level's design. (For example anyone who's played our demo/ First Access builds might remember the guard sleeping near the beginning of the Apostle level). By players action we mean interactions with the world to make that change. For example when a guard is hearing a calm music while resting. For that to happen the player needs to hack a radio and set it on a station that plays calm music. When the NPCs are asleep they'll wake up to unexpected noises, so the player will need to be careful walking or running near them. So the RestAction can be perfect for when a player wants to disable a guard to sneak past it, and also gives a more unpredictable factor for the player to be always careful about the guard's behaviour.
Another important thing to mention about the RestAction is how to make a chair sittable, as every chair that a NPCs can sit on needs to be set up for the NPCs to use it. For that purpose we created a tool that helps in the process. The user can drag one or various chairs (these chairs can be any GameObject possible, even Unitys default cube can be a chair if you really want) to the "Gameobjects" section of the tool. If any GameObject is a prefab then the respective prefab will also be updated and saved. The tool also allows you to set the chair direction, determining the direction the NPC will sit on. After setting things up as desired, it's just a question of clicking a button (and baking the levels navigation mesh) and everything is set for any NPC to use the respective chairs.

Small bug fixes etc:

• Fixed Lua Snippet file & API documentation generation, updated our wiki (kind of nice after all these recent changes of the game systems and the API ;))
• Fixed UI layout issues that caused overlapping text in some places
• Optimized tracking status console, and changed it to allow displaying more lines of text and handle long lines of text/overflow better
• Fixed localisation of text when viewing data files in the Data Inventory menu
• Fixed various Lua script errors in levels/conversations/devices
• Added alternative keyboard bindings for selecting/using apps, to make the buttons easier to reach with left hand without moving your hand away from WASD
• Camera now always starts behind the player when a level starts
• When a guard has a flashlight they'll will aim it correctly, depending on their path
• Graphics settings now only affect the level main camera
• Fixed NPC status icon spawning various times in a short time or spawning incorrectly
• Saving in the game now saves information about MissionObjects interaction changes
• Secretary in the secretary level fixed to react better and quickly to the player entrance
• Fixed Drones not stopping movement when the game is paused
• Fixed camera rotating continuously when the player is caught by a guard
• NPCs now use chairs to rest when their energy is low
• When the NPCs are resting in the chairs its also possible to make them fall asleep
• New tool to make chairs usable by NPCs.

[ 2022-03-03 08:18:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Folks, If you've been following along on the devblog for a while you will know that OFF GRID's NPC A.I. is quite extensible, moddable and able to create interesting dynamic behaviours, we've been continuing to refine and polish this of recent, and this blog will dig into a few of those changes.
One of the things those of you who are players in our First-Access testing groups have commented on regularly is that these complex behaviours can be hard to pick up on some times. Fundamentally there is one word used in game development to describe this, it's down to having a lack of "Juice". Creating juice in a given system is essentially the art of designing satisfying player feedback with animation and audio, and we have been digging into this specifically in the context of our AI recently.

NPC reactions

It's a small thing, but up until now you could only tell NPCs were receiving data by watching the networks in data view. We have now improved the NPC reactions so that they physically respond to data too. Similarly - showing what an NPCs behavioural model is upto has been tricky just through animation. We had hoped to just show what NPCs were thinking for players to deduct their next move from purely through character animation, in reality in a 3rd person game you are often so far away from the characters you are watching that this proves very difficult.
We decided to move to a more Metal Gear Solid Style system of core NPC thoughts and behaviours being identified as icons above their heads at certain times. It's pretty early in testing but it certainly seems to have improved things, more on this in future blogs as the feature evolves. Another is the fact that the modders we have testing the tools to make their own levels tend to want to be able to make more expansive environments and put more random background NPCs in to their content without having to write or design specific AI routines. They want to be able to drop random wandering NPCs in, *in walks the Wander NPC system* So this doesn't end up becoming a book rather than a devblog we'll focus on this particular system as the deep dive for this post, and we can dig into the others previously mentioned here in future posts as they mature.

The Wander NPC System

Essentially the bulk of AI work last sprint was creating a new system to easily have more neutral or non-enemy NPCs in a level without the need for the resource intense AI calls the main NPC system uses. This helps bring to life many of the environments and makes levels set in public spaces seem somewhat more realistic. We decided to call this lightweight AI the WanderNPC system, to differentiate it from the core and more complex NPC AI.
With the "normal" NPC system, every character has an agent definition to control its behaviour. This is good for having various types of NPCs in a level, but every NPC needs to be defined in the mission script, so it's not exactly a quick and simple way to spawn various characters scattered in a level. We needed a system to spawn NPCs more easily and without any specific AI, just different characters with different props and colors wandering in a level without any bigger purpose, except filling the level. To use this new system you only need to use the respective function in the LUA API, specifically the function "Mission.SpawnWanderNPCs", this function has some parameters to easily change the spawned characters. They are the following:

• spawnpoint : Is of the type string and is the only required parameter, the point selected to spawn is going to define the area that we want to spawn all the wander NPCs, every wander NPC is going to be spawned in a random position inside that area; the spawned area is defined by any position that a navigation agent can walk between the selected spawnpoint at any random position inside a specific radius, the wander NPCs cannot use doors, so doors and walls are normally the boundaries of a spawning area.
• quantity : Parameter used to define the number of wander NPCs to be spawned at the same time in a specific area, if this parameter is not manually set then it's only going to spawn 1 character
• characters: This defines what characer models / prefabs the system will spawn, at random.
• headprops : Like the name suggests its possible to define a prop or a group of props for the characters to use, the character is spawned with a prop or none in a random way, and never more than one prop
• colorTextures and metalTextures : It's possible as well to randomize the color and metal textures of the characters spawned, if none is selected each character will have its default textures
• gestures : Sometimes the wander NPCs will run an animation when they tops momentarily, this animation will be a random one of those selected in this parameter

As you can see, with this new system it's very easy to spawn various wandering NPCs, and it's also very flexible, by just changing some parameters it's possible to have a diverse crowd in a level, making it possible to have even more unique looking levels!

New Content - The Harbour Terminal

Since the last blog post we've spent more time designing and modelling for the Harbour level's main building. This one is a bit different from many of our locations, the main building itself is big enough to be a full level on it's own.
Like the rest of the Harbour, we've made it to support lots of alternative routes through the level, more than what we'll likely enable for when you play this level the first time. Let's just say that we have some interesting plans for that...

Changelist and other updates :

Content (Level Design and Art)

• Intro at the Apartment - player guidance and tutorialisation
• Courthouse - more advanced devices and puzzles
• Harbour - creation of areas for future expansions to the game

AI

• Creating the new Wander NPC system
• Start on AI behaviour icons system
• Reactions from NPCs and their corresponding animations

Modding and Lua API additions

• Player path tool now supports connections between paths

Bugs fixed

• AI reacting with a Radio
• AI Pause - Save time reduced - The save system also save the player crouching / standing state - Use item button visible after loading an autosave

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2021-08-24 09:36:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome Folks and Happy 2021, and how good does it feel to be finally well out of 2020?! Thanks for bearing with us while we got this you, we missed December's update, but here we are, back in the swing of things, and so finally here is your back-to-regular dev update!

Give me an 'A', give me an 'I', what does that Spell?!

On the last sprint roundup we mentioned that we started to work in some improvements in the AI to give more flexibility to the NPCs. So what exactly are these improvements? To start, some bugs were fixed, some unused features were removed and others simplified. But the main thing improved was the possibility to change, add or remove any aspect of the NPC behaviour in run time, like, for example, actions and goals, and with this came a round of improvements on our AI debugging tool, the AI Explorer:
The default way to change any NPC behaviour is still as it has always been, changing the world states. Only in specific situations should changing the goals or actions be needed, but this is now possible by adding or removing them during runtime and allows for much more complex behaviour. Changing Goals should be used rarely, as it is seen as a more permanent change to the NPC behaviour. It's important to keep the following concepts in mind to understand the best way to change an NPC behaviour: "World States" represent everything that the NPC knows about the world and themselves, for example: The guard must see the intruder before doing any action to try to catch it. Changing world states in order to evoke a reaction is the first thing you do. "Actions" are the available skills and resources that an NPC has, for example: A guard should have an action to use a taser or other resource to knock out the intruder, and so accomplishing his goal. Changing actions is the best way to change what an NPC has the potential to do. "Goals" describe the intentions or beliefs of the NPC, for example: the guard should always have the goal to catch the intruder, because it's his job, if this goal is removed it means that the guard lost his faith or belief in the job. For this reason goals are the last thing in NPC behavior you would consider changing as you are fundamentally changing them as a person. Being able to alter any of these at runtime means NPCs are now more flexible and give more options to design new levels and scenarios, that is noted especially during the gameplay because now its possible to change its behaviour at any time and you don't have any restrictions in relation to what was initially defined in the NPC, so that means that a NPC now can use picked up objects, learn new skills, change their main objective, among other possibilities, it really is much,much more flexibility. But of course this flexibility also means that is important to be careful with the complexity of the NPC definition, it could get a bit confusing in the best way to accomplishing some results and also could be hard to track why the NPC is behaving in some way. So to simplify we think the best way to approach the changing in the NPC behaviour in runtime is trying to change the world states first (but being careful to not have to many different states), next is the actions (that are especially handy for use specific items and skills), and the last one is the goals (that need to be used very carefully because a minor change can change the NPC behaviour drastically). Hopefully this model will provide some exciting opportunities for us in design and for modders too! We also replaced the old Lua API call for altering a character's motivation value with a new generic system which allows for checking, and setting, any of the stats an AI might have.

The U in Usablility

Since the last blog post, we've spent some time fixing some usability issues on the UI side. Mainly, we've added automatic scrolling to UI for use with gamepad controls, removing the need to use scrollbars, which then simplifies the navigation across the UI. To go with that, we've updated lots of the UI across the game, also fixing some selection issues and improving on the mouse cursor autohide system to further smooth the controls and especially switching between input methods. While these might not sound like big changes, they certainly have made the user experience a lot smoother...

Paperwork for a good cause!

The start of a new year always brings a lot of paperwork, with our financial year end timing in to the calendar one. It's a lot of shifting numbers on spreadsheets but the nice thing is that in the UK, with the fantastic BFI's support, we actually get a credit back on money we have spent on development each year though the Video Games Tax Relief scheme the UK government runs. Pretty good stuff. We have had some work for hire that we have fitted in in a couple of places, Pontus has been doing research and development on an unannounced project of a developer friend of ours and Rich ran a lecture series on Blender basics and specializing in Character animation for the MA Character Animation course at Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London. We also managed to garner some more funding for some R&D work from one of our long term partners Creative England, which has been super exciting - PLEASE don't jump to any conclusions from this but we have been researching how well our procedural message generation can be evolved to be able to handle languages other than English...

No Tofu!

As mentioned above, we have been working out how our generated content will work in different languages and doing some R&D on non-latin alphabet/writing system support. This is all quite exciting stuff, and warrants its own dedicated post at some point, but... essentially, OFF GRID's game mechanics depend on key words in data and meta-data generated by NPCs, and the fact that there is text in the game that is generated at all creates and interesting problem to solve when it comes to localisation.
At this early stage we can't specify any particular languages, in-fact we can't guarantee it will work, or that there will be any other languages than English in the game, but we are laying the groundwork to see if possible and have embarked on some research work to see what those possibilities are, watch this space!

The Beginning and The End

Some of you who have played alpha builds, or demos at some point may have seen the intro cutscene to the game (it's the one that some of the clips in the trailer on our Steam page come from). One of the things we have been working on is making this part playable and more of a mix of small cutscene sections intertwined with basic tutorials and gameplay. We are believers in making sure that everything in the game story is told via gameplay and the environment as much as possible, so we were keen to make sure that the very beginning of the game sets the scene while still adhering to this principle.
Unity's Timeline is the powerful tool we have been using to achieve this, but we have had to do some real hackery to get it to play nice with interactive sections rather surprisingly. When you couple that with tying it into our lua commands for writing missions, objectives and triggers and you start to get quite a complex section of the game to assemble. It's coming along nicely though, and they say the first 30 seconds, and 30 minutes of a game are the most important to focus on to keep players intrigued, so we have been happily dedicating a lot of time to getting this to all feel right. It's also certainly something we'll be counting on you, as our players, to play and give feedback on ahead of full release. Looking forward to seeing what you think!
We've also been fine tuning and cleaning up some of the content in the later game and making some more complex puzzles and hacks. The weird thing about editing content is sometimes you can make more of something, in this instance we needed to make sense of one of the final missions, and actually breaking it into two separate missions works better. Without giving any spoilers, one of the planned missions is now giving a 2-for-1 value!

Changelist

Content (Level Design and Art)

• Design for the Harbour level passenger terminal / offices building
• Replaced messages that were written for old SMS system with proper single-message conversations
• Courthouse initial puzzles done
• Taking the scene from prototype to production and playable instead of just a cutscene
• Broke up Court House Level into two levels

Controls and UX

• Autoscrolling in UI
• Usability improvements especially on a gamepad for any scrolling UI
• Greatly improves device UIs since it means we can make their scrollbars un-selectable on a gamepad, simplifying the navigation in that window

AI

• AI Goal and Action improvements for flexibility
• AI Debug system improved (with more information and in a clear format)

Modding and Lua API additions

• Lua API support for setting/getting NPC AI stat values
• We used to have AI.AlterNPCMotivation(name, value) specifically for setting motivation stat value, this replaces it with a generic AI.AlterNPCStat(name, stat, value) usable for all the stats an AI might have
• Lua support for Unity timeline and firing Lua functions from it (use wisely!)
• Lua Console app for testing any line of lua anywhere in the game

Bugs fixed

• Bug fixes related with the AI and save system
• Fixed issues with mouse cursor autohide/show system when switching between mouse/kb and gamepad controls

Other

• Year end accounts and VGTR
• A few small work-for-hire jobs
• Blender for Animators Lectures
• New Ideas Fund application and grant

Hopefully that catches you up on OFF GRID development. It's been a tough 2020 for us, especially the second half of it. Safe to say, the world has been turned upside down and that had an impact on some of our families and how we managed running businesses and looking after our loved ones. Obviously OFF GRID is continuing development but running behind at this point, luckily we have at every turn been ahead of the punches and come up with game plans to make sure we could continue sustainably, and deliver OFF GRID come what may. For our little studio this has meant tightening our belts at the couple of junctures when we have found we were behind our anticipated milestones, tightening scope, bringing in some part time work-for-hire contracts to top up the coffers, and scaling the team down so we could operate in a lean and efficient way. The knock-on effect of shrinking the team for sustainability is it means things take longer, but it has the benefit of meaning you can roll with the punches and survive more easily. The three of us, Pontus, Andre, and Rich are still working hard on dev, bringing you the best game possible, and one thing is clear, with our great little team, OFF GRID is going to be everything it deserves to be, and that you deserve it to be for supporting us. Thank you so much and looking forward to showing you more over the coming months!

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2021-03-09 19:49:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome friends, time for another sprint update!
In the last couple of sprints we did a fair amount of checking existing game systems, making sure everything works as intended, and adding some long-planned polish here and there to make those existing features look and feel better. Most visible changes from player's perspective would be improvements to how meaning and use of metadata is communicated to the player, with better messaging about what data has new metadata, making sure player knows when they gain new metadata, and making the effect of collecting data about someone more visible in the UI.
One of the improvements we did was the addition of the save slots, we believe that this change will make the save system cleaner and quicker to use. Each slot (the current number of available slots is 3, but that value can be increased before launch) can have one manual save and one auto save, also the difficulty option will be associated with a specific slot, to give the option to have different game states with different difficulties at the same time, every other game option will be general and not associated with a save slot. Improving the AI system is another important feature that we worked on in recent weeks, it's still a feature in development so we will talk more in-depth in the next sprint roundup, but essentially we felt the necessity to change the NPCs behaviour in the middle of a mission in a more flexible way, using the specific agent Lua script, doing that in an easier and transparent way. This will be a powerful tool to us and modders, to change the AI in a more dynamic way, but also it will help us to debug and improve the NPC behaviours in a faster way. For example, with this we can give a NPC a taser in the middle of a mission to attack the player. We'll have a full update on this topic on the coming weeks.
On the art front we have been importing a load of art assets into the project and reorganising our source files. We've been reworking all Existing LUTs, essentially cleaning up any old redundant character textures.
Whilst we made these changes, we updated the wiki to reflect which LUTs are working and a preview of their appearance, this should help to visualise the vast variety of LUTs we have in the game for modders to choose from.
On top of all this we've been looking forward with some funding applications for some interesting post release collaborations we have in the pipeline. We've also done a lot of back end organization work, we moved cloud provider for our documentation for the studio, and it takes a surprising amount of time to make sure everything makes it's way over to a new system properly, and when you move stuff you realise you have a bunch or organization to do at the same time! In the latest game and Levelkit build : So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools? Content (Level Design and Art)

• Dynamic light cone mesh for flashlights (no more flashlights clipping through walls!)
• New gates, fences, light models, concrete barriers, road/sidewalk parts etc added to LevelKit
• New character LUTs have been made based on the older designs that work with the new LUT template

Gameplay and Mechanics

• All game systems will now only display a character's name if the player has actually learned the name from metadata or not.
• Targeting system will show if a data point has new metadata the player hasn't found yet. (also cleaned up the target info window a bit)
• Data download notification shows the amount of new metadata gained from the data.

Controls and UX

• Save slots added

AI

• Improving and fixing various issues on the AI system such as NPCs being able to move form neutral to adversarial mid mission
• Setting and changing NPCs actions and goals were improved
• Cleaner NPC animation state machine setup

Modding and Lua API additions

• Changes made on agent Lua script to allow for more flexible modding of AI
• Lua track for Timelines (run any Lua command from a timeline - DANGER!!)

Bugs fixed

• Character LUTs were not assigned correctly if only color or only smoothness/metallic was defined in mission Lua script.
• SocialInventory was not assigned correctly so all collected metadata was just sent to void
• Lua API was not handling null/nil values consistently, some API calls returning a nil value from Lua side as a nil, and others as null.

Other

• Funding applications for post release DLC
• Cloud and documentation migration

That's it for this update, we'll be back again soon with more, in the mean time stay safe folks! If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid here on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2020-10-09 19:44:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Devblog time! From making all characters playable, API improvements, and an overhaul of our setting systems, we've packed a lot in to the most recent sprints this summer.

New character spawn system

On the last sprint roundup, we talked about the new NPC creation system - a more flexible system to create various types of NPCs. That was the phase one of a bigger goal: to improve and simplify the process to spawn all characters - NPCs or playable ones. The second (and final) phase was all about making all characters playable! Now all character prefabs are generic, and every character can be a NPC or playable. To change between these two states now just requires defining in a single line in the mission script, which, for examples, looks just like this: characterType = "npc". The game will automatically handle add the needed components and connections to make the character controlled by the player or the AI. This means you can now easily make a mission in which you can play as a guard and Joe can be an NPC! It's a big change that gives so much more flexibility when creating new missions.
Revenge! All characters can now be made playable - and that means Joe finally gets to use a tazer himself!

Look Up Tables

We also reviewed how the characters are currently implemented, and decided how we want them to work with regards to the character look up tables. Following this, we decided to create a new LUT template that would work for all characters whilst still enabling a variety of characters to be created from a single mesh, which will also take into account the new head prop system. For this system to work, a new UV layout has been created, which has been a great opportunity to review all existing characters and tidy up any issues with these characters too.

Timeline

There's been a lot of work getting Timeline to play nicely with spawned characters and our Lua API - so recent work has centered around implementing the playable sections of the intro to the game making use of this. It's been an interesting process with lots of back and forth as Timeline really does seem like a tool made for making animated movies in Unity rather than controlling entities in a game engine between playable sequences. Writing "playables", the Unity components needed for scripting different functionality into sequences, is a little arcane too! None the less, we now have something that is looking pretty good and sets the whole game up nicely. We think you are going to enjoy this!
A scene from the intro we're currently working on using Timeline

Settings

We improved the settings system, and added new settings to give players more options and to add other important small quality of life features.
OFF GRID main menu - where you can change settings as you please! The new and updated settings are: Gameplay

• Vibration: enable or disabled the controller vibration
• Auto hide mouse: the game have full control if the mouse cursor is shown or not, dependent if the player is playing with a keyboard and mouse or a controller
• Mouse locked [only available if the "auto hide mouse" option is disabled]: Always show or hide the mouse cursor
• Follow camera: if enabled, the game camera will always follow the player character

Graphics

• Brightness: increase or decrease the screen brightness
• Resolution: select the resolution in a list of available ones, the user screen native resolution is set as default
• Fullscreen: selected between fullscreen or window mode
• Locked framerate: it is possible to play the game on a unlocked or a locked framerate
• Vsync: the options here are off, on, or half
• Anti aliasing: the available options on this field are FXAA (FastApproximateAntialiasing), SMAA (SubpixelMorphologicalAntialiasing), TAA (TemporalAntialiasing) or none
• Anti aliasing quality: the player will also be able to choose the AA quality level if it's selected FXAA or SMA on the option above
• Shadows Quality: it's also possible to select the shadows quality (high, medium, and low) or disable it completely

Quite a list that is! All together, they will certainly improve user experience.

API Improvements

Making games is very much an iterative process, often requiring going back a few steps and re-doing what you have but in a slightly better ways. Over the development, we've grown our Lua API a fair bit, and sometimes things haven't ended in the most logical place, or with the most descriptive name. And in quite a few places we've eventually come up with a more convenient, or more flexible, way something could be done instead. So, while we still have a chance to make massive, breaking changes to our Lua API without annoying all the modders by breaking their mods, we've done a bit of an overhaul of our Lua API in general. In short, the API is now less verbose, more consistent in its syntax and its use in various Lua scripts in the game, automates certain setup tasks better, removes some easy chances of making mistakes in your scripts, and after all the changes, our mission scripts shrunk in size by about 25%, so you'll probably end having to write less code to make your mods as well!

In summary

As always, a quick list-based summary of the progress: Characters

• Finished the new spawn character system
• Bugs fixed and polish on characters and save systems
• Character LUTs

Content (Level Design and Art)

• Intro cutscene playable and tutorialised
• Testing the Unity Timeline integration with our Lua API and extending it to fit the implementations we need it for
• Work with virtual cameras and targeting in Intro to make them behave nicely now they are following dynamic spawned targets
• Continued work on the harbour level
• Harbour props - creating fences, gates and cranes to help make the harbour feel more authentic
• Adding head props to the unity project

Controls and UX

• New and updated settings

AI

• Writing custom AI Agents for intro level interactions

Modding and Lua API additions

• Updated some existing levels to new Lua API
• Added in-game debug UI with support for executing Lua commands while testing the game/mods

Bugs fixed

• Lots of generic clean-up and fixing various small bugs

As always, thank you for reading and following along on this development journey! The OFF GRID Team If you havent already - be sure to wishlist OFF GRID on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2020-07-29 16:00:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hacking as a genre is ever-growing, and the Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition is a testament to that! For our last dev stream of the festival, we are gathering some of our fav IRL hackers to play hacking and cyberpunk games currently featured in the festival. These include:

• Jack Move
• Chinatown Detective Agency
• Project Haven
• Ghostrunner
• Disjunction
• Solace State
• ...and more!

Hackers playing hacking games. JOIN US!

Starting 12pm Pacific | 3pm Eastern | 8pm BST.

It'll be a bit of marathon stream, so even if you can't make the beginning, be sure to jump in and say hi at any point! We stream via Steam Broadcast, YouTube and Twitch. Join us in the chats or simply watch and enjoy the hacktion! Steam Game Festival ends tomorrow - so if you have not already, be sure to DOWNLOAD THE DEMOS, play them quickly, and WISHLIST! THANK YOU! p.s. We've also seen that Hacknet is on 80% discount right now - go get yourself a copy!

[ 2020-06-21 14:44:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

The OFF GRID demo drops you in mid-game. Your world has already changed beyond recognition and you're in at the deep end.

Your daughter has been taken.

And now...

Your life as you knew it is over.

Your worldview has shifted. You're doing things you never expected.

You have one goal: SAVE JEN.

How? You'll learn as you go. You'll discover new tools. You'll learn just how much we all leave behind.

Join our dev Rich as we play through OFF GRID + chat! We'll talk:

• the inspiration for the game
• discuss the relevance of mass surveillance and data privacy
• why hacking is the core mechanic

Ask your questions or listen quietly. Your call. We stream direct from Steam Broadcast, as well as Twitch and YouTube - see you there! Don't forget to join our Discord if you haven't already - be great to have you in! -- If can't join in this one, how about these? OFF GRID Livestream + Showcase: Steam Game Festival Edition Saturday, June 20th, 12 noon PDT / 8pm BST This special edition livestream will be a chance to:

• explore OFF GRID's unique mechanics and how they were created
• speak with the hackers who have consulted on the game for realism and feature as characters
• showcase OFF GRID's moddability and how you can craft and contribute to the stories within the universe

Hacker Hangout Livestream Sunday, June 21st, 12 noon PDT / 8pm BST A chance to just hang out with the hackers, hactivists and heros that inspire OFF GRID. We'll do a livestream so that you can see more of the game, and we can chat about all things hacker culture as we do. Ask your questions in Steam Broadcast chat, and we can have a good ol chinwag about all things that they can legally answer. We'll be joined by Lauri Love, pathfinder, mc.fly, and more! p.s. PLEASE WISHLIST OFF GRID - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we *really* appreciate your support!

[ 2020-06-19 08:10:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

You're a technophobe dad. Or you were. Until your daughter was forcibly taken. Now you're being guided into the internet's underbelly and taught how to hack "Internet of Things" smart devices to distract, manipulate, and sneak past others. You source and leak sensitive documents to help uncover the conspiracy around the disappearance of your hacktivist daughter. Hide in the shadows, hack your way through, and don't get caught.

Where did OFF GRID come from?

OFF GRID is a labour of love brought about from our desire to see privacy respected, surveillance curtailled, and to empower individuals to better understand their digital footprint. This is exactly why data visualisation forms a core mechanic of the game. Combine that with the powerful skillset that many hackers possess, and OFF GRID as you know it was born.
Our direct involvement in the hacker community has brought about something quite unique in games: a game that thoroughly explores the culture of its subject and involves that very community in the telling of its stories. We've consulted with real life hackers; some are IN the game; and we have supported modding from the start. OFF GRID is a project doing something with Steam Workshop features that is genuinely ground breaking in terms of bringing a digitally literate community onto the platform to make a universe that represents their culture in mods.

Our studio, Semaeopus, is just a small team of 3 designer-programmers, a part time artist, and a part time marketing and business developer, making something incredibly ambitious.

Enjoy the demo, and please be sure to wishlist + follow OFF GRID to join us on our journey to release!

THANK YOU!

Sarah, Rich, Pontus, Andr, Josh

[ 2020-06-16 17:01:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join us for a play along Q&A session for the Chinese audience with our friend Hao who is keen to help OFF GRID reach his home country of China. He'll be leading a Q&A session for us and translating the interview into Chinese live as we play through the demo. Hao runs his own small studio Flying Hammer, and is a concept designer, game developer, animator, and entrepreneur working in both the UK and China, making educational games and animations. He is passionate about gaming culture exchange and helping get indie games like Sable, and now OFF GRID, seen in his homeland. **Disclaimer - at the moment OFF GRID isn't translated to Chinese, but we are keen to support Chinese players with the limited resources we have as 4 person indie studio. We have translated our Steam page to make a start in this direction, have modding support that we hope can mean at the very least Chinese players will be able to add Chinese localisation mods of OFF GRID to the Steam Workshop, and we will do our best to aim for an official Chinese Translation of the game at some point post release.

[ 2020-06-15 09:35:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

OFF GRID is part of the Steam Games Festival: Summer Edition, now running from June 16th to 22nd! The date may have changed, but our plans have not! What can you expect during the Steam Game Festival starting Tuesday?! Plenty! We've got SIX ways to for you to take part:

1. Download and play a free demo of OFF GRID!

Starting 10am PDT, June 16th - 22nd

Yep, you heard that right! It's time limited, but it will be there throughout the duration of the festival for you to try! Head on over to the OFF GRID Steam page and get your fix!

2. OFF GRID Developer Q&A

Tuesday, June 16th, 10am PDT / 6pm BST

Questions at the ready, because you can ask us anything! We'll be taking questions in the live Steam Broadcast chat AND via reddit.

3. Chinese OFF GRID Play Along

Wednesday, June 17th, 1pm BST / 8pm CT

Join us for a play along Q&A session for the Chinese audience with our fried Hao who is keen to help OFF GRID reach his home country of China. He'll be leading a Q&A session for us and translating the interview into Chinese live as we play through the demo. Hao runs his own small studio, Flying Hammer, and is a concept designer, game developer, animator and entrepreneur working in both the UK and China, making educational games and animations. He is passionate about gaming culture exchange and helping get indie games like Sable, and now OFF GRID, seen in his homeland! **Disclaimer** At the moment, OFF GRID isn't translated to Chinese, but we are keen to help support Chinese players with the limited resources we have as a four person indie studio. We have translated our Steam page to make a start in this direction, and have modding support for the game that we hope can mean at the very least, that Chinese players will be able to add Chinese localisation mods of OFF GRID to the Steam Workshop. We will do our best to aim for an official Chinese Translation of the game at some point post-release.

4. OFF GRID DevStream: CCCamp Mod

Thursday, June 18th, 12 noon PDT / 8pm BST

Part of our reguarly stream series - we'll be back with the infamous mc.fly and Mitch Altman - a seriously cool hardware hacker and inventor of TV-B-Gone, on the lineup! We'll continue modding & making the hardware hacking area in our CCCamp mod, which Mitch runs IRL.

5. OFF GRID Livestream + Showcase: Steam Game Festival Edition

Saturday, June 20th, 12 noon PDT / 8pm BST

This special edition livestream will be a chance to:

• explore OFF GRID's unique mechanics and how they were created
• speak with the hackers who have consulted on the game for realism and feature as characters
• showcase OFF GRID's moddability and how you can craft and contribute to the stories within the universe

6. Hacker Hangout Livestream

Sunday, June 21st, 12 noon PDT / 8pm BST

A chance to just hang out with the hackers, hactivists and heros that inspire OFF GRID. We'll do a livestream so that you can see more of the game, and we can chat about all things hacker culture as we do. Ask your questions in Steam Broadcast chat, and we can have a good ol chinwag about all things that they can legally answer. We'll be joined by Lauri Love, pathfinder, mc.fly, and more!

We stream direct from Steam Broadcast, as well as Twitch and YouTube - be sure to join in!

We're looking forward to the start of the festival! In the meantime, you're welcome to join our Discord if you haven't already. We've got a good group of people - be great to have you in there, too! The OFF GRID Team p.s. If you havent already - be sure to wishlist OFF GRID - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we *really* appreciate your support!

[ 2020-06-13 14:40:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're going to kickstart OFF GRID's entrance in the Steam Game Festival with a live developer Q&A and livestream. The Steam Game Festival has been delayed by a week and will now start on June 16th and run through June 22. We'll kickoff the Q&A on

Tuesday, June 16th

10am PDT / 6pm BST

We'll take your questions in the Steam Broadcast chat room once we go live on the day!

We'll also host an AMA on Reddit at the same time, answering questions from both. Click the 'reminder' button, and when the time comes, grab yourself a drink and get your questions ready! In the meantime, we'll just warm things up a bit first and tell you a little about ourselves. We are Semaeopus, the small team behind OFF GRID. It ebbs and flows a bit, but we've got five regular faces working together at the moment - a mix of full, part, and very part-timers. There's two Brits (three on a technicality), a Fin, a Portugese, and a Midwesterner. Our slack regularly includes references to pigs and piglets, toddler squawks occasionally feature in our video chats, one of us can't stand broccoli, and another lives in a rather enviable location near a gorgeous coastline. How's that for a taster? It may not be your usual dev intro, but then again, we're not your average dev team. We'll be primed and ready for your hard hitting questions come June 16th. If you have any questions on your mind right this moment, stick them in the comments below and we'll answer them on the day. Look forward to it! -- If you can't make this session, join our other upcoming streams:

Wednesday, June 17th

1pm BST / 8pm CT

Join us for a play along Q&A session for the Chinese audience with our fried Hao who is keen to help OFF GRID reach his home country of China. He'll be leading a Q&A session for us and translating the interview into Chinese live as we play through the demo.

Saturday, June 20th

12 noon PDT / 8pm BST

Our extra special Steam Games Festival Livestream & Showcase, complete with some of the hackers and hacktivists that both inspired and informed the making of OFF GRID. We stream via Steam Broadcast, Twitch, and YouTube. Don't forget you can pop over to the Discord anytime and start getting acquainted with our crowd - we've got good people in there. If you haven't already, please wishlist OFF GRID and tell your friends!

[ 2020-06-09 16:23:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Now running from June 16th to the 22nd, the Steam Game Festival is coming up and OFF GRID is in it! The OFF GRID world is rich with references to real life mass surveillance, privacy, and hacking stories - and we'll be talking about it all on Saturday, June 20th. Tune in to speak with the developers live and hear about the IRL stories and events that bleed in to the game. The livestream and showcase will

• explore its unique mechanics and how they were created
• speak with the hackers who have consulted on the game for realism and feature as characters
• showcase OFF GRID's moddability and how you can craft and contribute to the stories within the universe

You'll be sure to learn something new in this unique stream full of hacker culture, infosec, and a videogame that explores it all, so buckle in for a whirlwind ride! We'll be live via Steam Broadcast - so head over to the OFF GRID store page to tune in! -- Don't worry, if you can't join during this time, we'd love you to come along to another of our events during the festival:

Wednesday, June 17th

1pm BST / 8pm CT

Join us for a play along Q&A session for the Chinese audience with our fried Hao who is keen to help OFF GRID reach his home country of China. He'll be leading a Q&A session for us and translating the interview into Chinese live as we play through the demo.

Developer Q&A + Livestream

Tuesday, June 16th, 10am PDT / 6pm BST

Ask us anything! We'll be answering questions you post in the Steam Broadcast chat room and via a Reddit AMA. As always, we welcome you into our Discord at any time - it's a good bunch in there. If you haven't already, please wishlist OFF GRID and tell your friends!

[ 2020-06-09 15:34:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're going to kickstart OFF GRID's entrance in the Steam Game Festival with a live developer Q&A and livestream.

We'll take your questions in the Steam Broadcast chat room once we go live on the day!

We'll also host an AMA on Reddit at the same time, answering questions from both. Click the 'reminder' button, and when the time comes, grab yourself a drink and get your questions ready! In the meantime, we'll just warm things up a bit first and tell you a little about ourselves. We are Semaeopus, the small team behind OFF GRID. It ebbs and flows a bit, but we've got five regular faces working together at the moment - a mix of full, part, and very part-timers. There's two Brits (three on a technicality), a Fin, a Portugese, and a Midwesterner. Our slack regularly includes references to pigs and piglets, toddler squawks occasionally feature in our video chats, one of us can't stand broccoli, and another lives in a rather enviable location near a gorgeous coastline. How's that for a taster? It may not be your usual dev intro, but then again, we're not your average dev team. We'll be primed and ready for your hard hitting questions come June 9th. If you have any questions on your mind right this moment, stick them in the comments below and we'll answer them on the day. Look forward to it! -- If you can't make this session, join our other upcoming streams:

Thursday, June 11th

12 noon PST / 8pm BST Part of our ongoing bi-weekly Thursday dev streams. We've got the infamous McFly and a seriously cool hardware hacker on the lineup! Streaming via Steam Broadcast, Twitch, and YouTube - tune in!

Saturday, June 13th

12 noon PST / 8pm BST Our extra special Steam Games Festival Livestream & Showcase, complete with some of the hackers and hacktivists that both inspired and informed the making of OFF GRID. We stream via Steam Broadcast, Twitch, and YouTube. Don't forget you can pop over to the Discord anytime and start getting acquainted with our crowd - we've got good people in there. If you haven't already, please wishlist OFF GRID and tell your friends!

[ 2020-05-29 00:09:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Steam Games Festival is coming up and OFF GRID is in it! The OFF GRID world is rich with references to real life mass surveillance, privacy, and hacking stories - and we'll be talking about it all. Tune in to speak with the developers live and hear about the IRL stories and events that bleed in to the game. The livestream and showcase will

• explore its unique mechanics and how they were created
• speak with the hackers who have consulted on the game for realism and feature as characters
• showcase OFF GRID's moddability and how you can craft and contribute to the stories in the OFF GRID universe

Keep your eyes peeled for special guests and famous names from the hacker and security world that will be joining us. You'll be sure to learn something new in this unique stream full of hacker culture, infosec, and a videogame that explores it all, so buckle in for a whirlwind ride! We'll be live via Steam Broadcast - so head over to the OFF GRID store page to tune in! -- Don't worry, if you can't join during this time, we'd love you to come along to another of our events during the festival:

Developer Q&A + Livestream

Tuesday, June 9th, 10am PST / 6pm BST Ask us anything! We'll be answering questions you post in the Steam Broadcast chat room and via a Reddit AMA.

OFF GRID DevStream

Thursday, June 11th, 12 noon PST / 8pm BST Part of our ongoing bi-weekly Thursday dev streams. We've got the infamous McFly and a seriously cool hardware hacker on the lineup! Streaming via Steam Broadcast, Twitch, and YouTube - tune in! As always, we welcome you into our Discord at any time - it's a good bunch in there. If you haven't already, please wishlist OFF GRID and tell your friends!

[ 2020-05-28 22:11:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

We will be participating a fun event TONIGHT all about UK games and their makers. Hosted by Playcrafting, it's part of a free, weekly series - so definitely something for indie gamers to keep an eye on! Join us from 2pm EDT / 7pm BST (that's 7pm if you're in the UK!) [url=https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-game-night-made-in-london-tickets-102541967786] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-game-night-made-in-london-tickets-102541967786

[ 2020-05-20 14:03:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

May we welcome you to the latest OFF GRID devblog! As always, there are continuous improvements being made, and we hope you enjoy hearing about it all.

Improving User Experience

The last two sprints have seen improvements in the user experience for players, but even more so for modders. That also means it helps us in making content - as we use the same tools ourselves. Most noticeably for everyone, the look and feel of the data view has been improved. This makes it easier for players to find and access the data they want in the levels, making the whole experience of targeting data feel better. For anyone with access to our LevelKit and modding API, we have been rewriting lots of our API to simplify the scripts, make sure different functions use consistent syntax, and can be used everywhere. This reduces the amount of information modders need to write, and automates more of the level setup steps on engine side to reduce the amount of things content creators need to handle.

Character Updating

Another major task has been coordinating work by a few of us on characters, their accessories, LUT colours, and how the prefabs are organised for all of this. We finally removed the last remnants of prototype characters that have been in the game since day dot too. It has been liberating to do some spring cleaning! This has also meant that the full remit of characters in all colours, shapes and sizes are now implemented across the game, AND they can be tweaked and modded to your heart's content! Next up is fleshing out the rest of their personalities and conversations!
New characters have entered the building!
Character customisation - accessories, hair, and colours can be changed.

NPC Direction

NPC direction has been improved when performing certain actions, like interacting with a device or walking through various points. As the navigation mesh system isn't made to have an agent to face a certain orientation or to be in an exact position at the end of its path, it's needed to tweak the object direction and position with code, and at the same time control the animation manually to make everything seems as fluid as possible. The facing orientation is really important in patrolling because it's a game design pillar for stealth games to control where the player can navigate through a level. It's also important when the player is interacting with devices - for the animations to seem correct, the NPC needs to be in a certain position facing a specific direction. We also added a gizmo to help us visualise in the level each direction the NPC should face at certain points such as interacting with interest points, as you can see in the screenshot below:
Arrow indicates the direction this non-playable character should face. This helps us and modders to line up the characters correctly when setting up the patrol routes and interactions.

Improving and cleaning the NPC creation system

This is really Phase One of a bigger feature and task that we are going to talk more about in the next blog post, but for now we are going to focus on the NPC part of it. We are developing a more flexible NPC system to have various types of NPCs with different action, behaviours, or items. It's really important to have diverse levels, and also to give good tools for the community to create dynamic mods. In terms of developing the game, this is also really helpful to us because it's a good opportunity to improve and clean some code. This has already resulted in improving the AI search actions and debugging the code in a faster way.

What will you see in the next build?

Expect a new build for all of you FIRST ACCESS folk next month - we'll give you a heads up as soon as it's done. Here are some of the changes you can expect to see: Characters

• All protoype characters removed and new characters implemented across the game
• Characters available in all colours, shapes and sizes now in game - ready to be tweaked and modded as you please
• Improved creation of NPCs:
• Ability to create different types of NPCs with various actions and behaviours in a flexible way
• Some components are added in runtime, using the information in Lua scripts
• Simplification, merging, and removal of some NPC scripts

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Support for scheduling things to happen based on date / time (in addition to the existing "do after X seconds" option)

Controls and UX

• Fixed issues with data view visible range and actual targeting range not matching
• Improved visibility of data & data trails
• Fixed data view range not always resetting to minimum correctly
• Fixed data view shader using negative transparency with missing/bad UV's on meshes

AI

• New system to control the NPC direction at certain actions:
• It improves the movement before the NPC interact with a device
• Gives more control in the guard's patrol
• Gizmo added to visualise the desired direction
• Cleaner organisation and seperation of NPC functionality, which should make debugging various parts of the codebase easier

Modding and Lua API additions

• Lots of Lua scripting API cleanup, with more consistent and less verbose syntax for things
• Requirements for level creator / modder to set up certain things have been removed and are now handled automatically instead

Other tasks and upcoming events

• Rich did a presenation on modding and mod communities for Tentacle Zone: [previewyoutube=oFoYEiDI1TY;full][/previewyoutube]
• We submitted to Steam Games Festival - fingers crossed!
• Moving and tidying of all Semaeopus and OFF GRID organizational documentation to a new system

Tonight (Wednesday the 20th), we will be demoing OFF GRID and our Milliways mod during the World Game Night: Made in London Edition event put on by Playcrafting. If you're free, join in - this session is all about UK games and their makers! Check it out: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-game-night-made-in-london-tickets-102541967786
Thanks for reading! If you havent already - be sure to wishlist OFF GRID on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support! Thank you!

[ 2020-05-20 13:52:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hackers making hacker mods! If you were watching the devstream last year you may remember that we had a miniseries we did during CCCamp 2019 where we made a section of the hacker camp with help from folks from the Milliways hacker village. Well, we decided to spend season 2 of the devstream supporting mc.fly and other CCC'ers in expanding the mod. [previewyoutube=V5mTJH1wPAo;full][/previewyoutube] Come and watch Rich, mc.fly and other CCC goers and members of the community make this mod into more than just Milliways, perhaps even more than CCC, as we look to transcend space and time in this mod of the hacker universe! You'll get some inside commentary on hacker camps and events, and some opportunities to get involved yourself. Join our next stream: TONIGHT!! Thursday, 16th April ~8:00PM GMT --> WATCH ON <-- YouTube Twitch or Steam Broadcast Til Next Time! The OFF GRID Team Join our newsletter! Join our Discord Make your mates Wishlist OFF GRID!

[ 2020-04-16 16:29:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Wow, where has the last month or so gone?! We skipped a test sprint (and a blog post, apologies) to get a couple of features pushed further along and in that time the whole world has set on fire. However, we area lucky in working with computers, and although not completely unaffected we are managing to crack on with dev, so here is your long awaited Sprint Update! We hope, wherever you are in the world, that you and your family are holding up ok, hopefully a little insight into the mundanity of OFF GRID's digital universe will provide some respite for your weary mind in these strange times.
Trialing and tweaking new key art

Working up new Key Art

Pretty excitingly we have been working with an awesome Portuguese artist, Joao Sapiro, to work up some new images for our key art and capsules. We have got something really special coming together, focusing more on the themes of the game directly through its characters. Here is a sneak peak!

Making Timeline dynamic, and moddable!

We spent the last two sprints working on some features to improve signposting and tutorialisation in the game. This was namely in the form of a) implementing Unity Timeline instances that work with dynamic characters, cameras, and objects being spawned and b) being able to give cameras dynamic lookAt/follow targets. As with everything else OFF GRID this has to fit into the moddable systems. We decided it was needed so that devices & mission objects etc can set the camera target as the current NPC (or player) interacting with that object. This gives us a huge amount more flexibility when trying to signpost specific moments or interactions, but oh my did we find that timeline has some quirks when getting it to work with dynamic instances! It's odd to say this, but at times it has felt like the entire Timeline feature has been built without interactive video-game use cases in mind...
Implementing Timeline in a dynamic setting can feel like swimming upstream

Defining gesture & sound events in Hackable/InterestPoint devices

Previously these were being done in the agent Lua script (or, should have been done there at least!). That didn't allow for mods that would add new devices (each mod would require replacing all agent scripts in all levels, or the device can't be used by those agents), there needed to be a way to at least define a default gesture in the device itself. We added support for defining use of gestures & sound events in Hackable devices (on the Unity scene object/prefab). Hackable devices and InterestPoints need to be something modders can create, so the default gestures & sounds to play when using them needs to be defined in the scene object (or prefab), on the Unity side. AI Lua scripts can then define an override to this if the specific NPC should play a different animation. But having a default one defined in the scene object makes sure new devices are usable by all characters without having to modify AI code for every new added device (which would have been a pretty impossible situation for modding support).

Vibration patterns on the controller

Vibration patterns. Not all of them, and none are final, but there's some in the game now and we can keep adding more & tweaking them until they feel nice. We added a new tool on the dev side of the project to help us to implement quickly, various vibration patterns. Each vibration pattern has various options that we can use to define different types of vibrations (like you can see in the following screenshot).
To start, we can control each motor vibration individually, so it's possible to have a vibration pattern in only on one motor. Each motor (or the both of them) has a curve that defines the level of vibration. That vibration can be constant or can have an interval between two values. It's also possible to define a constant vibration pattern, that is a loop, which can have a fixed duration or it can have a minimum and maximum duration. This in turn enables us to have patterns that change duration or force according to the situation of the game. So, for example, it's possible to have a vibration pattern that can increase or decrease it's force according to the distance between the player and a respective objective, like a mission objective object. It also has some less important options, like pause between loops, and that pause duration can also change according to something that is happening in the game. So, with all that, it's a flexible tool that's going to help us to add new vibrations and improve the game's moment to moment experience, and player feedback.

Bizdev baby

We have had some of the year's un-sexiest admin work over the last month or so with our annual returns, but thanks to VGTR that at least means and nice cheque at the end of the process, which, everything being so uncertain with COVID-19 on the loose, is much appreciated. We are also lucky enough to be part funded by Creative England. Recently we have been able to take advantage of their support to do some business planning and a series of investment events, workshops and mentor meetings. We have some exciting news on a well known new advisor of ours that we will be able to talk more about soon! As development of OFF GRID gets further down the road and closer to release we have started making some rough plans for expansions and future titles from Semaeopus too. Exciting times!

In the latest game and Levelkit build :

No build this time around while we get these features finished and tested, so, what can you expect to see in the *next* build of the game and modding tools? Content (Level Design and Art)

• Created and imported Character Profiles for first half of levels

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Defining gesture & sound event in Hackable/InterestPoint device

Controls and UX

• New vibration tool
• Tool to add various types of vibrations, in an easy and flexible way
• Timeline/Camera dynamic lookAt/follow target

AI

• Improved and fixed the NPC AI
• The NPC AI can now search better for the player after losing them

Modding and Lua API additions

• Lua API to manage the current level data points, this makes it possible to do the following actions:
• Get DataPoints from a certain object/NPC
• Get data from the data points
• Filter DataPoints with:
• Network name
• Data type
• Save and remove data info in the the players inventory
• Remove data points from the level

Bugs fixed

• NPCs didn't react correctly to noises, now they do
• The taser didn't do/finish the taser action sometimes [only rarely occurred], now it does
• NPCs always check their phone on level start before anything esle
• UsePointAction triggered gesture & device use message every frame while using the device
• When the NPC was in search intruder action it ignored the player, and also sometimes it didn't do the taser action in any state
• Data & keys we assign to NPC's in mission setup were counting as received, unread messages
• AI action to use a device was triggering gestures & device code per-frame while using the device, rather than once when starting to use it
• Target selection sound wasn't played when targeting was enabled when current target was same as previous target
• Data view visualization range and actual targeting range don't match

All now fixed! Other

• #bizdev baby!

Virtual CCCamp in the Milliways mod We are restarting the Dev Stream just in time for those self-isolation blues! And what a time to be doing so, as the extra free time that some of our hacker collaborators are finding themselves with means we have the opportunity to crack out the Milliways mod and make some progress on it. If you would like to swat up on things ahead of time then be sure to check out the previous streams and other resources on the wiki page. Be sure to tune in at 8pm GMT on Thursday (26th March) to learn some more about modding in OFF GRID and hacker culture in general. Thanks for reading, as always we hope you found it interesting. Let us know in the comments or on the forums if there is something you want more detail on, or that we used too much jargon explaining and you'd like us to clarify, we love a good chat! We look forward to speaking with you more online! While you are self-isolating, social distancing, and generally keeping out of public, why not work through your Steam backlog so you are ready to play OFF GRID when it releases ;) Bye for now, and stay safe and healthy folks. If you havent already - be sure to Wishlist here - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2020-03-23 20:06:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hackers playing hacking games! Come and watch Rich and the OFF GRID devteam and our security researcher friends talk all things hacker news, and play through our favourite hacking games. You'll get some inside commentary on the authenticity of the hacking games we play, and some opportunities to win keys for some of those games! [previewyoutube=gjl2kw5qq98;full][/previewyoutube] Join our next stream: TONIGHT!! Thursday, 30th January 8:00PM GMT --> WATCH ON <-- YouTube Twitch or Steam Broadcast Til Next Time! The OFF GRID Team Join our newsletter! Join our Discord https://store.steampowered.com/app/526720/Off_Grid/

[ 2020-01-30 15:06:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream, and traditionally it has focused on what is currently going on in development of OFF GRID, and as a primer for how to mod the game and use its Workshop tools. However... We have also been starting to mix in letsplays of other hacking games that we find interesting, and we have been mixing it up by getting friends form the security research nd hacking community along to play and analyse with us. In case you missed the last one, here it is to catch up on: [previewyoutube=UK_i7HhL0Js;full][/previewyoutube] Join our next stream: TONIGHT!! Thursday, 16th January 8:00PM GMT --> WATCH VIA STEAM BROADCAST! <-- Til Next Time! The OFF GRID Team offgridthegame.com

[ 2020-01-16 17:34:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome folks, to the last devblog of the year! We hope you have had happy holidays wherever you are in the world. Festive cheer, lots of food, and if you don't celebrate a holiday this time of year then we hope you have had some time off to play some games at the very least.

Eating bugs

We have had some fun stuff, and some not so fun stuff, this last couple of sprints. But in all fairness the not so fun stuff has been satisfying... We decided to spend some extra time on lengthening the test sprint and working through bugs to tidy up the backlog ahead of the end of the year. Oh boy does it feel good reducing tech debt! The last month or so has included:

• bugs
• more bugs
• some non-bug fixes

As Pontus put it "this week we have mainly been eating bugs :D"
31 dead bugs.

A new look for Steam

We did some admin around the edges too, getting the Steam Library artwork all updated for the new look launch of Steam Library, and we have started making use of the new formats for Steam Announcements, as you as you may well be able to tell if you are reading this on Steam! The backend is so much nicer from a developer perspective, and hopefully it is all working nicely for you to have the whole thing collected together and centralised on the Steam community pages.
Our new box are for Steam Library.

A little helper on the Discord

But even more importantly for you good folks who are here keeping up on our news and take part in the various OFF GRID communities, we launched a bot pathfinder has been working on to the Semaeopus Discord. Why not hop in there now and try throwing around a few commands?
Darth Vegas in action.

But what about the game itself?!

Well a load of work went into new gameplay and testing for the opening missions in the game, and that included optimising and bringing a higher level of polish to some of our draft levels, coloring and braking up walls, adjusting lights, and baking initial lightmaps for testing gameplay in the shadows.
Debugging physics colliders.

Arty stuff

We pushed forward with the design and creation of a system of pipes and cables with multiple interconnecting pieces, and made a bunch of new environment art including cleaning products, janitor supplies, rugs, roof antennas, satellite dishes and more.

Profiling

We made a start on creating and writing up character profiles for all of the NPCs and started connecting them in mission scripts in game, lots of little back story elements and relationships between characters have started to be developed too. Exciting stuff!
Adding a little character. Additionally we kicked off a new phase of audio work with our sound designer Jonas now that new levels are steadily flowing his way.

Fixing Tasers

We improved a few systems too, including the timings of the taser action and animation. Now when the animation sends the information to show/hide the taser prop it also enables/disables the needed effects, allowing for everything to be more synchronous and more automatic. We also added a system to help to know if the wanted action's animation is playing or not, this will help to finish some actions properly, for example in the past sometimes the taser action wasn't played correctly or even at all, and the looking at the phone animation was played instead, that happened because the phone action was called right after that taser action and interrupted it. These types of issues are now fixed.
Buzzing.

In the latest game and Levelkit build :

So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools? Content (Level Design and Art)

• Fixes to system download notifications where items giving data are set up wrong
• Refactored and fixed mission script and lua errors in new missions
• Fixed all schedulers to be nested inside empty functions
• Made sure all props are prefabs and fix parent/scale/skew issue
• Worked on textures for posters signs and other environmental storytelling

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Saving a game were improved, adding more information to a file
• The NPC taser action was fixed and the timing was improved

Controls and UX

• Automatic doors now open automatically if the door is unlocked and the player or a NPC is near it

Other

• Generated and uploaded new wiki docs and snippets to Off Grid wiki
• Started adding support for using Timeline with our Lua scripting system

That's it for now, see you in 2020! If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-12-27 20:22:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello faithful OFF GRID fans! In the midst of things we managed to schedule this last devblog post and leave it in drafts, so belatedly here is the previous Sprint Roundup. Keep your eyes peeled for a new one next week! We had a fairly unique sprint last time around, with loads of doing stuff IRL! And with that we have got plenty to update you on with this sprint:

Facetime

This sprint we had a great co-working session with the team in Essex. It was the first face-to-face gathering with all of the current team in one place, and so we made sure to start it off well! Sarah welcomed the team with fresh, homemade doughnuts and Rich had several racks of ribs ready for the smoker. It was an extremely useful co-working session with lots of planning and organisation - with discussion carefully curated by Filipe. The team also got together with other Essex devs for a bowling session one evening... and we've learned there are no standout bowlers on the team! [table] [tr][td]
[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Essex Dev Bowling[/td][/tr] [/table] We have built a studio and processes around working remotely (and even globally!). It gives us access to talent we wouldn't manage any other way, but it is so good to get together and share a meal around a table. [table] [tr][td]
[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Rich, Filipe, Andr, Pontus, & home smoked ribs! Sarah's behind the camera (again)![/td][/tr] [/table] We did a lot of scribbling with markers on oversized paper, and presenting ideas for things from new technical solutions to twists and details in the core story of the game. Of course one of the best things about getting together as a team when you predominantly work remotely, is having a reason to take a step back. We covered a lot of our release planning fundamentals as a team, and looked at the big picture such as milestones, work organization, bottlenecks and solutions, and more excitingly, what post-release plans we have in store!

Milliways Mod

This sprint included some fun extras, too. Chaos Communication Camp 2019 (an international meetings for hackers!) was the end of August, and we celebrated with a Milliways mod. Josh and a great new modder of ours, Luri, created the mod and Rich streamed with it during CCC. You can read about it and watch the recordings of the streams all here on our Milliways Mod wiki page. And if this interests you, you can even pull the repo from gitub and contribute to the mod.

Dundee Calling

Rich and Sarah went to Dundee for the UK Games Fund Awards in early September, where Rich was nominated for the Rising Star Award. The event was great fun and OFF GRID was demoed at the gorgeous V&A Dundee. The Videogames exhibition is on at the V&A and it's got a great look in on the dev journeys behind loads of great games, and so much more. [table] [tr][td]
[/td][/tr] [tr][td]V&A Dundee[/td][/tr] [/table] [table] [tr][td]
[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Entrance to the Videogames exhibition at the V&A Dundee[/td][/tr] [/table]

Release Date

You may have also spotted that there is some news about the release of OFF GRID. We'll now be releasing OFF GRID in 2020 - you can read more about that here.

Cracking on with Dev

In between all of this, we have continued on with dev! We had a bunch more level content we were working on, some updates to the save system and a bunch of smaller tasks inbetween all of the above, a few of which are visible in the latest builds of the game and modding tools - as listed below.

In the latest game and Levelkit build:

What can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools? Gameplay and Mechanics

• Optimisations for drone navigation volume generation

Controls and UX

• Save system fixes & correctly listing save slots:
• overwrite saves
• maximum of 3 save slots
• reload last save system

Modding and Lua API additions

• Levelkit tool improvements
• Fixed asset bundle loading for Levelkit levels
• Levelkit warnings added
• Miliways mod for Chaos Communication Camp

Other

• Levelkit updated to Unity 2019.2.5f1

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-12-02 18:56:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome OFF GRID fans, we are back with your regular dev update. Lots to tell this time around. Plenty of nice new features in both the game and the modding tools, new content, and some pretty crucial fixes, as well as a special edition modding stream we collaborated on with our First Access modding community in the Discord! Want to hear more? Read on...

Giving you "the feels"

Character controls, and what some people like to term "the toy", are incredibly important, especially in a third person game where you see the character all the time and the camera revolves around that entity. [table]
Walking in a Unity wonderland[/table] A good "toy" in any third person game is two systems, character movement, and camera movement (in a first person game for instance this is just one system) and sometimes these two systems can conflict, especially when trying to get animation driven movement to follow camera direction. Anyone who has played early versions of OFF GRID will know that we left the movement in a "passable" state for a long time while we focused on AI and data mechanics, well, in recent months, the character controls have finally been getting some love. We got our friend Mike Robinson (of Rekim/ Pool Panic fame) in to hone in on this stuff and he overhauled the two systems for us to get them feeling good! To get the the bottom of things he stripped out all the input curves and other curves except the controller dead zone, simplified the stick to world position code right down to just use the local eular y from the player and camera instead of the inverse transform stuff we had before. A portion of the direction now gets added to the player's rotation directly outside of the animation system. The amount added is based on the pose mode. More for walking, less for running, even less for crawl. He stripped out the checks for about-turns, set off directions etc, which were previously causing over-compensation and are no longer needed because the turn now nice and quick. We have now set it up so the head look at returns to straight on when the direction is over a threshold to avoid the weird snapping rubber banding from before. Less comedy gazing through your legs now we're afraid! With all that in place we were still getting a little jittering from the camera and player fighting. We moved the player logic from Update to FixedUpdate which smothed it out (although we had to move the inputs back to update otherwise the buttons would only work on physics updates!). The camera we haven't finished tweaking values for yet. It may still be a little snappy in places, but you should feel some improvement. And so... we'd love your feedback and thoughts on it! If you are a #FirstAccess backer please pull the latest update on the testing stream and let us know what you think, is it an improvement? Is it worse? Is there anything that still sticks out as needing particular attention in the character and camera controls? Jump in the Discord (www.discord.gg/semaeopus) and let us know!!

Adding Character

We have been adding to characters a bit over the last sprints, and here is no exception, we set up some systems for designers / modders adding accessories to heads, and for devices adding props to hands. It's important to have flexible systems that will help to give the game more visual variety quickly and easily, for both developers and modders, so we added new dynamic visual elements to help to achieve that. Now it's possible to have multiple head props attached to any character (yes including the drone!). These props can be hair, hats, glasses and earpieces, anything that will work to be fitted to the head bone. So it's possible to make many combinations. The props are set in the mission script with their prefab names in the specific character section, and they will be shown attached to the character when the game starts, there is no limit to the quantity of props used, but usually it's recommended to only use one type of head prop at a time. A usage example and the list of available props can be seen on the following wiki page. [table]
Drones need love too.[/table] To add to this, some new visual elements were also added in the device and character animation systems, so that when NPCs are interacting with a device, the device can attach an item or prop to these interaction animations and the hand being used in a much more dynamic fashion than before. An example would be, if an NPC interacts with a soda machine to drink a can of soda, then the soda can will appear in the hand of the NPC when it picks it up and when it's drinking it, but if the NPC goes to a water machine then a bottle of water will appear instead. The interesting bit is that the device itself is deciding this, meaning devices can be set up to hand some odd things over to characters in different situations or states. Again, if you are a FIRST ACCESS backer interested in modding, please check out these systems and let us know how you area finding them. Are they intuitive? Have you reached any limitations? We are keen to hear!

New levels on the way

We have had some specific focus on level design and content creation recently, which is always hard to talk about without giving away some spoilers. After all the changes we've done to our prefabs, and all the other systems in game, the old harbour level some of you might have played (or at least seen in our past blog posts) has gradually fallen into more and more of a neglected state, like some forgotten-about rusty, old, industrial... harbour. We need a harbour for the game, so this sprint was the time to start getting it back into shape. Considering how much work was needed, we decided to scrap a lot of the prototype geometry and just rebuild it from scratch. Which should be good news for anybody who might have played the old level, since now you'll end up with a completely fresh level to play instead... :D [table]
About to take the stand[/table] We have also been developing a courthouse level, anyone who has caught the Dev Stream recently may have caught glimpses of this in progress. We have taken a stroll around it while other hacker comrades have been on the stream, as the level itself is based on real courtrooms we visited while showing support to our friend Lauri Love during the court case against his extradition.

Means of Production

There has been a heck of a lot of organising to do since the last devblog, both internally and externally with the modding community. We have done some scheduling and product management improvements. There has been a lot of small internal changes and reorganization of our epics and backlog as a couple of new team members start sinking their teeth into the project. More on this on another blog post to follow! [table]
The Milliways Mod stream was always on somewhere at camp...[/table] Meanwhile we had some gearing up in preparation for the live stream of the Milliways Mod. We made plans to help a couple of modders from our community recreate part of CCCamp 2019 inside OFF GRID. The whole thing went fantastically, and we had a bunch of people watching from camp on a screen at the Milliways dome. We even had people voting on the scale and height of different structures in the mod, and sending reference photos of camp as the mod was being built to help add detail. You can read up on the process and the plan on our wiki page about it. You can check out the streams and watch the modding process here, and if you are tempted you can pull the repo and make a contribution or base your own mod off of it (more info on the wiki page linked above)!

In the latest game and LevelKit build :

So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools? If you are a #FirstAccess backer you might expect to see some of the below next time you boot up. But most importantly we really would like you to check out the controls tweaks and post thoughts in the Discord. Additionally are you one of the lucky people that got to experience a weird stutter in the camera in the last 2 months? Turns out it was Garbage Collection (a C# method of memory management) and so if your machine was effected by this we would love to hear if you are still experiencing it, or if our optimisations have fixed it for you. Other than that, here the usual release notes to summarise: Controls and UX

• Updated character movement scripts to make for much tighter and more direct feel.
• Camera control code also tweaked to deal with some of the fighting between the two schemes.

AI

• Devices giving objects to characters - some devices now can add an item in the interaction character animation.
• OFF GRID's social media messaging system, Flutter, got some attention as we took a few days to focus on writing for it. There is more variety in the procedurally generated "tweets" from NPCs now.

Modding and Lua API additions

• Head props - Now it is possible to add multiple head props to any character (yes including the drone!), this increases the variety you can give to any character and it helps to create more customisable missions.
• Player Path tool - The player path tool can help in the planning out and creation of a level by giving the ability to create a visual aid showing the possible paths that the player can take. It has a couple of handy features, such as the creation of multiple paths in the same level or text in the path points too.

Bugs fixed

• Performance improvement - The game's performance was improved in this sprint, as we had had some bug reports of a stutter on a few different machines. Theres still plenty of work to do this area, but the game presents a more fluid gameplay experience with less noticeable framerate spikes.

That's it for now, we'll be back soon with some more dev news soon! If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-08-29 13:55:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Videogames Is Serious Business Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream, and traditionally it has focused on what is currently going on in development of OFF GRID, and as a primer for how to mod the game and use its Workshop tools. However... In order to mix things up, and further blur the lines between games and reality, we are going to continue with the dev streams, but add a couple of new formats in too, starting with... hackers playing hacking games in "Videogames Is Serious Business". The idea is simple, some of our friends and IRL hackers that feature in OFF GRID as characters will guest on the show as we play through new and classic hacking games, chat about current events in infosec, and share old war stories as we go. Incase you missed it, this last month we did parts 1 & 2 of our first letsplay, and we chose the recent classic Hacknet. We had some great fun with it, you can catch up on those first two episodes here:

Hacknet Pt. 1!

Hacknet Pt. 2!

We have the next letsplay starting tonight in 30mins (8.30pm GMT) where we are going to check out the demo for NiteTeam 4, so if that interests you jump into it with us! Youtube Twitch or Steam Broadcast Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam!

[ 2019-08-01 19:04:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are back with another Sprint roundup! Loads of progress to tell you about and a lot of great stuff to poke and test out in the newest build if you are a First Access backer, so let's get to it!

Working on Information Underload

Now, bearing in mind the game is still pre-alpha - one of the most frequent pieces of feedback we get from first time players is a sense of information overload, and that it takes about 20 minutes of play time to really break though and "get" the game, but once there they love the depth.
Many people who bear with it really get a kick out of the moment when the game "clicks" for them, it can be quite rewarding to feel the pieces slot into place as you work out how Off Grid mechanics can be used and combined to your advantage, but it's not optimal that it takes so much perseverance to get there, and this is something we have always hoped a good opening to the game would help solve. In steps our first pass at tutorialisation!

The Workplace

This month we have been working on some new content that we want our First Access backers to give some feedback on. It's not the very beginning of the game and it's opening, but it is the first full level and in the core story missions and so should set the player up with the basic Off Grid tools and teach them the core mechanics without too much confusion. We'll try and avoid any spoilers here, but as mentioned earlier we are looking to ease people into the mechanics and reduce information overload. It's meant to tutorialise the features you need to get started digging into Off Grid, and so we specifically made it a relatively safe environment without too much challenge to make it easier for folks to explore and experiment with the mechanics we are trying to teach.
There are a few new mechanics in there, and some nice draft sequences for rooting your phone and getting your tools, but we are really keen to hear if this helps the the game "click" earlier for people... A lot of this is still under development and things like the Secretary neutral NPC are still being worked up and don't behave as intended yet, but we want to get a sense of how you feel about the pacing / challenge in this level and whether it gives you a better feeling for the extent of the tools available. If you are part of our FIRST ACCESS backers from the Kickstarter then please grab your key, take the new level for a spin, and give us your thoughts in the Discord (link) If you backed us at that level and haven't claimed your First Access / Pentester key from the Kickstarter yet then please get in touch, we are relying on the feedback of those early backers and the more of you there are the better. You should have an email from us with the steps you need to take to do so. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

More character work!

We have been busy beefing up the gestures available to NPCs and the modders making them! Using a mix of preexisting animations and newly sourced animations we have added lots more generic gestures to the animation controller for NPCs, all of which can be called through the Lua API. Check out the ever growing list here: The Gestures page on the OFF GRID wiki Have any suggestions for useful gestures? Ping us in the Discord or make a suggestion on the public trello board: The First Access and Modding public Trello board Come on in and contribute!
We have been busy getting the rest of the IRL hacker characters made, some surprise reveals on the way! Can you guess who is wearing a tshirt with a simplified version of the milliways logo?
We've been adding new LUTs into the project and now all characters will have their own unique LUT, meaning we essentially have the variations for all NPCs in the game pretty much covered now!

AI

Again, sprint work was focused on AI. We needed a method of an AI appearing mid level, but spawning an AI would have required a refactor of many systems. Instead a solution where AI could be paused/unpaused made sense, meaning an AI could 'leave' by being paused or 'join' by being unpaused. As a result we can now hide AI in cupboards if we need one to appear later in the level. Also slowed AI replanning when they end up in situations where there is no valid plan.
Other significant recent work is adding more things to level saves; saving app status, and AI state. These both proved important in getting a working build out.

BUGS

In the last sprints we ran into some pretty weird and complicated to debug issues, which is why it's taken us a while to get a new build out. But after few weeks of testing for every possible and impossible reason for the problems, we finally got things up and running again.
We had a build breaking bug in the form of ghost Lighting data included in Common level, which is essentially a scene that loads in most of the systems alongside the scene that has the individual level's content. That is fixed! We also has some mad things happenning with NPCs glitching. Turned out we needed to make sure all movement from animations is applied even when framerate drops below FixedUpdate rate, and is applied only once. That is now fixed! It's kind of hard to even complain about the bugs we had without getting too technical : we should make sure to create simpler bugs in the future. Or at least ones that are more entertaining to explain! ;P

In the latest game and Levelkit build :

So, what can you expect to see in the next build of the game and modding tools? Content (Level Design and Art)

• More generic gestures in the animation controller for NPCs. Added these to the list of Gestures that can be called through LUA.
• New unique LUTs in the project and listed for use on the wiki.
• Workplace Level:
• A (hopefully) decent full pass at tutorialising the early game
• New mission objectives and gameplay in the Workplace Level with a nuetral NPC who gets angry if you go into off limits areas.
• Edited down conversations and modals to give enough information to learn new tools but not seem like a wall of exposition (feedback on this from you First Access folks would be great!)
• Replaced and bunch of deprecated stuff with updated implementations of features (e.g. removed old SMS single messages in Workplace and replaced with single-message variant of conversations)

Controls and UX

• Tweaks to movement speed and control, simplifiying the bledtrees now means easing between animations as the character moves around should now feel more accurate (still in progress)
• Running - the player now walks by default, holding "B" or "Space" to jog and tapping the same button to then sprint in a short burst while you have the stamina to.

AI

• Added Pause/Unpause for agents. Means that AI can stop and start as progress is made through a level, simulating joining/leaving.
• Defined NPC/Guard type for sound in the character table. When enabled, and audio work is done, will allow for different voices for different agents.
• Reduced planning when agents are unable to achieve any of their goals.

Modding and Lua API additions

• Added a global app folder in mods, allowing mod apps to be used across the game.

Bugs fixed

• Fixed NPC movement issues (make sure all movement from animations is applied even when framerate drops below FixedUpdate rate, and is applied only once)
• Fixed build issues caused by ghost Lighting data included in Common level.
• Added Mission Lua API calls for checking if objective is active/completed
• Loading item images from both mission & common folders

Other

• Save System - Save agent state, and app status (needed for new build).

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-06-22 12:21:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ep15: The 'AI Explorer' and How to debug the AI Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the OFF GRID modding tools and our Workshop integration. In this episode we do something a little different though. We take a look at another hacking game Quadrilateral Cowboy, and talk about the design in relation to OFF GRID.

Watch it here!

Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam! Remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!

[ 2019-05-24 14:17:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ep15: The 'AI Explorer' and How to debug the AI Every 2 weeks on a Thursday evening we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the OFF GRID modding tools and our Workshop integration. In this episode we follow on from what we covered in Episode 13 with how to write AI goals and actions, and look at how to then debug and follow how your newly written AI is 'thinking' with our AI explorer tool.

Watch it here!

Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam! Due to me being away tonight we won't be streaming as usual (this evening) and so the stream will be pushed to next week. Remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!

[ 2019-05-09 08:21:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Every 2 weeks on a Thursday we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the modding tools and our Workshop integration. I missed a repost so here are two episode's at once! ;) Ep13: NPCs - writing custom AI, actions and goals

Watch it here!

In this episode we look at setting up NPC AI and how to script basic GOAP "goals" and "actions" in Off Grid. We go into a *lot* of detail on the AI flexibility here, so buckle up for a deep dive! Ep14: The episode where nothing works!

Watch it here!

In this episode we *attempted* to look at taking scriptable AI further and how to create detailed NPC actions and goals in Off Grid. *However*, as with all things live, you are sometimes at the mercy of the Gods, and we had some trouble checking out the features I had planned to. I will just aim to cover this topic in the next stream, and if you haven't already seen it Episode 13 covers the first part of the AI scripting process in a whole load of detail. Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam! Remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!

[ 2019-04-19 06:38:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Setting up an NPC character to patrol Every 2 weeks on a Thursday we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the modding tools and our Workshop integration. Here's last week's again in case you missed it.

Watch it here!

We look at setting up an NPC character in your mods, and how to give them patrol routes in Off Grid. We also talk about how the character profiles work to generate unique procedural data and text messages from the characters and the design philosophy behind it. Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam! Remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!

[ 2019-03-21 21:43:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's that time again! Here is your regular sprint round up of development! Read on to find out what we have been up to in the last few weeks and if you are one of our backers on the FIRST ACCESS level, what you can expect to see in the latest build update!

Content (Level Design and Art)

• Created new Character LUTs amd some character variations (as seen above!).
• Cleaned up on the geometry of the IRL hacker and activist characters.
• Setup new system for door prefabs
• Wow this was a big one, but one we have had our sights on a while - the doors and door frames all now conform to sane dimensions and make use of the new nested prefab system in Unity meaning doors and their variations are infinitely easier to create.[/* ]

• Lots of work on an early level and tutorialisation of rooting your phone and glasses, and the hacking tools you have to install and learn at the beginning of the game.
• Some more scripting of interactions with a more neutral NPC than the fairly intolerant guards you meet in other levels.

Gameplay and Mechanics

• New mechanics for data view trace time & app use and costs. Hopefully this will sort out some of the pitfalls of the old trace time system and instead turns that into a proper game mechanic. Plus the changes give us a way to upgrade player abilities throughout the game while keeping things balanced. We'll test this a bit in action and will then tell you more details.
• This also came with some visual prototyping with Josh Ge's ASCII art and animation editor REXpaint (as you may recognise from his game Cogmind) to try and get an ASCII art / homebrew software feel, we are still playing with this, but it's a nice start:

• Added support for using physical inventory items (and the Lua API for scripting what the items do).
• This helps evolve the game's "adventure game" like elements
• This allows for finding and using items which can be scripted now to do pretty much anything. We have yet to add a "combine items" button, but watch this space. Mini crafting system here we come! :0

Speaking of 'adventure game like elements' - Rich talked a little bit about this on the retro gaming podcast last year. One of the host's, Ben, described the game like this: "Its kind of like an adventure game that is then set within this 3d stealth game - which gives you more fail states than 'well I'm too stupid to figure out this puzzle'. You can listen here around the 1hour 30min mark.

Modding and Lua API additions

• The above point to do with physical item inventory comes under Lua API too of course.
• Not much on it on the wiki yet here but this shows some of the basic usage.
• New scene hierarchy in the Template scene in generated when you create a new mod LevelKit to give a guide to help keep your mod scenes tidy and

Other

• Fixed NPC prefabs to have the correct navmesh area tags so that NPCs would use stairs again!
• Lots and lots of small stuff about doors. How their logic is set up, how the player and NPC's unlock them, and making sure they open away from the character instead of hitting you in face etc...

If you havent already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-03-14 17:13:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Every 2 weeks on a Thursday we do a dev stream that focuses on an element of the modding tools and our Workshop integration. Here's last week's again in case you missed it, and remember to tune in and join us next Thursday at 9.30pm GMT for the next episode!

Watch it here!

On this stream we look at setting up conversations in Lua, and how to change or track states and run functions that will change the game based on your player's answers. Jump in the Discord to ask any questions and chat with us, kek'ing and hecking ;P Join the mailing list for the latest news to your inbox. And most importantly tell your friends to Wishlist us here on Steam!

[ 2019-03-07 20:07:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello hello, here is your regular sprint round up of development through January! Read on to find out what we have been up to, and if you are one of our backers on the FIRST ACCESS level, what you can expect to see in the latest build update!

Content (Level Design and Art)

• Work on workplace level design and early game tutorialisation, mission scripting and character conversations
• Wrote some new AI states, goals and actions for a nuetral NPC character (using our new moddable, data driven AI behaviours)
• Worked on existing geometry in the Workplace level to get it closer to a completed level
• Paper sketches of new level designs
• Started grey-boxing on new levels

Greyboxing a new level

Gameplay and Mechanics

• Design work for data view & app use cost change

Controls and UX

• Added a crouching first person camera: the look from point is no longer parented to the rig, which improves camera targeting
• Reworking of character controller and camera to give finer control -Now players have better control of jogging and sprinting both on controller and keyboard and mouse using Space/ B to jog, and repeatedy tap to get a sprint burst -Crawling animations and controls have been fixed to work properly and feel nicer -There is a crawl sprint too!
• Turn animations and transitions in blend trees have been sumplified for better control overall but smoothing and polish is needed still for smaller movements (some finer turning / control has been lost and is to be fixed in next update)
• Started converting various UI elements to better font rendering and animation systems
• Support for displaying controls as icons in middle of text in the UI
• Rebuilt the AppWheel UI to better handle adding and removing apps

Converting the UI to Text Mesh Pro

AI

• AI function to prefer or avoid particular devices. Example: the coffee offer message, sent to a guard, will reduce the cost of the UseCoffee Action, meaning that Guards prefer that Action and will go out of their way to use it rather than alternatives.
• Added an optional personality requirement to have actions that are only runnable if an Agent has a particular interest (or not!)
• Added stats to the Agent definition
• Added generic actions to the Agent definition
• Added responses (to other Agent's actions), adjusting Agent stats
• Added reactions (stimuli in the world can thereby adjust Agent stats, based on personality)
• Added an audio attribute to actions in agent definitions, to be played when they are performed

Modding tools and Lua API additions

• Added support for loading apps from your current mission (as opposed to the global Apps folder, or app mod) full screen modal window,
• Updated gizmo icons in LevelKit
• Correct scale & rotation for bounding box when editing mission triggers etc.

Bugs fixed

• Fixed a shader problem introduced after updating Unity

Other

AND: WE MADE THE BRIT LIST! http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/01/11/games-of-2019-british-games
Thanks for reading, look forward to seeing you next time!

[ 2019-03-04 14:19:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy New Year 2019 is here and we are thrilled to welcome it! There are so many exciting things to come in 2019! Before we move head on into the new year - we just want to pause and reflect on all that came our way in 2018. We did a quick recap in our December newsletter (sign up!!), but upon reading it back, realised we missed out some seriously significant moments. Without further ado, here are our highlights of 2018: 1. Rich and Sarah attended GDC for the first time - an eye opener! 2. The team demoed at PAX East as part of Figs and Co! 3. Made our print debut with a double page spread in GamesMaster magazine
4. Semaeopus was named as part of Creative England's 2018 CE50 cohort 5. Attended EMF Camp with a base at Milliways! 6. We brought a fun new artist on board - shout out to Sophie! 7. Rich started streaming and we launched our DISCORD! 8. Gave talks at GameDev Camp and IndieCade 9. OFF GRID was featured in InsideIntel, a modern art show on privacy put on by the CIJ 10. Spoke at Sweden Games Conference, and won the Indiecator award in the form of a giant cheque!
11. Ran a successful, overfunded Kickstarter campaign - hitting the first stretch goal! 12. Announced the line up of real life hacker characters to feature in OFF GRID!
13. Semaeopus won the first ever UK Games Fund Smart Studio Award 14. Kicked off our new and *exclusive* FIRST ACCESS programme WOW. What a year 2018 was! Thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us and helping us make all of this happen! ...and now it's on to 2019: GOOD THINGS ARE COMING! We wish you all the very best in the new year! THANK YOU! The OFF GRID Team p.s. Have you wishlisted OFF GRID on Steam?! PLEASE DO! Each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2019-01-03 18:18:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Twas the last sprint before Christmas, when all through slack there were messages pinging, of snow in Finland tasks have been completed on Jira with care with hopes of increased wishlists for the new year ...we're not poets and we know it, but all in good cheer! Pontus has decamped to his native Finland and the snow is plentiful! There's a few us of here in merry ol England that are snow jealous.
Finland = Winter Wonderland In this sprint, there were lots of tweaks and updates as we prepped the roll out of the FIRST ACCESS programme for our Kickstarter backers, as well as plenty of essential documentation and tasks. So without further ado, here's the last Sprint Update of 2018:

App System

Apps can define cost per action, and any continuously-running actions can apply cost over time Updated App scripting wiki page to match with the recent App system changes and to better explain all the features

AI

Added generic actions to AI definitions (to perform tasks, change state, without the need of an InterestPoint) Added stats to AI definitions (to track various attributes in a data driven fashion) AI documentation

LevelKit

Built the "Semaeopus Testing Facility" level in LevelKit as an example for modders, and as easy place to test new modded content and features Changed the LevelKit Tool to have a dropdown menu of different Districts for the mission so people don't need to check the options from wiki and type it in Did a complete review of all the props and models in LevelKit: - Made sure Models are not importing new Materials - Gave a box collider to things big enough to need one - Created a Prefab of everything - Added everything to Collections, cleaned up and re-sorted Collections
Organising materials in LevelKit

FIRST ACCESS

Sent FIRST ACCESS keys to relevant backers Fresh build of OFF GRID with LevelKit tools for FIRST ACCESS users Created public Trello board for modders and FIRST ACCESS players to request features and report bugs
The best NDA return e-mail we received! :D

Character Controls

design and planning for improving character control

Bug Fixing

Fixed game crash in Map screen

Other

Final itch.io build, and then added back all features & content that was disabled for it Explored documentation generation Loads of improvement and additions to the documentation on the wiki planning and research on offering a slacker backer option for people to be able to get into FIRST ACCESS post-Kickstarter (more news coming soon!) A team holiday party at Beef & Brew that left us all bursting! No worries, we took the leftovers home. Waste not, want not, folks! A note on FIRST ACCESS: If you are eligible for FIRST ACCESS, you will have a) backed OFF GRID at the PENTESTER level or above on Kickstarter and b) already received an e-mail with instructions on how to join! If you find that e-mail and you have time to dig into things over the holiday season, please do! Sign and return your NDA, and we'll endeavor to send over your Steam key in return as soon as we can. ...and that's that! We're still going through the holidays, but taking it a little easier than usual to enjoy the time with families and friends. Thanks everyone. We wish you all the happiest of holidays! The OFF GRID Team p.s. There's a HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY planned! We've chatted about it in our discord - and it's soon to be announced. Sign up to the newsletter to get the details first!

[ 2018-12-21 17:01:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all, Steve here! There's been some monstrous performance spikes in our AI, and I've spent time over the last month working to mitigate this issue. Two significant changes have been made to improve this: 1 - the addition of a pool of Dictionaries to store states, and 2 - making each state item immutable This vastly reduces object creation, which is slow, and reduces the number of objects in existence, which helps reduce memory fragmentation (another Bad Thing) - which, being C#, is harder to control than in C++.

DICTIONARY POOL

So what's a Dictionary Pool, you may ask! Well, at its simplest (which this is), it's a big list of pre-made Dictionaries, each with a flag on to indicate if it's being used. When we want a Dictionary, we grab one from the pool, put it in a list of 'in-use' Dictionaries, and mark it as being used. When the object using it is destroyed, we mark it as free, and put it back in the pool for someone else to use. The key here is to be very strict on who is using your object! It's critical that nobody is using it when it's marked as free, or the whole concept breaks down.

IMMUTABILITY

And immutable states? Immutability is another weird software-engineer-y word. In english, it means something that never changes. But that's perhaps misleading when it comes to thinking about objects in Unity - what use is an object you cannot alter? The answer is that while you can't change the object, you can create a new one to reflect this change. This means you have precisely one instance of any particular combination of object. For us, this means that instead of creating hundreds of thousands (no exaggeration) of states, all duplicates of one another, we create... about seventy. The overhead of querying a Dictionary for the instance of the state we want is much, much less than creating a tiny object, then destroying it, repeatedly.
These two changes weren't trivial, as such, but were fairly self contained, and only produced a handful of super frustrating bugs that I had to then work against for a week or two.
Back within 60fps, but still a lot of garbage to deal with! But the good news is that performance improved drastically! We are now back to 60fps within the editor on my machine, mostly. Which was a relief because I feared for a moment or two that I'd accidentally extended the AI system in such a way that it would never be useful in a finished game, which would have been embarrassing. -Steve If you havent already - be sure to wishlist and follow OFF GRID! Each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-12-11 17:35:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! This Sprint Update is a long time coming - there's been a lot going on, including a successful Kickstarter! Successful Kickstarter has a nice ring to it, eh!? If you followed along with the Kickstarter (and hopefully you did!) you will have had a lot of updates to read in the meantime. Nevertheless, here is the detail of what we have been busy with throughout this epic sprint as we prepared for and ran our first ever crowdfunding campaign:

AI

- Pooled dictionaries in AI state - Immutable AI state - Inevitable fixes for above - Extra cost for guards using stairs - Fixes to AI planning - Fixes for OffMeshLinks / AI using doors - Tracked down a bug relating to door GUIDs / saving and loading - Noise documentation - Updated AI used in the Harbour scene - Fixed a drone navigation crash - Added mechanisms for AI to prefer particular devices based on their personality - Added mechanisms to allow AI Actions based on their personality + Documentation for this

Controls

- Added UI to remap controls in main menu - Checked/updated all control settings & defaults - Limited repeat rate on analog gamepad sticks when moving around UI - Added dataview range control on mouse & keyboard
Apps being configured: choose if you want them available in the app wheel or radial menu.

App system

- Completed new app system - added App system Lua API - unavailable apps are now hidden from Apps menu - If app can't be added to either appwheel or radial, it's now hidden in the App Menu (for exaple the password cracking is currently an app, but shouldn't be controlled by the player directly) - Apps are added to AppMenu, AppWheel and Radial menus when the app becomes available - Only execute currently selected app (instead of all active ones) when selecting a target+app in radial menu - Update loop for apps (so apps can run in background and do things continuously/over longer time) - Apply app action cost (both per-action, and for app cost over time for a continuously running app) - Status windows for apps - Support for displaying an icon and/or a piece of text - Support for changing icon & color - Rewrote Light Monitor app using new API - Created "Send Data" app (lets you send a file to currenlty targeted chaarcter or device)

Lua API additions

- Lua API for audio RTPC - Added normal (scaled) time support for scheduler API - Added notification messages to UI Lua API - Player API additions to get social profile data for currently targeted character

Bugs fixed

- Player character walking/crawling sounds get swapped after crawling first time - Removed hack that re-assigns all materials in scenes (original Unity issue that required this has been fixed so the hack isn't needed any more) - 1st person targeting should maintain the direction player is currently looking at - Character profile data displays color codes in UI rather than colored rich text - Fixed notification message UI animation setup - Fixed file viewer not displaying images - Fixed card scanners missing UI markers whe usign the Help app

Apostle level

- Checked all atmos colliders, added new ones where needed - Blocked staircase from lobby to 1st floor - Blocked door in 1st floor that would otherwise allow player to skip half of the floor - Checked navigation layers - Checked colliders, changed some to simpler ones, added some that were missing - Fixed colliders with negative sizes - Fixed typos in some device scripts - Checked all doors and assigned correct door groups and access levels - Removed drone from rooftop - Replaced a few hunded cardboard box models in level with prefab versions - Fixed missing/wrong static tags around the level - Removed some leftover invisible collliders blocking player and the AI movement - Fixed props not correctly aligned to walls/floor - Redesigned first floor of Apostle HQ - Implementated new hackable device

Art

- Creation of activist and hacker characters - Prop and asset creation for new levels - Set dressing and environment art for the Apostle level
Models of the real life hackers featuring in OFF GRID.

Other

- Enabled ultrawide display reoslutions - Added headers support in popup menus (menu item with no function becomes a header automatically) - Added splash screens when starting the game - Data colors now ignore alpha value set in scripts and instead use pre-defined opacity to make sure things look correct in data view and in UI - Opened studio Discord! - Built a new website for the game - Quick update of studio website with new Semaeopus logo

Kickstarter

Updated build for Itch.io demo - Removed options menu from build - Removed other levels from the build - Forced loading straight to Apostle level in demo build - Added Kickstarter campagn ad in main menu - Disabled save game loading (makes no sense for a single-level demo and would cause issues when loading a save where the demo level is already completed) Campaign Prep - Campaign page drafting, review, and finalising - Reward drafting, review, and finalising - Contact push - Press push - Newsletters - Update planning: every 3-4 days to all channels - News release drafting - Daily social media scheduling - Streaming planning Events and promotion - Game Dev Camp, Lisbon - Rich and Steve spoke - IndieCade, LA - Rich spoke - Sweden Games Conference - Rich spoke, Off Grid demoed within Indicator and Off Grid won the Indicator award! - Inside Intel, London - an art exhibition on privacy & surveillance - PlayUK, a videogame curation put on by the British Council in Macedonia - Dev Space Winter Mixer, London - Closing party and livestream to countdown to the Kickstarter campaign's end!
The final moments of the Kickstarter campaign! Whew! A long list to match a long, bountiful Sprint! To top all of this off, the team travelled to Dundee, Scotland last week to attend the UK Games Fund Awards. Semaeopus was nominated for the 'Smart Studio' Award, and we were looking forward to a fun celebration together after the month of hard graft. When the category for 'Smart Studio' was up, we were absolutely stunned to hear 'Semaeopus' announced as the winners!
Award winners! Sarah, Steve & Pontus pictured with the award presenter. A successful Kickstarter, two new awards, and loooooads of new supporters - we are so grateful to each and every one of you that has helped make the last couple of months so successful! There's been SO much going on - expect to hear more from individual members of the team as we each wrap up from the last couple of months.

What's next?

It's onwards and upwards now. We're working on getting our FIRST ACCESS programme off the ground. Anyone that backed at the PENTESTER level or above can expect to hear from us soon about what is to come. One of the two main goals of the crowdfunding campaign was to provide a bit of additional resource to support more open production of Off Grid. We're busy getting our ducks back in a row after the Kickstarter, and can't wait to move forward with you all behind us. THANKS EVERYONE! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-19 23:49:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

We did it! OFF GRID was 126% funded on Kickstarter in the end - that's a whopping 5,252 over our goal. THANK YOU!
We hit the first stretch goal late yesterday afternoon, then kept building to our final tally of 25,252. That means OFF GRID has the extra funds dearly needed for art and sound, AND we'll be sharing even more with you as we shift into a more open mode of development! PLUS, by hitting that stretch goal, OFF GRID will benefit from the addition of an in-game social media app, and those of you that took advantage of that extra tier (and all those who backed above it!) will get the satisfaction of seeing a message of yours in the game. Thank you to everyone that followed along with the countdown - whether in person or via the livestream. It was great fun to share the success with you all! We will be back in touch soon with updates on the game, development progress, and importantly, details and questionnaires about your rewards. THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-09 15:41:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's the LAST DAY off the OFF GRID Kickstarter campaign! If you are following the project but have not yet backed, we need you to do it now, even if just $1, a quid, a yen, a euro! We are SO close to unlocking that first stretch goal - can you help us do it?!
Theres only 10 hours to go now, but that doesnt mean the fun is over

Character Reveals

We have two new characters joining the OFF GRID lineup to share with you:

Naomi Colvin

Naomi is a writer, digital rights campaigner and activist who has been involved in casework around some of the highest profile hacker court hearings in the UK, specifically that of Lauri Loves extradition. She writes extensively on the subjects of human rights and digital policy and is a well known figure in the world of privacy and digital rights advocacy. Her involvement in OFF GRID is important as she has an incredible knowledge of digital policy and law, and knows about how the most seemingly innocuous of miswritten laws can have massive effect and cost on the liberties of society.

Barrett Brown

Barrett Brown is a US journalist, essayist and satirist, and founder of the Pursuance Project an activist and journalist collaboration toolset. He is best known for having founded Project PM, a research collaboration and wiki, to facilitate analysis of the troves of hacked emails and other leaked information concerning the inner workings of the cyber-military-industrial complex, and was imprisoned for charges relating to the 2011 Stratfor hack. Hes previously been described as an unofficial spokesperson for Anonymous, has written two books, and multiple articles about politics and journalism in the digital age. In 2012, the FBI raided his house, and later that year Barrett was indicted on 12 federal charges. While in prison, Barrett continued to write a column from jail for The Intercept, for which he has won a National Magazine Award and a New York Press Club journalism award.

MORE TO COME!

Expect more as OFF GRIDs development continues! Remember, characters in OFF GRID can be virtual instead of physical: you just need to find their public key and then you will be able to speak to them via the CryptoChat app. There will be an array of hackers and activists you can eventually meet in OFF GRID: well continue to announce some of them, and others might just stay secret for you to find! Heres a clue towards one of them!
We have our Kickstarter Countdown Party tonight in London at the fantastic Loading Bar in Dalston, and we'd love for you to join us! There will be:

• OFF GRID cookies
• A prize for the best hacker fancy dress
• A LIVE livestream with interviews and Q&A with the dev team and hackers like Lauri Love, March ONeill, and Hacker Fantastic
• A demo of the game to play and chat about

Get your free ticket here. Hope to see you there in physical form, or joining us with your wonderful digital presence on the stream! And once again, THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-08 13:54:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Its been a busy week with smashing through 100%! We are now sailing along - nearly half way towards our first stretch goal, we had a big news piece released, and we've announced a couple fun new characters!

36 HOURS (just under!)

WOW. Its absolutely awesome to be nearly 110% funded at this point! Weve said it before, and well say it again - we are SO GRATEFUL to each and every one of you backers! THANK YOU! A lot can happen in 36 hours - so lets see what we can do! Will we reach that first STRETCH GOAL?! We hope so! The in-game social media app would really add to the gameplay experience.

New Characters

If you have kept an eye on our twitter feed, then you will be aware of these fun additions. We had a great livestreamed interview with Biella Coleman, an anthropologist who studies hacker cultures on Monday. Yesterday, we announced security researcher Hacker Fantastic.

Biella Coleman

Gabriella (Biella) Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. Trained as an anthropologist, her scholarship covers the cultures and ethics of hacking. She is currently working on Hack_Curio: a curated ensemble of hacker-related videos that will be accompanied by short reflections on the featured clip written by researchers, writers, and journalists working on these topics. The site will launch in the late fall of 2018. She has authored two books, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014). Her work has been featured in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes. Committed to public ethnography, she routinely presents her work to diverse audiences, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, and has written for popular media outlets. She sits on the board of The Tor Project. She is a fairly significant chronicler of hacker culture and perfect addition as a character to the OFF GRID universe.

Hacker Fantastic

Hacker Fantastic is a professional hacker with over 15 years experience providing security services to a global client base. He is widely known for his research on vulnerabilities in North Korea, exploiting the late Prime Minister of Singapore's code and his hacking of Microsoft's ransomware-proof" computer during 2017. HFs research on exploits powering the WannaCry ransomware, NSA leaks, and Shadow Brokers in 2017 were published to an audience of over 500 million. He is an expert in his field and is highly sought after, to lead long-term engagements that accurately reflect real-world security challenges, simulating attacks on global and high-risk environments. Fantastics work is known globally and he has been at the forefront of discovery and dissection of state level hacking tools. His background in the professional research side of hacker culture creates interesting balance within the world of OFF GRID.

Count down with us!

If you're in/near London, join us for a little celebration as we count down to the campaign's end tomorrow night! There will be a livestream countdown, too - sign up for a reminder and watch it via the OFF GRID Kickstarter page! Please keep sharing the campaign - its not long to go now! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team P.S. Have you wishlisted OFF GRID? Joined the mailing list?!

[ 2018-11-07 12:45:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

How fun it is to be talking stretch goals! Stretch goals are a tricky thing, especially with this amount of time left: its plenty of time for a nice little burst of activity, but it isnt ages either We wrote a little bit about our attitude to stretch goals yesterday here, and so, building on that, here is our plan Were not gonna go mad, but we do have a few nice ideas that wed like to put out there and see how people respond to them, and if they prove popular, we have further things to expand upon based on uptake too. Well be revealing 2 possible stretch goals to start with, and then revealing a new one each time one is met (if they are met!). To start, we have these stretches for you:

Stretch Goal #1: In Game social media feed!

The details! How about it: an in-game, fictional social media app that does some world building and can provide hints for both narrative and mechanic discovery? We are on our way already with this one: the campaign currently sits at 20,593 so were 13.5% toward it already! :)
Apps... This will give you more insight to what's going on in the game world outside (rather than just what's going on in the mission you are playing), through a short message-based social media feed. Not unlike certain real-life one with a bird as their logo. We feel this is something that would make the OFF GRID world feel more alive, *and* that we can do without it affecting our release schedule since we already have built similar tech for other parts of the game. The feed would be a combination of procedurally generated messages from the "outside world", pre-made story telling messages, and ones created as a response to player's actions and choices in the game. This would also create an additional way to learn about people in the levels, and perhaps gather some useful information as well. After all, people post all kinds of things on social media! To go with this, we'll add a new limited edition tier to our campaign, giving you an opportunity to create your own message and have it included in the game. What might you put in there?! Get to thinking - itll be up on the reward section once the stretch goal is met! (We reserve the right to veto inappropriate or ill-fitting content of course, but will work with you to get everything edited into something that will work with the message generation system we use.)

Stretch Goal #2: New hackable interfaces!

Now this one is niiiiiice!
The game currently has one device user interface (UI) which represents something you'd have as a back-end settings menu on a device. With this stretch goal, we'll add some new ones to represent the front-end side, what any normal (non-hacker) user would see when using a device. ...after all, all the devices in the game are actually used by other characters too, and surely they aren't doing it by hacking to their back end settings menus like you are! So the player should be able to see the same end-user side as well. We think this will make for some potentially interesting variations on hacking techniques and puzzles too. Lets do this!

How? you say...

• Tell others that youve backed OFF GRID and want to see it go further!
• Tell your friends they might like the game too!
• Post the campaign wherever you hang out online
• Do you write about games? Wed love you to write about OFF GRID!
• Do you stream? Stream the demo and talk about the campaign!
• Retweet, share, and like our posts as much as you can
• Start thinking about what social media message you want to adorn OFF GRID with and back the new tier once it's unlocked!

If you havent already, and you like what we do, back us at any level you can! Remember, if you are tempted by the stretch goals and have already backed, you can up your pledge too! Even just by 1! Every single little bit helps! THANK YOU BACKERS! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-05 17:28:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

You have all helped us raise over 20k for OFF GRID so far

AMAZING.

...and there is still quite a bit of time to spare too - a good few days in fact! As all money over and above the goal will go straight into making OFF GRID even better - let's keep it going! If today is anything to go by, we are really rolling! Since hitting 100%, we have doubled our usual average daily pledge, with ~500 coming in in just a few hours - could this be the start of another mad rush like the astounding beginning of the campaign?! Its a bit early to tell, but apparently the last couple of days can have a similar effect. We can't wait to find out!

Feeling good!

It feels SO good to have the support of you all behind us! We were pretty confident that we have a caring and passionate audience from the get-go, yet still nervous about putting that assumption to the test! This moment was *terrifying*:
From the very moment we hit the GO button, you backers took us for a wild ride!

• OFF GRID was 35% funded in 5 hours
• We hit 40% funded in 7 hours
• AND THEN we hit the 50% mark within 21 hours!

50% funded within 24 hours?! That blew our minds! We are so grateful for all of that early support - it set the tone for the campaign and gave us the boost we needed to keep things going strong. These last few days as we crept toward our goal have been pretty exciting! We have been busy too: there's a big piece on the IRL hackers and principles behind OFF GRID hopefully going live tomorrow, and some cool announcements to make over the coming days, including new hacker / activist characters! All this could make for a very busy final few days!
Rich Metson and Lauri Love being prepped for the camera in the Sky studios on Friday.

So what is next?

A few of you have been asking about what we plan to do if we over-fund, and with the amount of time spare, it is likely we will by some degree! What scale that is though, is anyone's guess. At this point it is worth reminding folks that stretch goals can be a length of rope devs can do themselves a disservice with, and the key thing to really point out is that any funding over and above our goal will go straight into improving the game. Funds, broadly speaking, will go on:

• covering cost overruns
• better polish
• expanding upon the content and depth of the world

All that being said, we do a have a few nice things that we would like to do, and a little extra funding would help them become realities! We polled some of you in the Discord just before launch about your feelings are on the subject. The majority of people seem to feel the same way we do: that the key thing is to focus on the core game and ways to improve upon it rather than adding bells and whistles. A couple of key things folks in the Discord said they would like to see avoided were:

• over-promising
• anything that would cause delay to the main game

Our whole campaign (and indeed our development approach before and after) has been very carefully structured in order to avoid these issues So with all that said ... Tomorrow we will announce some manageable and realistic stretch goals that will add value to your core experience of the game! Stay tuned!

More backers, please!

Do keep spreading the word, and if you haven't backed yet, please do: every penny counts towards improving OFF GRID and making it the best it can be - *especially* every penny over the initial goal! We have a bunch of folks who are following the projects progress that we would love to convert in to backers! If that is you, now is the time to BACK!
Converts! If we can convert these 280 or so backers-in-waiting, it would be an additional 66% on top the backers we already have! Remember: the Kickstarter rewards are exclusives, folks, so what are you waiting for?!

Celebrations!

Now is the time to celebrate! If youre in/near London, why not come and do so with us on the final night of the Kickstarter?! Grab a free ticket here, and then head to the Loading Bar in Dalston for 6:30 pm this Thursday, the 8th of November. There will be:

• Some drinks
• Some swag
• A prize for the best fictional hacker fancy dress!!

Dont worry if you are not able to come along in person - the whole point of this event is to create a fun livestream countdown that you can take part in from anywhere in the world! We will get the dev team and some of our hacker friends along to do interviews and Q & A throughout the evening as we countdown to the campaign's end. You can subscribe to the event to get a reminder when the stream goes live here. Be sure to tune in, and if you would like to post some questions in advance to the Discord in #kickstarter or on the KS live event in the 'submit a question' field, then please do, and we will be sure to cover them! Thank you!! Finally, a HUGE thank you for helping us achieve our goal! Let's get some more in the bag over these next few days! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-04 23:28:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Things are looking good, everyone! We made a big jump yesterday and today OFF GRID is 95% funded!
THANK YOU! There's just 5% - that's 1000 - left to go before we reach our target of 20,000! Lets raise that 1000 as soon as possible!

LET'S DO THIS.

Help us reach 100% funded:

• Tell others that youve backed OFF GRID and want to see it succeed!
• Tell your friends that you think they might like it, too
• Post the campaign wherever you hang out online.
• Do you stream? Stream the demo and talk about the campaign!
• Retweet, share, and like our posts

This is an incredible place to be and we are SO grateful to each and every one of you backers! If you havent already, and you like what we do, back OFF GRID at any level you can! Every single little bit helps!

DEMO OPPORTUNITIES

Theres two fun events were taking part in! If these are in your neck of the woods, go get check 'em out! OFF GRID is in fantastic company with loads of other interesting indie games: TONIGHT in London: DevSpace Winter Mixer
TONIGHT - SUNDAY in Macedonia: PLAY Arcadia 2018
Don't forget you can play the OFF GRID demo from the comfort of your own home, too! There's a fresh, new demo build up - Pontus did an update with a few small fixes yesterday. Enjoy it! Happy Friday and THANK YOU, backers! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-02 15:57:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

SEVEN DAYS.

The one week countdown begins. OFF GRID is 82.73% funded today (16,546) and there is just one week left in the campaign! That means there is 3454 left to raise within the next seven days - thats under 500/day! We can do it. Help us smash it!

All or nothing

Kickstarter campaigns are all-or-nothing: either we hit our goal, get the funding, and everyone gets their rewards, OR we fall short, and backers get their money back without the rewards. <-- We do not want that to happen. You want your rewards. We need the funding to get them to you. Help us make it happen! If you have been thinking: Theres a group I should really post this in... Do it. I have a mate that would really like this. Tell them. I dont have a big following, my tweet wont matter. It totally matters! Having a name in the game would be a super cool gift. YES IT IS! Id really like the goods in the next tier... Up your pledge! Could this be a good use for my bitcoin riches? Definitely. 100%. I wonder what being a character in a video game would feel like? This is your chance to find out! Go on! Now is the time. Together we can do this! To everyone that has backed OFF GRID so far: THANK YOU! Your support means *everything* to us! If you're still thinking about becoming a backer: check out the campaign here! LET'S DO THIS! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-11-01 12:48:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Halloween from all of us at Semaeopus!

What a treat!

Weve hit the 80% funded mark! THANK YOU!
If were *exact* about it, were 81.355% funded at time of writing - backers have funded us to the tune of 16,271! Theres just 8 days to go for us to raise the last 3,729. A quick reminder: its an all-or-nothing campaign, so we absolutely must hit the 20k goal in order to receive the funding. Help us get there by continuing to share the campaign in any way that you can.

Real life trickery

We hope you enjoyed yesterdays surprise character reveal!
Hackers and hacktivists have become iconic figures in recent times, making a huge impact on the public dialogue around data privacy, information security, freedom of information, whistleblowing, mass surveillance, and digital rights. Having real hackers in the game is an opportunity for players to dig into the themes of the game in a more meaningful way. After all, their stories helped inspire and shape OFF GRID. Our halloween themed scare is all about these scenes from the OFF GRID intro...


Each represents a real scare that happens regularly. They are not fiction. They happen. Governments really do smash their way into homes (or use trickery to gain access), and bundle away teens and other souls with little, poor, or even no substantial evidence. The people we are featuring in the game have been through this, and theyd be the first to tell you thats a trick-or-treater you dont want knocking on your door. So whatever you do this Hallows Eve - stay safe on the interwebs!

Help us reach 100% funded!

If you havent backed OFF GRID yet, what are you waiting for?! Go ahead and treat yourself - it will help us make this game the best it can be, and shine a light on the aforementioned issues. If you are quick about it theres still some early bird 14 copies available as an exclusive to Kickstarter! SO BACK NOW! Just 8 more days to go! Happy Halloween and THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-10-31 13:50:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Remember us harping on about some big news? Well... today is the day!
Did you happen to spot this image on the Kickstarter page, scratch your head, and wonder who it might be? Drumroll please... Former LulzSec, Anonymous, and other well-known hackers will feature as characters that players can meet in OFF GRID! Hackers to be featured include: Ex-LulzSec and Anonymous members and now security researchers

• Mustafa Al-Bassam
• Jake Davis
• Darren Martyn

Alleged Anonymous hacktivist and digital rights campaigner

• Lauri Love

Notable whitehat security researcher

• March ONeill

. . . with more to come!
Hacker characters to feature in OFF GRID: Mustafa, Jake, Darren, March, Lauri This will be a very cool feature of the game as it builds on the notion of exploring hacker culture in the game world with an authenticity that is hard to come by in mainstream media. It will give the hackers themselves the chance to tell some of their stories about the future of the internet, and if this proves popular, will provide something to really expand upon. We have found it hard to keep from blurting this one out, and it has been excruciating working on the art without saying anything. Turns out well known hackers know how to keep a secret too!

Hacktion figures

We have exported the models in a 3D printable .stl format so that you can print your own characters from the game.
Ever wanted your own Lauri Love action figure? They are released under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 so feel free to share and remix, have a play! Get the files from here! They will all be up on our Github page shortly too.
Mustafa in progress If you do do some printing, be sure to take a picture and post it at us on:

• Twitter
• Discord
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Reddit

HACK THE PLANET!

BACK OFF GRID

If you have yet to back OFF GRID on Kickstarter - now would be a great time to do so! We are 79% funded and there are just 9 days left in the campaign! Thank you! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-10-30 12:57:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good morning, backers! OFF GRID is 78% funded right now! THANK YOU! We've got an update directly from Sophie, who works as an artist on OFF GRID. She is fairly new to the team, but she's been doing a stellar job! We hope you enjoy: - - Hi! Soph here! Im here to keep the art side of things rolling on smoothly. Which mostly means asset creation, like props, but also set dressing.

Modular Props

Let's talk modular: doing things this way allows you to have just a few meshes that you can make a lot of things out of. For the Apostle level, I made a couple pieces of modular furniture to speed up asset creation. Think of it like an Ikea range where you could buy a desk, drawers, cupboards, etc. that all fit together physically and look like part of a family. Some of the pieces in that range will share exact parts, and some will have unique ones. This is the basics of modular building.
Modular desk components. With these six pieces I can make six variations of desks. Going beyond these, you could make a broken desk with only three legs that is being propped up with other assets, or you could scale the length of the straight desk-top as much as fits the space you want (since the textures are vertex-painted faces theres no distortion).
Modular sofa components that can be put together in endless ways Different from these desks, this four-piece sofa set is mostly one-off models (they all share the same feet). Yet when placed in the scene, there is no real end to the possibilities you can make with it. Make a snaking three mile long sofa if you so wish!
The modular sofas creating a comfy space in the Apostle level

Set Dressing

Set dressing is pretty straight forward as a concept. Youre placing things around the world to make it feel like a more real lived-in environment. Its a little more than just throwing assets around the place (although thats a lot of it), you need to think about each environment differently. In the run up to the Kickstarter, I spent a lot of time in the Apostle offices discussing with the team what the general feel of the place is, and then looking room to room talking about what happens in these rooms in a gameplay sense. The Apostle is being closed. There are boxes everywhere as stuff is being packed away to go elsewhere. These boxes are great for the stealth aspect of the game, but also tell the story of what is actually going on. Most of the larger offices are quite sparse, having already been packed up, but a few offices are still very much in use. Set dressing has to work alongside the game in making the environments look more interesting but not distract from what the player needs to do. This means I cant place new hackable devices around the place and not block the players path. But what I can do is direct the player to places of interest.
Set dressing is cleverly used to direct attention to this office in the Apostle level. For instance, most of the offices dont have much in them that the player needs to notice, these are kept very sparse and all packed up. But there is a particular journalist's office that is a key place in the Apostle level, and its one of the few offices thats still in use. Theres things scattered around the desk, a coat thats been left on a hanger, a board with all the bits of information that the journalist has been working with.
Fun with set dressing - a DIY standing desk. There were a few other places less important to the player that I was able to just have fun with. Such as this office where its being packed away. A friend of mine wanted a standing desk but her work wouldnt give her one so she stacked things up to make her own one. I made a little desk in honour of her here. I bet it really annoys the person on the opposite desk!
A secret corner for slacking off! Here the occupants of this office have used the fact the office is moving as an excuse to move furniture around and create them a secret coffee corner for slacking off. Hope you've enjoyed!

Help OFF GRID succeed!

We have just 11 days to go with the campaign and need to raise another 4,318 in order to meet our goal. Please help us! Share the campaign with others: if each of you shared just once, the campaign would be shared to thousands of others. We need this exposure! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team p.s. Did you read the last update?! BIG NEWS coming Tuesday!

[ 2018-10-29 11:44:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

OFF GRID is 76% funded and officially loved by Kickstarter! <3
The campaign was given a 'PROJECT WE LOVE' badge earlier in the week! We had hopes and dreams of getting that nice little bit of extra love from Kickstarter before we started, and now weve got it. It feels good. Thanks Kickstarter!

BIG NEWS IS COMING

We have some tremendously fun news coming next week! Stay tuned - the news is going to break on Tuesday, October 30th. You dont want to miss it!
Once the news is LIVE - please do us the favor of sharing it to the masses. Tweet, blog, write an article, do a little video, share, retweet, or write us a poem. Would you like a clue? OF COURSE you'd like a clue! Here you are:
To celebrate the release of the aforementioned news, Rich will be doing a dev stream on Tuesday to chat about it all with you! Tune in via twitch.tv/semaeopus at 5pm UK time. Now, let's get to smashing the 80% milestone as soon as possible, folks! Share and chat about it as much as you can! Perfect conversation for all those Halloween parties this weekend... the mass surveillance state that surrounds us all is downright frightening, after all. THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-10-26 16:25:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Were at the halfway point! Halfway through the Kickstarter campaign and 73% funded is a great place to be - thank you!
You backers have given us a seriously wild ride: OFF GRID was 35% funded in 5 hours, 40% funded in 7 hours, AND THEN we hit the 50% mark within 21 hours! It has been super exciting to have the support of all of you behind us. To be 50% funded within 24 hours? Astounding!

We still need 5,330 to meet our goal - and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

If you have yet to back OFF GRID on Kickstarter - now would be the *perfect* time. Help us reach 100% funded! Every single , every single $, is hugely appreciated - please, please, please share far and wide throughout your own networks.

Dont forget about the playable demo on itch.io!

There's a fresh new build of the demo up today, complete with:

• better keyboard & mouse controls
• inverted axis support
• rebindable controls
• and more!

Wed also like to hear from you: what would you like to hear more about in these updates? Character backgrounds? More on hacking gameplay? You tell us! Let us know in the comments below or in the discord - join it here, if you haven't already. There are 15 days left in the campaign, and a lot can happen in 15 days. We are excited! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team

[ 2018-10-24 16:57:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

OFF GRID is 73% funded! Thank you everyone! If youve read anything about OFF GRID or played the demo, you will have picked up that our hero, Joe, is a technophobe dad who relies heavily on his hackivist daughter, Jen, for everything: to get his phone to work, keep the smart fridge firmware up to date, and make sure the IoT toaster doesnt get any funny ideas. Our last update showed some of the early art tests we did, and explained that we landed on following a low poly art style pretty quickly. Environments in this style are somewhat straightforward - you can make some really interesting scenes quite quickly. Even programmer art doesn't look bad in a low poly environment, which is one of the reasons we went for it! But when it comes to characters, it takes something a bit more special. We started by mocking up a very basic low poly character so that we could get straight into prototyping movement and mechanics. We didn't really have a story or background for him at that point, we just knew that we wanted the character to be a bit of a luddite and incredibly dull - the very opposite of the superhuman, infallible secret agents of most games. Our initial model was made as a placeholder and he was seriously vanilla:
We quickly pushed it on by defining the shapes of character that could be used to portray different attitudes. As you can see in the bottom half of the sketch below, we felt that rectangular characters, and especially ones with a lean to them, a bit like a parallelogram, provided a nice dynamic. Over time, this lean also seem to fit the notion that our lead character is forced into situations unwillingly.
There is some interesting theory around shapes and personality floating about on the internet, but essentially, the shape of a character will often convey their attitude. Pixar are a great exponent of this, and a good example is Carl from UP. Hes a grounded and steadfast character who is immovable and difficult - until he is changed by another character with the ability to always bounce back and right themselves, even if a little naive:
...and so we starting experimenting along these lines. Sazacat, our character artist, started speed painting some thoughts on how we might make some extremely normal-looking folks in game.
Reaching the concept below really defined how we wanted the characters faces to convey emotion in OFF GRID.
We then progressed to the more twisted / awkward style that all OFF GRID character bodies (especially the knees and hands) carry:
That style was largely brought about with the drawing above, which very quickly translated into a model for our player character, Joe:
You can see the kink in the knees, and the slightly crooked fingers, as well as the uncomfortable stance (even in A-pose!). We also defined our style with the use of specific hard and soft edges all over the character, but most prominently around the jaw and forehead.
These couple of major points have set the style for the rest of the characters in the game. We hope this provides a little insight into the process. Don't forget, if you like this sort of thing, you can get your very own copy of the 'Making Of Off Grid' book by backing at the NAMESPACE level or above! We look forward to showing you more soon! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team P.S. Please continue to share the campaign as far and wide as you can. Every single $ or backing is so important to us!

[ 2018-10-24 08:52:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

We won an award! In case you didnt see us shouting about it all over social media: Off Grid won the Indiecator Award at Sweden Game Conference! It came with the giant cheque of our dreams (literally - a HUGE check!) and a very pretty bouquet of flowers! Rich was in Sweden speaking and demoing the game, and was the lucky one to receive the award on behalf of the team. We might have to stage reinactments next week so that all of us can feel the glory of being handed a giant cheque!
All of us still have huge grins on our faces today. Thanks Sweden Game Conference - you've totally made our week!

Concept art, anyone?

We want to give you a little look at the beginning of Off Grid's visual style and whet your appetite for the 'Making Of' book! Off Grid was destined to be low poly from the start. Its an aesthetic style that we like and that is achievable for an indie team. We also knew from the get-go that we wanted to create a world where data was visualised and tangible. Not immediately visible with the naked eye, but with the help of augmented-reality glasses. This is was our first pass at what a 'data view' layer might look like:
We knew we were getting somewhere when we hit on this idea of using stealth mechanics to 'hide' your data. Next up was working out what the overarching objectives were for the meta game. We wanted to create a dark, dull, dystopian near future, that could be liberated with a new free internet (free as in open, not as in cost). This led to thinking through what the liberating of zones or areas of the world with 'mesh network nodes might look like.
It's fun to look back and see how far the game has come, what has carried on, continued through, or has been left behind. If you like this sort of thing, there will be copious amounts of concept art, sketches, notes, photos, and loads of other behind-the-scenes exclusive content in the official 'The Making Of Off Grid' book! Secure your own copy by backing at the NAMESPACE reward level or above! If you've already backed, remember you can easily up your pledge, too!

Funding update:

WE ARE 70% FUNDED! Yesss! What a relief it is to say that! We've been steadily climbing the 14k mountain this week, and it's possible we have hit refresh more times than we care to admit over the past few days. We have had the best time sharing Off Grid with the world through this campaign so far. Nineteen days remain! A LOT can happen in 19 days. If you have yet to back, please do! If youre thinking about backing, please do! If you keep meaning to tell your friends to back, please do! THANK YOU, BACKERS! The Off Grid Team p.s. If you're near London, go check out Inside Intel! It's a very cool contemporary art exhibition with the theme of surveillance running through it, put on by the Centre for Investigative Journalism. It's FREE, and open all of today: https://tcij.org/inside-intel

[ 2018-10-20 10:41:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Weve been kickstarting for a week and were ALMOST 70% funded! Nearly 70% in seven days is absolutely astounding. Thank you all SO much! Its been excellent to hear from backers and hugely exciting to get feedback from those of you that have played the demo. Weve gotten our first Lets Plays, and overall, we are feeling pretty good about week one! Now for week two! Theres a few fun things going on this week - Rich is Sweden for the Sweden Games Conference. The conference theme is Games and Politics: Reflections on power, play & changing perspectives'... and we fit the bill! Rich was invited to speak AND Off Grid was selected to be on the show floor as part of Indiecator - a showcase dedicated to indie games!
If youre in London - Off Grid is also on show as part of Inside Intel - an exhibition of contemporary artworks, design objects and digital assets brought together to investigate the confusion sewn by an increasingly partisan media, sinister new technologies and the culture of official secrecy and widespread surveillance. The exhibition forms part of the 2018 Centre for Investigative Journalisms Logan Symposium: Conspiracy. If the theme of our game is whats piqued your interest - go check it out as it looks seriously cool! Plus its free!
We want to keep momentum for the campaign going - and we need you to help. Please continue to share, share, share. Remember, its an all-or-nothing campaign, so we must hit our target in order to recieve the funding and fulfil the rewards. Keep on sharing, shouting, and spreading the word for us! Thanks again for an incredible first week, backers! The Off Grid Team P.S. Have you joined our Discord? Check it out: http://discordapp.com/invite/NDEVwBJ

[ 2018-10-16 19:55:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! What a week this has been: a huuuuuge thanks to you all! Were [strike]nearly[/strike] 60% funded - and THAT is a great way to go into the weekend. In case you missed it, Rich did a little stream yesterday from the back of an LA cab - it is full of big gushy thank yous to everyone! The video isnt top quality, but the heartfelt thanks definitely are. (check it out on twitch.tv/semaeopus) Hes out there as hes a speaker at IndieCade today! Hes talking about modding, digital activism, and why as a game developer, you probably have less to say about a subject than your audience does. So without further ado: lets talk about what makes Off Grid so unique!
Off Grid is first and foremost a fun yet challenging hacking game that opens a dialogue about the real world issues of data privacy, information security, and the mass surveillance state that surrounds us all. It has a compelling narrative and a sweet father-daughter relationship at its core. Its played with a controller, and we promise, no previous hacking knowledge is required. ;) But if you wish to take it further, theres so much more to it!

Replay & Community Input

We want Off Grid to continue on as a piece of work that the community can shape along with us in order to make it everything it can be. It is an open stealth game with multiple solutions to levels and a complex AI, creating missions that are fun to play through many times over. PLUS, the game is extensively moddable and the speed and ease with which players and modders can turn around a level means that interesting content and stories should be produced at a speed and scale that will outstrip anything we could dream of as an indie development team! This is something we want to expand on here...

The 'South Park' of Hacking Games

O Grid has dark humour at its centre, and the state of this crazy googling, Orwellian hot mess of a world we live in is ripe for modders to exploit humorous interpretations. O Grid is much like South Park in that important themes are wrapped up in tongue-in-cheek humour. Like South Parks speedy turnaround of episodes to approach topical issues, O Grids modding tools make it possible to produce a new level in a matter of days in order to ape news and current events. The incredible importance and relevance of the issues around hacking and data privacy in everyday life mean that there is a mine of inspiration available for topical mods to be created and for streamers to play and comment on. In this video we took a real life vulnerability and made it as a mod in the game to prove the tools could used to tell stories of real life hacks. In this instance, we took Scott Helme's talk from Steelcon16 about the vulnerabilities of the Nissan Leaf, and made a hackable car that carried the same weakness: a publicly displayed VIN was used to access the app that controls the car's aircon, battery, locks, and could get the car's location data. The possibilities are endless! We look forward to the game being released and seeing the first official mods come back. If this sounds up your street and you have yet you back Off Grid, please consider doing so now! Wed love to have you as a backer. To all of you that have backed and/or shared this campaign so far: we cant say thank you enough - its been an absolutely incredible few days! THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team P.S. Dont forget: please share this, retweet us, post the link wherever you hang out online, and tell your friends! THANK YOU!

[ 2018-10-12 17:05:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

WOW. You backers have given us a seriously wild ride: 35% funded in 5 hours, 40% funded in 7 hours, AND THEN we hit the 50% mark within 21 hours! It feels seriously good to be 50% funded within the first 24 hours of the campaign! Your enthusiasm and support has blown us away. THANK YOU!
For this first update, we wanted to give you a little background on the inspiration for Off Grid. As you might be aware, its been in the works for quite some time! The game was initially inspired when Rich heard Eben Moglen speak about net neutrality and data privacy at the INET conference in 2011. It struck a cord, and the seed for Off Grid was planted. Soon after, Rich teamed up with Pontus, and together they built the first prototype of Off Grid. The goal was to get people thinking about data. The root notion was to try and physicalize it - to make data into something manipulable, something that people would be able to go and play with and see as a thing you can walk around. But the concept was still a little out there: this was early 2013, before Snowden and NSA revelations. Fast forward to June 2013, and the first ever public unveiling of Off Grid (in a livestreamed interview at Etoo London) just happened to fall nearly 64 years to the day after the publishing of George Orwell's book, 1984, and the same week that Edward Snowden made his first leak. And all of a sudden, it clicked. Prior to the first revelations, it was a struggle to explain to anyone why what we were doing with Off Grid was important or would be interesting. Then, almost overnight, Snowden gave everyone the vocabulary to talk about it. People understood. Now, years on, the revelations have just kept rolling, and everyone is much more aware of the issues surrounding data privacy and mass surveillance. It is the perfect time for a game like Off Grid: people are tuned into the effects of data mining and the impact that bad laws around digital rights have on real life. Help us get Off Grid funded, and THEN help us shape the game so we can all try to picture a less dystopian digital tomorrow. Lets keep the momentum going - tell your friends!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/richmetson/off-grid-data-is-your-most-powerful-weapon/description THANK YOU! The Off Grid Team P.S. If you want to chat to us a bit more informally, we regularly hang out in our studio discord - wed love to see you in there! Join us: https://discordapp.com/invite/NDEVwBJ

[ 2018-10-10 15:39:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

....and we're LIVE ON KICKSTARTER! NOW is your chance to back Off Grid and -PLAY A FREE DEMO of Off Grid -Secure your copy from as little as 8 (SUPER EARLY BIRD - it's a steal!) -Get your name or handle in the game -Help shape the game via our FIRST ACCESS program! -Snag some official OFF GRID merch ...and much more!
Back Off Grid TODAY! http://offgridthegame.com/kickstarter Get in there quick! Some reward tiers are limited... you don't want to miss out! Help us spread the word! Share our posts, tell friends when you've backed, and let us know that you have by using #offgridthegame on social media! THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! The Off Grid Team P.S. If you haven't already, please join the mailing list for news and updates: http://newsletter.offgridthegame.com/?p=subscribe&id=1

[ 2018-10-09 15:07:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today is the day! The Off Grid Kickstarter campaign goes LIVE! From 4pm BST onwards TODAY, you will have the opportunity to PLAY A FREE DEMO of Off Grid!

Play the demo

Access the demo via our kickstarter page: http://offgridthegame.com/kickstarter

Become a backer

-Secure your copy from as little as 8 (SUPER EARLY BIRD - it's a steal!) -Get your name or handle in the game -Help shape the game via our FIRST ACCESS program! -Snag some official OFF GRID merch ...and much more!

Set your alarms!

The campaign launches at 4pm BST. That's: 4pm London / 5pm Berlin / 11am New York / 8am LA

Back Off Grid!

http://offgridthegame.com/kickstarter Get in there quick to get the best deal on the game! Some reward tiers are limited... you don't want to miss out!

Help us spread the word!

Share our posts, tell friends when you've backed, and let us know that you have by using #offgridthegame on social media! THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! The Off Grid Team P.S. If you haven't already, please join the mailing list for news and updates: http://newsletter.offgridthegame.com/?p=subscribe&id=1

[ 2018-10-09 07:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

That's right, in just over 24 hours, Off Grid will be live on Kickstarter! Launching on Tuesday, October 9th, you will have the opportunity to: -PLAY A FREE DEMO of Off Grid -Secure your copy from as little as 8 (SUPER EARLY BIRD!) -Get your name or handle in the game -Help shape the game via our FIRST ACCESS program! ...and much more!
The campaign goes live at 4pm BST. That's: 4pm London / 5pm Berlin / 11am New York / 8am LA Get in there quick to get the best deal on the game! Some reward teirs are limited... you don't want to miss out! Help us spread the word! Share our posts, tell friends when you've backed, and let us know that you have by using #offgridthegame on social media! THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! The Off Grid Team P.S. If you haven't already, please join the mailing list for news and updates: http://newsletter.offgridthegame.com/?p=subscribe&id=1

[ 2018-10-08 13:16:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

BIG NEWS! We'll be running a Kickstarter campaign in October!

Get ready for:

• a playable demo
• the first ever opportunity to secure a copy of Off Grid
• a chance to get behind the scenes and help shape the game

The Kickstarter will go live:

Tuesday, October 9th Please consider backing us if you are able! If you're not able to, please share, share, share! Every pledge, like, wishlist and follow means a lot! We'll be asking for feedback on our campaign via Discord this week - hop on in there to get a preview of the campaign & tell us what you think: https://discordapp.com/invite/NDEVwBJ Thanks everyone! The Off Grid Team P.S. If you haven't already, please join the mailing list for news and updates: http://offgridthegame.com/newsletter

[ 2018-09-25 16:51:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! That's right, Thursdays are Dev Stream Days! We'll be chatting all things Off Grid, show you in-game play, hacking, modding, and more... Here's what you need to know:

When:

Every Thursday

What time:

5pm BST / 12pm EDT / 9am PDT

Where:

https://www.twitch.tv/semaeopus Ask questions via twitch, or in our Discord's #hack-the-planet channel! Join the discord here: https://discordapp.com/invite/NDEVwBJ ICYMI: We've done a couple dev streams already! One featured hacker Darren Martyn, Pwnsauce of LulzSec fame, and in another, Rich intro'd the game and went through some basic lua device scripting.
Videos are also posted to our YouTube channel after the fact - hop on over there and have a gander: https://www.youtube.com/offgridthegame Hope you can tune in! The Off Grid Team If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-09-20 10:30:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've been having fun today with a little soft launch of the Semaeopus discord server! We invited our newsletter subscribers in for a little exclusive dev AMA session earlier - and now we're ready to welcome the rest of you out there in the big, wide world!

Join us in Discord!

https://discord.gg/NDEVwBJ

Get your questions ready - the devs will be online again at 9pm BST / 4pm EDT / 1pm PDT today to welcome you and answer any qestions you have!

Look forward to chatting with you soon! p.s. If you want in to the exclusive club that derives from our mailing list - sign up! We'll be happy to have ya! http://offgridthegame.com/newsletter

[ 2018-09-03 18:10:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

When you spend so much of your time behind a screen and a keyboard, a true break from it is an absolute requirement every once in a while! Just as Pontus hit the woods in Finland last month, this month Sarah and Rich met up with family and spent a week camping in the Rockies. Highlights included multiple excited loud-whisperings of 'MOOSE!' while wildly gesturing at a black mass in the trees, only to get closer and discover a cow! Luckily, plenty of real moose were also spotted throughout the week.
At the end of it, Rich had an afternoon in Boulder and got a chance to meet up with some local devs, too. Then it was back to work, of course!
And so it's time for another sprint update! Here's what's been checked off the list this sprint:

Level Design

• Utilised ProBuilder to clean up old geometry and fix z-fighting issues
• Improved upon player route through existing levels

App System

• Rebuilt the App System - apps are now actually fully driven by the Lua scripts
• Expanded the Lua API to add more features specifically useful for apps (but of course available for other systems as well)

AI

• Data-driven work on AI, which included: -Making InterestPoints general -Creating Agent profiles to use and/or fix these points

Art

• New artist on board! Yesss!
• New character models completed that will be part of a surprise reveal in the future!
• New character concepts for LUT variations of moddable characters

Bug Fixing

• Fixed multiple bugs and inconsistent behaviours with apps

...plus a bunch of essential biz dev and planning tasks. SPRINT COMPLETE! Now we're focusing on the busy sprint ahead as we gear up for some big upcoming deadlines. A couple of us are headed to EMF at the end of August for a weekend of making, breaking, hacking, crafting, ingeniuty and fun. If you're planning to be there too, get in touch with Rich on twitter and ask to play the demo! Thanks for following along! The Off Grid Team If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-08-22 16:46:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

This sprint someone (Pontus!) spent a good chunk of it hanging out by a lakeside cabin in Finland.
The rest of us weren't envious AT ALL, of course, while we plugged away at our tasks while melting in the unusually hot English climes! Here's what we accomplished:

Level Design

• Grey box work completed on a new level and its architecture, using probuilder to replace old modular geometry
• Worked on the mission script, overall design and objective placement and the devices in it

Devices

• Devices now can leave data, by either grabbing metadata from the using character's profile, or by a function that generates data within the device (or both) - NPC's using devices leave data / e.g. vending machine use should leave purchase data
• Device Lua can now grab data from its inventory
• Devices are now set up to react to data they are sent (e.g. virus etc) via data sending and Device.SetState
• Added hackable light groups and API for modders to use this
• Lua API for device UI's now display the device's inventory

Character Controls

• Recentred camera after idle delay

Bug fixing

• Fixes complete for office worker on the roof issues (setting User Position for InterestPoints)
• Fixed Videoplayer for cutscene

More detail on some of these ares of development will come throughout the month's devblogging. Sprint complete! Thanks for following along with us! The Off Grid Team P.S. The next newsletter will be out very soon! Sign up to our mailing list at offgridthegame.com/newsletter If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-07-26 13:24:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's not every day you can pick up a magazine with a double page spread about Off Grid inside... but today you can!! The August issue of Gamesmaster, GM332, is out now and features Off Grid in its IndieMaster section! Off Grid is featured as #1 in Gamesmaster's list of 'the best in the indie scene' and given two glorious pages for you to feast your eyes upon. Order a digital or print copy here: https://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/gaming/gamesmaster-magazine-back-issues/gamesmaster-august-2018-issue-332/?force_sid=uu3rcl7l4nqjduv6rltaop8os3 We're in good company, too, there's some other great indie games listed alongside Off Grid for you to check out! Happy reading! :D

[ 2018-07-13 14:33:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Off Grid dev Rich Metson is going to be interviewed by Pursuance Project tech lead Steve Phillips in a livestream at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 8pm UTC / 9pm BST. We'll be talking activism, tools, and videogames, of course! They want allll the info about Off Grid - so listen in! Don't miss it - here's the link: https://live.kickstarter.com/barrett-brown/live/interview-off-grid-where-data-is-your-most-powerful-weapon
Haven't heard of the Pursuance Project? Brainchild of founder Barret Brown, Pursuance is working to create a secure platform for collaboration in order to amplify the efforts of activists, journalists, & nonprofits. Check out their kickstarter and learn more at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/85883596/barrett-browns-pursuance-project/posts/2230500

[ 2018-07-05 14:49:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

This sprint included a major milestone... playing the game from start to finish!  :D
That may be stretching the truth a bit, and included a bit of cheat... but here’s the detail on that, along with the rest of our work this sprint:

Stub-out of all levels

Stubbed out the game's level sequence and the logic that ties it all together then threw in a completion hack to 'play' the game end-to-end - Made stub grey box rooms for all remaining levels - Created completeable mission scripts for missing levels - Created level.json and preconditions to make all levels tie together and the game "completeable" - Added dev laptop to all levels and added setting in the device so you can ‘hack’ the laptop to complete the mission. - Made a couple fo test builds and made sure the game is fully ‘completeable’ end-to-end.

Save System

- Set up save files to save persistent data (to last throughout a play-through, rather than just during missions)

Devices

- Added functionality to mission and device scripts to enable state to be saved. - Refactored devices to work towards formalising their operations, and allow for more modding potential.

Updating to Unity 2018 (and everything else)

Unity update, and updated just about everything else to latest versions at the same time. - Updated Unity project to run on 2018.1 - Sound engine & Unity integration updated to Wwise 2017.2.4 - Updated ReWired to 1.1.14.4 - Updated PostProcessing stack to v2      - also updated our settings system and postprocessing profiles to work with the new system - Updated Cinemachine - Added ProBuilder and Text Mesh Pro to project (giving nicer tools for modders since you can build things inside Unity instead of being limited to our levelkit pieces or using external 3D software to build things with)

App System

Needed to undergo some refactoring to ensure full functionality, this has meant a bit of digging around

Bug fixing

- Fixed a Mac path problem that was preventing levelkit work being done on Mac - Fixed a shader used in harbour that was using a deprecated function - Added workaround for Unity not handling nested Canvas Groups correctly (to fix issues with invisible selectable buttons in main menu screen) - Fixed level loading from mods (built-in levels and ones added as mods have a different path for level.json which needed to be taken into account when looking for available levels) Sprint complete!  Thanks for following along with us. The Off Grid Team If you haven’t already - be sure to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/526720/Off_Grid/ Wishlist on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-06-18 11:04:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello!  It’s Pontus here this time. You've already read about us recently making a trip to USA for GDC and PAX, and about the push for new content and polish we did before that.  As things go, that kind of quick development tends to mean lots of new stuff is added at the last minute, and sometimes maybe not tested in every possible situation.  Or there's a good chance there are some odd bugs and things that only appear after a while, or in very specific conditions.  Things that in the long term would get noticed, added to our bug list, and eventually fixed... but in a 4-week rush, things sometimes go less than perfectly and some features might end up being a bit buggy. In multiple ways, sometimes. Most of my sprint was spent on fixing biggest issues we found in our PAX build, and most of that didn't end being much to talk about.  But one of the bugs ended being a bit more interesting to figure out, and while I'd usually prefer talking about design, I though some insight on this side of game development could still have some value.  So, this is going to be more or less accurate story of our guards not behaving as intended, as I saw the issue through bug reports on our Jira board, and watching people play the game & testing things myself afterwards trying to figure out what exactly was going wrong.  And also a nice example of how the most obvious explanation often isn't quite true!

There's something wrong with our guards

So, the first thing I heard was one of the other team members saying our guards were sinking to the floor, in t-pose (which is basically a clean starting pose used for character animation, standing with your arms at 90 degree angle to your sides). Not what you'd want to see in the game, but my immediate guess was that there's just a missing animation file somewhere, which would be easy enough to open the animation tree, figure out what's missing, drop the file in, and it's fine.
The second problem, which was noticed during PAX, was that sometimes the guards just seemed to stare straight at the player, but not actually react in any way. Of course there's a distance check for how far away they can see you, and also the lights and shadows affect the player visibility, so it's not so easy to say for sure. But it seemed like they should have spotted the player. So we did what you do when demoing a game at events, not being able to open Unity and debugger... we watched people playing it and noticed some things. The guards seemed to work fine, until they went for a coffee break. When they did, they sometimes seemed to continue drinking coffee, either just spending the rest of their working day hanging around the vending machines sipping coffee, or sometimes taking their coffee with them, going to patrol but constantly stopping to sip a bit more from their cups. (Actually, that sounds pretty realistic! :D  Sadly it didn't look great, and wasn't the behavior we wanted from them. And they didn't bother to chase the player any more, which is less than optimal for a stealth game).
So, more info added to to Jira bug reports, and since we had just added the animations and related AI actions for the guards to do the coffee breaks (rather than just standing next to the vending machine for a bit to "take a break", something missing in the animation tree and probably in the AI action seemed a pretty likely explanation).  Now I just had to survive people running into same issues over and over again until the PAX weekend was over and I was back at my desk with Unity again.  Always great to see your work being broken again and again without being able to do anything about it!  :D

Debugging and fixing the bug

The first thing I did was open a scene with few guards and a vending machine in it, and just let the game run with error log open to see if I could observe the same issues, and if there were any useful errors. After half a day, I hadn't seen the "t-pose through floor" issue, but I definitely did notice the guards gave up their work day around the first coffee break.  Sadly no useful errors appeared, and even with our AI tools open everything seemed fine, the guards took a break, and returned to patrol (based on what AI was doing), yet on-screen they stayed drinking coffee instead. So, maybe we were right about animation issues. Time to open the Animator window.
(not the exact Animator setup I was facing, this screenshot is from earlier in sprint so it's missing some gestures we added later) The states seemed OK, we were triggering a "gesture" with a number code to tell which gesture to play. It would then play one of the states, check for when the animation has completed, and then tell our animation controller script it's done. There are some issues with that, which I'll get into a bit later, but at least that should work for the guards to complete the gesture and get back to patrol. So I needed some other explanation. ...Half a day more of staring at the guards walking around the level, with various logs and inspector windows open, trying to see what could be wrong.  And then I noticed it.  The AI takes breaks when it runs out of "motivation."  Motivation in this case is pretty much just a number we track, decreasing it a bit for every boring task they do, and then when it reaches 0, we tell the AI it wants to take a break, which will then restore the motivation.  But for some reason it wasn't being restored. The guards would go for the coffee break, but somehow the coffee wasn't refreshing them at all, so they kept drinking more, and more, and more! It turns out the gesture system was telling the animation system that it was done playing the gesture, but nothing was informing the rest of the AI that it's fine, you've completed your gesture action. So, with a few more lines of code the guards were now returning to patrol after few sips of coffee to refresh themselves. Kind of.  They were indeed returning to patrol, but would still sometimes keep staring at the player in front of them like you were invisible. Or happily drink their coffee as if they were thinking that the odd guy running around the office building in the middle of the night was someone else's problem during their coffee break. And that's where the aforementioned problem with the gesture animation setup comes to play. The characters would start the gesture, then go through the animations, and then tell the AI to complete the action and start doing something else.  But what if the player walk past the guard while he is in middle of the gesture?  We needed to add a way to break them away at any point if the AI tells there's something more important to do:
Slight pain to set up, but basically, every single animation state needs to have two exit transitions, one for when the animation completes normally, and other that can be triggered by the AI and set up to immediately interrupt everything and exit the gestures tree. This seemed to work:  I ran around the guards, interrupting them in different ways and at different times during their breaks, and they now reacted immediately, dropped their coffee cups, and started chasing me.  Bug fixed!

...or more debugging and fixing more bugs.

While doing some final testing to confirm the bug was now gone, I somehow got the guards even more confused.  Now they were correctly reacting to me and starting the chase, but then sometimes just ended up stopping in middle of everything, with their AI not able to figure out what to do.
That was odd, as based on the logs, the guard was happily chasing the player, waiting for the chance to fire his taser (probably with a grin on his face even though our characters in general don't have mouths!).  He lost the sight of the player, so he made an estimate where the player might be, but couldn't find anything.  And then it all goes wrong.  At that point,the guards should go into search mode, where they select a bunch of search points from the level around them, then jog to each of those locations looking for the player, and after doing this for a while decide the player must have disappeared and return to normal patrol.  But sometimes the guards would just completely give up instead - the AI not being able to come up with any sensible plan left the character frozen in place. So I spent another hour running around the level, trying to get the guard to see me, and then trying to escape him in different ways and in different places, looking for some kind of pattern at least.  Let's just say it's not easy - the guards are pretty good at catching you.  Eventually, I noticed that this only happened sometimes (but not always) when I was running up the stairs from our test scene lobby. To be fair, that's just about the only way I could actually escape from the guards in that level, so it took a while before I even started considering that the stairs might have something to do with it.  And of course, verifying that as the reason was even harder, since now it wasn't enough to get the guards to see me and then escape, but I also had to make that happen so I'd escape exactly at right time while running in the stairs, with enough distance between me and the guard.
Indeed, that ended up being the very specific situation which was triggering the AI confusion.  I probably would have never even ran into it if I hadn't spent that much time testing for the animation/AI/coffee break issue in the same level.  After some nosing around in our code, I found an old hack we had put in place earlier to prevent the guards from using stairs (we had some issues with bit too steep incline on some stairs earlier, but the limitation should have been removed already).  I found a line of code that was pretty much saying “if your target is more than 2 meters above or below you, you can't go there.”  And, annoyingly, it was doing it bit too late to really work nicely to start with, so the AI had already set the target and planned for it, and then that line was just saying that the plan can't be done. Not that the AI would have any other plan to work with, so all it could do was throw its hands up in the air (metaphorically, although I'd really like to actually add an animation for that in the game!) and give up.

Done!

So, after few days, and staring through tons of code, and carefully observing the Animator trees, and our AI inspector, and tracking values in the code, what we thought was one bug somewhere messing up the guards and making them not see the player (and maybe play wrong animations) it actually ended being a bunch of separate issues that all just happened to surface at the same time, plus one more which I only found because of all the testing I had to do to figure out the others. As for the "Sinking into floor in T-pose" bug I started with?  I was never able to replicate it.  Not a single time during all this, even though I even had a screenshot as evidence.  Maybe it was some even more odd glitch, or maybe it was fixed as a side-effect of something else I did, I have no idea.  But I haven't heard any complaints about that happening from the rest of the team either, so I decided to just mark that bug as "fixed" in Jira as well. :D Also, after getting annoyed about trying to get spotted and escape a very specific situation again and again, while also trying to monitor logs and other stuff, I ended making good use of our Lua apps system, and made one that turns the player invisible. That took about 10 minutes to do, so at least our apps system is showing some great potential here.  I don't see this one being an actual feature in the game for obvious reasons, but it is great tool for testing the levels and debugging AI!
That's it for now, maybe I'll get to talk about more design-y stuff next time! Pontus If you haven’t already - be sure to Wishlist on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-06-13 11:31:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all - Steve here. I’m a programmer working on Off Grid - and I’ve had the pleasure of working on save systems recently. :) Ha! This is really one of the short straws of game development. When I was at Sony, it was almost a rite of passage; these were the days that not only did you have to save and load, but you were responsible for ensuring things didn't die when the memory card (remember those?) was pulled out mid-operation. Prior to this month, we had the beginnings of a save system in place, but were aware that certain things didn't seem to be working quite as they should - so I took a look. What I discovered was that we kept a save in memory as well as writing it to disk. This is a good thing - loading a checkpoint is faster. But a side effect was that there were two code paths to reinstating a save - to load it from disk, or to just reference the save data as game data. The danger with this is that the in-memory data can reference 'live' game data, which means the save on disk diverges with this during gameplay. Lots of copying data later, the bits that weren't working quite correctly now seem much happier.
The other work I've done was on a system level. Saving and loading requires making a list of all the files available. Previously, we loaded all of these into memory - but as we cannot know how big they're going to be, this will eventually cause us all sorts of problems. I've instead created a header at the top of each save file, containing the information we need to present to the player. Load the first 1000 bytes or so of each file, grab the header, close the file. Saving and loading done then? Certainly not! We will still have new data that needs to be added to our save structure, and I bet there are still some bugs in there. But I'm confident that we are on firmer ground than we were a month ago. Til next time! Steve

[ 2018-05-26 08:18:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and welcome to our first Off Grid annoucement on Steam! Exciting! We've had a dev blog going for some time at offgridthegame.tumblr.com - if you haven't had a look, go check it out. Here at Semaeopus, we work in development sprints that last roughly a month - and moving forward, at the end of each sprint, we’ll be putting together a roundup of the development achievements. We'll break the detail out into individual posts every week or two. It means there will be pretty regular updates from the team working on Off Grid, and they should cover a specific theme or area across the last month of development. We hope you'll enjoy!
Now, for the most recent sprint round up (17.05.18):

Upgrading the App System

Evaluated current app system and how to get it to fit our requirements & designs -We’ll need to change things a bit so the apps are fully controlled by the Lua scripts

Bug fixes and tweaks after PAX & GDC

Screen fade to black moved to UI, removed all old fade systems/code -So fades now work reliably on player death, level restart/completion etc. Pause menu scroll bar was misaligned to edge of screen instead of edge of menu Fixed guards being stuck in wrong animation / AI states after taking breaks -Taking breaks restores motivation correctly (for NPC’s not just us developers) -Added interrupts in animation system to break out of animation before it completes. (Now the NPC’s don'ät need to finish their coffee before they can start chasing the player) Fixed guards sometimes not chasing player -See above... They *tried* but it’s hard to run while also drinking coffee -The AI system for selecting target locations still had some old code that limited target locations within +/- 2 meters vertical from NPC position. When player disappeared out of sight in stairs etc. that stopped the AI from following Fixed our build script’s “build all” option only building Windows. -Also made it ask for all the options needed *before* making the builds, not in between each platform. Otherwise the person making the builds can’t go for a coffee while waiting the build to complete ;P Data view textures and colours conforming (props sucha as paper sheet and some devices had wrong data colour) Fixing the formating in the text for some devices (Extra tabs in hand dryer description strings) Sped up first hacking interaction to make gameplay and feedback more immediate (bathroom thermostat start temp to 20C) apostle/basement conversation after server objective not set to secure

Fixing save issues

NFC data now doesnt disappear on load Saving and loading is now handled correctly Save data no longer diverges when play is continued

Fixing Doors!

Set up scannable interaction prefabs properly Added frosted strip accross all glass door models for better visibility Scanner door prefab not tagged properly (doesn’t work for the Help overlay)

Prop work

Fixed missing files in levelkit source .blend Updated the vending machine prop to give more detail

Character Rigging

Worked on bringing new characters into the game Made a start on rigging and set up of some of the older characters with new Colour LUT setup and blend shapes for their body shape Thanks for reading! The Off Grid Team If you haven’t already, be sure to wishlist Off Grid - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!

[ 2018-05-18 15:03:22 CET ] [ Original post ]