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As we announced in our last update back in October, we are developing an experimental subgame, Off Grid: Red Team (OGRT), and playtesting is now currently in progress. Do you want to join in?
Let us start by saying that if you havent signed up to test OGRT you still have time over the next couple weeks. Why would you want to? Well let our Playtesters tell you why:
Just finished the game, and it really is amazing, as I said before the interactions with the browser were amazing, the only thing I have to note about the interactions aside from some specific issues that i will report in the forum channel was the lack of forum posts, and i hope that changes
The game seems really good and looks great. Love the ARG with the websites. Im trying my best not to go full-on hacker mode with the usual suite of tools. The last problems are really tough, though!
The gameplay is pretty good, I enjoyed it. I also like the element with real websitesI got tripped up a few times, but that was down to my lack of attention to detail. I was a bit gutted when it came to an end.
OGRT isnt just engagingits successfully challenging players to think like an attacker!
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!
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:
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:
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:
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...
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!
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!
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.
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!
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)
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.
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:
The OFF GRID demo drops you in mid-game. Your world has already changed beyond recognition and you're in at the deep end.
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.
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.
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:
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
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
We're going to kickstart OFF GRID's entrance in the Steam Game Festival with a live developer Q&A and livestream.
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
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
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.
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!
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
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/
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
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.
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:
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...
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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:
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++.
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:
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
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
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!
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:
You have all helped us raise over 20k for OFF GRID so far
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!
Happy Halloween from all of us at Semaeopus!
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
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.
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!
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!
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!
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!
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
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!
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
....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
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!
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
BIG NEWS! We'll be running a Kickstarter campaign in October!
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:
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!
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:
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:
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
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
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:
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!
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
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):
[ 6084 ]
[ 777 ]
[ 4040 ]