Earlier this month we released the next audiobook in the Brigador universe - Brigador Killers: Pilgrim - and since then there's been plenty of chatter. This post will not be spoiling any details of the plot but we suggest refraining from reading if you want to go in blind. Before we get to some of the community's reactions...

A few notes about the production of the audiobook

The original text of Brigador Killers: Pilgrim was completed in September 2021. The voice recording sessions with Ryan Cooper started a month later in October. Twice a week, Ryan would head to his VO booth (you can see Ryan's setup here) in the evening for about an hour at a time to locally record the book. Unlike the previous audiobook's production (which was less than ideal), this time around our editor and producer Benjamin was able to direct Ryan as he recorded. Since this was during the height of pandemic lockdown, there were a lot of free solutions available, but Skype was profoundly terrible at it due to its poor audio quality. Fortunately, we were able to use something called Zencastr, which allowed Benjamin to remotely hear Ryan clearly, but still chime in in real time to give direction where necessary. It wasn't exactly like an AV engineer overseeing a VO session, but it was close enough for our needs given the circumstances. After Ryan sent over the raw audio between each recording session, Benjamin took it into Audacity to cut it all together as well as double checking for any parts that weren't caught during the live session in order to re-record them in the next session. This twice-weekly process went on until late January 2022, with a few minor additions like the intro and end credits recorded in March 2022. The audiobook was then shelved for about a year, before receiving its final touches (the addition of MAVS' music and an EQ pass) made by Grant. Two years after that brings us to today and the book is out.

Some character trivia

Josh Brolin's character in 2015's Sicario was a heavy influence on how Pilgrim team member Marco was performed - specifically his demeanor, not his accent. [previewyoutube=j4ygaIE3FkY;full][/previewyoutube] The mispronouncing of Louis Valka's first name by Daarb is a reference to Frank Oz antagonizing Dan Akroyd in 1983's Trading Places. [previewyoutube=z4Rm-RB4MgE;full][/previewyoutube] Lastly, given who Tuno Vocc is within the fiction of the Brigador universe, we needed to pull from a personality of equal measure. Who better, then, than the late Oliver Reed? More specifically, this extract from the 1985 BBC documentary "In at the deep end". [previewyoutube=OmnK0ty0RBE;full][/previewyoutube]

Reactions on Discord

Our Discord server was the most active channel and several community members got through the book with somewhat worrying speed. In mostly chronological order: [quote=author]Just finished up, that was one hell of a ride - Squared[/quote] [quote=CeriseCisilipp]200% respect absolute banger i will be thinking about this book on the toilet - CeriseCisilipp[/quote] [quote=basedthunk]Yeah it's fuckin' phenomenal - basedthunk[/quote] [quote=pommy]Good book - pommy[/quote] [quote=ANIMAL MOTHER]This picture of Bugs Bunny I think summarizes exactly how I felt when reading the last two chapters - ANIMAL MOTHER[/quote] [quote=miffledkrisp]>chapter 24 what the fuck man - miffledkrisp[/quote] [quote]On a lighter note, I fucking died laughing at "Oh fuck, did i pull the pin?" - the huanglong[/quote] [quote]Guh I have work [tomorrow] still but ended up finishing the epub in one sitting - hax[/quote] [quote]"Cartwheeled into a lifetime of therapy" is probably my favorite phrase out of the whole thing. - HomelessCylon101[/quote] [quote]Finished listening to it this morning, and holy crap! It was nice having a book that didn't hold anything back. I think four years of life experience and three years of the army has made me appreciate your writing a lot more now, I don't think stuff like "You know what I love about the army?" (especially the one about the cages/stores) and the armoured NCO in charge of a recce/special ops mission would have phased me nearly as hard without that. Your written dialogue is real in the best way, makes me feel like they're people, not book characters. - Boliervac[/quote] [quote]Great stuff, absolutely unrelenting by the final chapters. - heavilyaugmented[/quote]

On Reddit & Youtube

Elsewhere on the internet, the r/brigador subreddit has seen a handful of reactions: [quote][Just] read it all in one sitting, really scratched an itch I didn't know I had. Hit me like a truck when I realized halfway through I was reading the exact paragraph describing the book cover. Absolutely worth the five bucks. - u/Ok-Spend-4503[/quote] [quote]It was fun - u/Nodbot[/quote] ...While over on YouTube, the first half of the book is being uploaded one chapter at a time over the next few months, and has generated plenty of comments: [quote]Can't express how happy I am to see the same author & VA return. Loved the first one in ways I can't describe. - westonshores9248[/quote] [quote]Oh yeah, I'm Brigadoring it - captainkarmine9014[/quote] [quote]Why is that mech so curvy? It's making me feel strange things But seriously, thank you guys for these, they are of amazing quality - MrBjanders[/quote] [quote]I've listened to the Brigador book DOZENS of times, looking forward to doing the same here - mossy3565[/quote]

FAQ

Where can I get the book? You can acquire the audiobook on Itch (and also listen to the first 15 chapters entirely for free). The epub & pdf version is sold separately and available on our merch store. The Kindle version is available here. The Audible version is pending as of time of posting. Will there be a physical version of the book? If Brigador Killers (the game) does well, only then we will consider pursuing a physical release of the book. On the book cover, is the photo on the helmet Aline Vocc? You'll just have to read (or listen) to the novel to find out.

[ 2025-03-28 15:16:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Available on Itch.io right now is the next audiobook in the Brigador universe titled Brigador Killers: Pilgrim. Both Brad Buckmaster and Ryan Cooper return as writer and narrator respectively and this book takes place both before the events of our next game and is a direct sequel to the first book. You can listen to the first part of the audiobook entirely for free on this Itch page. The free segment is about 3 hours and 50 minutes long, while the total runtime of the audiobook is just over 9 hours long. We dont wish to spoil the details, other than to warn you up front that it contains graphic descriptions of bloody violence and dismemberment (like the last book). If you choose to buy the audiobook now at its price of 9.99 USD, later down the line you will also be given a DLC upgrade key for both the audiobook and the soundtracks by Makeup And Vanity Set for Brigador Killers on Steam. The audiobook is delivered as a zip file and you will find the chapters as mp3s sitting in the media folder. Though we have mentioned multiple times that a lot of music has already been made by Makeup And Vanity Set for Brigador Killers, we havent yet finalized what tracks are going to go into each album since the structure of the game has changed. When the soundtracks are ready, we will add them to the Itch page. You should note that when that happens we intend to increase the price to 14.99 USD. In other words, acquire it now at 5 USD cheaper than the intended price. Were uploading a chapter of the audiobook to YouTube as a kind of weekly serial for the next few weeks. Technically the very first one is a reupload but this one has the fancy cover art courtesy of Flyingdebris as well as the wallpaper engine effects courtesy of Hara. The next chapter will appear tomorrow with a new one every week. [previewyoutube=qEiKhnq_hF8;full][/previewyoutube] UPDATE: The ebook version is sold separately. You will find it available as an epub & pdf on our merch store, and on Amazon. The audible version is still processing but should be available soon. Lastly, here is the book cover in various formats for your desktop wallpaper or phone lockscreen needs:

• With logotype
  
• Without logotype
  
• Full book cover with logotype
  
• Full book cover without logotype
  

[ 2025-03-11 17:48:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

By summer of 2025 we expect to have a demo ready in preparation for the next Steam Next Fest. That Next Fest will begin on June 9th, or about three months from the time of this post. As a result a few things are going to happen, though not all at once. First, the storepage - which was set up in haste after Rock Paper Shotgun covered our appearance at BitSummit in 2019 - will finally get its long-due overhaul. That means those images and gifs will be replaced so that its clear what Brigador Killers actually looks and plays like, instead of things from the build that did the rounds at PAX in 2019 and 2020. All those old images from that version of BK can be seen in this dev archive album. Next, we intend to put the demo up before the June Next Fest starts so that were eligible for the press preview event that occurs before each one. Developers only get one go at this event per game so we want to make the most out of it. What this means for you the public is that you will probably be able to access the demo not long before the festival begins. We do not intend to take the demo down after the Next Fest ends either. Another piece of news is that the next audiobook will become available soon. One reason it has taken a while is we needed a good illustration for it. The work is almost done and heres a peek at one part of the overall image (click here for a bigger version).
In case you missed the prologue post from before, the book is titled Brigador Killers: Pilgrim, written by Brad Buckmaster and read by Ryan Cooper. It is a direct sequel to the events of the first novel and it takes place between the first and second game. The first half of the new novel will be put up on our YouTube channel, one chapter at a time. The ebook version will follow at some point after since it is also waiting for the cover. We realize this is a short post for this month but they arent the only things that are going on behind the scenes at Stellar Jockeys - this is just what to expect in your immediate future.

[ 2025-02-27 13:54:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=zZxaDPUQqjE;full][/previewyoutube] The video above is about a new debug tool added to Brigador Killers called Ghost Lights. The rest of this article repeats the content of the video in text form with some additional details.

A brief note about map making

Like in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition, the Brigador Killers engine uses a combination of global illumination and small destructible props called minis to light its levels. Global illumination is where we model the position of a sun inside the game, while minis are things like lamp posts, traffic lights, neon signs etc. When these minis are destroyed, the lights attached to them are also removed, as one might expect. The levels are made in SJTiled - a fork of an open source program called Tiled - and it works like a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. In other words, where you place a building prop or an NPC spawn in the editor corresponds to the same position inside the game when you load that map. SJTiled, however, cannot have the same lighting conditions as the game as can be seen at the 34 second mark. Regardless, SJTiled is great at making levels. When we export a file from SJTiled, it creates a .json file for the game to read. This .json file tells the game what to load for that map and where. We demonstrate this in the footage by placing a blue barrel in the map, exporting the map, switching over to the game that is currently still running, and reloading the map with a developer command to show that same blue barrel in the game. Dave promptly kicks the barrel to show its not some sort of trick. Although placing mini lights to illuminate a scene in the right way is still something well do, constantly having to go back and forth between SJTiled to adjust the position of a lamp post, exporting the map, reloading the map over and over can become tedious.

What are ghost lights?

Ghost lights allow us to dynamically place lights anywhere in-game via the debug panel, instead of placing minis via SJTiled. They are neither props nor minis and can exist entirely on their own if needed. In the footage we start by placing a simple electrical light via a sub menu in the Rendering control tab, which in its default state is a bright white sphere that initially has green, blue and red lines sticking out of it when selected. We then use the debug panels Data editor to change the width of its cone to create a small spotlight and give it a sodium lamp-like color. After navigating back to the ghost lights sub menu, we change the direction of this spotlight via the X, Y and Z direction where X corresponds to the red axis, Y corresponds to the blue and Z corresponds to the green. This spotlight is then categorized by giving it the category name spot before it is duplicated to create a second light in the list. This duplicate light uses the same data values as the first but we can change its position and direction independent of the original ghost light as seen at the 2:37 mark in the video. Also, since both lights are in the same category, this lets us bulk select and move them together as a group, so we move them over to spotlight the barrel that was placed via SJTiled earlier. When we save our ghost lights via the Save ghost lights for this map button in this sub menu, this creates a meta .json file for that map specifically for the ghost lights. Once the lights have been saved, if we mess up the position, we can reload that meta file to reset their position.

Where things get interesting

The sneaky part comes at the four minute mark: ghost lights can be linked to a prop or mini. In the video we link our two ghost lights to the barrel, then have Dave destroy the barrel, at which point the ghost lights disappear just like when Dave kicked over the lampposts earlier. We can also make the ghost lights flicker by checking the "flickering" checkbox in the ghost lights sub menu. Once enabled, we can choose from one of many preset patterns available in the Data editor depending on what sort of effect we want, be it a fluorescent light with a faulty capacitor, or the gentle whispering of candlelight. Since Brigador Killers is more zoomed in than the first game, the players attention is much more likely to be drawn to environmental details, so its important that we have the capability to fine tune those things.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2025-01-30 21:47:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

A short post this month for the end of 2024, this time again from our lead artist who previously wrote about the Lobo, the Mar Nosso SWAT vehicle and the spacer redesign. This post is about a few new vehicles assets recently added to the game.
Earlier this year we put out an alpha of Brigador Killers over on Itch. We learned a lot of good lessonsone lesson being that the game world felt empty between playable vehicles. It was time to add a lot more civilian vehicles to Brigador Killers, starting with smaller ones. Many of the fan favorites in Brigador were small, so we knew the Tuk Tuk had to come back, and we already had a motorcycle. What else fits into that category? I wanted an electric scooter, and some kind of goofy small commuter car.

Teddy Boy

A freely-styled, loud, sort of 80s/90s scooter which I named Teddy Boy, partly because I think the jokingly Italian scooter names in games are tired, partly as a nod to the underground fashion style in the UK of the mid 20th century, and partly as an echo of the fan-christened Pantry Boy from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition. Heres how it looks in-engine.

Liliputter

For a small commuter, I looked no further than the deeply charming and goofy Comuta-Car of the late 70s/early 80s, one of the first widely available electric cars. Exaggerating its small scale, I turned it from a two seater into a single seat vehicle. Below is the Liliputter in action in GIF form.

An aside on the process

Sometime last year I moved all of my hard surface modeling to a program called Plasticity, and it was an incredible gain in speed. Now it was time to revamp our rendering pipelinenot for the sprites, but some new way to show off items and vehicles in the game with close-up beauty renders. Blender and image-based rendering came to the rescue, as per this tutorial: [previewyoutube=APmw2Q8kBOM;full][/previewyoutube] Following this tutorial I had my new template for beauty renders. The added bonus is that once the game is out, we will include this render scene for modders. This means that any gun or vehicle you add to the game can use exactly the same rendering!

The Tuk Tuk

As mentioned earlier, heres the return of the Tuk Tuk, which now comes in multiple configurations:
Like with the other new additions, here is the lineup within Brigador Killers.

Remember that over on the Brigador: Up-Armored Edition news section we announced four new pewter minis available on our merch store, as well as a 20% holiday discount until the end of 2024. A rundown of the new models can be read here. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/274500/view/4488495001178736877 Alternatively, head straight to the store by clicking here, and dont forget to enter HOLIDAYS2024 at checkout. Happy Holidays!

[ 2024-12-20 15:34:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

[quote]Restitution - Physics. the return to an original physical condition, especially after elastic deformation.[/quote] Video games are not bound by what we understand to be the laws of the universe. Objects can be given ridiculous values for their acceleration or mass and they wont suddenly create shock waves or distort space time around them if the engine running that game doesnt have systems trying to simulate those things. Generally speaking, games trend towards simplification when recreating the underlying chaos of nature. Note that this doesnt mean work isnt involved - the math for things like real time fluid simulation are very complicated and resource intensive, so to get the thing running at a steady framerate concessions must be (literally) made. At the same time, this simplification process is where things that might be referred to as jank can appear.
Entities in the Brigador engine love to spin Jank isnt necessarily bad - in the above case its just an example of the Lobo inflicting pure impulse on the car with both set to deal no damage - but it looks off. Within the game data, impulse is the value that decides how much push another entity has. In this instance the Lobo is applying impulse with its arm swing, while the car is applying its own pushing force by driving into the Lobo, but its not quite right because the Lobo is being shunted slightly while the car bumps off it and spins nearly 270 degrees. In isolation this might look fun, but in the heat of gameplay a vehicle wildly clipping into the player might get old fast. [Tangential: one in-game distance unit is equivalent to just over 8 ft (or 2.44 meters). A tile in-game is two units by two units. Mass correlates to kilograms 1:1. For example, Dave who has featured in previous posts has a mass of 70 kg.]
Dave standing on a tile To keep things simple in the Brigador engine, only NPCs are affected by impulse. Props (static objects like lampposts or office buildings) are not affected by it - though that is not to say props do not have an effect as was discussed in this previous post. So how do we go about reducing janky moments like the one above? It sounds crude but in truth we just start smashing things into one another and keep changing the values until its right. In other words, a crash test.
Two identical Lobos at one end, with two cars going at full speed towards them. The car on the left can go faster than the other one, though in this next gif the slower one arrives first in frame.
In this demonstration the slower car (with all its doors) has a mass of 615 kg, the faster one (no doors) has a mass of 750 kg. The Lobos are both 1000 kg. There is a name for the phenomenon when two bodies collide with one another: Coefficient of Restitution. To directly quote the wikipedia article: [quote]the Coefficient of Restitution (or COR) is a dimensionless parameter defined as the ratio of the relative velocity of separation after a two-body collision to the relative velocity of approach before collision. In most real-word collisions, the COR lies somewhere between 0 and 1, where 1 represents a perfectly elastic collision (in which the objects rebound with no loss of speed but in the opposite directions) and 0 a perfectly inelastic collision (in which the objects do not rebound at all, and end up touching).[/quote] For our purposes, we need the COR for the bodies involved to be neither too close to 0, nor too close to 1. In the example above the COR is about 0.35. In this next example, the Lobos have a higher COR of about 0.75 meaning they will spring back more than in the previous GIF - notice how the Lobo on the bottom being hit by the slower car doesnt get knocked over until the second impact.
If we keep these same parameters but decide to increase the mass of the Lobos up to 1500 kg from 1000 kg, then the impact will look like this.
Neither Lobo is knocked over on the first hit and both cars bounce back pretty hard. Since theres a greater disparity in mass between the two entities, the resulting bounce is harder. Because restitution is basically how much inertia is preserved after an impact, this ties into another system that weve mentioned before - reverse trample (short version: both rapid acceleration and deceleration can be deadly). So if cars end up having a default COR of 0.35, and that at full speed that deals about 50% of their HP on impact (such as from hitting a wall, or hitting another NPC of equal or greater mass with a COR of 0.35 or lower), then hitting a unit that is both bigger (like the Lobo, or a mech, or a tank) and has a higher COR means the impact will be more destructive. Whether that destruction is fun, however, is a different question. We expect players will want to gun the engine, but we might not want to make every impact potentially lethal to the player. Something else discovered during these crash tests is that reverse trample damage does carry over into whats called overkill damage. In plain terms this is what happens if you drive a 2000 kg cop cruiser into four Daves.
In other words, if you have a heavy enough vehicle moving fast enough, you will insta-gib infantry.
Over on the Brigador: Up-Armored Edition news section weve just announced four new pewter minis are coming to our merch store, as well as a 20% holiday discount. Full details can be seen here. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/274500/view/4488495001178736877 Alternatively, if you want to go straight to the store, click here and dont forget to enter HOLIDAYS2024 at checkout.

[ 2024-11-28 19:21:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=_iwOdmoP2yc;full][/previewyoutube] The video above shows off a basic implementation of two major mechanics for Brigador Killers. The first is weapon pick up and drop, and the second is the vehicle bay. Caveat as before that what you see in this footage is subject to change, both in function and especially in terms of appearance. Since the UI is very simplistic, the rest of this post is an explainer for this footage.

Weapon Pick Up And Drop

This demonstration takes place in a simple shooting range level. At the timestamp of 0:06-0:20, the player-controlled Dave moves next to a weapon on the ground that lights up to indicate it can be interacted with. When Dave is in range of it and the player mouses over the glowing weapon, a text box appears showing what the weapon is, how much ammo it has, what slot it goes into, along with the prompt of Press E to equip, hold to place in backpack.
For the purposes of this footage, the player presses the interact button to immediately equip the shotgun, fires off a few rounds, and then presses another keybind to drop it back on the ground. At the timestamp of 0:26-0:52, Dave instead stores the weapon in his backpack by holding down the interact button. The player then presses the inventory keybind, which brings up a basic inventory screen that lists what the player has. From here, the weapon can either be equipped or dropped from the inventory.
The player equips it, closes the inventory screen, and shoots off some rounds before dropping the shotgun on the ground. Moving on to the timestamp of 0:58-2:10, the player moves Dave towards a set of briefcases which lights up like the weapons do. This is a weapon chest. By pressing the interact button when in range of the chest, the chests inventory appears. Listed on the left are what the player has, while on the right shows the list of items contained within this chest.
The player takes the Heino9! SMG to add to the Rhino Stopper shotgun they picked up earlier. The player closes the chest inventory, opens their own inventory and drops both weapons on the ground. Those watching carefully will notice that the shotgun occupies slot 0 while the SMG occupies slot 1.
[What slots means for the player is that, unlike in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition, weapons are no longer assigned to LMB and RMB on your mouse, but to slots. Depending on what the player is controlling, the number of weapon slots available will dictate how many weapon slots they can use. For the time being, Dave has only two slots available.] The player picks up both weapons from the ground to immediately equip them like in the first example. Pressing 1 on the keyboard selects the shotgun, while pressing 2 selects the SMG, visualized by the change in ammo count in the top left of the screen. After swapping to the SMG, the player opens fire on the dummy Daves, then drops the gun to the ground, showing that it was the correct weapon, as well as showing off the reduced ammo count of the dropped weapon.
Now for the second major mechanic vehicle bays.

Vehicle Bays

This demonstration takes place in a small, screen-sized square. At the timestamp of 2:15-2:56, a Fork mech is seen parked in the top corner, while some weapons and a brain tape are scattered on the ground. Our focus is on the terminal of TVs next to a green rectangle. Like with the weapon chest in the previous section, the terminal lights up as the player approaches it, and pressing the interact button shows three options:

• Store/Retrieve
• Summon vehicle
• Store Vehicle

For the purposes of this footage, the second option is chosen, and the player selects the Forverkhuhn mech from the list since there is one available. The menu then shows a Groups option, which is intended to serve as a choose loadout option but is non-functional at time of recording. Upon clicking Summon, a confirmation window appears asking us whether we want to call in the vehicle
and it does. Dave gets in, drives the mech around, and stops it back on the same green rectangle, which changes color when the mech is parked on it. When interacting with the terminal again, the third option of Store Vehicle is available. Upon clicking this and a subsequent confirmation window
the Fork mech is returned to its bay. At the timestamp of 2:57-4:10, Dave instead gets into the Fork parked in the top corner, and drives the Fork straight into the vehicle bay. Dave gets out, hits the store button on the terminal and the Fork disappears. When Dave accesses the vehicle terminal again, two Fork mechs are listed as available, so Dave retrieves both of them one after another. Dave drives both mechs around and then parks them back in the bay one at a time.

How Does Any Of This Work?

Both of these features are part of a major user interface overhaul that has taken several months to come together. We mentioned a while ago that Lua scripting had been added to the engine and this video is an example of just some of the things we can now do. As a quick example, the chests are relatively simple. Maps that have chests need to have a file called luaload.lua which is referenced on level load. The chest itself is a simple object that references a file called rangechest_01.lua. Functionally, rangechest_01.lua is not that much different to a .json file, in that it will list out what files its referring to, how many can be found, and what chance there is of that item spawning within that chest.
However there are still limitations: Lua files cannot be live-edited like .json data - this is instead done externally in an application like Visual Studio Code, Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Lua files also require a full restart of the game in order to see the changes, but its worth the trade off. We no longer have to worry about levels feeling static like they were in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition, since we can now do things like add weapons and vehicles for the player to acquire. Lua is also whats behind the narrative system, map connections and unlocks and now this vehicle bay and weapon pick up system.

What This Lets Us Do

In summary:

• Players can pick up weapons found on the ground
• Weapons and vehicles can be stored to be retrieved for later use

Regarding the first point, its expected that enemies wont always drop weapons but some will. In addition, you might have noticed something in the text about the Heino9! SMG
Even though this is placeholder, the functionality referred to is something called weapon stability, which was once mentioned in an older newsletter all the way from March 2022 that predates when we started posting these updates to Steam. [quote]Weapon stability is a combination of two new things: a unit's "stability" and a weapon's "chaos". As the names imply, units like infantry, vehicles, or tanks will have different stability values, while weapons like shotguns, rifles, or heavy machine guns will differ in how "chaotic" they are to fire. In development terms, "stability" and "chaos" both have a rating between +5 and -5. Depending on the difference between the two values on those "stability" and "chaos" ranges, the game engine modifies the weapon's accuracy bloom. "Bloom" here is the rate at which bullets fired start to spread outwards from the intended point of impact. In simple terms, if the stability rating is the same as chaos, then the weapon's accuracy bloom will act as it does in Brigador. If stability is greater than chaos, then the bloom cone will be narrower and stay accurate for longer. And if stability is less than chaos, then the bloom will grow quickly [and] start at a higher spread.[/quote] In other words, if Dave were suited up in a carmine, theyd be able to fire the SMG with better accuracy. Meanwhile, the players weapon inventory and vehicle storage still needs a lot of work on the visual front, but the main point is: it works. Its difficult to stress how much of an accomplishment this is for an engine that was never designed to accommodate something like this in the first place, and veterans of the first game are all too aware of how limited that games menus were. More importantly, this system ties into what was mentioned back in our August 2024 post under the section titled Refining the core loop. The storage of vehicles is not just a simple garage but also meant to be part of the development tree for making more specialized vehicle variants.
If you havent yet wishlisted our game, please consider doing so. https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2024-10-31 14:27:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

We asked one of our artists for an explainer on what theyve been working on. This time its Igor again, who previously helped us write this post, and has decided to drill down on his favorite building prop.
[quote]This is me playing on Manyson. The map cs_manyson. -Anonymous youth, circa 2000s[/quote] McMansions, which are called "subhouses" in the game files, are one of my favorite prop sets in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition. The moment I blasted through one of them with a Banshee MG and saw it immediately collapse, I thought to myself "Oh, they're flimsy, that makes sense!". Working on the upgraded version of the McMansion for Brigador Killers was a challenging and occasionally painful quest that asked me to reconsider what constitutes good architecture.

New design, new problems

The subhouse as it appears in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition, divided into its constituent tiles Subhouses, as good as they are, needed a lot of reworking to fit into BKs design requirements. With the increased fidelity and visual scale, as well as a greater focus on infantry combat, I had to show the collision boxes a lot more respect than the previous game, effectively blocking myself from using some of the modelling techniques deployed in Brigador. Significant deviations from the tile grid had to go for a while, returning only when the code team pushed an update that allowed us to put down what are called qprops (as the name suggests, its a prop that takes up one-quarter of a standard tile in the engine). The modularity issue also needed to be tackled. The original game's subhouses were modelled from the top down, in that they were a complete house model divided into tiles. This approach allowed for the greater utilization of half-destroyed states, where destroying one of the building tiles reveals the ruins and debris "inside" of adjacent tiles as in the image above. However, this approach significantly limited the ways tiles could be combined together. Last, but not least, the visual scale had to be more realistic. If our player character is standing next to a building, it would be better if they could visually "fit" inside it, at least when it comes to something as spacious as the houses of the wannabe ruling elite.

Italian inspiration

The Villa La Rotonda, just outside Vicenza in Northern Italy, designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio Since ordinary McMansions with their seemingly nonsensical combinations of volumes were too hard to work with from the get-go, I had to pick something simpler I could start tinkering with. The Villa La Rotonda immediately checked many boxes. A Renaissance masterpiece, I saw it has all the essential elements I could easily cut into tiles: entrance groups, corners, internals, dome... With this the basic combinatorics were born: tiles can be facade or corner, one or two storeys high, all with a front-facing sloping roof, meant to be assembled around core internal tiles.
An initial mockup of possible combinatorics Importantly, the Villa La Rotonda also provided a general style guide. McMansions come in many different shapes and styles, but understanding that all those variations won't seamlessly click together, I had to narrow it down to just one. Italian quickly became the choice for good reason: it was thematically appropriate for Miami-inspired Mar Nosso and also worked better with more gentle roof slopes. This meant I could model my two-story pieces without occupying too much screen real estate with the jarring roof tiling. With all the prep work done there was only one question: how do I turn a UNESCO World Heritage Site into complete shit?

Rules, or lack thereof

First iteration of the new McMansion in BK There were a few hard constraints left to set due to the modularity requirement mentioned earlier. The primary color has to be uniform to call less attention to the tile grid. In addition, all sets (I made three, which are differentiated by the wall and foundation design) have to share the same floor and roof heights. As for the rest, well one thing I noticed while looking at IRL examples of McMansions is that there is not a single architectural rule left unsullied. Rhythm, composition, using your classical references correctly you name it, its disrespected. This was the paradigm I had to adopt. If a particular set corner had plain rectangular windows, its corresponding facade tiles should use ornate phallus-shaped ones instead. If one particular element had to, by all the rules of good taste, align with another misalign them, but only slightly, lest someone think it was intentional. If the set you're making looks medieval, add one (just one) Neoclassical tile for good measure. If the tile you've made screams "entrance group" at you, conveniently forget to add a door. And after youve broken everything, make a couple of tiles that actually look normal for once, just to subvert the meta rule you've set for yourself. But even then, remember: its "tacky", not "classy". After all, we're making a mass-produced steel-frame property investment, not some aristocratic manor. This approach came in handy when I was working on side wall greebles. Sure, I want them to have pipes and AC units just like in the original subhouses, but what's the proper nouveau riche way to do this? It's by ignoring the back-alley aesthetic and painting all of it with the primary wall color, of course.
Final iteration of the McMansion in Brigador Killers, divided into its constituent tiles This brief article on McMansions omits many aspects of what could be a much longer story. There are other tales such as my work on actual wall and floor constructions, or the accompanying topiaries set inspired by the album cover of Supertramps Breakfast in America, or how I discovered some of the mappers were combining unfinished McMansion assets with office buildings behind my back. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did working on them, albeit without the minor existential crisis where you question how your education led you to this point.
P.S. We are running a very short survey about the exact make and model of controller you use to play on your computer. We particularly want to hear from those who played Brigador on controller. Participation in this survey is anonymous, but at the end you can submit your email address to be entered into a raffle to win something from our merchandise store. You will only be emailed if you win. This survey will run until October 31st 2024.

[ 2024-09-30 09:12:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've shot for the moon, and we're almost there. Brigador Killers is an order of magnitude more complex than our first game: BK has cars that can handbrake around corners. You can travel freely between levels, you can talk to NPCs, and you can get in and out of vehicles. We've listened to the features you wanted and now we're close to the game of our dreams. We're just making sure that we unveil it when it's ready. Thank you to all our fans and everyone that has shown interest in Brigador Killers. It will be worth the wait. If youd like more details for any of these sections, check out our monthly posts (like this one) or watch our YouTube uploads (like this one).

SO WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO? PROGRESS IN 2024

To catch you up, at the start of February 2024 we made the SECRET ALPHA 1 build of Brigador Killers available over on Itch.io. We updated that build a couple of times over that month to fix some issues: Windows Defender didnt recognize the game and flagged it in a false positive, we had a few crash bugs that our dedicated players helped us discover, and our freshly-made playlist system sometimes failed to play music across level transitions. After solving those bugs and releasing fixes in March 2024, there have been no public updates, but in response to the feedback from SECRET ALPHA 1, weve been hard at work behind the scenes:

• March also saw the addition of brutalist-themed cinema building props, the configuration of the pierce resistance values for smaller props (referred to internally as minis) and their hitboxes, as well as making the storylets system friendlier to modders and designers. After SECRET ALPHA 1, player questions revolved around progression and a sense of purpose, and weve spent the rest of 2024 addressing this feedback. More on that later.
• In April, more props were added, we streamlined our story and world progress tracking systems, and made it much less likely for the player character to unintentionally run themselves over with their own vehicle after exiting it.
• During May, many art assets were rendered out, such as scrap gibs and other debris, various street minis and the first variant of the Lobo, an early-game enemy type (pictured below).
• In June, the second variant of the Lobo was added, along with the TV trees and other lights you may have noticed from last months dioramas video.
• July was very big on the audio front. Weve been working closely with our audio people to better take advantage of FMODs features. Where Brigador was straightforward in its soundscape, mostly focusing on gunfire, bullet impacts, and stompy mechs, were adding a lot of detail to the world of Mar Nosso. As a result, the sound bank has grown and several sound events have been added, while more are coming. New lighting (or weather) files for levels were also authored.
• The sound bank changes continued into August, with the addition of locational sound emitters - think a buzzing neon sign, or a leaking water pipe burbling into a storm drain. Now, designers have the ability to enrich their levels with these ambient spots. Also, we added the ability to display text comments in the game that have been placed via the map editor. Brigador Killers systems are much denser than the first game, which can be hard to keep track of as a map designer. We needed a clear way to signal how the levels work in-engine, both for our own use and for future modders. Finally, weve enabled the player to pick up and drop weapons while in infantry loadouts, which is easy to say, but required fundamental changes to the engine.

A peek at the Lobos in-engine, an industrialized enemy type that you face early in the game This is not the full list of things weve been working on, but we do want to go into detail on a few other things that are currently cooking.

REFINING THE CORE LOOP

As we mentioned above, players enjoyed SECRET ALPHA 1 but wanted to know more about their progression: how they could develop their characters abilities, and what challenges they would be working to overcome. We wanted to answer these desires while keeping in mind Brigadors strong cast of vehicles, which many players have come to love. Only a subset of vehicles will return Mar Nosso is on a different planet than the first game, after all but we wanted to make sure to keep vehicles at the core of Brigador Killers. One of the ways were doing that is to present vehicles as resources not just a means to get around, or to shoot things with, but something youll want to hunt down so you can work towards a goal. Now, what does that mean? The image above is an example its a development tree that describes what you can do with a motorbike. Once you find and unlock it, youll be able to use blueprints and parts to turn it into more specialized variants. Many players wanted more customization from Brigador, and ever since 2017, weve been keeping that in mind as we work on Brigador Killers. It would have been simple to add a looter-style progression to vehicles (swap engines for +5% movespeed - that kind of thing), but we wanted to really dig into what players wanted and come up with a satisfying system. Along these lines, weve been working on identifying player types and giving each type options that are interesting and rewarding. In real life, someone who restores vintage cars doesnt have the same priorities as a performance-focused hobbyist racer, even though they both work on cars in their garage. So, going back to the image above, a mobility-focused player can turn their motorbike into a Corvid Skate, and then a Rope Kid. A more combat-focused player can turn it into a Troubadour, and then a Pantry Boy, and even a Doorman. In order to create these variants, the player needs to venture out into Mar Nosso and discover their blueprints, and then track down the parts needed to complete them. For example, a wandering SNC Ad Buddy might drop an agrav impeller, which is the drive unit you need to begin Corvidizing your motorbike into a Skate. Anyone familiar with modding vehicles from our first game, kitbashing model parts, or, say an episode of The A-Team [previewyoutube=H7zc1iySY1I;full][/previewyoutube]will have a good notion of what were after. We arent yet able to visualize this in-engine because what sounds like a simple idea (smoosh parts of vehicles onto another vehicle) is a lot of work. Brigador is a data-driven engine, which means that at its heart, mechs were described whole cloth in a JSON file. We dont have to get into the details, but suffice to say that it was not designed to combine and change mechs like this. In 2018, when we started BK, we couldnt even dynamically spawn units in a level. Everything that would be in the level had to already exist at level load time. Much of the code work since then has focused on making the engine more flexible and modern. Even easy-seeming tasks like adding returning vehicles involve a ton of work: we have to import and re-render the required models at BKs higher sprite resolution, as well as redoing their animations thanks to all the additional features we now have. These are problems we know how to solve, but they do take time.

THE SOUNDSCAPE

Another major change to the in-dev build of Brigador Killers is to the audio. Previously in Brigador, when youd load up a level, the map would have a pair of music tracks associated with it. Once they finished playing, it wouldnt start up again, so players were in for a quiet experience if they were on a particularly long or difficult run. Sound effects like gunfire and engine noise still played, but our implementation didnt really allow for anything dynamic to happen during a level, like changing music tracks. Weve focused on addressing these gaps from the first game in Brigador Killers. For instance, its much easier for us to specify the material of a ground tile. This means units can make different footstep noises when they traverse those tiles. This system existed in Brigador, but was only really used for grass tiles and railways. Now that we have infantry gameplay, footsteps are much more central to the world feeling alive, so weve expanded the surface audio system. Heres a demonstration of what we mean: listen carefully to Daves steps as he traverses over each labeled strip. [previewyoutube=H3WIm9KUwNk;full][/previewyoutube] Audio emitters can also be placed to play whatever sounds we want within a certain radius to the player. Later in the same video at the 1:59 timestamp you will see Dave teleport closer and closer to one of these emitters. Its subtle, but notice how the volume of it increases as Dave gets closer, and the direction it plays in your headphones. There is still plenty of work to do on the audio front, but were excited at the possibilities of what we can do with these fancy tools, especially in terms of making maps feel less static. Speaking of

THE MAPS

The areas you can access in the current Itch build are, even with a vehicle, kinda time-consuming to get across. For the next public build, we expect to change the scale of the playspace, dividing these areas into smaller chunks. We also plan to add level transitions which can be unlocked or opened up via the world state, along the same lines as Dark Souls droppable ladders and unlockable shortcuts. The way you move around Mar Nosso will evolve and grow as you do.

THE STEAM PAGE

The images and content on the Steam page are not what BK looks like at all. Those images and GIFs are from the long-since retired build that was available to play if you saw us at PAX in 2019 or 2020. Well be updating the Steam page to better reflect what BK actually looks like. This might mean that certain units, like the Vocc Doll or Gravesend Pinball, are no longer showcased in the art on the store page, but dont worry. Theyll still be in BK they just need to go through the sprite updating and re-export process to be featured once again.

ANSWERING A FEW OTHER BURNING QUESTIONS

Why the delay? In 2003 video games were somewhat niche, making roughly 7 billion USD in total across both console and PC according to the ESA. Jump forward two decades and in 2023 alone its been calculated the industry has made well over 180 billion USD. Thats way, way more than what Hollywood made in 2023. In terms of the number of games available to players, last year just on Steam over 14,000 titles were released. At the same time, in just the past couple of years major corporations have consolidated a huge amount of talent under fewer and fewer roofs. Entire media outlets with years of experience covering the games industry have winked out of existence, to say nothing of all the recent closures of studios that put out critically-acclaimed and successful games. Whats become apparent in the past decade is that successful indie titles tend to fall into one of the following camps:

• Highly polished with a narrow scope (e.g. Hollow Knight or Celeste)
• Roguelikes blended with other genres (Hades, Noita, Slay The Spire)
• Crunchy world simulators and builders (Rimworld, Project Zomboid)
• Cozy (Unpacking, Stardew Valley)

More importantly, the indie titles mentioned have also spent years in development, often providing post-release support long after the games release. While Brigador Killers is taking a while to come together, it is no longer unusual for indie games to have project timelines that rival the AAA of yesteryear. As established indie developers, we also find ourselves in the unusual position of being assigned the standard bearers for innovation. This is something you would hope to see out of the bigger companies that have the resources to do so (and in some cases used to do) but R&D into all-new IPs or hardware is not common. We want to do it, but that comes with the caveat of adding more devtime, especially since were one of the few developers making an isometric, sprite-based game in the 2020s. Why not just do more Brigador? The sentiment of Why not just make more content for the first game? has been expressed in various ways and the short answer is we consider Brigador: Up-Armored Edition to be feature complete. We may revisit it to make sure it is still functional on future versions of Windows and Mac, or make the default controls play better on the Steam Deck, but for the time being our focus is on developing this game. Brigador is kind of in a state where adding anything new would be like trying to add a pair of socks to a suitcase that you already had to sit on to close. The things we are doing with BK that we have outlined in this post are not possible with the engine that runs Brigador. We do not yet know what the minimum spec is for Brigador Killers but if you can run the current Itch build on your computer without issue youll probably be okay. I have the Itch build - when can I get my hands on SJTiled? The version of SJTiled for Brigador Killers will eventually become available - we dont want to run into the problem we had with Brigador where when we updated that game with new assets, we bricked everyones maps theyd been working on. We are adding new features to SJTiled as well that havent been revealed in this post. Where can I get the Makeup And Vanity Set soundtrack? The tracks are infrequently released to our YouTube channel. The main soundtrack is about 40 tracks long, which is roughly the same as Brigador Volumes I and II. This doesnt include the new ambient tracks that MAVS has also composed, or other music we have requested from them. As for the run of vinyl LPs of these albums, we intend to have a few of them available on our merchandise storefront, and MAVS themselves will also be selling them on their end. Judging by how well MAVS vinyls tend to do, we recommend that you either sign up to our newsletter over on our site or subscribe to MAVS to hear about the vinyl release first. Are you going to make more minis for the merch store? Yes. A new line of scale miniature models is coming later this year. Hey! You didnt answer my question! Please leave your question in the comments, or in the #brigador_killers_chat Discord channel, or even email us at team@stellarjockeys.com.
Actually, we have a question - what recent release have you been playing that truly grabbed your attention?

[ 2024-08-29 18:39:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=jHoNCIfszPI;full][/previewyoutube]The video above is of eighteen different themed dioramas shown in five different lighting conditions, one after another. These five lighting conditions (or weather files) are called:

• green mood
• orange mood
• pink mood
• blue mood
• pitch black

The weather files decide the basic lighting in terms of what color the direct light is, what color the ambient light is, and what direction and height the light is coming from in the game. The first four moods also use an associated Color Look Up Table, which is a feature new to Brigador Killers. CLUTs are screenspace shaders that can change how these colors look on screen in a fashion similar to color grading. In other words, all of the arranged assets in the eighteen different dioramas are not different colored buildings. Instead, whats changing is some basic lighting information (which is kept in a .json file) and a .png file for the CLUT thats only ~10 kilobytes in size, which lets us create completely different moods using the same scene. Dave is included because he has a flashlight on his chest rig and gun that we use to light up some of the assets when the dioramas get darker.

The Ambient Music

Accompanying the video is an ambient track composed by Makeup And Vanity Set. The track is titled Faber and is one of several that have been composed for the game in addition to the OST. [previewyoutube=0jp7N8hBPxk;full][/previewyoutube]

Yes, We Know About The Shadows

Why it happens is because you are not seeing true three dimensional models - you are actually looking at flat two dimensional quadrilaterals, or sprites, so the engine is repeatedly casting slices of the sprite rather than creating a regular looking shadow. Here is a longer explanation of the art pipeline if you are interested in learning more. At some point down the line the staircasing effect of the shadows in the game will disappear, so please enjoy it while it lasts.
Thats all for this month, but do tell us which mood and diorama was your favorite before you head off on holiday? https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2024-07-26 19:42:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

This months post comes courtesy of our lead artist who also helped write the previous posts about the Mar Nosso SWAT vehicle and the spacer redesign.
Brigador is not a transhumanist or tech utopian setting. For as much as technology serves and eases human life, it can and is used to undervalue and enslave. We want to reflect this in Brigador Killers with designs like the Lobo. Early in the story we discover specialized cyborgs used as soldiers, known as Lobos. This is the Spanish word for wolf, but is also suggestive of the word lobotomy. These soldiers did not volunteer; the fuller scope of the why and how for the Lobos came to be is part of the story. Some key design goals for the Lobo:

• Real world style design revisions over time, and
• Those design revisions depicting escalation over time

Lets talk about these two in turn.

Design evolution over time

Optimal design seems intuitive or even obvious, but only in hindsight. For example: the first minivans were smaller, passenger comfort-focused versions of cargo vans, which only had a single large sliding door, so the first minivans also only had a single slide door.
Minivans initially only had a single sliding door on the passenger side (source) It took two generations of models in Chryslers case to introduce sliding doors on both sides, after which all the major auto manufacturers quickly followed. Obvious in hindsight, yet it took time to actually occur. When we seek to reflect how designs change over time, we have to remember that the ultimate goal is not always in sight from the beginning. Designs evolve, clarify (or obscure and devolve!) over time. For a more realistic approach to design, we want to show iteration over time.
Top: 1st & 2nd generation minivans with no driver sliding door (1984-1995). Bottom: 3rd & 4th generation minivans with a sliding door (1996-2007) (source)

Design escalation over time

This leads into our second point: technology is not value neutral; it reflects the values of its creators. Shirley Cards tell us a lot about whom Kodaks film stock was intended for, and who were not considered. In the fiction of BK, between the Mk1 and Mk2, the designers of the Lobo stopped seeing the pilot as a person, only a design problem to be eliminated. Whoever the Lobo client is, it is not the pilot. The Mk1 is a half measure of hobbling and forcing a person to drive a suit of powered armor. With the Mk2, the awful logical conclusion has been reached: the person is another component to be streamlined, optimized. Where the Mk1 is designed around a quadruple amputee with at least some allowances for the pilot, the Mk2 Lobos are maximally dehumanizing (an armored head enclosure with life support).

A (brief) annotated visual history of the Lobo

The Lobo design began in 2012 with a design I called Company Man for my game Animal Memory, which is the precursor to Brigador and the origin of the world setting. The goal was an unsettling robot/cyborg type enemy. The empty helmet with optics motif was seized upon.
Cyclolucidites* particular head-in-a-can design is over a decade old at this point. The following image is also from 2012 and the same time period. In a world without, or few advanced computers, human brains would substitute. [* For true Doom murderheads of The Lore, read up about cyclolucidism.]
A few years later I would revisit this design circa 2015 as a sketch, adding the dress shoes which is my favorite element of the design.
In 2023 The Mk2 would be modeled. Other than being given a 20mm cannon the design is quite faithful to the 2015 concept.

Original head canister design as per 2015 concept sketch with rear wheel, suggestive of these wheeling around on their own like Star Wars mouse droids. Which I think is a little too cute.
Here is the revised canister design, which is much more like the 2012 original cyclolucidite canister sketch:
This is how the Mk2 finally looks after being animated and exported into the game engine:

Mk1 Design

Seeking to land the design evolution over time theme, I went back and designed a more primitive Mk1 model. Cutting off and using only the head for a cyborg is a severe move; it would take time to arrive at that. First, they would use a quadruple amputee and more primitive coercive methods of controlling the brain.
I did not particularly like the ape-like aspects of this design. While it was meant to look as though he was stooped and wizened from forced labor, it mostly just made you look at his butt. Not the design intent.
Some revisions later we arrive at the Mk1. Here it is in action in-engine:

Death flops are among the many animations made for this unit.
Notable influences on the Lobo are Ted Backmans Stalker designs for Half-Life 2...

...And The Sequester by Keith Thompson, whose story vignettes also inspired the lore entries in Brigador.

Its Steam Summer Sale time again, which means our first game is currently on discount for the next two weeks. If you would like to support our development, please consider telling a friend. https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/

[ 2024-06-28 16:13:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

[quote]Whyre they pink? Gus asked, pointing to his chest as he struggled with the donning procedure of a Carmine in his size. Carmine. Its the colour as well as the suit, Amon corrected him. Fine. Why are they fucking Carmine? Amon rattled off his lines like an actor jumping the mark. It put Gus on edge in a way he struggled to articulate. The area in which these suits saw action is tidally locked. That is, the strategically important areas on Volta are cast in a permanent twilight, which casts a pinkish hue over the entire region. Carmine-ish, Gus corrected him.[/quote] [Excerpt from Brigador Killers: Pilgrim by Brad Buckmaster] Arriving at a particular design is one of the difficulties of video game development. Just come up with something new sounds romantic, but is often an ineffective approach. We find that the best designs are often authored in response to particular constraints; those can be story (the planet has a red star), practical (we only have two weeks to build this), gameplay (we don't have the sprite budget for this unit to animate), or even just arbitrarily self-imposed. If you read our post on Reimagining The Spacers from last year youll know comes next: we went one step before that process to answer what might seem to be a simple question: why is the Carmine suit that colour? Naturally, we asked an astrophysicist to help us out.

The Carmine suits origins

Also known as a tactical rig or tac rig, the Carmine suit is less sturdy than a powersuit like the loyalist Mongoose. It makes up for this with increasing the players movement speed and kick power, as we have previously noted.
Within the fiction the suit comes from Volta, a mining colony planet mentioned in the text above. Voltan locals attempted a revolt with the use of these suits, though Volta is not a planet like our own.

Volta

Volta is different to both Novo Solo (where Solo Nobre is located) and Mar Nosso (where Brigador Killers takes place). Theres no specific mention of the following in the original Brigador, but if you listened to the prologue of the Pilgrim audiobook [previewyoutube=_2dPb9XSzs8;full][/previewyoutube] At the 3:10 mark, you might have wondered what the word terminator means in this context. On most planets like our own, the terminator is the ever-moving line that is the border between daytime and nighttime. In Voltas case this line does not move. This is because Volta is tidally locked towards its sun, meaning one side of the planet is always facing that direction. Our own Moon is an example of this phenomenon, since it faces towards Earth. In the novel extract, the character Amon mentions a pinkish hue over the entire region but most of us have experienced twilight - that period where the Suns light is still scattering into the upper atmosphere despite being below the horizon
[Mojave Desert via Wikipedia] but these periods are not exclusively pink. Missing from the extract is what sort of sun Volta has. Enter Dr. Lindsay DeMarchi, an astrophysicist kind enough to consult us on the vagaries of living on a tidally locked planet.

What is a red dwarf?

Our sun in the solar system is a yellow dwarf. Its about 0.5 degrees across, or in other words takes up approximately 1/720th of the sky. Voltas sun is a red dwarf, which is 2.1 degrees across and takes up 1/180th of the sky. If we overlaid both planets skies into one scene, the stars might look something like this.
Despite the yellow dwarf looking smaller than the red dwarf, red dwarves are smaller in mass, have less luminosity and are cooler than a star like our Sun. Volta is also much closer to its star for two reasons. The first is tidally locked systems occur when bodies are close to one another, such as Mercury and our Sun (another example of tidal locking... kind of). The second is that Voltas red dwarf has a cooler temperature and is less luminous than our Sun. This means the habitable zone for Volta needs to be within 0.030 and 0.043 astronomical units from the red dwarf to make up for the disparity in temperature and light compared to the Earth (which is ~1 AU from the Sun). If you are wondering whether we did the math on any of this, absolutely not. The astrophysicist who does this sort of thing as their day job did the math, resulting in the following table:
Or, as a diagram:
We are aware that tidally locked planets might not be habitable at all. Dr. DeMarchi wrote to us the following caveat: [quote]Astronomers dont yet know for certain the effect tidally locking has on the development of life. Would this cause a temperature gradient that triggers very strong winds? Would the opposite faces each be too hostile for life to develop? Would an atmosphere be able to exist at all, or would the cold side condense it all until its too thick to be a gas?[/quote] Yet when it comes to the realism vs. fun debate in video games, we tend to lean towards fun because its far more interesting to assume that Volta is (just about) habitable and all the effects that might have on a local population. Now that we know where Volta is and what sort of sun it has, what does any of this have to do with the Carmine suit being carmine?

Light, Or The Ornamental Force Of The Universe

Since Volta has a red dwarf and not a yellow dwarf, there is going to be a difference in the range of visible light on Volta. This means that Voltas star isnt putting out a lot of blue or green into the spectrum, which we get a lot of from our own Sun. Put blunt, this is what a Voltan rainbow might look like.
This isnt the full list of colors visible, just a snapshot of what might appear. If youd like to play around with what colors appear at different wavelengths, you can use this site. As the name of the red dwarf implies, Voltas environment would appear very red on the surface. We arrive then at our answer as to why the Carmine suits are that colour: camouflage. Theres even precedent for this in an actual conflict.

The Pink Panthers of the SAS

A few years into the Dhofar War that took place between 1963 and 1976, Britain supported the then-sultan of Oman with the Special Air Service. One of the vehicles used in this conflict by the SAS was a run of 1968 series IIa Land Rovers painted entirely in pink. This vehicle can be seen on display in the British Motor Museum in Warwickshire, England.
[Via Wikipedia] The reasoning behind this choice of colour is that it turns out pink was effective at disguising the vehicle in Oman, the geography of which is mostly desert and valley. The colour scheme would later be abandoned when it was replaced with the sand-coloured SAS 110 Desert Patrol Vehicle in the 1980s.
If youre voracious for more physics, you might have missed this lengthy chat our designer Hugh had with another physicist friend discussing the rationality behind the proposed form of space travel in the Brigador universe. Enjoy. [previewyoutube=ICXwN8JsJQQ;full][/previewyoutube] [Special thanks to Dr. Lindsay DeMarchi AKA @stellarmorticia who also went to the trouble of explaining several other things, like why bees would not do well on a planet like Volta due to the lack of UV light from a red dwarf. Cover image is "Planets Under A Red Sun" by NASA/JPL-Caltech.]

[ 2024-05-31 14:33:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

There are a few things to interact with in the Secret Alpha build of Brigador Killers that generate a small amount of reactivity for the player. For this month well look at the two main ones: the braintape, and the carmine suit parts. Please note that these systems are still a work in progress and what is detailed in this post is not necessarily indicative of the final product. Both of these interactive elements have the following things in common:

• They are ITEM_PICKUP resources* in the game
• They have a condition assigned to them in SJTiled**
• They change state because of a Lua function***

[expand type=show more]* Resources are the games various .json files arranged by type; ITEM_PICKUP is new to BK ** SJTiled is a fork of Tiled, a map-making tool used by several games *** Lua is a scripting language that allows the game to execute code; a Lua function is a self-contained module of code[/expand]

WHY THE BRAINTAPE DISAPPEARS

To jog your memory, this is what the braintape looked like placed on its own:
This is what the data for the tape looks like in the Data editor tab of the debug panel:
The two things to note here are the resource path i.e. assets/data/pickups/kipple/pkp_braintape_01.json, and whats contained in the on_pickup field i.e. UnlockTape. From here we go look at the same scene, but in SJTiled.
The three elements to pay attention to here are:

• The green key icon that is currently selected named Braintape 01, which is a scripting object
• The asset field under Custom Properties
• The disable_if field under Custom Properties

The scripting object is placed on an object layer within the map in SJTiled. When the map file is exported as a .json file that the game engine can read, this file allows the game to know where to place what assets, be they enemy spawns, building props or pickups like our braintape as well as what states they should be in. The asset field tells the game what asset to use for that object. Since its using the same asset path as the braintape in the data editor screenshot earlier, this means the game knows to use the assigned sprite for the braintape. If no asset was assigned to this object, the game would not render any sprite at all (or possibly crash in the attempt to load the map) and the player would not be able to interact with it. The disable_if field contains the text __IS_UNLOCKED__. This field means that the object will not appear if the object has been unlocked by the player. Recall that the on_pickup field in the Data editor tab contained the text UnlockTape. Reversing the idea, this means the braintape will always appear in game until the player interacts with it. This begs the question: how does the game know to do this? The bridge between SJTiled and the game engine is a Lua function called by the ITEM_PICKUP resource. Here is the relevant Lua function in Notepad++:
This function is titled UnlockTape. In case you missed it, the text that was inserted in the on_pickup field is referring to this exact function. In other words, we can insert functions into the data of ITEM_PICKUP resources in order to execute a module of code. What this module does when the player interacts with the braintape is: [olist]

Increases by one the gvar labeled tapes_delivered*

Executes the relevant code to change the gamestate

Unlocks the resource according to the indicated filepath in the resource that is calling the function

Saves that unlocked state to a local Lua file called gvar_data [/olist][expand type=show more]* Gvars, predicates and storylets were mentioned before and will be revisited in a later post[/expand] So, once the braintape is picked up, it will be unlocked by the game engine. In SJTiled, we assigned this object to be disabled when it is unlocked. This means that when we come back to the same location
the tape is gone. Now that we understand how the braintape appears and disappears, we can look at the suit parts.

ONE MORE LAYER OF COMPLEXITY

Unlocking the carmine suit follows the same path as the braintape but with a couple more steps. Going back to our test level, all three suit parts are laid out in a line and have the same disable_if condition as the braintape to stop them from reappearing after being interacted with. Here is what the parts look like in SJTiled:
While this is what the parts look like in the game:
And all the resource data for the carmine suit parts looks something like this:
An additional field to pay attention to here that the braintape did not have filled out is menu_unlock. When the function unlocks this resource, the intel entries on these items also become available to read. Until the pickups are interacted with, they will look like this in the games Intel section accessed from the main menu:
The function being called in the Data editor for all the carmine suit parts is UnlockItem. Heres what this Lua function looks like in Notepad++:
Simply put, this function unlocks the resource that is calling it (the three carmine suit parts), and saves that state information to the gvar_data Lua file. When this map that contains the carmine suit is being loaded, two other things are going on. The first is another function called HandleItemUnlock, which looks like this in the file called mapstates.lua:
There is also a reference script called pickup_ref.lua which contains this:
In this reference script we can see the filepaths for the three ITEM_PICKUP resources that are also placed in the map in SJTiled, and we can see the filepath for the carmine suit itself. The reason why this script is referenced is because of something called BRIGAHACKED. This is another object layer in SJTiled that has a custom property called luaload assigned to it which contains a string called, you guessed it
pickup_ref.lua. Combined with HandleItemUnlock, this reference script gives the layer of this map a list to check off when it is loaded. This reference script is also meant to be copied and modified to unlock other items on other maps. So what about the suit itself? We already know how the suit parts disappear when interacted with - how is the suit being handled? Returning to SJTiled, the suit is just sitting there, but when we look at the custom properties for it
Instead of disable_if, we have the custom field enable_if with __IS_UNLOCKED__ in the field. In other words, until the three parts are acquired and trigger the UnlockItem requisites, the suit is disabled from appearing on the map. When all three suit parts are acquired and the map is revisited
The three suit parts are gone as we would expect, but the suit is now available for use. It should be noted that for demonstration purposes, all three suit parts and the suit itself were placed on the same test map but they do not have to be. Since the unlocks system is being handled by these Lua functions, which are entirely separate from the maps, the unlocks can be made to appear wherever we want them. If we look at the Fort map that you see when you start the Secret Alpha build, the suit is placed there in SJTiled.
However, it is only until the player ventures out and finds all three carmine suit parts that they will find this reward waiting for them back at the fort.

WHATS IN IT FOR ME?

This unlocks system for Brigador Killers is how we are responding to some of the feedback the previous game Brigador has received over the years. While the quality of action and writing in lore entries was fine for enough players, Brigadors unlocks system was found lacking. This doesnt come as a surprise to us as developers, because very little time was available for that aspect of the games design. Brigador Killers is in a different position and we think this new system of unlocks will address the criticism of there being nothing to do. Players will have reasons to return to certain locations, as opposed to the previous method of earning arbitrary sums of money to unlock pieces of text in a menu that was too many clicks away from the action. Were also exposing these details to give our modding community advance notice. Those who have made Brigador maps and mods in the past will likely have already thought of ways to go one step further with whats been detailed in this post. After all, why give someone a carmine suit as a reward and have nothing to fight against? Why not place something more lethal in a map that can only appear in-game once the carmine suit itself has been unlocked? Or if entire layers of a map can be given custom properties, why not change that map entirely? In a later post we will revisit the topic of gvars, predicates and storylets. We already talked before about how they handle dialogue, but what we werent able to say back then is we are also able to use those narrative systems to effect changes on gamestate in the much same way that ITEM_PICKUP resources can.
If youd like to support our ongoing development efforts, consider making a purchase from our merchandise store where we sell minis, pins, t-shirts and many other items.

[ 2024-04-24 18:27:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Before anything else, everyone at Stellar Jockeys would like to thank you for your reception earlier this month. Considering what we were up against, and how deliberately narrow we made the announcement, we were taken aback by how much attention we ended up getting for the first public build of Brigador Killers.

Wait, what? Theres a build of Brigador Killers I can play?

Yes, and we wrote a few paragraphs to prime you on what to expect. Please read it, especially if you are a complete newcomer. And yes, its only over on Itch for the time being.

Whats the music track that plays in the menu?

Its called Approach and it was composed by Makeup And Vanity Set. It has been uploaded to our YouTube channel. [previewyoutube=N7se5WNjosE;full][/previewyoutube]

Whats the font for the two new splash arts?

The loading screen splash is an homage to the title cards in Katsuhiro Otomos "Memories" (its free to watch on the Internet Archive).
The English text is set in Arial, regular and bold, with the Japanese set in GL Tsukiji 5go. The haze effect is achieved by making an outer glow and a drop shadow in photoshop with the following settings:

The text color is an off-white with a hex code of #e8f2fb. The outer glow color is #cdf4e9 and the drop shadow is #dcf4ec. For the revised Brigador Killers logotype that can be seen on the recent Makeup And Vanity Set video posted to our YouTube.
Brigador" is set in Cassannet bold with the color code of #e8f2fb. "Killers" is set in Times New Roman Bold Italic with a color code of #db214c. The Japanese text is set in Kozuka Gothic Pro Heavy (H) with the same color as "Killers". Here are the outer glow and drop shadow settings for for Brigador.

The drop shadow color is #d2f6f6 and the outer glow is #81b4d7. The outer glow on the Japanese text uses the following settings with a color code of #ff0000.
The two splash arts and just the logotype can be downloaded by clicking these links.

• BK Secret Alpha Program
• BK Auditor
• BK logotype

Sidenote regarding most issues

Things that have not yet been dealt with and that arent covered in detail here for example Why do the menus look the same as in Brigador? are typically because those things overlap with so many other parts of the games code or are connected to systems that havent yet been set in stone. In other words theyre not just one thing. Instead, they are multiple things often tangled up with even more things, so tackling one thing would in most cases mean doing all of them at once. This is not unique to us or to Brigador Killers, and is better known as tech debt. That said, there were plenty of frequent questions or observations.

Why could I possess Froggy?

Theres a flag on the data of all mech-type NPCs that, if enabled, permits the player to enter it as if it were a vehicle like a tank or a mech [Side note: almost all NPCs are considered mechs in the game engine - even the agravs]. Usually this flag is for empty vehicles, but they werent set properly for every NPC placed on the maps and it wasnt intended for people to drive Froggy or other non-hostile NPCs either. This is also the reason why players could enter multiple NPCs like a kind of Russian nesting doll even if it made no physical sense. Needless to say very quickly many players in our discord server reported gleefully driving around as Froggy and setting off Froggys flop animation, before getting their Froggy into a Fork and stomping around. We have since changed the data on various units including Froggy to no longer permit this behavior, but it is trivial to reenable Froggy piloting for those experienced with the debug panel.

Why does the Settings menu not change the movement of the cars?

There are three categories of things that can be changed in Brigador Killers settings: [olist]

Mech & Tank movement

Agrav movement

Suit (or infantry) movement [/olist]These three categories cover four movetypes, but behind the scenes each mech in the game can actually have one of six movetypes. This is most noticeable when driving any of the new wheeled vehicles, but the wheeled vehicle movetype cannot be altered via the Settings menu because there is currently no category for it.

Why was the Fort NPC repeating the same line over and over?

It was due to a bug with the storylet system not working as intended. It has since been fixed.

Why was my character stuck in a particular pose after getting out of a vehicle?

The short version is because its an alpha. The longer version is that the games finite state machine broke in a way that stopped things from animating properly, hence why the player character could remain seated in mid air after getting out of a car.

When can we get our hands on SJTiled?

SJTiled is the tool we use to make maps in Brigador Killers and in the Secret Alpha post it is mentioned that this tool will be made available - and that will happen. A few things need to be pointed out. The first is that although there are plenty of props to make maps, there is little in the way of enemy spawns to make interesting combat encounters. For instance in the BK build you can acquire the Fork mech or the Betka tank, but you don't get much of a challenge with them as there is nothing equivalent in force to those vehicles to give you a challenge. Second is that we don't want to run into a problem we had with Brigador with breaking people's maps by performing any major revisions to the games assets. We don't expect to do this frequently but we do want to add in some newer stuff to both SJTiled and BK first so that you can make something more interesting than on-foot gunfights before we potentially break things. Third is the modding document alluded to in the post that helps explain some of the new features is a work in progress and will definitely be rewritten (and probably re-rewritten) over time. Once SJTiled is ready to be distributed, it will be done so initially via our discord server.

I have a crash bug!

Report it to the #bk_bug_reports channel on our discord server or email it to our team account. For the time being we are keeping any feedback to as few channels as possible. It makes our jobs much easier if we can reliably reproduce the bug youve encountered, so detailed explanations of the problems you have encountered are greatly appreciated. If youd like to support our development of Brigador Killers, consider sharing the fact that our first game Brigador: Up-Armored Edition is on sale on Steam until March 4th https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/

[ 2024-02-29 18:05:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Were a little delayed in sending the first BK update of the year, but for good reason. First up, four new miniatures are available for purchase from the Stellar Jockeys merchandise store: Buckmasters, Forks, Powersuits and Daves are up for sale. Further details after the jump: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/274500/view/3739732875058752728 Our entire range of minis and several other items have also been reduced in price for the entire month of February. If youre interested in supporting our development efforts, consider picking up an item from our store while the sale is on. Second, we have news about BK over on Itch.io. This doesnt mean you wont get development updates on BK as usual, but nothing substantial is appearing here on Steam just yet.
For the time being the comments and discussion board on itch.io are disabled. If you wish to discuss all things BK, please do so in the new dedicated Brigador Killers section of our Discord server. Third, a bit of housekeeping. If youre on our mailing list but havent been receiving newsletters lately - please check your junk mail. If you havent been receiving newsletters lately despite subscribing, sign up here. We keep an archive of every monthly newsletter on our site that you can see here so any newcomers can take a look at our backlog. Come back later this month for a more substantial development post.

[ 2024-02-07 02:29:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

The past twelve months have been very busy for Stellar Jockeys on multiple fronts, so were going to briefly run down most of the stuff we made just for Brigador Killers alone. Before we do that

THE RELEASE DATE

Brigador Killers will not come to Itch.io in 2023. Due to how many other things we had going on, such as the surprisingly high demand for the Brigador pewter scale miniatures in the summer, and all the complications that come with adding new systems to Brigador Killers engine, were pushing the Itch.io release into early 2024. One of the reasons why is from our experience with the first Brigador game. During its Early Access period and subsequent reviews in 1.0 and beyond, a very frequent criticism from players can be boiled down to Looks cool, but what else is there to do?. The first time that happened with Brigador in EA, it led to months of crunch in order to bring the game more in line with player expectations. Since we dont feel like doing that a second time, weve spent our energies on making things that will hopefully rephrase any potential criticism of BK to Looks cool, but there is too much to do. With that in mind, lets look at some of the new things that were made in the past four quarters.

Q1: AIMING REWORK, MORALE & SUPPRESSION, CLUTS AND NEW ANIMATIONS

One of the first big tasks for BK was to tackle the aiming system and we think were on to something with the rework. Our dev update at the end of March 2023 showed off the new lock on system. Here is footage from our YouTube channel in case you missed it. [previewyoutube=67fyHDSzQ6o;full][/previewyoutube] For this aiming rework to not feel off, we also needed to have what we call the bloom box which we can enable with the debug menu.
This square represents the spread of a firearm as the players aiming reticle intersects with building props. In this example the guns bloom box is smaller at closer targets and bigger further away. Note that having a high-spread weapon is not necessarily a bad thing when other new systems like morale and suppression are factored in, because guns (and the bullets they fire) can affect those two systems. Detailed explainers on these things will eventually be put out but the very short version is having a mean gun can intimidate enemies into doing things like hitting the ground or running away. CLUTs, or Color Look Up Tables are screenspace shaders. That means they can change how the color looks on your screen. Rather than try to explain at length how it works, its easier to just show you an example of a test CLUT at work. Apologies in advance for the flashbang.
When the player gets into a vehicle, or in the above case a wheelchair, a CLUT can be applied immediately in-engine. This will allow us to give certain loadouts a particular visual flare like night vision goggles or an infrared filter. Lastly in the first quarter of this year various animations were completed for Dave such as flinch and death animations.
Implementation of such animations was not without the occasional bug, however.

Q2: PIERCE & PENETRATION, SOME NEW PROPS AND KICKING THINGS INTO OTHER THINGS

Pierce and penetration are separate systems that can overlap in a variety of ways both with each other as well as with above-mentioned morale and on-impact damage. The short version is this: pierce dictates whether bullets can go in; penetration dictates whether bullets can go through.
The easiest way to explain pierce is with a table. The first two columns of values below are example values what matters is the third and fourth column.
So long as your bullets are strong enough to pierce through the impact resistances of NPCs or building props, youll be able to deal damage to those entities. The penetration system is separate to pierce. If a bullets penetration value is less than or equal to the targets penetration resistance, then the bullet is absorbed by the target entity. If a bullets penetration value is higher than the targets penetration resistance, then a bullet will pass through the target entity. Again, another table:
Youll probably have guessed that any time a bullet successfully passes through an entity, it loses some of its penetration value. To best demonstrate this, heres a line of over 20 dummy NPCs with a cannon round going straight through all of them at about half game-speed.
The shots penetration value is high enough that it can pass through about half of the line. Once the cannon round terminates, it does additional damage via the subsequent explosive AOE, eventually leaving only the last six NPCs still standing who took a small amount of damage from the outer ring of the explosion. Did we mention that explosions also have pierce values? Some new props were made in this period too.
And you could start kicking NPCs about.

Q3: DIALOG TOOLS, THE CISTERN AND OTHER ART ASSETS

While the summer faded, BKs all-new narrative systems were introduced to the engine. A lengthy post titled Lets Learn About Storylets was written back in September 2023 that covers the topic at length that we encourage you to read, especially if youre curious to the mechanics of how games like Hades delivers its story. On the art asset front, the first version of The Cistern was shown off in our Discord server.
The Cistern will be an important location to the player throughout BKs campaign. Visually it draws inspiration from Saitamas storm sewer system in Japan. We also got plenty of rocks which will be very useful in dressing up outdoor areas.
And with spooky season looming, we figured a jump scare featuring Eds mascot The Hundo was in order as well.

Q4: VEHICLE EJECTION, GIBS AND SQUIBS

To close out the year, as of time of writing it is now possible in the BK engine to throw oneself from a vehicle in motion. For dramatic entries, of course.
Mind that you can also be thrown off a vehicle if you take too sharp a turn or too sudden an impact.
Such behavior might be a useful way to get around certain obstacles, particularly if those obstacles happen to be explosive. Speaking of things blowing up, we also got various gibs for props and NPCs
and blood squibs that may need to be toned down a little.

WHAT ELSE IS IN STORE?

More 1:144 scale pewter miniatures are coming to our merch store. Four new sets of miniatures will be added: one box containing 2x Buckmasters; one box containing 2x Forks; one box containing 4x Mongooses, 2x Dorothys and 2x Pellinores; and one box of 24x Loyalist infantry aka Daves. Theyll get their own dedicated post when theyre actually live but heres a glimpse of an assembled Fork and Buckmaster.
All the new blister packs get new stickers too, as a treat.
Lastly, well be reducing the prices of all of our merch items for the holiday season, so keep your eyes peeled on our socials or Discord server announcements channel if youre looking to snap up an SNC Zippo lighter from our store at a discount. And thats it! Thanks for sticking with us throughout the year; theres so much more to show you in the next.
[Banner image illustration by @flyingdebrisguy]

[ 2023-12-15 18:45:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

The above quote is attributed to Paul Rand who was a famous graphic designer responsible for numerous corporate logotypes. You may have already seen the allprops tour with Dave video that was posted several months ago which featured building assets from a few areas in Brigador Killers. If you havent seen it, watch the first two sections to get context for the rest of this post. [previewyoutube=8gE4F2juPz4;full][/previewyoutube] Neither the video nor the post for it talked about the conceptual origins of those buildings for BK. To rectify this, we asked the artist responsible for a lot of the props in that video, Igor, to dig up some of their pencil and paper sketches for them along with penning a few thoughts behind each one. Click the images to expand them in your browser.

slide_1_hrush

This was my first assignment on BK. The Hrush, short for "Khrushchevka", represents modest modular housing widespread in Sady districts. To make it I decided to simply appropriate the Type I-335 Apartment Block, a fairly ubiquitous design in the former USSR, and accommodate it for the game, both structurally and stylistically. It wasn't a particularly hard feat, since two adjacent cells can be believably downscaled to fit into one game tile. However, the Hrush also represents a particular shift in environmental design philosophy between Brigador and BK, a shift that will complicate things later on. Due to the doubled output resolution of sprites, we're now making most of the large buildings as sets of interconnected props, akin to the mansions from the previous game.

slide_2_hotels

Nossian Hotels are essentially the Hrushes of downtown Mar Nosso, the design of which is heavily inspired by US hotel architecture of the 1950s-1970s, particularly that of Miami. Making them was a bit more involved, since the right balance should be struck between fancy and mundane elements all to prepare for the eventuality of an unruly mapper overusing one particular prop style.

slide_3_offices

Mar Nosso Office Buildings. Glass and concrete. The 80s. The original design document proposed by yours truly said Nosso should feel open and uncomfortably clean, in contrast to the cozy misery of Sady. The first and the most straightforward idea here was to explore classic cyberpunk influences of Japan and Hong Kong. It clashed with Jacks vision of a more neoclassical downtown. A compromise was found in turn-of-the-90s postmodern architecture. As with the hotels, a proper ubiquitous set requires many mundane modernist and internationalist elements, and US 80s office building architecture came in handy here. No need to go crazy yet.

slide_4_mcmansions

McMansions. You know em, you hate em. This was the moment where cracks in my psyche started to show. See, it's actually not that easy to make something as tasteless, as tacky and as stylistically inconsistent as a modern American McMansion when you have a degree in the field of architecture combined with very little experience of actually working in said field. This sheet represents one of my numerous attempts grasping at the plethora of contradictory styles and influences used by modern American architects tasked with building what are meant to be the most pretentious-looking houses in the country.

slide_5_office_postmodern

Postmodern additions to office buildings for Mar Nosso. This is hell. A particular late capitalist kind of hell fueled by late 80s pop/rock playlists. Go on. Just make a regular facade piece and put a giant bronze vase on its roof. Make a giant ionic column, but inverted. As long as it fits the 16x16 feet footprint and sufficiently blocks sightlines at the infantry level, anything goes. There Is No Law Here by Makeup and Vanity Set starts playing as teammates try to cheer me up.

slide_6_technotop

At this point I'm fully equipped to make products, not just assets. Remember that high topiary tile from Brigadors suburbs/subwall_13-24 particularly liked by mappers? The one made of a combo of green wall and pieces of a Pak 40? Let's just make an actual thing out of it. So I did. No, it doesn't make any sense to encapsulate a piece of topiary into a proprietary plastic frame inspired by those trendy products I saw in the 1987/88 edition of The International Design Yearbook, but most startup ideas nowadays dont make any sense either, so I'd say we're even.

slide_7_fabhabs

The FabHab. Cheap modular housing for general colonial purposes. Hugh casually mentioned styrofoam. I know everything that needs to be done. The Metabolism architecture movement and the Nagakin Tower in particular serve as inspiration. All I need to do is to make a more cruel version of it. That, and a catchy name. Jack suggested FabHab. Pre-Fabricated Habitat. Perfect. Ship it.

Holiday merch store discounts coming soon

Later in December well be reducing the prices of all our items, including all the pewter miniature models, from mid-December until mid-January. If youd like to support our development, consider picking up an SNC Zippo or a t-shirt. We'll announce via our Discord server and all the other usual places when the price drops are live. Thanks for reading.

[ 2023-11-30 16:18:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

For this month were going to explain how the Brigador Killers engine handles the emission of gib sprites from entities during gameplay. In other words, this.
Weve established in previous news posts that all youre looking at on screen are flat 2D sprites and that BKs systems can overlap in interesting ways to create unexpected outcomes, but we havent touched on the data end of these things. First off, to save on space, both the Brigador and the BK engine store all assets in a large collection of compressed data called a pack file which has the exciting name of assets.pack. By using the games debug panel, we can look up these assets via the Pack file tab. At time of writing there are roughly 19 thousand assets categorized into 60+ different resources. Sometimes these assets are .png image files (such as the various sprite sheets for all the building props and characters) but a large portion of them are JSON files which allow us to specify the values of all sorts of various things in a human readable manner. Most of the screenshots in this post are of the games debug panel, which is a version of Dear Imgui that among other things allows us to look up and iterate on data values during a games runtime without having to make a new build of the game.
The JSON for a specific unit can be made up of several JSONs itself. For instance, lets look at foot_loy_bd_01.json, which is the JSON file for a typical enemy infantry unit, and which turns out to be made out of a lot of JSONs.
The keen of eye will notice that, yes, infantry in Brigador Killers are all technically mechs behind the scenes - anything in assets/data/vics/units is a mech, be it the player in a carmine suit or an NPC-controlled forklift truck. This is just how the game data is organized. From this list of JSONs, we want to inspect the units salvage, which is a file called salvage_foot_01.json.
Here you can see not only even more JSONs attached to this one, but also the types of values that can be assigned to its salvage hulk. A units hulk is what is left over after its health has been fully depleted. Vehicles that have been destroyed will leave a wreck, which is usually just the top part of the same model but desaturated to give the appearance of burned out armor. From the above menu most of the values are set to zero, as the hulk left over is for a body instead of a chunk of metal, but for purposes of player reactivity, hulks will still have some amount of health. Tangentially, infantry units as seen from the opening GIF will go through a series of animations as they are being attacked, which is not handled in this menu - thats part of whats called Flinch, Suppression, Flop and Weapon Stability, which looks like this:
Getting back to the gib sprites, we look at whats assigned for the on_damage_pyro, which is pyro_blood_mist_01.json, which is emitted by infantry-type NPCs and is a pyro-type resource.
Within that JSON we look for the gibs assigned to that pyro, which leads us to gibs_blood_mist_01.json. Explosion layers and lights are for bigger pyro effects. For instance, a gas station blowing up will need a fireball attached. Three layers down we have arrived at the resource that handles the attributes of blood sprites that an infantry NPC will emit on receiving damage: gibs_blood_mist_01.json
Here we can see what type of sprite has been assigned and how the animation for that sprite is set to play. We also get to decide how many blood mist sprays shoot out from the unit and at what speed, height, angle etc. These numbers are kept low for infantry gibs but, if we want to get silly, we can crank the numbers up and end up with something like this.
Again, the use case for more flamboyant gibs would be the destruction of a bigger entity like a heavy vehicle or a building prop that will have their own pyro and gib effects. Note again like in the first GIF at the top of the post an entity will do more than just shoot out a blood mist spray - just like a practical effect in movies, a squib also plays out to leave a blood stain on the ground. But unlike movie FX, we have to account for more situations than a carefully staged scene. Therefore one of the many other things to bear in mind with making these gib effects is that they have to have different spreads depending on what caused the hit. Here for instance is what happens if we put a bunch of infantry NPCs in a straight line and attempt to drive a heavy caliber round through them.
On top of the fireball explosion sprite and the bloom of light for the explosive bullet, youll notice that theres some uniformity to the ground spatter. This is because the sprites will only shoot out from an entity a limited number of ways. It would be too expensive (and a waste of time) to have our artists render out every single possible angle. Instead, the hope is that the gibs are done in just enough ways that the player fantasy is maintained. Thanks for reading, and happy halloween!

[ 2023-10-31 16:58:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Weve mentioned that one of the criticisms the original Brigador frequently received is along the lines of Cool mechs, but what else is there to do? If you havent been following our development updates since they began, part of what were doing as a response to this is adding elements of progression like acquiring unlocks within a map, rather than the previous system of spending money in a menu outside of the action. What we havent talked about yet is how Brigador Killers is presenting the narrative - and yes, modders will have access to these tools. (By the way, whoever is responsible for looking after the TVTropes page for Brigador - your efforts have not gone unnoticed and we appreciate those of you who spent the time piecing together that games story.)
Brigador Killers will have narrative systems, including dialogue. They are heavily inspired by Emily Shorts article Storylets, You Want Them and Elan Ruskins article Dialog in Procedural Storytelling in Game Design (eds. Tanya X. Short, Tarn Adams), which describes the contextual dialogue systems in Left 4 Dead. The overarching system is made up of four overlapping narrative systems: storylets, predicates, the gvar (or "global variable") editor and a library of Lua functions. Note well: what were showing off is a work in progress, and both the systems and UI elements will change, particularly the debug panel.

WHY THESE SYSTEMS?

As Emily Short describes in her blog, there are three attributes that make up a storylet: [olist]

A piece of content

A set of conditions that determine when the storylet can play

A set of changes that happen to the world state after the storylet is completed. [/olist]Why do this, and not just a normal dialogue system? For one thing, we didnt just want a dialogue system. This system of storylets and qualities gives us far more flexibility to describe a changing world and react to the players actions. On Brigador, we freed the player from some level design constraints by implementing completely destructible environments; on Brigador Killers, we want to do the same thing with our storytelling. Storylets enable us to write reactive chunks that respond to the players decisions and behaviour. Lets say that you have intel on a Betushka that you want to steal. In a traditional model, wed simply set a flag saying that you unlocked the Betka and dialogue trees would have variations to account for that flag. Using a storylet model not only allows us to track whether you steal it, but also how you steal it. Rather than accounting for flags within complex trees, we can (following from Left 4 Deads contextual systems) write reactions for various NPCs based on the stolen Betushka quality assigned to the player. Qualities are like a flag, but with more semantic information. Where Left 4 Dead's characters react to the world around you in an FPS, Brigador Killers characters will react to the story-world of the players actions. Not only that, storylets and qualities can be used to affect the game state on a local, per-map level, as well as on a global, game-wide level. They are not just a means to make NPCs interactive on a map, though we can do precisely that. Lets say we set down two NPCs that when we interact with them, a text box will appear.
If we interact with the NPC on the left, their text box is a simple introduction. If we interact with the NPC on the right instead, we can have them ask the player if they spoke to the first person.
And as a part of that chain of dialog we can have the first NPC chime in on the conversation
And if we wanted to do the same thing for both NPCs, we can do exactly that.
A system like this is appropriate for the needs of BK because we have player reactivity in mind for the design of the game. Put another way, if presented with a choice of left or right, we want the player to be able to select either one and still be able to advance, and not be required to speak to the correct NPC. Indeed, the player could just as easily choose to not speak to any of these NPCs. They might ignore them entirely, or the NPCs might have been spooked into running away because of a gunfight across the map, or an explosion might have killed them before giving the player the chance to talk to them. We can factor all of this in with such a narrative system. Better still, we can continuously add new content to this system without breaking existing chunks. Heres how a basic dialogue box is created in the game. In the games debug panel we click the Show Dialogue Editor button in the Main tab.
This opens up another window called the node editor, which looks like this. Node graph editors have been seen elsewhere, like Unreal Engines visual scripting system. We use the imnodes extension to Omar Cornuts excellent Dear IMGUI library.
When we click Add dialogue storylet, a box containing several fields appears on the node graph for us to fill out. A functional storylet would look like this:
Interacting with the NPC will prompt a text box to display Hi I am Tester 1. If we want an interaction to display a sequence of text boxes, the node graph editor would look like this.
So if we want the text boxes to go Hi I am Tester 1 and then Did you speak to Tester 2 yet?, we add the name of that second storylet to the response field of the first one. When we do that, the interaction will produce two text boxes in sequence on screen. Lastly, in order to assign these speakers, we need to use Tiled - the open source program we use to make maps - to give these NPCs names in their properties, because this is how the storylets system knows who is a speaker, even if multiple versions of the same NPC are populating a map.
But its trivial to display text on screen after hitting an interact key next to an entity. How do we make things more interesting?

COMPLEXITY THROUGH CONDITIONS

The three other narrative systems are predicates, the gvar editor and Lua functions. You might have spied the Show Predicates Window button in an earlier screenshot. Clicking it shows us the window. What is a predicate, you ask? A predicate is just an expression that evaluates to true or false.
What appears is a list of all existing predicates currently in the game. This window also serves as the predicate editor. Predicates can be considered the conditions that can be applied to a dialogue storylet in order for the dialog storylet to play. For example, if the player has done a specific action, like having talked to another NPC or completed an objective, this can be queried through a predicate. Lets say one NPC can have two storylets with the same predicate but with two forms: one of those forms says gvar.rescued_norman == true and the other says gvar.rescued_norman == false. This gvar part is a global variable which is a thing tracking the overall state or world quality of the game. If the player has rescued Norman, then the first storylet will play because the predicate has determined based on the gvar that Norman was rescued. If the player left Norman to his fate, then the second storylet will play. [table equalcells=1] [tr] [th]gvar[/th] [th]NPC storylet text[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Rescued[/td] [td]"Thanks for rescuing Norman[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Not Rescued[/td] [td]You didnt rescue Norman?[/td] [/tr] [/table] Before you ask, yes, predicates can be nested within other predicates and we can make the Norman example more complicated. Maybe we have a gvar like gvar.alive_norman which is tracking whether Norman is alive or dead, not just whether the player rescued Norman or not. In this case we can have four potential predicate outcomes. [table equalcells=1] [tr] [th]gvar[/th] [th]Alive[/th] [th]Not Alive[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Rescued[/td] [td]"Thanks for rescuing Norman[/td] [td]"At least you tried[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Not Rescued[/td] [td]You didnt rescue Norman?[/td] [td]"You didn't even bother[/td] [/tr] [/table] These gvars can be a simple true/false statement, or take on the form of a number or a string. The gvar editor within the game lets us decide what form these things take. Its also not limited to NPCs either. This system lets us express complex situations by responding to simple tests. Its easier to keep track of, for designers, and easier to reason about, for programmers and modders.

ONE MAP, MANY OUTCOMES

When a level loads up, the game engine checks the gvars and mvars (or map variables) for what to load within that level. When we make maps in Tiled, we can populate that map with whatever we want it to display according to the current quality state of the game (instead of having to make multiple versions of the same map to accommodate different outcomes which would be extremely tedious for our level designers). Any entity, like a building prop or an armored vehicle containing a full squad of tac-suited mercenaries, could appear, so long as they have been placed in Tiled and have been given the necessary labeling. Last of the four narrative systems are Lua functions. Lua functions either modify the game state or are bound to game code. They can be applied to storylets to generate an outcome of some kind. For example, when a certain enemy spawns and initiates dialogue, we can use Lua callbacks to play a particular music track or sound cue. They can pause or unpause the game, spawn units, set or complete objectives and eventually, much more. Note that this is not full on scripting in the sense that were not putting a programming language into the game. Doing that would open the door for all kinds of malicious activity. While Lua is a programming language, what were putting in the game is more like a lesser version of Papyrus, Bethesdas in-house scripting language. Its a set of predefined functions that we make available to designers and modders. Well go into more depth on that later. Combined, these systems massively expand our options as designers; were no longer limited to hard-coded objectives and mech spawns, and we gain a huge amount of flexibility and iteration speed. The tradeoff, wellwe spent most of this year on these systems. What were hoping, though, is that we can pass on that flexibility and massively expanded set of options to the player. Players who come in to Brigador Killers expecting the limited-by-comparison playspace of Brigador are in for a pleasant surprise. Thanks for reading.

WIN SOME MINIATURES BY PAINTING MINIATURES

We are currently holding the Olive Drab Everything painting contest on our discord server. The theme is Brigador - do with that what you will - all we ask is that submitted minis be painted. Painted minis do not need to be official Stellar Jockeys pewter figurines if you have kitbashed a Brigador vehicle of your own, or 3D printed a Touro you are eligible. Winners will get to choose one of the new sets of minis that are coming to our merch store later next month. The contest will be taking submissions until approximately 23:00 PST on Monday October 9 2023. Check the pinned message in the #olive-drab-everything channel for the full details Lastly, our first game Brigador is currently on sale as part of the Steam SHMUP Fest. If youd like to support our development for BK, tell a friend? https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/Brigador_UpArmored_Edition/

[ 2023-09-29 14:17:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Courtesy of our lead artist, August's post is a look into the design of an armored vehicle belonging to NOSPOL, which is one of the enemy factions you'll be facing off against in Brigador Killers. Without further ado...
Brigador Killers deals in part with the question of militarized police and police violence. How to approach this in the design and presentation of the world of Mar Nosso and its inhabitants? It is not enough to present to the player an MRAP [Editor's note: Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle] with police badging. While obscene, absurd, it is also perfectly ordinary to Americans. We are inured to it. So, the initial point of departure for the SWAT vehicle was to go back to the source: the Los Angeles Police Department and their SWAT Team. This departments escalation of weapons, tactics, and equipment would I believe set the template for militarized police presence in America for years to come. Which brought me to the Cadillac Gauge V100/Commando:
While iconic and fitting for the technical restrictions of our engine (wheeled vehicles can only have four wheels), we run into a similar problem as the MRAP: too many associations, many of them positive. The player cant see it with new eyes, which to us is one of the crucial aspects of good science fiction. So well shift to an older, and much more loaded point of departure: German wartime armored cars.
British soldiers inspecting a captured Sd.Kfz. 222, North Africa, 1941 (Wikipedia) While the associations vary, the baggage is unquestionable. WW2 German hardware should be unambiguous enough of a reference. Not so simple! German wartime hardware is the background radiation of popular cultural designs in film and videogames for decades, everything from Star Wars to Killzone. These design elements are powerful, but so much so they can easily overwhelm your own design intention and muddy your intended comment. Another particular difficulty with referencing German wartime designs is that one can end up on footing to that of say, Jin Roh where the loving depiction of German wartime arms and armor could be read as uncritical devotion. This is not what we mean to suggest with NOSPOL, the corrupt and gang-ridden police force you face in Brigador Killers. Early on, I switched from the Cadillac Gauge basis to this idea of roughly approximating the Sd.Kfz 222. I wanted to echo the angular hull shapes, but the overall design shouldnt map too closely to any original wartime design. Rather, I wanted to design my own vehicle to invoke, rather than recreate a wartime vehicle explicitly that might distract or muddy the players read for the vehicle. Again, lets have the player see it with fresh eyes. There are myriad other pitfalls with fascist police force design. Travel too far in a given direction and you retread others work, like Viktor Antonovs brilliant Combine APC design for example was something I wanted to avoid. The best way to do this was to design the vehicle in a way that made sense to how NOSPOL might commission the vehicle in the setting: a retrofit from an existing truck chassis. I had this Russian tanker truck model on hand. Perfect!
But its Russian, not German, how is that helping your association? Good question. Just as with the Loyalist military gear was largely but not exclusively Russian in origin, we dont want any one single source. When the viewer sees a design that is by turns subtly heterogenous in character its my theory that it aids in, to introduce a metaphor, slower digestion. An obvious design is like a piece of candyit can be very sweet, but its gone and eaten quickly without a second thought and without a lasting impression. We want this design to be somewhat chewier. More complex flavor notes. We want the taster to think about what flavors strike the palate. So we begin from a Russian truck chassis to execute a German influenced armored hull design to talk about American militarized police. Simple enough, right? Lets chop off the back wheels and introduce a magenta box to remind us of the package space required by the engine. Whatever else goes on in the design, were going to need ample clearance to house the engine. While were at it, I quite like those big, high clearance front fenders. Lets turn them around and put them over the rear wheels.
Now were getting somewhere. We havent really had to design anything yet, actuallybut by using a real world truck, notice how confident and realistic the scale read is. Provided we keep it consistent with our chassis here, the scale read will be more or less an automatic bonus, and will keep our work from getting too outlandish. [Side note: one such problem that science fiction designs from scratch will run into is that when designing a ground car the designer fails to take into account the legal width limits for road legal vehicles. While military machines can be bigger, they are also still expected to travel on the confines of established road infrastructure. Get those dimensions dialed in first and youll get a lot for free.] All we need to do now is start fitting an angular hull on top of this chassis, while still keeping in mind our other core requirements. How many people can it hold? Where does the driver sit? Does the armored car actually have a front and back driver, as some armored cars did? What engine limitations for a sprite-based and isometric game do we need to cater to?
In the interest of time were not going to walk through the rest of the design in detail, but with the major hull shape established, much of the rest would be about adding the hull detailing consistent with armored vehicles, stowage, searchlights, etc. Once weve got our goal in mind for this design theres not a lot of quibbling over different shapes and thumbnailing different looksone of the great pleasures of independent game development is that we can dispense with a lot of tiresome Art Director behavior most of the time. Heres the finished render of the armored car, in two flavors. First we see it as it will first appear to the player:
Beyond the police colors, something that always distinguishes overenthusiastic purchase of surplus military equipment by police departments in America and the former military service these vehicles saw is plainly their role. In the military, an armored vehicle is maintained but often subject to a lot of wear and tear. Once an MRAP is back home in America, emblazoned in SWAT livery, it seldom has to work. Its purpose is intimidation and peacocking for the department by and large. This is the initial guise I wanted to see the SWAT armored car deploy in BK as. A little underdressed compared to its military companions, seen elsewhere in the game. Then, as the game progresses, and the players fight against the Concerns and their attendant police and mercenary forces intensify, updates and changes are made. Even a SWAT vehicle is forced to work under something more akin to active combat conditions. It needs to keep ammunition and fuel and spare tires with it.
It might even need to get semi-improvised slat armor for the wheels, a repeated weak point for ambush attacks from the player character (or other parties?). We highlight for the player that the slat armor is definitely newer by giving it fresh, dark paint compared to the more sunfaded exterior of the main hull. Hopefully youll agree that at least some of the above is more than bluster and the design principles as established are borne out in the final design, and that the up-armored variant makes it clear to the player that the fight is escalating. See you, killer.
Stay appraised of news about Brigador Killers development by wishlisting and following the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2023-08-31 15:22:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

A while ago we revealed that one of the big visual differences between Brigador Killers and the previous game is the increased output resolution of sprites. This increase in fidelity means you the player will get a closer look at exported models in-game. If you'd like a longer read on the topic of how these models become sprites then consider reading this other article from Brigador's news hub. Getting a closer look means we get to focus on the infantry scale of things. In that spirit, we're going to run you through how an all-new spacer suit for Brigador Killers goes from concept to final sprite render.

The first step is what's called the mood board. This is the conceptual framework where the artist references the mood, texture and detailing that we want to evoke with the spacer power suit.
Step two is the adapt or "kitbash" stage. Seeing as we've already developed a powersuit for Clade Vocc (not pictured), in 3DSMax, we extrapolate a suit design to help suggest how mainline spacers are still related, though considerably drifted away from in both culture and military doctrine.
The third step is the paintover in photoshop. With a basic suit layout in hand, we think about how we are going to change and treat the design. Returning briefly to the mood board's astronaut references, we decide on a cloth-covered suit. At this stage the helmet is unsatisfactory, but that will get revised later.
Once we have arrived at a satisfactory model of the suit, the finished design is then broken down into components for baking down and then texturing in Substance Painter. The final sprite render shown in the bottom right corner of the above image is done in Blender. Here is the finished suit as a render (click here to open a full size version in your browser).
As a bonus, a scene was composed using the model of this new spacer powersuit, which was used as the header image for this article. You can get a wallpaper sized version by clicking here, with deference to American digital painter Craig Mullins for this piece.
This post was based on one of our monthly newsletters that was sent out back in March 2022. Click here if youd like to check out our newsletter archive.

[ 2023-07-31 15:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

For June 2023 we are (very briefly) showing off one of the major new features for Brigador Killers, which we're calling map connections. [previewyoutube=1sxs1NDXhHc;full][/previewyoutube]

WHAT ARE MAP CONNECTIONS?

Map connections are a means for the player to transition to different areas without resorting to overmaps menus. If you are familiar with Brigador: Up-Armored Edition's Freelance mode, those used overmaps menus to handle the different map choices within a run of maps. For BK, were building a contiguous set of spaces that you can travel back and forth between, giving the game's world a clear sense of structure that you navigate and explore. In the video above you can see a very basic implementation of this in action. The player gets into a vehicle and drives towards the edge of the first map, hitting the first map connection volume that will advance both the infantry character and the car they're driving to the next area. The player then drives all the way through the second map still in the same car, hitting the next connection. They then get out of the car in the third and final test map, shoot away some props and hop onto a gurney.

BRIGADOR PEWTER MINIS NOW ON SALE

The latest addition to our merchandise store is three pewter minis of vehicles from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition. They are the Canmore, the Broadsword and the signature Touro at 1:144 scale. We've already put up a post detailing the creation process over on Brigador's page. https://steamcommunity.com/games/274500/announcements/detail/3680051300625264980 Please note that due to higher-than-expected demand, any orders made for these miniatures will be delayed by at least a week.

[ 2023-06-30 15:27:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

For Mays update on Brigador Killers weve decided to talk about something many of Brigadors modders will be familiar with: the debug panel. For those not familiar, if you press F1 at any time in Brigador: Up-Armored Edition an overlay window appears that looks something like this.
In BK, the debug panel has had some work done to it
so were going to highlight three of its new features. [For those wondering, yes, this is Dear ImGui by Omar ocornut Cornut, which is used by a lot of other game developers in their games though its typically not made accessible in the public versions of those games.] Our usual caveat as ever: what you see is still a work in progress and not everything in this articles screenshots are necessarily representative of the final product. If you're having trouble viewing the screenshots, try right clicking the image and opening it in a new tab (click here to view this post in your browser).

Tile contents tooltip

Lets say for instance weve laid out a level and need to edit the features of a particular structure (or prop) like this fenced-off enclosure in a Brigador Killers test map.
If this were our previous game and we didnt know what the props .json file was, we would typically refer to the version of the same level in Tiled, which is the editor we use to make levels in both Brigador and Brigador Killers. Over there we click the prop and itll show us its file path
And from there its just a matter of alt-tabbing back into the game to look up the same file path in the pack file tab, and then inspecting it via the data editor tab and we can set about configuring the prop to our needs.
Simple enough, but it can be a bit clunky, particularly if you have to work with multiple rotations of the same prop in order to, say, make sure the strength of a structure is unified across all variants of that asset. This could get a bit complicated when it came to what we call prop stacking, which is placing two props in the same tile but using different layers in the editor. [Sidenote: this hasnt historically been a huge problem for us, though it is one of those time wasters in game development that might seem tiny, but adds up as more and more assets get added to the game.] The Tile contents tooltip provides a solution. By enabling it, a small tooltip window will appear whenever our mouse cursor moves over any prop in a level.
This window tells us what props are occupying that tile, what the prop path is and allows us to immediately look up the asset in the data editor by hitting End on our keyboard, which cuts out all that of alt-tabbing and manual typing mentioned above. In addition, if we in fact have stacked two props on the same tile, the tooltip will still tell us! Lets direct our tooltips attention to this set of light poles inside a topiary
Mousing over with our tooltip and using the arrow keys will let us toggle between the props on that tile, showing us the details for both the topiary and the light pole.

From a development standpoint, this will save a huge amount of time because of the increased volume of props that were making for BK. Keen-eyed modders might also have noticed the green text that appears in the top right of the screenshot, which informs the user whether the moused-over tile is walkable or not.

Patrol routes

In the Mech debug tab, two new radio buttons have been added:

• Select patrol origin
• Select patrol endpoint

In order to make use of it we select a mech (mech here means any NPC that has some kind of active AI state unlike a vehicle like a panel van), indicated by the green triangle underneath the placeholder Dave-with-a-cophead. If units are currently moving about we can pause the action with devmode enabled. With time frozen we can click the desired patrol origin and end point for the chosen mech within the game.
Inside the game we are limited to just a start and end point. Outside of the game we can set more complicated patrol routes via Tiled. If we click Force patrol AI state and unpause the game, our newly assigned mech will dutifully bounce between both points in the level, visualized here by the orange debug lines.
Unfortunately we cant force this new patrol information permanently within the game. It has to be done outside of the game in Tiled, where we have to manually specify the patrol behavior for a placed unit. However, having the patrol feature immediately testable within the game lets us: [olist]

See whether the mech can patrol to and from that point or not

Get the coordinates for those two points that we can take over to the Tiled version [/olist]As you might expect, this is going to allow us to create more interesting combat encounters, particularly in light of the third feature.

Civilian socializing

This ones complicated, and this screenshot is probably not going to help either, but bear with us.
What youre looking at is the debug draw of the social paths. Put simply, civilians have new socialize AI states. In the case of the above, the green hemispheres indicate areas of socializing, while the white lines indicate civilians searching for such areas and the path theyre taking to get to one. When a mech enters the social state, it will randomly pick another mech, internally called its "friend". The friend's current position will be chosen as a meeting point (or green hemisphere) and it too will enter the socialization state. Futher mechs that enter a socialization state and choose either of the currently "socializing" mechs as a "friend" will converge to that meeting point. After an amount of time passes, these civilians will search for another place to socialize. In the process of writing out this post, we had left the level running a bit too long in the background and 99% of the test level civilians ended up all grouped together.
Civilians dynamically moving around in such a manner goes a long way to making levels seem more alive but its not the only thing. Not featured here is the ability to make props that are socially interesting and not just to civilians. Other on-foot NPCs like cops are also capable of the social AI state. What does this potentially mean from a gameplay design standpoint? One possibility is it means we can place entities in levels that will draw the attention of NPCs and cause them to gather in particular spots. Maybe its a fast food restaurant, maybe its a police checkpoint, or maybe its something the player can use to create a diversion within a level Whatever form it ends up taking, we know were excited to see what our community of established modders gets up to with these features alone.
Did you know that Stellar Jockeys has a merchandise store? If youd like to help fund our development, consider purchasing a pin, t-shirt or even an SNC Skull & Laurel Zippo lighter.

[ 2023-05-31 15:59:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

This months post looks like a GIF explainer but its secretly a ruse to explain how systems can overlap in Brigador Killers. Heres the GIF in question, taken from a recent debug build:
Weve slowed this GIF down considerably because at normal speed, it would look something like this
Also well post the first GIF a bunch of times throughout this article so youre not constantly scrolling up and down. The GIF shows several entities in its short clip. An entity is an object that interacts with the game and responds to player input or other entities. These entities are:

• 1 x Carmine suit
• 1 x police cruiser
• 2 x Dave
• 1 x destructible object or prop in the form of yellow buckets filled with water

The Carmine suit is player-controlled. The police cruiser has no driver and is empty. The two Daves are non-player characters that either have no AI or are set to not to react to player actions. The yellow bucket props are in-universe impact attenuators.
We also have some debug visualizations on screen, which are:

• A label called Max speed
• A label called Decay
• Green HP bars above the police cruiser and the two Daves
• A red and orange ring that briefly appears beneath the Carmine suit

Max speed and Decay arent important to this specific scene, but well try to explain them regardless. Max speed is, as the name suggests, that units maximum speed. The Carmine suit has a greater motive power than the two Daves. Decay is the bleed off of bonus velocity that an entity would get from boosting or charging. In the previous game Brigador, after you stop boosting your vehicle, your max speed immediately goes back down to its original value. We smooth this transition out now for Brigador Killers, but because of how these bonuses work, we have to keep track of how much "bonus" there is which we then gradually subtract from. So, the decay value represents the remaining bonus we're still subtracting from - but the decay value in the GIF is zero because no entities have boosted or charged. The green HP bars are an abstraction of how many hit points that entity has left after taking damage. A green bar that has turned completely transparent will disappear because the remaining HP has hit zero. Not all entities on screen have HP bars visible. Player-controlled entities like the Carmine suit have their HP displayed elsewhere. Props do not tend to display HP bars either, sometimes because their HP pools are so small and because we express damage to props in other ways. The red and orange ring underneath the Carmine suit are visualizations of the damage radii of the kick. You might remember something similar from a previous post about systemic building collapse. Third, lets go over the visual effects going on in this GIF.
The visual effects that we can see are:

• A kicking up of dust from the Carmine suits kick
• A darkening effect on the Carmine suit, police cruiser, two Daves and prop
• The Daves changing animation states
• The inertia of the police cruiser after colliding with the prop

Technically the Carmine suits kick here is actually a reused mech stomp. More specifically, its not a stomp at all, but an explosion. This is also the reason why the suit briefly darkens. The darkening effect is to visualize to the player that an entity has taken damage in some way. As a result, every entity that appears in the GIF takes damage in some manner, including the prop. The two Daves change animation states because they have entered whats called a pain state (sometimes referred to as flinching), with both being pushed aside by the hitbox of the police cruiser. One of the Daves thats still visible dies as they fall over backwards, losing the HP bar in the process. The cars inertia after impacting the prop carries it forward a small distance more before eventually rolling to a stop. Now for the fun and penultimate part - heres whats going on in terms of behind-the-scenes systems.
Some of these systems are holdovers from our first game, some of them are new to Brigador Killers. In action in this GIF are:

• Impulse
• Wheeled vehicles
• Trample
• Reverse trample

Impulse is how the police cruiser gains velocity and is pushed sideways into the Daves. The impulse comes from the explosive stomp kick of the Carmine suit. Due to Brigador Killers new wheeled vehicles implementation, cars can better act like four-wheeled vehicles. We spoofed wheeled vehicle movement in Brigador for vehicles like the Pantry Boy treadbike or the Varlet tuk tuk by taking the tank movement and making the treads very narrow to give the sense of a bike/trike-style movement. Currently in BK, wheeled vehicles dont have the handbrake on, meaning they can be pushed around easily just from NPCs bumping into them. The Carmine suits kick delivers more than enough impulse to send the cruiser sideways into the Daves. Trample is a means of causing damage that already exists in Brigador - its how mechs are able to stomp through buildings like with the Touro or ramming through enemy vehicles with your Killdozer. Reverse trample is different. Reverse trample is a system new to Brigador Killers in which trample damage can be self-inflicted. A simple way to think of it is how you can get hurt because you went very fast into something solid. However, in BK, reverse trample can kick in from both rapid deceleration and rapid acceleration. So finally with all of the above in mind, heres the detailed play-by-play of the GIF
[olist]

The player in the Carmine suit hits the police cruiser with an explosive kick that gives the car impulse.

The police cruiser immediately takes damage from the kick and the impulse sends it in a direction away from the source of the impulse.

Almost instantly the first Dave takes reverse trample damage due to the rapid acceleration it inherits from the police cruiser. The police cruiser may also be inflicting a small amount of trample damage on the Dave.

A frame later the second Dave takes damage for the same reasons as the first (reverse trample and trample).

The police cruiser continues towards the yellow impact attenuator prop, inflicting trample damage on it.

The Dave on the right exits off screen and survives, but the Dave on the left, after rapidly accelerating and taking both damage from reverse trample and trample, takes a second bout of reverse trample damage because it catches the corner of the prop and rapidly decelerates. This makes the total interaction lethal to the Dave on the left.

Leftmost Daves HP is fully reduced, its death animation plays out, and the NPC flops backwards onto the ground.

The police cruiser still has inertia and continues to roll forwards before stopping. [/olist]All of what you just read is about 1000 words explaining what happens in roughly a second of gameplay.
Why we bothered to write that all out is because at the time of capturing this GIF we didnt even expect the second Dave to have been killed by the interaction - we would have been content enough with the police cruiser shunting into the NPCs and inflicting some reverse trample damage, which it did. Instead, weve found ourselves in a much more exciting place, because we now know that such player actions have the potential to be messy in ways that means players wont see the exact same thing over and over if they replay certain combat scenarios. The reason this has happened is because its a combination of multiple overlapping systems that, in some cases, have taken several years to develop, and can now be expressed in Brigador Killers.
If you enjoyed this post, you can find quite a few more in-development GIFs on our discord servers #brigador_killers_chat channel.

[ 2023-04-28 14:29:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

One of the major advances that we made the past month was changing how the aiming works in the games engine for Brigador Killers along with some new animations. Weve recorded some footage of the new aiming system in action and put together this post as an explainer for what youre about to watch. A reminder as always: what you see below is not indicative of the final product, and theres plenty still left to do but its starting to get much closer to the game we want to make.
[previewyoutube=67fyHDSzQ6o;full][/previewyoutube]

Combat Glide (0:00)

We briefly talked about an earlier version of this system in November's post. By holding down right mouse button, which is the current bind for Ready Weapon and moving with WASD we can see the player-controlled Dave do a Combat Glide. The yellow dot at Daves feet indicates his current orientation, while the green dot is where the mouse cursor is in screen space that the player has line of sight to. While Dave can spin around in a circle while stood up, crouched down his upper can only rotate so far in either direction until he reaches a maximum turning radius. Dave moves over to a white panel van to then demonstrate what happens if something gets in the way of the players free aiming. As the aim sweeps across the van, the green point changes position and a second red dot appears. This red dot is to indicate where the mouse cursor is, but that the player does not have direct LOS to that point and is instead getting caught on the vans hitbox. The player then shoots the white van with a gun thats slightly overtuned.

Lock Target (0:56)

When not aiming like in Combat Glide, the purple dot on screen is currently an indicator of where the players cursor is. Lock Target is a new form of aim that automatically locks on to the hitbox of an NPC that is closest to the players cursor when the player presses whatever Lock Target is bound to. In this case its bound to the side button of a mouse. Once locked on, the player can freely move around the targeted NPC and maintain aim until the NPC is either destroyed in some manner or the player decides to aim at something else. The player practices on some dummy NPC units that also shoot out some new blood squibs when shot. The NPCs dont fall to the ground like the enemy Daves will later because animations have not yet been set up for them. The player-controlled Dave, who is currently invisible to enemy NPCs, shows off the tracking of this new form of aiming by locking on to a few wandering Daves and following them around before unloading a shotgun a few times. The ability to lock the aim is an important addition to the Brigador aim scheme for a couple of reasons: for some Brigador players, the combination of manual aiming with maneuvering and tactical awareness required too high a cognitive load. Being able to slow the game down alleviated that, but could still be frustrating as a single-stop solution. Lock Target provides another option for players while making both controller play far more viable and adding a major accessibility option for impaired players. Returning Brigador players may choose to eschew aim locking entirely, and that's fine. The idea isn't to require a certain style of play, but rather to open the door to as wide an array of playstyles as possible.

Level Aim (2:52)

Some context is required before explaining the footage of this section: one of the biggest things that we wanted to have with infantry-scale combat was the ability to crouch behind walls and shoot over them, but there were problems with doing this. The main one was due to the legacy of Brigadors own method of aiming, in that the players arc of fire usually shot downwards into the ground from the position of a vehicles weapon mount point. That meant that crouching a unit also lowered the position of a vehicles weapon and thus the height at which the fire would emanate. This meant that weapon fire could easily catch on the top of environmental props, but it wasnt really a problem in Brigador because of the general scale of things and most props being easy to destroy. However, in BK the props are sturdier and were trying to do infantry-scale combat. Thats why this footage starts with the player Dave crouching by a barrier and appearing to shoot at the red sports car, but doing no damage to it even though the green aim dot is clearly over the car. When Dave stands up to take a shot, the shots connect because the rifle bursts are no longer catching on the top of the barrier and can connect with the vehicle. At the 3:24 mark, the area is refreshed and the player crouches down to shoot at the same car... except now the shots connect. The sharp eyed will notice the aim lines have changed ever so slightly this is what happens when the Level Aim button is held down, and in this footage is bound to a second side button on the mouse. When used in conjunction with Ready Weapon with right mouse button, it allows the player to shoot at a flat angle, parallel to the ground. So even while crouched, the player can shoot over and make their hits land. Player Dave also returns to the group of standing NPCs we saw earlier to show off Level Aim while crouched, and shoots at a couple of wandering Daves from behind a barrier.

Flop, Drop & Prone (4:45)

In addition to new aiming, several new behaviors have been added to make enemy infantry more alive and animations to go with them. The first is Prone, which is when an NPC Dave drops to a chest-down position in response to a frag grenade being thrown nearby. The main effect of this prone behavior is to give the enemy infantry a defense bonus as well as the player a sense of agency. After taking enough damage, one of the Daves flees, before being dealt enough damage to enter a bleed out state that eventually kills the NPC after a specific amount of time. Player Dave then proceeds to show off other Daves flopping over on their back or dropping to their front due to small arms fire. Its something that needs to be fine tuned, but what we want to do with this system is similar to the pain state of monsters in Doom, wherein the player is able to briefly stun mobs of enemies by doing enough damage.

Death Animations & Gibs (6:29)

We also decided the past month that the Daves needed to better demonstrate when theyre incapacitated. In addition to blood squibs from being shot at, enemy Daves now fall over dead in various positions. Also, corpses can be gibbed by the player with explosives like grenades and generally make a mess of things. The graphic content of BK is something we are able to configure. For instance, corpses can be made to immediately fadeout on death. So, if screens full of blood and limbs is a bit much then youll be able to turn such things off.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider wishlisting and following Brigador Killers on Steam to get the latest news in your Steam library feed. https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2023-03-31 16:34:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Back in July 2022 we wrote that we wanted to put some form of Brigador Killers out in 2023. We have recently decided that the game will come out first as a build on Itch.io in the coming months. Assuming that period on Itch goes well, BK will then come to Early Access on Steam in 2024, and then eventually 1.0 with post-release support. The Itch page is up though there are no builds of the game to get your hands on just yet. You can take a look at it here. Price is still TBD.

WHY WERE DOING THIS

Well limit the list of reasons to four broad points. First, expectations. As indie developers go, were old and remember what Early Access on Steam used to be like and what the public accepted as early access. If we were to repeat with BK on this storefront now what we did with Brigador back in 2015, were confident a lot of people on here would be disappointed because the game simply wont be at the expected quality level of an early access game in 2023. Second, risk. When a game is released on Steam, the platform puts your game in front of a lot of customers every second but only for a limited time. Also, Steam is still the most widely used platform for PC gaming. We want to make sure we can make the biggest splash possible. Third, scale. When BK is released to the public, dull yet highly important things like bug reports will shoot up. We already know that keeping Brigador functional on current operating systems like Windows 10 has been bumpy, and with Windows 11 we expect more of the same for both Brigador and BK. By exposing BK to a smaller pool of players first, the hope is that we can prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by the number of people with technical issues, as well as the occasional player that is somehow able to run our game on a government-issue laptop from the early 2000s running Windows 8.1. Fourth, burnout. We appreciate the hype from a lot of you for BK but please also understand that we dont want to destroy ourselves in the process of making it. Brigador already went through that process in 2016 with its initial release, and its not an exaggeration that it took years to undo the damage that it caused. Brigador Killers is not only meant to be a sequel to Brigador but also internally is the end result of a lot of lessons learned and what we learned with the first game was we enjoyed the community feedback, which Itch will help us with. We realize Itch isnt going to be for everyone, and thats okay. Itll still come to Steam and GOG regardless.

ANSWERING THE QUESTION OF IF I BUY IT ON ITCH FIRST, WILL YOU GIVE ME A STEAM KEY FOR IT LATER?

Yes. Itch even has that functionality built in. When the game is ready for Steam, Itch owners will get their Steam key.

WHATS BEEN HAPPENING WITH BK

On the programming end of things, lua scripting has been added into the engine. This is going to significantly increase what well be able to do with the overall gameplay of BK. If youre familiar with Brigador, everything about the in-level maps in that game is decided the moment a level loads. That means a level will always have the same layout of buildings, the same spawns in set locations, the same music, and so on. We now have the ability to change a lot of that, though well save an explainer post on this topic for later. Design wise, with the new systems like morale and infantry movement, the amount of game data that needs to be audited is substantial. To give you an idea, heres a glimpse at the current list of values that can be configured just for the morale system, and that these are things that can be set per AI-controlled unit.
Because theres so much data to deal with, things like the armor & pierce system mentioned in the August 2022 post are going to be pared down from eight tiers. As much fun as it is to have a broad range of numbers to play with, BK is ultimately not going to be a hyper-detailed MilSim like the Arma series. In terms of visuals, our lead artist Jack recently put up a twitter thread explaining how to signal to the player which wheeled vehicles are going to be drivable and which ones are not. Consider these two as an example:
Which one do you think you can drive as the player? If you chose the one on the left but not the right, congratulations but pause for a moment and consider why. The obvious go-to is that the roof has been taken off, but also note that where the driver would usually sit is now occupied by an optical array, meaning theres no space for a human to sit. The intention is that this wordlessly tells the player that, although this is identifiable as a vehicle, it is not intended for you. In addition, it serves as a tease for the loreheads out there to speculate as to the function of the vehicle on the right and what implications that has for the Brigador universe.

BEFORE WE GO

We are surveying our userbase to see what kinds of computer hardware and software they are using to play Brigador with. Participation in the survey is anonymous. The information gathered isnt very exciting but it will be incredibly helpful to us as it will tell us what benchmark to aim for with BK. Click here to take the survey and get your response in before March 31st 2023.

[ 2023-02-28 17:30:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

NEW MAKEUP AND VANITY SET TRACK

Considering people enjoyed the Makeup and Vanity Set tracks from Novembers all props tour video, heres the extended version of Strange Bedfellows from the Brigador Killers OST as its own upload on our YouTube channel. [previewyoutube=A_X8h66CroQ;full][/previewyoutube]More tracks to come.

OUR PLANS FOR 2023

Our intention remains the same as what we said back in July 2022: BK will come out in some form of early access this year, and well have more details on the specifics next month. Between then and now were currently settling on the minimum feature list for that early access build. The biggest task for the programmers is overhauling the menu interface. Rewriting how the engine handles the menus is a complicated affair, but it will be necessary to make the game we want to eventually release.

OTHER THINGS OF NOTE

In other news, animations for enemy infantry flopping over were completed. Heres a group of Daves falling over to demonstrate.
People who have played a lot of the original Doom will be familiar with the term Pain state. Our intention with the flops above is largely the same, in that it is both visual reactivity for the players actions, and is a means of controlling enemy NPCs. Why we have this is part of what we talked about before with finding the fun. With a vehicle-only game like Brigador, we didnt have to worry about the enemies having pain states, because their vehicles werent alive and it was enough to make them go boom and end up as hulks on the ground. Doing the same with human NPCs wont work, because players will want to see human-like behavior. Our hope is that combining flops with death animations and the new gibs system we have in the works will lead to satisfying gameplay.

STAY WRAPPED UP TIL NEXT MONTH

If youve missed any of our previous dev streams or other dev-related videos over the past seven months, you can find them as their own playlist on YouTube.

[ 2023-01-27 17:30:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=_2dPb9XSzs8;full][/previewyoutube]As a parting gift for 2022, here is the first chapter of the next audiobook written by Brad Buckmaster and read by Ryan Cooper. Titled Brigador Killers: Pilgrim, it is a direct sequel to the events of the first book and will serve as a companion novel for the game Brigador Killers. We are thrilled to have worked with both Brad and Ryan again on this project. As we state in the novels foreword:[quote]Be ready: this is no mere "tie-in" novel. We gave Brad the go-ahead to run, and he ran all the way into the dark.[/quote]As for Brad's own blurb:[quote]Solo Nobre fell in one night. Those loyal to Great Leader were pushed to the edge of oblivion, yet remained unbroken, and now they turn their gaze skyward towards a new world, jewel of the corporate oppressors that now reign over them. It is there on the rich colony of Mar Nosso that the hated Brigador mercenaries enjoy the spoils of war, basking in newfound celebrity status, lionised as heroes to the ignorant masses. They think the fight is over. For the members of Kill Team Pilgrim, they havent even started. Pilgrim will take the fight to the enemy, on their home turf, where they think they are safe and protected. Its time for the Brigadors to die.[/quote]Were looking forward to you learning more about both Zhe and Kill Team Pilgrim when the novel is released in full in 2023.
P.S. Our merchandise store is still running its sale all December long. You can get 20% off your next merch order by entering promotional code HOLIDAYS2022 at checkout, or clicking here. P.P.S. Like the splash art? An album of all our splashes to date for Brigador and BK can be seen over on this IMGUR album.

[ 2022-12-16 17:30:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

[quote]Earnest, loyal, and doomed. Loyalist Infantry is filled with a dying breed of hard-asses. Theyre a dying breed because most of them get killed, because theyre infantry on a battlefield crowded with heavy metal. That doesnt stop them sneering at basically every other branch in the military. The way they see it, everyone else is trying to hide their deathwish behind armor plating and hardshields. The grunts just like to get there faster. -MB[/quote]In last month's post we talked about how one of the problems we wanted to address was how aiming generally felt bad. This was in part due to the player having to stop-and-start the process of aiming and shooting which was not at all fun. We think we're a step closer to achieving that with what we are tentatively calling "aim glide". Long time readers will know the drill but for new readers: what you see below is not indicative of the final product. The keen-eyed among you will likely notice shadows popping in or other sorts of graphical artifacting - rest assured there are plenty of things you can't see that also need smoothing out. All music in this video is by Makeup And Vanity Set and the first track is an alternate version of the track "Strange Bedfellows". As for those asking "Wait, who's Dave?" - the answer lies further down.

OPEN THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND READ ALONG

[previewyoutube=8gE4F2juPz4;full][/previewyoutube]

BKTEST Allprops Sady (00:00-03:51)

Such allprops levels exist in Brigador but we hide them away from players. As developers we use them for all sorts of testing purposes such as checking whether a particular level's lighting works with the assets, or configuring the damage values required to destroy a particular prop. Also they all get lined up neatly in up to four rotations. "Sady" is one of the initial locations where the action of Brigador Killers will take place and its architecture is intended to reflect what its inhabitants do and what sort of activity goes on there. We currently leave it up to you the viewer to speculate on what that might be. At the end of the run-through, Dave walks through a short diorama to show off how some of the props might be arranged.

BKTEST Allprops Mar Nosso (03:52-08:44)

"Mar Nosso" is another one of the starting locations of Brigador Killers. Geographically it is adjacent to Sady but as can be seen from the architecture and palette, it sits in stark contrast. Dave does a quick circuit around another diorama at the end of this segment.

BKTEST Allprops [Unnamed Location] (08:45-11:51)

Deliberately left unnamed, this location is not one of the first places players will explore in BK. Like with Sady, we're going to let you wildly speculate on what the place is and what is the function of all of the pipes coming out of the buildings.

BKTEST Dave Animations & "Aim Glide" (11:52-13:57)

"Dave" is the internal nickname for the loyalist infantry unit that you can fight groups of in Brigador, seen below.
Dave retains the name but their appearance has been given an overhaul for BK, as well as new animations. You will briefly catch Dave reloading and crouching in this footage. This version of Dave has also had changes made to their movement and aiming. This segment starts with Dave moving in a somewhat stilted orthogonal, eight-directional manner as they walk around in a circle. When the player pushes left mouse button, Dave raises the rifle to shoot, and we can see from the tracer fire that it still follows these rigid directions. However, around the 12:30 mark, we demonstrate the new aiming change that we're calling "aim glide". Unlike last time, Dave can now walk and shoot a lot more elegantly than what we saw last month with the Carmine suit footage. How the player does this during gameplay is hold down the right mouse button. When this happens, Dave's aim will change from the eight-directional movement to smoothly point their gun wherever the player's cursor is aimed whilst still retaining the ability to move around. As a result of this change, we end up with a much less static feel to the action and decide to take Dave back to the shooting range to try out the movement against some stationary and not-so-stationary targets. There's still a few things to iron out and even new animations to add for Dave, but we're quite happy with how this movement change has panned out.

A FESTIVE ANNOUNCEMENT

Starting tomorrow (Thursday December 1st) we are having a sale over on our merchandise store all December long like last year. Enter promocode HOLIDAYS2022 at checkout to get 20% off your order. Please note: minimum order value of 8 USD required. Promotional code is active from December 1st until 23:59 CST, December 31st, 2021.

[ 2022-11-30 17:30:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

For this post we want to highlight one of the less exciting things about making games from the past month and how we plan to address it. Its often referred to as finding the fun i.e. the process of iterating on a set of prototyped mechanics or systems and testing them to see if it fits within the expectations of our design and achieve a broadly enjoyable feeling of play (also sometimes referred to as a flow state in more academic circles). Our caveat like last time that what you see below is not indicative of the final product. Theres still jank like map boundaries missing allowing units to wander into the void and things generally looking empty while veterans of our first game will recognize reused elements. The following video is of three short encounters on small scale maps that measure about 40x40 tiles. We also had a fourth, much larger map (around 220x250 tiles) to stress test how many things we could stick into one map, but it is not included for reasons that will be laid out in this post.

OPEN THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND READ ALONG

[previewyoutube=AM89ARzAASM;full][/previewyoutube]

1ENCOUNTER 1 (00:00-05:11)

The first encounter map opens with the player in plainclothes incognito with a carmine tac suit standing nearby. The player mouses over the tac suit to see that it is equipped with an assault rifle and a rocket launcher. Their objective for this map is simple: clear out the garrison. For this one they need to eliminate 31 targets, most of which are hostile NPCs in plainclothes (hereafter just Dennis), but a few are green palette swaps of the carmine that serve as placeholder for tac suit-wearing Faber units. By entering the carmine suit, the player is no longer incognito and instead perceived as hostile to any armed NPCs, which is why they open fire. Fortunately, this exchange of gunfire will do the player no harm because the Dennises weaponry is not strong enough. Like we outlined at the foot of Augusts post, BK now has a pierce system in effect. Or, in other words, were too tanky to take any damage from their puny firearms (note the health bar in the top left). That quickly changes when the green Faber suits turn up, who start plinking away at the players HP, forcing them to switch to their rocket launcher and one-shot the first Faber unit. However, just 30 seconds in, we have multiple problems with how a lot of this all feels that might not be obvious from the footage. In no particular order they are the following:

• Player aim sucks
• Player damage output sucks
• Environmental props are very solid (compared to the previous game)
• Engagement distances feel off
• Reloads suck
• Camera sucks

These problems also overlap in a few ways. Because there are no reticles in the game yet, where projectiles land as the player aims isnt great, which is compounded by both Brigadors existing accuracy cone system and how the plainclothes units are crouched behind cover. Heres a visualization of how that accuracy cone system functions.
Its intentional that these props are chest-high walls, but as you can see from the footage of the player shooting at two retreating plainclothes, the bullets are catching on the top of the prop rather than hitting the intended targets, though the player has no such problem taking out the Dennis in plain sight to the south west. Except its still a problem that the player cant see someone shooting at them from off screen - and then the first Faber unit turns up. Depending on the Faber unit firing, they will either slowly drain a carmine suits precious HP, because despite the lack of distinct SFX their guns actually have higher pierce than the Dennises, or potentially destroy a carmine suit outright if they land a rocket on the player. These first two Faber units are only carrying rifles, but rather than getting into a two-on-one DPS race, the player beats a hasty retreat to reload their rocket launcher which in this current setup takes ten whole seconds to cycle. All these factors combined result in a less-than-satisfying experience for the player. After just an initial skirmish, the player is now down to two-thirds of their starting hit points, which dont last and a Faber unit eventually busts the player out of their suit, only to quickly eat through their remaining hit points. Restarting the encounter, the player decides to make use of the incognito status and scout things out. They find a muscle car to drive freely up until they run over a Dennis, at which point the level turns hostile. The player races about to find a Rounder tank parked deeper into the encounter, and proceeds to gleefully tear through all the Faber units, which highlights another problem: the current disparity between the fun of vehicle-based combat, and infantry-scale combat. Compared to everything mentioned so far, the Rounder has absolutely no problem tearing through the entire encounter, even though Faber is equipped with rockets that can eventually take out the tank. Finally, after debussing from the tank in their pursuit to get rid of the last few units, the inertia on the tank and the trample system unintentionally kills the unprotected player. Oops.

2ENCOUNTER 2 (05:12-08:53)

The second encounter opens with the player in plainclothes next to both a carmine suit and a Rounder. The players goal is to destroy an object at the other end of the level. Explicitly theres two ways to go about this encounter a combat gauntlet through the main route, or taking a side route through some buildings. The player opts to take the main route on foot first. Again, we see a repeat of the same behavior of easily dispatching some Dennises, only for Faber to appear and make the players day worse. This time around the player loses their carmine, and opts to get the Rounder to take the side route, encountering an enemy Rounder that would give the player trouble were it not facing the wrong direction. The player succeeds in scoring a rear shot on the spacer tank, blows up the objective, makes a mess of several dozen Faber units, and generally has a pleasant time in the vehicle. Once again, we see the disconnect in vehicles generally having a faster time to kill, while the infantry experience is much less snappy.

3ENCOUNTER 3 (08:54-12:08)

The third encounter is the shortest of the lot, containing a mix of mostly police units, a few personal mobility devices and some more green tac rigs equipped with rifles or rockets. The players first attempt goes poorly, with their shots failing to go over the barriers and Faber eventually eliminating the player. Restarting, the player is more careful, running around corners to abuse the AIs method of pathfinding and being sure to prioritize the first Faber unit to turn up with an RPG. Due to all this violence, the police retreat, which shows off the flinch/flee behavior we mentioned in Augusts post. As they retreat, the player uses this breathing room to reload their RPG and extend out the camera to scout the area ahead for any units lying in wait. A lone Faber unit, likely attracted by the explosion noises, is felled by a rocket from behind and the footage ends here.

TO SUMMARIZE THE CURRENT PROBLEMS

As a result of these short encounters, infantry scale combat feels bad. Chiefly the reasons why are:

• Player movement doesnt feel good especially compared to vehicle movement we either walk/run or mostly stand still to shoot
• Aiming and shooting feels very static and uninteresting to engage in this is amplified by how the accuracy system functions causing projectiles to catch on top of barriers we want to shoot over, as well as the excruciatingly slow reload times
• The environment is tanky part of the joy of the previous game is that even though shots from either the player or NPCs sometimes failed to land, the environment was so fragile that something was still happening even when shots missed
• Time to kill is off versus armor an on-foot player should certainly feel terrified going up against a bigger foe, but theres a current frustration just dealing with units of the same size (even non-Faber) which can lead to the player getting dogpiled by multiple enemies
• Engagement distances are too great getting damaged from off-screen sources not only adds to the frustration but also encourages the player to default to camera-optimal distances i.e. zoom out and extend the camera as far out as possible to get a bead on any potential threats
• Too much is going on and cognitive load irritates the player frequently the player was trying to quickly dish out damage at approaching units, only to find that their guns had to be reloaded and their health was quickly deteriorating and had no means to counter incoming threats both on- and off-screen beyond running away

But all thats okay! Diagnosing the problem is how we approach a cure, and we already have a strong idea how to go about fixing a lot of the above.

SO WHAT TO DO?

There are a wide number of issues to deal with, but we can boil them down to four main things that we intend to do:

• A form of ADS (Aim Down Sights) along with a new type of aiming reticle our intent is to have right click on mouse act as a form of focused aiming for the player which will involve changing how the camera operates
• Changes to the AI behavior of enemy infantry these NPCs fundamentally act the same way as vehicles do which does not translate well as infantry behavior
• Tweaking a number of values experienced Brigador modders will be aware that its possible to do many things with the data in-game, so reducing reload times and HP pools, stopping bullets from catching on chest-high walls, or changing when and how quickly enemies engage with the player is already doable
• Simplifying input while not overburdening the player this point is a bit vague but one thing we might do is give the player character an additional option to run and gun on top of firing while either crouched, standing or walking which means new animations are required

Of this list, the first two are the biggest asks of our programmers. As of time of posting were currently working on changes to the camera system in order to accommodate this new aiming scheme we have in mind. The past month has been eventful and we should stress that this isnt intended as a deliberate downer of a post this is part of the process of making games.
By next month we hope to report back on how infantry scale combat has changed. If you for some reason havent yet wishlisted Brigador Killers please do. As developers it helps us out immensely as we edge ever closer to 2023. https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/

[ 2022-10-28 16:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

One of the hallmarks of our previous game Brigador is its fully destructible environments. With a few exceptions, every prop visible within the games levels can be smashed through or blown up and left as a pile of debris on the ground. Here's a Touro from our first game next to some buildings showing the before, during and after effects of a stomp (right click > open image in new tab to get a better look).


[Images from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition] How this system works in Brigador is each prop, depending on a few factors like its size and what hit it, has a couple of destruction states (or variants of the prop) that then, when damaged enough, leave a flat rubble texture on the ground tiles which the player can walk through as if it were a regular ground tile.
[GIF from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition] Were adding what were calling systemic building collapse to this existing system in Brigador Killers. Related to it is a tactic that we tutorialize in the first game: mouse-holing. As developers we give you the ability to make your own space through that game's environment and its up to you to make use of that space in whatever way you the player deem fit. For instance in Brigador its entirely possible to just destroy one chunk of a building prop with certain weapons and not really affect anything else connected to or around it. If youre accurate enough and shoot through a sturdy-enough prop with something like a railgun, youll carve out a neat line through it. Heres a before and after of a typical Zeus shot in Brigador going through a couple of building props.

[Images from Brigador: Up-Armored Edition] What you can see is a convenient, Touro-wide hole through which to stomp through as a result. Although it serves our gameplay purposes in this game, this would not really be the case in real life as can be evidenced by looking at footage of any collapsing building (volume warning ahead). [previewyoutube=AGUqcnhJbeg;full][/previewyoutube]Rubble scatters around, dust kicks up to say nothing about anything or anyone that happens to be by a collapsing building. The structure of the damaged building is also heavily compromised and the rest of it is liable to fall as a result. The previous approach is also not suitable for BK for three big reasons:

• The change in initial scale from vehicle -> infantry
• Variable zoom for the player, and
• Buildings are much tougher and bigger than before

So, why were adding systemic building collapse is because we've raised the floor on how difficult it is to knock down a single building chunk, we want to keep the landscape malleable to the player in a way that's still exciting and potentially hazardous.
[GIF from BKTEST04] Behind the scenes, what's going on in the above gif? Imagine if you will a building and around that building it has the potential to cause damage to its surroundings when it collapses.

For the purposes of this exercise, suppose that this collapsing building will do three rings worth of damage. Each ring is in this example one point of damage each and each ring overlaps. For those of you that speak game development no, we are not ray marching these rings because that would be highly inefficient for our purposes. [If we for some reason did want to do that, wed have to shoot out rays in every direction from the point of collapse and test for intersection with another entity and then test to check if we had already applied damage to said entity and then test against each distance value in ascending order until we find the range that entity sits in and you get the idea.] The central red ring we can imagine is the immediate point of collapse where the most damage will be done. Anything within the space of this ring will take three points of damage (or more accurately: 1 + 1 + 1 from all three rings). Entities in the second orange ring will take two points (or 1 + 1), and anything in the blue will take just one point of damage. Note that these values are just for example purposes in the engine we can set the values of these rings to be whatever we want.
With all that said, what does systemic building collapse look like in action? You might guess from the image above that its just another form of how explosive props (such as pipelines) already work in Brigador. However, instead of shooting part of a pipeline that will almost immediately cause a violent chain reaction and take out everything else along that length of pipe, a collapsed building might only take out that part of the structure depending on the relative HP of the building segment, its neighbors and the source of damage. What that means is well still be able to retain some of the plinking at one prop chunk like before in Brigador, but unlike Brigador when that single chunk falls it will damage the surrounding building props by its collapse. Further plinking at other now-damaged parts can result in a subsequent domino-like collapse. Let's demonstrate this in BK with the help of some HP bars on the buildings by carefully shooting at an individual prop using a Me Dois...
As we damage the segment, note the green HP bar and the discoloration on the building. Lets keep shooting...
As we reduce that prop's HP to zero, it collapses and the two building props on either side have had their HP reduced by its collapse.
What we're left with here is a collapsed structure that can still serve as cover, but its height is reduced. The neighbouring buildings have been damaged by the collapse and it will not require as much effort to take them down. In addition, we see the accompanying white rubble on the ground indicating that it is traversable to the player. One example of how we intend this behavior to manifest in BK is the player using a building as cover which, at the start of an encounter, is sturdy and can clearly take an exchange of cannon fire. However, if the fight drags on, and more and more rounds batter the building and fill it with holes, the AoE damage starts to add up and - before it's too late - the splash from just one more shot will be enough to set off a domino effect and completely take out the entire building complex. The player's cover is gone and, depending on how close a player or other ground units are to a collapsing building, the effect may even be lethal. To give you an idea, we can violently speed this process up with our newly-revised Gravesend Pinball blasting through a set of buildings.
Take note that though the pinball itself is wide, its nowhere near as wide as three building props worth even coming through at a slight angle. Those with keener eyes will also notice the delay on the last building to collapse in the gif, along with the damage caused to the very last building in the row courtesy of the reduced HP bar (also note that the data for each suite of buildings needs to be manually configured, so part of the reason youre seeing the same building over and over here is because the values need to be calibrated for each one). Theres still some work to be done on systemic building collapse because, ironically, you cant just touch one thing in game development without it affecting other things. Already for legibility purposes we realize we have to lower the height of the walkable rubble so the on-foot player character doesnt get lost
as well as regrade the color of the rubble so it appears traversable to the player.
Though these are issues we are confident we can deal with through playtesting.
That's all for now for systemic building collapse. Next month we'll show off some new assets from our latest internal build. Lastly, our first game is currently on sale until Monday October 3rd and we recently put up a short article about the inspirations behind that game. Enjoy. https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/Brigador_UpArmored_Edition/

[ 2022-09-30 17:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

At the end of last months post, we mentioned that there have been a number of Brigador Killers test builds (or BKTESTs as we call them) put out over the past eight months. In this post were going to cover some of what appeared in the first three BKTESTs with a series of clips of each in the video below. Each section is timestamped and a short explainer is provided. Caveat as before that what you see is not indicative of the final product; this is us lifting the lid up and letting you take a look at the less glamorous side of game development. That means youll see jank like clunky animations and weapons not mounted properly, a distinct lack of things like new sound FX, while veterans of Brigador will recognize reused UI elements. Please also note that some of the things mentioned in the previous news post, such as the in-level item acquisition or threat response escalation systems, are not yet implemented either. However, careful listeners keep an ear out you might hear something new in the first section Lastly, in terms of timeline, BKTEST01 was pushed in December 2021, BKTEST02 was March 2022 and BKTEST03 was June 2022.

WATCH THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH THE TEXT

[previewyoutube=Ght6sZYWxEI;full]https://youtu.be/Ght6sZYWxEI[/previewyoutube]

BKTEST01: ALLPROPS LEVEL (00:00-01:37)

Various video games tend to have some form of level like this. In our case we refer to them internally as zoo levels (other games may refer to them as dev rooms depending on genre). In our case they are specific maps populated with every single type of a thing according to a particular category. This particular zoo map is every single prop (environmental assets like buildings or light poles) in every orientation needed, hence allprops. Most big props seen here are in four rotations, though smaller ones like signage (that we refer to as minis) will get more. The sprites for the props are rendered at a greater level of visual detail compared to the first game, though at this point in development there were no destruction sprites, so the buildings here are invincible despite being shot at occasionally. As for the on-foot player character, this is Tactical Dennis, who currently serves as our placeholder for a plainclothes Brigador Killer with a temporary gun equipped.

BKTEST01: RACE TRACK (01:38-02:31)

As the name implies, this level is a small loop to drive around in. Visually its not very interesting, but this is the first implementation of two major things:

• Vehicle entry/exit
• Wheeled vehicle movetype

In BK you will be able to get into and out of vehicles like cars, tanks, mechs and so on. Currently the player character merely teleports into a vehicle provided they are close enough, which is indicated by the green debug circle around a vehicle (eagle-eyed viewers will also note the change in camera zoom upon Dennis entering a vehicle a hint of things to come later). Concerning the implementation of wheeled vehicles in this games engine, note that previous vehicle types were either tanks, stompy mechs, or floating agravs. Those of you who might be typing But what about the treadbikes? sorry but those were technically just very narrow tanks. This is not the case for the muscle car in the footage. With the new wheeled vehicle movetype we can do things like configure its mass, speed and acceleration as well as set the friction coefficient, the offset of the vehicles center of gravity and the stiffness at which it takes corners. In other words, we can recreate vehicles to handle as if they have front wheel drive or rear wheel drive. However, in this footage such specifics were not yet dialed in, so the cars appear very floaty and frictionless and can even be pushed around by the player character as if theyre on ice. It does not help that there are no engine sounds or visual effects like tread marks either. That said, because of this movetype we can do things like make the muscle car pull a somewhat convincing J-turn, which was not possible in the first game.

BKTEST01: CITYSCAPE (02:32-04:20)

This cityscape is a number of props placed down on top of new ground tiles such as the pavement and cracked tarmac, road markings, as well as grass tiles. The player character knocks over a few lamp posts, shoots a muscle car to destroy it and leave whats called a hulk. They also get into an odd-looking vehicle that we use for testing purposes. Despite shooting at various things and crashing into objects, outside of the mini lampposts, the player cant currently destroy anything because at this point neither trample damage nor destruction sprites are in the game.

BKTEST02: CITYSCAPE (04:21-11:25)

This build introduced a few things that may not be immediately apparent, chiefly:

• Player suit choice (which later affects incognito status)
• Infantry scale weaponry
• Running and crouching animations for on foot characters
• New road vehicles
• Morale system

Were still reusing the old UI as a means to load our level. We have a new pilot portrait (whose face youll see on the videos thumbnail) of Kermit Carthew which currently has no effect. The vehicle choice in the Freelance menu allows the player to choose what sort of suit they want to roll out in (plainclothes, police tactical rig, or Carmine Suit), which will affect whats called their Incognito status upon loading into a level, although only the next build will show off non-hostile NPCs. Primary and Secondary are now weapon slots the player can switch between, and this BKTEST contains a selection of infantry-scale weapons to choose from (yes, even the Me Dois). Initially the player picks out an RPG and an SMG, enters the level and we immediately see that we have actual night-time lighting compared to the previous build. The player blows up some new destructible props to drive a van through (because trample damage is still not in, so we cant drive through), then comes across an NPC driving a muscle car. The player gets out, shoots at the vehicle and the NPC driving it bails from the vehicle, giving the first glimpse of the effects of the morale system. [quote]

WHAT IS THE MORALE SYSTEM?

In BK, NPCs and vehicles will have a morale threshold. A simple way to think of this system is as a separate invisible health bar that, when reduced by morale damage, will set off certain behaviors like escaping from a vehicle or fleeing from an area. Weapons or other effects like explosions can reduce a target's morale "health". In the footage the player damages the vehicle's morale (alongside inflicting regular damage), so the driver immediately bails, freeing up the muscle car's pilot slot and allows the player to take control of the vehicle.[/quote] The plainclothes player then comes up against a small police road block, unable to run them over (because, again, this build does not have trample damage in) and gets into a brief gunfight with pursuing cops. The player then loads in with a police tactical rig equipped with a rifle and a blooper, and drives back to the same checkpoint to make quick work of it, before driving off to find more cops to deal with, and briefly finds a police motorbike to drive before switching to the Carmine Suit. The player loads in with the suit, a Me Dois and an RPG, and sets about dealing with the levels garrison of cops using both weapons. At one point in the footage infinite ammo was toggled on in the debug panel which is why the ammo counters go into the negative values towards the end.

BKTEST03: SHOOTING RANGE (11:26-14:44)

This build specifically contained:

• A shooting range and another cityscape nicknamed the Broken Grid Arena
• Uprezzed playable versions of the Spacer Arlo agrav and Rounder tank, and the Loyalist Betushka
• Mousewheel zoom
• Threat indicators
• Flinch/flee behavior
• Trample damage
• Incognito mode and non-hostile NPC behavior
• Destruction sprites for props

Much like the race track and allprops from BKTEST01, the shooting range is a test level that deliberately has a bunch of NPCs and props lined up so that we can test various things like weapons. We also see the new Arlo, Rounder and Betka lined up. Most of the NPCs in this test level will not attack the player because of how we have their AI configured, save for the three boxed-in Rounder tanks that do a pretty good job of killing the player very quickly on sight, which signposts another major divergence BK is taking from the previous game. Those of you used to the higher difficulties of the first Brigador will be accustomed to being fired on immediately and how we made that fair was to give enemies with high lethality weapons like the Zeus a very broad aim cone but reproducing this same behavior in BK has turned out to be extremely unforgiving. So, at the edge of the screen in BKTEST03 weve provided threat indicators in the form of yellow Caution icons to telegraph danger to the player. Other things, like firing delays and weapon spin-up/spool up for guns to simulate more human reactions are being worked on in order to dial back the lethality of engagements. Lastly, in a separate pen we have a number of Dennises and Nospol cops standing around. Although they are passive, when the Betushka opens fire you will see the Dennises scatter and Nospol crouching down - this is an instance of the flinch/flee behavior, which is tied to the morale system mentioned earlier. In short, depending on what sort of combat is going on, the crowd and cops may either attempt to run away or crouch down to lower their profile.

BKTEST03: BROKEN GRID ARENA (14:45-22:30)

The theme of Broken Grid Arena is a first attempt at making a level suitable for vehicular combat. Our objective is simple - take out a number of enemy Rounder tanks. The level's layout simultaneously allows for long sightlines as well as several chances at irregular intervals to break line of sight and flank. For this final clip the player initially starts in plain clothes to demonstrate non-hostile NPC behavior. One thing we intend to do in BK is to allow the player the ability to scout out a levels layout without entering combat. So, the player hops on a nearby motorbike, comes across an enemy Rounder tank that doesnt fire on us but does run them over (because trample damage is now in the game). Oops. Restarting, the player jumps in the Betushka provided at the spawn, demonstrates the new mousewheel zoom function, does some prop destruction and takes another route through the level. Another Rounder ambushes the player off screen so the player deploys smoke, strafes around and gets some rear hits in. The encounter is brief but just one main cannon round from the Rounder was enough to take off all the players shields and deplete a chunk of the Betushkas armor, so they go hunting for another vehicle. The player finds an Arlo agrav beside a building, so they dismount from their Betushka and hop in to encounter a second Rounder and attempts to ambush it from the rear using its superior speed. Restarting the level, the player finds an empty Rounder hidden inside some bamboo scaffolding. With this, the player immediately ambushes an idling enemy Rounder, taking it out with one well placed shot to the rear (for those not familiar, in the previous game, enemy vehicles will take additional damage on side and rear hits though so will the player). The Rounder is bulky, can roll through props without too much trouble, and the player proceeds to ambush a second enemy Rounder from the rear. The player then gets into a straight one-on-one with a third Rounder and restocks some lost shields. Elsewhere in the level are a number of other vehicles, such as the Tuk Tuk, which the player briefly takes a spin in. Around the 20:10 mark, the player drives the Rounder from side-to-side in front of some props to deliberately demonstrate the lighting system the game engine has. We wont dwell on this point, but if youd like a little more insight, feel free to check out this brief twitter thread on the topic. Lastly, the player takes out a police checkpoint and two more Rounders, making use of the staggered layout of the props to juke the AI. In one instance you can see that an enemy Rounder drops two policemen fleeing from a destroyed Rounder that the player mops up with some MG fire. With the garrison of this level eliminated, the player ditches the Rounder, finds another Tuk Tuk, and races to the exit.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT AND WHATS NEXT

As said in the introduction, the first three BKTESTs have not yet covered the intended loop we want prospective players to engage in. However, that does not mean we didnt learn anything from the BKTESTs. What is not mentioned in all of the above are the various hurdles that were involved just to ultimately produce such footage. In terms of the art pipeline, several changes to the previous Brigador workflow had to be made in order for the assets to look good at the increased output resolution but this doesnt just apply to the static props. Coupled with the different zoom, the initial attempts at processing the new vehicles (vehicles here also includes the playable on-foot units) at 64 sprite rotations would often give the vehicles a sort of jerkiness as you drove them round corners. So, in order to produce smoother turns, vehicles like the muscle car are actually outputted at 128 rotations. Its for this reason that no mechs are present in these builds yet because the animations for their lower halves are going to take time to get right. On the upshot, as a result of all this new work, the speed at which outputted sprites can be added to the game is significantly faster than what it was like for Brigador. In terms of scope, we didnt demonstrate it in these builds but the introduction of the pierce/penetration system for weapons that was briefly mentioned in last months post (but is explained in more detail in this dev stream archive) has added significant breadth to the amount of data work required. We knew this was going to happen and its important to do the due diligence because were establishing a foundation for a lot of other aspects of gameplay. If we did not, it would be much harder to alter such things further down the line. BKTEST04 was recently pushed in August 2022, and it includes what we hope is a robust implementation of the pierce and penetration system for both various weapon and unit types. To give you an idea of what was involved, look at this abridged table by our designer that reflects the current implementation of eight tiers of damage against respective armor types.
The first BK alpha is our next milestone, which were currently looking to deliver around Halloween this year. Finally, you may have missed it but were running another community survey among our player base. Its seven short questions thatll help us get to know you better, with an optional form at the end to leave your email address if youd like to be entered into a raffle to win something from our merchandise store. You will only be emailed if you win. Be quick, you only have until Thursday, September 1, 2022 to leave your response. Take Survey

[ 2022-08-30 17:00:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

WELCOME CAVEAT

Please note that at this stage everything about Brigador Killers is still subject to change. Or, in other words, this is a statement of intent and not a series of bold promises that we may not be able to keep. We also want to point out that we think its fantastic that quite a few of our regulars have maintained a level of enthusiasm for a sequel after so long, but its important that a) expectations be kept in check and b) where possible, we be transparent about what were doing as we go along.

FOR CONTEXT: A VERY BRIEF RECAP

In 2014 Brigador (then Matador) started as a closed alpha. In 2015 Brigador went into early access. In 2016 Brigador went into 1.0. In 2017 Brigador was re-released as Brigador: Up-Armored Edition (hereafter just Brigador). In 2018 Brigador received a number of updates. In 2019 news about a Brigador Killers (hereafter BK) demo at BitSummit broke. In 2020 a well-known YouTuber covered Brigador, which contributed to us switching from BK dev back to Brigador dev. In 2021 Brigador received three notable updates, after which we returned to BK dev proper. In addition, between 2021 and 2022, thanks to the renewed success of our first game, we were able to grow our team to include an additional programmer and another artist. Chances are you already know of them. The programmer is the same person responsible for the Spacer Commander video you might have seen, while the artist impressed us by reverse engineering the sprite production pipeline to make stuff like this. Their addition has dramatically affected what sort of game we think we can make. Its now the middle of 2022 and its an understatement to say a lot has happened over all those years, but the short version is this: there were a number of false starts on Brigador Killers on which we wont dwell. However, the past eight months of work has been extremely productive, so lets get into some of it.

SO WHAT IS THIS GAME?

Last month we put out a call for your questions about BK over on our Brigador page thank you for leaving them! Were going to lean on one such question for this section and answer some more further on: Doctopus asked in a discussion thread: [quote]Whats the difference compared to the first brigador game?[/quote] There are a number of ways to answer this, so lets try to do so as fully as we can.

VISUALS

Here are some images from a recent BK test build. The environmental props and ground tiles are entirely new assets, while some of the vehicles are uprezzed versions of models from Brigador. Weve still to redo various effects sprites which are things like smoke, explosions, craters and debris so those of you with a magnifying glass will recognize old effects assets from Brigador still in use in this test build (click to enlarge).

TECH SPECS

Brigador Killers is using an iteration of the same custom engine we used for Brigador. Iteration here means several changes made to engine code in order to implement new things, which means that, compared to our first game, hardware requirements have gone up. We dont know about recommended system specs at this time but we are confident in saying that if your computer could only just barely run our first game, it will be unlikely to run BK at all. One of the reasons for this increase in hardware requirements is the major graphical change that occurred early into BKs recent development. In recent months we have doubled the output resolution of sprites, meaning you can see things in finer detail. For example, heres the original Brigador signature Touro at three times the standard zoom on the left and the BK Touro at the standard zoom on the right but cropped (click to enlarge).

Or together in the same scene within an early test build of BK
In order to pull off this increase in visual detail the old limits on the games packfile were lifted. In plain terms, BK is going to take up more hard drive space than Brigador. Other new things include complicated systems like wheeled vehicles or new variants of existing ones like gunfire influence maps. What this all fundamentally means is more math is going on therefore a more powerful CPU and/or GPU than what you would need to meet our current minimum spec for Brigador will likely be required. We will (loudly and repeatedly) broadcast what these requirements are when we know them.

GAMEPLAY LOOP

In terms of gameplay, a frequent criticism of Brigador was something along the lines of Cool mechs, but what else is there to do?. This is because, once you get past the sights and sounds, Brigador is a fairly simple, arcade-like experience. Yes, theres a strategic layer of learning how to manage enemy mobs at higher difficulties, but for a large chunk of the Brigador campaign youd enter a level, destroy up to three types of things and leave. Progression was also fairly limited: successful missions in Brigador earned the player money, which they could spend on unlocking vehicles and weapons in the Acquisitions menu for use in Freelance mode or buying lore entries to flesh out the overall story. Thats all there was to it. Needless to say, abstracting this way of acquiring new stuff via menus wasnt very exciting for particular players, hence the criticism of what else is there to do?. So what we intend to do in BK is three broad things: [olist]

Scale the initial combat down from vehicles to on-foot

Merge Campaign & Freelance into a single mode where any loadout can be used

Let the player acquire unlocks during in-level play [/olist] Mechanically, the elevator pitch is akin to something like Hitman: Contracts meets GTA2. Your initial loadout will be limited but when we set you loose within a level, you as the player may find vehicles, weapons or items that can be acquired for current and future use. However, in order to add them to your permanent arsenal and use them in subsequent forays you will need to get out of the level alive. In addition, such vehicles and weapons will influence the force posture of enemy forces and affect a type of escalation system. For example, you can go into a level incognito on foot with discreet weaponry and local security will not consider you a threat nor will they attack you on sight. Or, assuming youve unlocked it, you could strut in with a Touro sporting a Zeus and a Me Dois and its safe to assume local security are going to call HQ. Why you would go down either route depends on your objective. Maybe youll want to scout things out or simply jack a vehicle and book it before Nospol gets wise, or maybe youll need something with enough oomph to break into a Faber compound to either acquire or eliminate a high value target. Regardless of how your recon goes, the idea behind combatting this lack of things to do from Brigador is to let the player take an active hand in the acquisition and behavior of weapons and vehicles within a BK level, rather than just buying things from a menu. In addition, the implication of all of the above means we need to make new weapon types suitable at the infantry/squad level, along with damage models and enemy behaviors to compliment this style of play.

MUSIC

Makeup And Vanity Set has already composed about 40 new tracks for BK. A few of them were already posted to our YouTube. Heres the playlist of the tracks weve already made available. [previewyoutube=z3WmEYtpFQY;full][/previewyoutube]

LORE/PLOT

Spoilers for Brigador but in case you missed it, in that game [spoiler]you were playing the bad guy[/spoiler]. All the Brigador pilots were mercenary contractors for an intergalactic corporation called the SNC that disrupted Solo Nobres government so that it could take over the planet. The action this time around takes place some time after the events of Brigador. Youll largely be playing as the Nobreans that survived the mess the SNC caused. The action will initially take place on the planet of Mar Nosso, which is an SNC colony and new home for several of the Brigador pilots, but youre not just coming for them. With BK, the wider fiction is going to be fleshed out. Youll learn more about the enigmatic Spacer clades and the intercorporate politicking with various security companies, as well as find out what happened to your favorite Brigadors from the first game.

(AUDIO)BOOK

Both the text by Brad Buckmaster and audio version recorded by Ryan Cooper of the next book is done but there's still some cleanup required on both to make everything presentable specifically, making sure the page layout on things like Kindle is good, and double checking the mastered audio. It is also a direct sequel to the events of the first book.

OBLIGATORY RESPONSE TO JUST ADD MULTIPLAYER

We realize it wont stop a particular set of people asking so heres our response you give us at least ten times the amount of our lifetime revenue from Brigador, and cover the costs of increasing our staff to about 50 people, then maybe well talk about the idea of making a functional multiplayer mode in Brigador Killers. Thats our proposal: give us a lot and we mean A LOT of money up front and maybe well consider it.

PLATFORMS AT LAUNCH

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac

Mac OS in recent years has become an extremely hostile environment for developers. For us there are two big reasons:

• Apple declared in mid-2018 that it has stopped supporting OpenGL which is the graphics library that the Brigador engine relies on
• In 2020, Apple announced it was making a major shift from Intel processors to ARM-M1 CPUs

Both of these together mark a fundamental change in how Mac machines function. It is only a matter of time until OpenGL itself disappears from Apple's operating systems, and with it the ability to run Brigadors engine. Though projects like MoltenGL exist, the amount of work that would be required to make a Brigador engine game functional on a modern Apple machine will likely be unjustifiable. That said, if BK ends up doing well, well reconsider our current attitude towards Mac.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Given the new systems were making, well hopefully be able to make more interesting ones beyond Kill X of Y or from acquisition unlocks.

ACTUAL RELEASE DATE

We want to put some form of BK out in 2023 because at some point we have to pay for the roofs over our heads. We may go down the Early Access route like before but thats still TBD. Regardless we intend to produce a demo for people to play as well so that no buy-in is required for those on the fence.

ANSWERING YOUR OTHER QUESTIONS

AdeptOfHellLife asked: [quote]Will there be any WMD's in BK? I wanna nuke the establishment.[/quote] Modding weapon values and explosion radii will still be possible in BK via the F1 debug panel just like in Brigador. Youre more than welcome to mess around with weapon values and make screen-filling explosions, though if you crash the game as a result of doing so dont say we didnt warn you. [quote]Also, any plans for trailers or demo-version, even?[/quote] There are plans to make a demo. A trailer is going to be a major marketing beat and we dont have enough of a game yet to make one. [quote]Will there be multiple endings to Campaign?[/quote] Telling you how it ends before its even started is a bit premature. [quote]Will I pick my loadouts for Campaign missions from set options like in original Brigador or will it be like Freelance?[/quote] Like we wrote above, the intention is that Campaign & Freelance are going to be merged into a single mode. Unlocks will be tied to your actions and progression through this mode. The current idea is that the things you acquire in later levels can be used for deployment in early ones. [quote]Will Freelance mode make a comeback?[/quote] We are not ruling out a sandbox mode of sorts, but whether such a thing will be suitable for the game were making remains to be seen. Kris in a discussion thread asked: [quote]Are we still a lone mech/vehicle or will we have allies?[/quote] For now, the idea is youll initially play as a member of the Nobrean hit squad, but other members will be recruited into the fold. Our plan is that each person will have a certain effect on gameplay in that some will be better at using certain vehicle types or weapons. It will be vaguely reminiscent of Hotline Miamis mask choice system. Though its a direct inspiration to this game, a Syndicate-like party-of-four system is not on the cards. Omni asked: [quote]Is BK going to be evolution of the first game, more of the same but polished and iteratively improved, or do you plan some revolutionary changes in gameplay? Not that I expect to outright share them at this point if you do.[/quote] Aside from being able to switch between vehicles within a level, one of the most significant changes is the pierce/penetration system. Our design lead discussed it along with some other in-progress features in a June stream you can watch an archive of here [previewyoutube=NJNkV6AJ77w;full][/previewyoutube] The short version is weapons will have varying pierce values while vehicles and environmental props will have penetration values. Example: shooting a handgun at a tank wont do anything because of its thick armor plating. [quote]Is BK going to take place on one planet, or many?[/quote] We intend the player to start on the SNC colony world of Mar Nosso, but who knows where you might end up [quote]Are you sticking to Tank-Mech-Agrav trio, or are we going to see some new type, flier maybe?[/quote] In terms of things you can drive around, we have added wheeled vehicles. Physically modelling the physics of driving a car is one of the most complicated things in game dev (theres a great GDC talk from the Rocket League devs on this subject that we recommend watching) but is necessary in order to get the right feel. We do not expect to add any sort of flying vehicle to the roster. [quote]Are you planning for the game to have some kind of coop capacity of any sorts (as implied by Brigador Killers)?[/quote] No. [quote]I always felt like AI can be its weakest link in its chain, and I often wished it was bit smarter about things, communicating better, trying to use its numerical advantage, contain, encircle and flank me, behaving bit more like actual combat force, are you per chance aiming for development in that area?[/quote] Yes. One of the issues presented by infantry-scale combat versus vehicle-scale is people do things like take cover in response to suppression. Its still early days but weve been making systems to try to reflect this sort of behavior. Please refer to this newsletter from January for additional details. [quote]A number of people asked about the topic of melee weapons[/quote] Melee weapons arent being considered currently, either for mechs or on foot. There will still be a melee attack/stomp for on-foot and vehicles but we dont intend to extend this system out. Leif asked: [quote]What faction will the player be working for in Brigador Killers?[/quote] Youre not working for the SNC in this game. Primarily you will be part of a Loyalist cell that survived the devastation of Solo Nobre sent to Mar Nosso to get payback. zwzsg asked: [quote]I know it's the future and that the spacer one uses balls not treads, but still, drifting tanks???[/quote]
(Yes we are aware that a tank drifting is generally a terrible idea, usually for the treads, but we'd like to find an entertaining middle ground between players looking for cathartic release and those with lifetime passes to Bovington)
Once again, thank you for the questions. Next month we'll give an overview of what happened with each of the recent BK test builds. Until then feel free to join our Discord server and maybe check out the #becks_best channel.

[ 2022-07-29 17:00:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

What are you buyin', Brigador? First 50 orders using the discount code TEXAS7 get 15% off. The Stellar Jockeys online store is now open with a selection of posters, patches, an official Pinny Arcade pin, and a shirt. We can ship almost anywhere, and will be updating with new stock and designs from time to time as we step closer to the launch of Brigador Killers (which you should wishlist if you haven't already). We'd like to thank everyone who's stuck with us through the development of Brigadorwe wouldn't still be working without your support, so thank you. Please enjoy what we've put together for you:





https://shop.stellarjockeys.com

[ 2019-07-07 01:04:35 CET ] [ Original post ]