Knights and Backers, Our goal with our Kickstarters has always been to provide top tier communication to you, our backers. So, with that said, well jump right into the schedule update as we wrap up Q3 2020.

Schedule Update

Far too many Kickstarters wait until there are already major problems to update their backers. As we wrap up Q3 of 2020, we want to share our realistic estimates that it is now more likely that the Cyber Knights Alpha will start in Q1 2021 rather than late 2020. As many other game and movie studios -- big and small -- have found this year, it has been challenging to keep to previously planned schedules. There are many reasons for the slowdown including COVID-19 which has impacted not only on our team but each of our partners. Weve also made some decisions this year to focus on refining and expanding parts of the games foundation, which has traded some time for significant future benefits of features and speed of delivery. This includes rebuilding our UI kit, adding cross-platform cloud sync capability, language translation support and integrating Wwise to achieve both reactive and dynamic music/SFX. To help everyone stay on the same page, weve updated the Progress Bar to reflect the revised timeline. With every update we will continue to share as transparently as we can about any schedule changes and will always post the most up to date Progress Bar in each update so these milestone dates and progress on stretch goals and rewards are all clear. [previewyoutube=Dw4lAA6VYIE;full][/previewyoutube]

September Progress

A delay in schedule doesnt change the fact that we are working tirelessly to bring this game to the alpha phase as soon as possible. While it may feel like a set back, at this stage it is far more important that we take our time and get it right than to try to rush it to make up for lost hours in 2020. We have been cranking -- September has been a month of major progress. Were integrating systems while adding and pruning others judiciously to ensure the best flow and focus for the gameplay loop. One example is the formal addition of Blueprints, a type of item that is the plan to build another item. While we had planned for blueprint-like features within the story and crafting, theyve recently gotten the upgrade to full system. They are now first class citizens with all the necessary bells and whistles to buy, sell, loot, steal and craft items from your blueprints in your safehouse or through a crafting-focused contact.
Mergers and integrations of systems and continued refinement of the gameplay loop is naturally pushing us to take stock of the original prototype content -- weapons, armor, monsters, everything -- that we loaded into the game and balanced. To prepare for the larger content build out that is to come through the alpha, were diving back into our balancing tables, statistical models and equations. One example here is the massive pricing matrix that we are building out to preplan the relative price of all the types of resources, rewards and challenges in the game. This work is necessary in order to be certain that the scaling and balance of mission payments to maintenance cost to your stream of upgrades is balanced and fun. The starting point to this on-going exercise was to peg the basic mission payment at $500. If level 1 weapons (which you have) are $100 and level 2 weapons are $200 then you could finish your first mission and upgrade two weapons. With minor medical treatment is $10, medium is $50 and major treatment is $250, if your team got banged up a bit on the mission, your ability to purchase the 2 weapons might waver. And with level 1 armor costing $200 and level 2 armor costing $400 which means you could ... this table has many columns, rows and internal calculations! Weapons, armor, gear, items, grenades, medkits, cyberware, drones, dogs, cats, safehouse upgrades, matrix hacking rigs, mission rewards, blueprints, medical treatment, recruits ... oh my!!
Weve been working on the battle map to bring better visualization to the active elements such as Overwatch, sight lines and cover. The AIs sight lines have especially helped us fine tune the stealth and sneaking game and will be important parts of the gameplay. By improving the rules and raycasting used to detect players were getting entirely consistent and logical results.
Now that the AI understands cover and the optimal ranges of their weapons, they are running around in much more dangerous fashion, ducking behind barricades and taking flanking positions to flush your team from cover.
As always now, everything we add further expands and deepens the animation controller which has blown up the monster you see below. The overwatch animation transitions have just been added and were prepping to add step-out from cover, which will be another major chunk.
The art team is finishing the Skyrise stretch goal environment now with just a few more props to go. The concept art for the Streets environment is complete and the hard surface modeling team has transitioned to bringing those gritty pieces to life.

Progress and more progress! Were preparing in October to reconvene the Executive Producers team to give a gameplay-focused preview and to gather early feedback from that excellent team.

Cyberpunk Day is 10-10-2020 - join us for a game preview and Dev Q&A stream!

For everyone who's a genre fan or wants to dive deeper, join us and a coalition of authors, musicians, filmmakers and more in celebrating all things cyberpunk on the first World Cyberpunk Day, 10-10-2020. The day will be a hashtag-driven (#CyberpunkDay) celebration, with people sharing author readings, film highlights, new music, and more -- just check the hashtag link above on the day, or follow @CyberpunkDay for the "official" highlights. We'll be joining in the festivities by streaming a game preview and live Dev Q&A at 3 PM Eastern; add it to your calendar and check @CyberKnightsRPG for the link to watch. Join us in celebrating all things cyberpunk!

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress

As always, weve included the progress bar infographic to ensure our progress and commitments are clear. With this update, weve completed a few more of the art stretch goals that are between us and alpha. Your support on Kickstarter gave us a significantly expanded art budget to add new character outfits, drones, dogs and even cats! Were getting closer to completing all the art assets required for those even if some of them (such as cybercats) still have significant game dev needs to be game-ready. The art team has now completed both the Street Outfit and Military Outfit stretch goals and they are looking awesome, as shown below. All four of them offer a lot of new versatility to the outfit options. We hope you like the look of the street berserks and the career mercenary outfits.



The new Corp Outfits are still in their high poly phases but will be heading to be prepped for the game and textured soon.

We know a schedule slip is never something any backer wants to hear. We appreciate your patience and we will keep marching to our commitment to make this amazing game for you!