Update #19 for Wasteland 2 is a hefty one, including an all-new 5-minute track from Mark Morgan to typify the feel of the southwest, and a long writeup from technical director John Alvarado on the dialog system.<blockquote>Brian has emphasized that Wasteland 2 will put the player in the position of making tough choices that have deep affect on the unfolding story. Every decision comes with some tradeoff—some known, some only to be revealed later. There are so many paths through the adventure that it is likely no two players will have the same experience. This is an apt metaphor for the process of game development. In this update you’ll learn about some of the game systems the engineering team has been developing, and I’ll delve into detail on important decisions we’ve made around our story-scripting and localization systems.
Every game system we build involves making decisions about how to solve a challenge. Thankfully, Unity gives us a big head-start by providing many built-in solutions, saving us the work and reducing the decisions we have to make (in a good way). Using Unity was one big decision we made early on that has paid dividends. But there are still challenges particular to Wasteland 2 that we must overcome, and that means making tough choices that will have consequences for the rest of development and the final product.
As we weigh different approaches to a challenge, we attempt to gaze into the future and discern how the consequences of different decisions will play out with respect to design requirements (known and potential), content pipeline, run-time performance, and development time/cost. Fortunately, our engineering team has decades of experience over dozens of successful projects that help us make most of these decisions with confidence. So far we have made engineering strides on the following systems:
· World Map System
· Movement and Turn-Based Combat System
· Saved Game System
· Character Animation System
· Inventory system
· World State Tracking system
· Story Scripting System
· Localization System
We now have a player-controlled Ranger character moving with animation in a game-level and interacting with NPCs, triggering conversations and changing world states that affect future interactions. This is where we wanted to be at this time and we are right on schedule. Brian stressed to the engineering team the importance of having this ready by the time the writers are finishing up their level designs and story so we can begin implementing, testing and iterating. That priority and the desired iteration process informed some important engineering decisions.</blockquote>
Every game system we build involves making decisions about how to solve a challenge. Thankfully, Unity gives us a big head-start by providing many built-in solutions, saving us the work and reducing the decisions we have to make (in a good way). Using Unity was one big decision we made early on that has paid dividends. But there are still challenges particular to Wasteland 2 that we must overcome, and that means making tough choices that will have consequences for the rest of development and the final product.
As we weigh different approaches to a challenge, we attempt to gaze into the future and discern how the consequences of different decisions will play out with respect to design requirements (known and potential), content pipeline, run-time performance, and development time/cost. Fortunately, our engineering team has decades of experience over dozens of successful projects that help us make most of these decisions with confidence. So far we have made engineering strides on the following systems:
· World Map System
· Movement and Turn-Based Combat System
· Saved Game System
· Character Animation System
· Inventory system
· World State Tracking system
· Story Scripting System
· Localization System
We now have a player-controlled Ranger character moving with animation in a game-level and interacting with NPCs, triggering conversations and changing world states that affect future interactions. This is where we wanted to be at this time and we are right on schedule. Brian stressed to the engineering team the importance of having this ready by the time the writers are finishing up their level designs and story so we can begin implementing, testing and iterating. That priority and the desired iteration process informed some important engineering decisions.</blockquote>
