In 1933, a servant of Asaroth, Adolf Hitler has come to realize dangers Jewish nation, and it's esoteric knowledge may bring. It's their knowledge and faith that kept Death Angels and forces of Hell to break through. He portrayed Jews as "subrace" to the Third Reich, and waged a war to exterminate them. With the help of SS and Heinrich Himmler, Germany was to exterminate unwanted nation within few years. But first months of the war shown that Archonts are not going to give up. Afraid of the consequences, Hitler and Himmler ordered a ritual to purify their souls and save them from Purgatory. They didn't need to wait for the results long. In December 1939 Todesritter, a special group of SS, found records about the ritual, and began the preparations. The 'Die Erlösung' ritual was to be carried out in March 1940.
But they needed people. Many people, that were to have Hitler's and Himmler's sins transfered onto them. Prisoners of War on Altmark tanker were perfect. The transfer was to be carried out on February 28th, and the ritual would happen on March 11th.
By the end of January, 1940, British fleet came to realize that Altmark is holding English POWs. In two weeks they localized the boat, and carried out the boarding, saving all their prisoners of war.
Echelon, main Todesritter cargo ship - place where the ritual was being prepared - suddenly was endangered. Hitler ordered the preparation of Wasserübung operation that would recapture the Echelon in case worst has happened. On February 26th Himmler ordered 'Die Erlösung' ritual to be carried out at any cost, using their own "human" resources. Out of 120 people, 40 were to be sacrificed, which meant a revolt. Dietrich von Marienburg, top Todesritter officer gathered 20 of his most trusted men. Orders were simple: imprison about 40 people. In case of any signs of revolt, kill without mercy. In the night, 27th to 28th of February, this operation was carried out. Within an hour they had 45 people imprisoned, and the rest was told that "they were traitors". Everything went great, and the final date, which was to bring salvation to both Hitler and Himmler, was March 20th, 1940.
On March 18th, Echelon went silent...
After a revolt carried out by one of the Todesritter commanders-in-chief, Albert Zoltman, interrupted the preparations. The Illusion was broken, and Echelon was slowly interconnecting with the City of Machines, merging Metropolis and Elisium. Most of the crew died within hours, either killed by soldiers of von Marienburg, or creatures their own fear has summoned. The ship was abandoned quick, and it became a prison for only man alive - Dietrich von Marienburg. For days he fought for life, and even though his protecting glyph saved him from the creatures from outside of Illusion, his sanity was deteriorating. His psychosis was deepening. On April 8th he began his preparation for upcoming meeting with Kriegsmarine. He destroyed most of the traces and documents on Echelon.
The evening was full of surprises though. He came to realize, that he is not the only human alive on the ship...In the game, the player will play with 4 characters at a time. These characters are: Reiner von Dortmund, Heinrich Blitz, Georg Beziehung and Albert Goldmann. All four are always available for player, and each of them has their own set of specialties that may help them survive... for now.I designed the story and the game, to make the playing enjoyable and full of surprises. The whole game happens on Echelon, which is a 4-level Cargo ship. Most of the rooms are available in some way, but not all are opened. Some may require the player to find another way, perhaps through a ventilation shaft. Or even to blow up the door with a bit of dynamite. Also, before the game starts, we set the skills our characters have, so we decide what are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the characters.
Because of the damage Echelon took over past days, the ships damage may increase over time, ex. the pressure may blow the pipe open, and ship will start sinking a bit more.
The characters suffer from amnesia caused by the events that happened on Echelon. During the game, amnesia slowly subsides, revealing more details of what happened. And more of the dark corners of human nature...As I said in the beginning, the engine itself is still on its WIP stage. As the work progresses, the list below will change. Also, quick sidenote - most of the screenshots that will appear here will be in Polish. This is because it's my first language, and I'm developing the game in it, but as soon as polish version is done, I will translate it to English. When creating engine, I try to put all that may need translation in three variables: $DICTIONARY, $DIALOG and $DESCRIPTION, so translating it will be a matter of few days.
What is done?
- Displaying
- Player characters: all 4 characters are on the map, they can be selected and moved.
- Pathfinding: unfortunately, after trying to write A* algorithm and failing, I created a bit worse pathfinding algorithm. But it still works, and gets the characters to desired place about 90% of times.
- Fog of War: With 3 states. Hidden, seen-but-covered and visible. It's based on game grid, so it doesn't look that good now (32x32 squares).
- Dialogs: Dialogs in game are displayed in a large window appearing on the bottom half of screen. Think Baldur's Gate-like.
- HUD: Divided into 3 parts: Left, which displays menu sections (Game, Map, Notes, Inventory, Character, Options), Right which displays the characters, and bottom which is kind of a dialog window, but smaller in size. Again, thing Baldur's Gate-like.
- Basic entity: At the moment entity just is, and clicking on it starts the dialog.
- Time engine. 15s in real life is 1 minute in game. This will set the game time to about 1h 45min before the events at the end of story start happening.
- Location Map: Displays current location scaled down. FOW still works on it, so it won't show us what we didn't see yet.
- Base of Container, Enemy, NPC, Door and Waypoint class
- I changed the controls a little bit. Left mouse click selects/orders the characters, double left click on any character selects all four, double click when nothing is selected de-selects all. This leaves right mouse click for a small action sub-menu (think: Planescape: Torment).
- Game_Player class now assigns a Game_Character, meaning all characters are now actually more than just names - they have their own skills, characteristics, graphics, inventories and so on.
- Skills: Each player has a set of skills that are set at the beginning of the game. These skills are: Pistol, Machine Gun, Rifle, Pick Lock, First Aid, Knowledge, Mechanics. They also have four characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Energy, Intellect.
- Inventory system: Each character starts with 4 slots in their inventory (+weapon slot and bag slot). This can be extended to 20 slots with a bag. One bag is going to be found quickly and easily, two more will be hidden. I haven't yet decided if I'll include 4th bag (so all characters will have 20 slots), but if I will, it definitely will be well hidden. Weight limit (40-49kg, depending on strength) still applies
- Inventory and Character screen.
- Active pause. Lets us pause the game in any moment and think of strategies, give orders etc. when everything is still.
- Particle Engine: both for continuous animation (like fire, smoke, water leaking from pipe) and single animations (explosion, blood shooting out when shot, smoke from gun after shooting).
- Re-designed HUD, it now fits nicely on one (left) side of screen!
- Animated intro (2 short "video clips", one displaying "Powered by Ruby and Gosu", seconds shows my creator's logo), of course it can be skipped
- When player's resolution is the same, or smaller than game resolution (that is 1024x768 or 1366x768), he or she is prompted that window is scaled down and some graphic may look glitchy, and that it is advised to turn on full-screen mode in Settings.
- Some other things, that aren't really worth mentioning at the moment.
Mental states:
In "Character" screen we will sse a triangle, with its three corners pointing to three states: Fatigue, Fear and Paranoia. The more graph goes towards the state, and more red it is, the more given character is influenced by this state. First two decrease our skills, where Paranoia is most dangerous one. On higher level the character may start running, and when it will reach 100% - the character goes through mental breakdown and shots himself.
- Base of Container, Enemy, NPC, Door and Waypoint class
- I changed the controls a little bit. Left mouse click selects/orders the characters, double left click on any character selects all four, double click when nothing is selected de-selects all. This leaves right mouse click for a small action sub-menu (think: Planescape: Torment).
- Game_Player class now assigns a Game_Charater, meaning all characters are now actually more than just names - they have their own skills, characteristics, graphics, inventories and so on.
- Skills: Each player has a set of skills that are set at the beginning of the game. These skills are: Pistol, Machine Gun, Rifle, Pick Lock, First Aid, Knowledge, Mechanics. They also have four characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Energy, Intellect.
- Inventory system: Each character starts with 4 slots in their inventory (+weapon slot and bag slot). This can be extended to 20 slots with a bag. One bag is going to be found quickly and easily, two more will be hidden. I haven't yet decided if I'll include 4th bag (so all characters will have 20 slots), but if I will, it definately will be well hidden. Weight limit (40-49kg, depending on strength) still applies
- Inventory and Character screen.
- Active pause. Lets us pause the game in any moment and think of strategies, give orders etc. when everything is still. - Particle Engine: both for continuous animation (like fire, smoke, water leaking from pipe) and single animations (explosion, blood shooting out when shot, smoke from gun after shooting).
- Re-designed HUD, it now fits nicely on one (left) side of screen!
- Animated intro (2 short "video clips", one displaying "Powered by Ruby and Gosu", seconds shows my creator's logo), of course it can be skipped
- When player's resolution is the same, or smaller than game resolution (that is 1024x768 or 1366x768), he or she is prompted that window is scaled down and some graphic may look glitchy, and that it is advised to turn on full-screen mode in Settings.
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