DevNotes #1 | First on Steam

Usually, I do my devnotes on Instagram to share my progress with my friends. But lately, I noticed that people I don't know wishlisted the game. Therefore, to let everyone know that the game is still in development, I'll post my devnotes here approximatively one time per month. So here are the latest "big" news since Decembre 2024.

Checking ped pockets 👀

The new feature I've been working on is the ability to check peds pockets content. You are now able to ask a ped to empty their pockets which will force the camera to focus on their hands. And if the ped has some props in its pockets, it'll show them in its hands. Note that a ped can only have a maximum of two props. It can be drugs (weed bag, cocaine bag, a joint, etc) or common objects (wallet, keys). For now, I did not modelize all items models, so I'll let you know in another devnote when It's done. You can ask them to throw them away, or to give them to you. You'll be able to make money by stealing the drugs, but you're exposing yourself to police and the hostility of other drug dealers. It's a first approach in the gameplay but I'm afraid some people will not be able to see correctly the product due to the distance between the camera and the ped's hands. I'll let internal testers let me know of their feeling with this and review it if necessary. For now, I kinda like the vibe that gives the outline shader with its emission color 👀

Retaliation groups 💥

A retaliation group is a group of peds that'll spawn to beat you up. They will appear if you've insulted or treated badly a ped that will seek revenge by calling it's friends. In other words, It'll be able to call some "reinforcements" to kill you. In the screenshot, the group size is very big and it'll be more balanced in the future.

Bystanders Peds 🚶​

I've added bystanders peds where their sole purpose is to give a semblance of life to the map. Their conception is very simple: they spawn at one of the map spawning point, they determine a random destination point, and they walk to their destination point. However, when I launch a session, the streets are empty because they spawn directly in the hidden spawning points of the map, which is not very realistic. So in order to have peds directly in the street, I've added a little tweak by pre-calculating their path (cf: red segments), selecting a random segment of their calculated path (cf yellow bracket) and determine a random position (cf point P) within the segment (cf red segment [ab]) with an interpolation function. Very simple to implement and it gets the job done 👍

Interview Gameplay Reworked 🕹️​​

Before this update, when you were calling peds in the waiting queue to interview them, you were in a sort of "control mode". This mode made your character's body movement disabled. You could only turn the camera around to talk with the peds in the group controlled. I found this state very frustrating, and this went against an aspect of the gameplay that I had in mind where you need to pay attention of your surrounding and react to external threats all the time, even during a conversation with a ped. How can you react to a threat if you can't move ? Thereby, you have now a "working spot" marked with a purple circle on the ground that let you call people in the waiting queue. You'll be able to interact with the waiting queue only if you're in this area, notably to call the next group in the queue. So now, the only time where you can't move is during a dialogue. Otherwise, you'll always be free of your movement. For now, the way it works suits me, but I can probably make it even better thanks to the future testers remarks.

Massive Brawl 🥊​

I was showing the retaliation feature to a friend and I've randomly decided to spawn two big retaliation groups. And since peds can hit accidentally other peds, it'll trigger a feature already coded since a long time where they will start to fight each other. This is exactly what happened in the screenshot where it led to a general brawl. I've noticed some framerate drops during the fight, so I've noted in my backlog that the fighting behavior algorithm needs to be optimized. Also, the peds offensive logic is too low, they spend their time protecting themselves. Thus, I'll be reworking their aggressiveness over the next few days.

See you soon ❤️​