[NightFright]

More IF is never a bad thing. One of the rare cases for which I'd still place a pre-order.

[Sanek]

My guess is that this expansion pack is going to be what The Birth episode is to Duke3D, i.e. use all the content that didn't make it to the original game as well as having something that's made from scratch. Either way I'm excited!

[Truck Stop Santa Claus]

the bike will be great for user maps

[Master O]

Sanek, on 07 September 2020 - 04:13 AM, said:

My guess is that this expansion pack is going to be what The Birth episode is to Duke3D, i.e. use all the content that didn't make it to the original game as well as having something that's made from scratch. Either way I'm excited!

Does that mean IF's expansion pack's opening cutscene will be just as infamous as The Birth's?

[Micky C]

I am a bit surprised that IF didn’t have a vehicle sequence in the core campaign. It’s inclusion would have dissipated some criticism that the game was too vanilla or playing it too safe. The bike level in the DNF 2013 expansion was easily one of the most memorable experiences in the whole mod.

[NightFright]

DNF 2013 = IF 2021. Especially regarding vehicle usage.

[Truck Stop Santa Claus]

that isn't a bad thing

[NightFright]

Never said it was. IF rocks. Even more so with vehicles, hopefully.

[oasiz]

Micky C, on 08 September 2020 - 04:08 AM, said:

I am a bit surprised that IF didn’t have a vehicle sequence in the core campaign. It’s inclusion would have dissipated some criticism that the game was too vanilla or playing it too safe. The bike level in the DNF 2013 expansion was easily one of the most memorable experiences in the whole mod.

Yeah, it actually had something like this planned VERY early on but was scrapped before any work was done.

Just some trivia:
A lot of the decision in Fury and such was caused by the fact that the game's scope was very limited at first.
It was initially requested as 4-5 map, almost throwaway title, with art being converted assets and renders from bombshell (the "main game" as it was), sounds etc.. with heavier ties to bombshell's story. The alien you see is a test from that game.
The project was to be completed in roughly a year at most.
Overall progression was similar but the visuals and complexity were much more toned down and had a bit less of the signature visual identity it's known for.
It's not secret that the first screencaps were practically bullshots and around the corner you would see just devtextures :)

While we worked, we were kind of left on our own with gaps in the project that were never truly filled.
It took us around 2016 to realise that we need to finish the project on our own.
Our stubbornness eventually landed us with people filling those missing roles (i.e. musician, sound, modeller, vp intro logos, etc..) all by different guys we handled ourselves.
Naturally our standards couldn't let some quick conversions and such exist so we ended up doing everything from scratch basically.

1.5 years of work was kind of condensed and bits picked out to form the preview campaign to get at least something out and this was worked on hard for about a year.
During this period we finally got our vertical slice of the game and the feel for things and around spring 2017 we had our first external guys beta test the game.

It was ultimately the extremely good feedback and reception that finally pushed us to finish the title, we at one point even threw around ideas of just selling the preview as standalone lower priced thing but the ready product finally made us see the light ;)
After that we moved back to our stuff from 2016 and polished the heck out of those for 1.5 years (while backporting preview segments to main game) and that's what you have.

Fyi, this is not too far off from what the first testers got to play:

[MrFlibble]

Cool, LameFury, are you guys gonna release it? I mean 3D Realms released LameDuke right? You missed the first anniversary though but still not that far off.

[Jimmy]

oasiz, on 08 September 2020 - 12:36 PM, said:

It took us around 2016 to realise that we need to finish the project on our own.
Our stubbornness eventually landed us with people filling those missing roles (i.e. musician, sound, modeller, vp intro logos, etc..) all by different guys we handled ourselves.
Naturally our standards couldn't let some quick conversions and such exist so we ended up doing everything from scratch basically.

Sam Hyde has the greatest advice on this sort of thing that everyone should take heed, that I will summarize because not everyone will get/care for his video style: If you want to finish a project in timely manner with a good level of quality, you need to outsource portions of the project to other people. Not only that, but to reduce "crunch time" it helps to have people taking care of other responsibilities in your life while you focus on the project. All grunt work prevents you from being creative because all of your energy is being spent on labor, whether physical or mental. Just because you're capable of doing the entire workload yourself, doesn't make it the greatest use of your time. This is especially crucial advice if you're someone who has to work on a project as a hobby and you still have a day job. If you're spending all your free time cleaning the gutters, cutting the lawn, mopping, washing clothes, that's time you could have spent being productive on the project.

In a separate video he has companion advice to this concept, where if you get really good at one thing, you can become the grunt worker for someone else and create a pretty lucrative career basically being your own boss. If your skill is useful enough, you can work very little for someone else for quite a lot of money, therefore being able to spend more money and time on your projects.

[BattleWalrus]

Yeah, that advice is gold pretty much. (Your version, not Hyde's. Not clicking that shit). Saved my life too. Being somewhat autistic and a loner I naturally gravitated towards self reliance; partly out of fear, partly out of arrogance. Unless you're a literal genius, though, it's a recipe for 5-7 year development cycles in basically any field.

"Not only that, but to reduce "crunch time" it helps to have people taking care of other responsibilities in your life while you focus on the project." - People seriously underestimate the importance of this. I couldn't focus on anything I really wanted to do until I had someone paying my bills for a while (had a rich ex). Soul crushing jobs are soul crushing.

Work smart, not hard. I mean, Killpixel said his wife basically let him make his game before he got contracted by 3DR. Creative people need a lot of support, it's just a shame we don't have actual patronage anymore.

[Jimmy]

Always click Sam Hyde links fam :) Anyway, I know what you mean about self-reliance and all that stuff. I've basically been working on the same Duke3D project, with probably 4 clean slate starts, for 12 years now. In the past I tended to get lost in the details of anything, but as I've grown older I've really learned the value of planning things. (It's also easier to outsource if you know exactly what needs to be done ahead of time.) Hendricks helped me learn this quite a bit when our separate projects merged for some time. He was much more organized than I was at that time, ultimately it didn't get finished for a multitude of mostly external reasons. Good learning experience though. Right now I'm deep into the planning stages of this project, phase one is pretty much completely planned, and pre-production mini-projects will commence as soon as I rebuild my PC. We'll see if I can finish it for once.

[oasiz]

It's a very valid advice, delegation and leading is the most important thing in a successful team project. Usually if you're in a bigger setup as a leader, you kinda failed in your task if you need to start doing actual work.
Your efforts should be focused on the bigger picture, delegating roles and making sure that production doesn't stop. These all tend to fall apart if you have no process or plan. It's like telling a group of chefs to cook something but not handing out a recipe. Talent, guesswork and skill can still save the dish but that's not very efficient. I'm talking about things in general and not necessarily referring to Fury here :)

Anyway, when I refer to stubbornness, I was merely referring to the fact that despite things looking extremely grim for the fate of the project multiple times, we didn't give up.
We got very lucky to get VERY right persons to fill in the roles, i.e. I sort of knew Roz's stuff (musician) from before and I met him at a demoparty around late 2016, super drunk and I was showing some map from the full game to a friend of mine and chatted "Wish we had tracker music" and Roz conveniently started shoulder surfing and offered to make some, which was a surprise since the game looked kinda shit back then ;)
It's harder to get good stuff when you're on shoestring budget, you want the talent but you also want to give something back.
2016-2017 was kind of a transition point, once we had some segments of the preview together with first drafts of the ingame music (genesize in final) and sounds, things kind of started to come together finally. Our stubbornness was kind of rewarded as things finally progressed from development hell towards a viable product. Things were in limbo so many times that it was hard to really even get anyone because you always had a fear that things would go to waste. Had it not been for the positive reception and hype after working on the game in secret for years, I think it could've been a shorter journey.

[Aleks]

It's quite interesting to read about all the struggles during the development process, as they are seen from the insider's point of view. It's great that you guys didn't give up and actually went for the quality instead of fast pushing it out, as the game certainly looked and felt like something made out of passion and not just an another "product". Had great fun with the original game last year, looking forward to the expansion!

[NightFright]

Thank God this turned out to be a lot more than just a 5-map project. Imagining the game already finishing after the mech fight... the horror!

[oasiz]

maps were basically "gdf - city - "highrise" (heavy on nakatomi plaza always) - train complex - rural/mansion - labs" -- Preview was chopped from these.
Mech was built for the preview :)

[MrFlibble]

oasiz, on 08 September 2020 - 12:36 PM, said:

After that we moved back to our stuff from 2016 and polished the heck out of those for 1.5 years (while backporting preview segments to main game) and that's what you have.

oasiz, on 09 September 2020 - 01:32 AM, said:

maps were basically "gdf - city - "highrise" (heavy on nakatomi plaza always) - train complex - rural/mansion - labs" -- Preview was chopped from these.
Mech was built for the preview :)

Interesting, so you mean that while the preview was built from segments of existing levels (as shown in the full game -- although they flow very organically into a single whole in the preview), they got refined and then the full version maps were updated with those?

I'd rather expect the full version maps to diverge from the versions that were incorporated into the preview, being polished in their own ways in the meantime.

BTW, I have to reiterate my question, any plans on making the preview into a free public demo? It would be a great way to introduce new players to the game, and possibly expand the audience.

I had a conversation in another forum a few days ago which made me (attempt to) look at Ion Fury from the standpoint of someone who has never played any of the Build engine games before. It's likely that some players might indeed be confused by the scale and non-linearity of the first levels, possibly to the point of not liking the experience, as it has apparently happened to the person that I talked to. I know it's a kind of sink-or-swim learning experience for the newcomers (including any sort of "tutorial" would probably amount to disgrace no matter how you do it), but it seems to me that the preview levels have a more intuitive flow to them while not overwhelming the player with loads of visual information from the start.

[Hawke]

Excellent, I was hoping we'd see more Ion Fury.

[oasiz]

MrFlibble, on 10 September 2020 - 04:22 AM, said:

Interesting, so you mean that while the preview was built from segments of existing levels (as shown in the full game -- although they flow very organically into a single whole in the preview), they got refined and then the full version maps were updated with those?

I'd rather expect the full version maps to diverge from the versions that were incorporated into the preview, being polished in their own ways in the meantime.

Yes, levels existed however they received a TON of work during preview's development. Segments were ~50% done generally. A bunch of preview specific stuff existed to connect areas together.
Naturally these "100%" versions got backported to full game's maps and worked on more. i.e. office segments had Heskel branding originally, for preview it was changed to GDF and it was changed back again since.
Some times areas specifically done for preview got also repurposed like the escalators leading to the secret level.
So maps were: Full -> Preview -> Full

As for level flow, preview was about cramming a ton of different stuff in a shorter thing so it was a bit more condensed due to that (every .map was practically different author).
Based on lots of feedback, it ranges from "getting confused" to "just right" for many new players, even for preview.
Preview will have a differet flow since the scenery and style can change every 15-25min compared to doing things per-zone.

There are no plans to release a demo as they are quite obsolete in this day and age. 20+ years ago it made sense when it was a matter of downloading 10MB rather than streaming hundreds of MB worth of video on a slower connection.

Here are some pics from z3a2, using the version that preview was based on to give some idea :)
You can see that the escape elevator already was planned at this point, shape of the exterior would change a bit and the water puddle stuff you see in z3a1 is still there (not a courtyard yet).
There is a reason why the three elevators exist where they are ;)
(trashbags, funny things are just changed picnums during dev)

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[jkas789]

Jimmy, on 08 September 2020 - 01:50 PM, said:

Sam Hyde has the greatest advice on this sort of thing that everyone should take heed

I don't even know who this guy is and I already hate him just by hearing him talk. But yeah it was good advice.

It's interesting to see what could have been of Ion Fury. I wonder if we would ever get a behind the scenes of the story proposals from when Ion Fury was not a prequel of Bombshell and used assets from bombshell. Also, apparently there were reused assets from another game (Fate). What's the story behind that?

On another note and touching a little on the demo thing. It would be nice and although Steam refund may make this mute, refunding a game takes time to appear again on the person's account. In countries with high income this may not be much of a problem but in poor countries like say Latin america as a whole, Demos are still very appreciated. Also live streams are debatable because seeing a game is only one part of the equation. You don't buy a car just because it looks nice after all.

[oasiz]

Fateguy was just temporary art since those matched the texture dpi we wanted to go for (plus full directional frames were being experimented but scrapped).
You can see early renders for the cultist in some frames.

Fury has always been a prequel. Story itself hasn't changed much, it just had some other fluff planned like radio comms from GDF.
There is a dialog.con in the game that you can open to see our dialogue system that was cut before preview.
Keep in mind that any text here is basically lorem ipsum and mostly just whatever the mapper had in mind, not story that would have been in the game as-is.

Steam refunds do have some penalties so that people don't abuse it.
I know it's less easy on poorer countries but those also have slashed prices to offset it.
Anyway, it's true that we don't offer a road to play the game in any way without buying it.
I don't see any change to that due to reasons mentioned on my previous post.



----- POSTS ABOUT ION FURY DEMO DISCUSSION HAVE BEEN SPLIT ----
https://forums.duke4...ge__pid__348872

[Hank]

PC Gamers is looking forward to Ion Fury, the sequel.
https://www.pcgamer....uffer_pcgamerfb
Pure FPS comfort food. … But most notably we can see a fast-moving section featured in the trailer where Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison is either driving a vehicle, or moving strapped to some kind of rocket sled—which would be an entirely new type of level. … Evan Lahti

Voidpoint wrote
https://twitter.com/...245951796404225

[Master O]

Hank, on 13 September 2020 - 06:32 PM, said:

PC Gamers is looking forward to Ion Fury, the sequel.
https://www.pcgamer....uffer_pcgamerfb
Pure FPS comfort food. … But most notably we can see a fast-moving section featured in the trailer where Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison is either driving a vehicle, or moving strapped to some kind of rocket sled—which would be an entirely new type of level. … Evan Lahti

Voidpoint wrote
https://twitter.com/...245951796404225

Is the rocket sled named "Rosebud"? :)

[MrFlibble]

Where can I get the full level credits list?

[oasiz]

This is a quite condensed list (as third person). Reality is that everybody contributed some way or another to each other's maps.
For example z3a5 was primarily done by Fox but Methy expanded things quite a bit and oasiz did the arena fight

Lead level design oasiz (Feedback & Planning & Effect consultation & polishing)

Main author
zone 1 & 2 davox
zone 3 oasiz (z3a5 by fox)
zone 4 daedolon
zone 5 started by vitaliy, expanded and finished by methy
zone 6 started by vitaliy, expanded and finished by methy
zone 7 oasiz
qoth - davox (map) and modified & rigged as a new game mode by oasiz and mblackwell
Original preview: davox | davox & oasiz | vitaliy | daedolon | davox --- With a polish pass by oasiz

Additional level design work:
oasiz - probably every map in the game in some form, from minor changes to bigger changes, set pieces, effects, prototypes, etc.. z4a1 train skybox, jukebox, slam game to rigging ambient sounds & consistency related things to name a few.
methy - additional work on z1-2 and 4 during the final stretch, polishing up like adding sounds, enemy patrols, effects, etc.. Lot of help with wrapping things up.
davox - Some designs, i.e. the flying ship's visual shape was his work
fox - Various architechtural designs like all of the vehicles to other "prefab props" and most importantly the skyboxes you see in z1-3

Honorary mention to artem who also contributed on some very early z5 stuff (Plus earlier takes on z5)

Some mention to Cage as he also contributed some ready prefabs done from art assets.

[MrFlibble]

oasiz, on 14 September 2020 - 05:59 AM, said:

Additional level design work:
oasiz - probably every map in the game in some form

When I asked about the mapper credits I realised that I also had another question in mind about the workflow, and this probably answers it. Was this part of your involvement akin to that of a copy editor in publishing? Is there a title for such a role in the gaming industry? ("map/level editor" usually refers to the programme used for creating levels, not to the person who checks and polishes the work of individual mappers)

On a different note, am I the only one who thought there might be a secret here? (Abandonment Issues)
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The wall has a slightly different tint compared to the other sections, and it is even slightly depressed compared to the adjacent panel, as shown on the second shot.

But it seems that there is no secret there, I even had to watch a video to make sure because I had two secrets undiscovered. (Generally I try to find secrets on my own but sometimes it becomes really frustrating, with the levels being this large.)

[Aleks]

MrFlibble, on 14 September 2020 - 07:20 AM, said:

On a different note, am I the only one who thought there might be a secret here? (Abandonment Issues)

The wall has a slightly different tint compared to the other sections, and it is even slightly depressed compared to the adjacent panel, as shown on the second shot.

But it seems that there is no secret there, I even had to watch a video to make sure because I had two secrets undiscovered. (Generally I try to find secrets on my own but sometimes it becomes really frustrating, with the levels being this large.)

It seems the shadows on the right side of the screen are made with black, transluscent sprites, which explains why they have a slightly different tone than the shadow on the left side of the wall (and also why there is a very small gap between them and the wall, as they have to be ornamented on the wall).

[oasiz]

What Aleks said.
At one point in dev we had to lift these slightly off the wall since polymost would mess up it's Z sorting (this was fixed later but maybe a bit too late for some maps).
Some times the shade value isn't exactly the same in polymost and software so it's likely an oversight here. (Distance to wall/sprite also matters)

--

I don't know about roles for professional setting, we're honestly just using sort of using a modder approach when we do things.
Difference is that if you're sick of staring at something and want to start a new map, you can't.

Each one of us initially had a map and in the end everybody did at least 4 maps in one way or another.
My title and stuff was something mostly on paper since I ended up doing a lot more than just the institute stuff (remember, the project started quite small), kept maintaining our mapster scripts and other minor things like documentation and todo stuff to some degree. Some times it was about organizing meetings or coordinating things. In a more professional setup I think the scope would generally be a bit more narrow since I did other stuff as well (early betas actually had me doing temp VO for Shelly and Heskel)

When we went along with the preview, I kind of coordinated the initial draft and merges for that and sort of just expanded from there to polishing. Edits would be like say a button could be static and I could change it to emit a single use spark and some smoke or things like flipping levers so that when a lever is facing up, the door is up (like the first lever you see on that preview video was flipped later on). Some times adding the blowing walls to any mapper placed fire extinquishers. Usually I ended up doing really weird shit with the effects that resulted in concepts that got added in to the game later on in some way or another.

Playlist of various videos that I've linked on discord as well, keep in mind that most are just silly prototypes that never got even considered for inclusion, just mostly inspiration of "what could be done". Just like with the old Build porn thread, I kinda just wanted to see how far things could be pushed with more control over things and none of us really knew how well the game would turn out. Final game has many effects that nobody else on the team even wants to touch as a result (It's not pretty).

During preview I also kinda started chasing and bugging people with bright green mspaint markers on screenshots, layout / interconnection suggestions and other changes plus other discussion.
Kinda just got excited as I love to work with layouts and such, zone3 kind of occupies all the space and has all sorts of weird BS tunnels and vents going around since I just enjoy when there is a nice "all is connected" feel that I can't explain.
It kind of just happened on it's own and people seemed fine with it. For the full game I resumed this coordination role but my own maps kept me quite busy as well (plus the scale was bigger) so it was quite a bit of juggling as I moved to saudi around late 2018 and that took some getting used to. It was just doing a lot of stuff in the end.
This is not to say that I had to really fix other mappers work or anything as they do excellent work and easily surpass mine in areas, it was more about getting more cool shit in and perhaps spot any inconsistencies and to help with filling any gaps.

[MetHy]

oasiz, on 14 September 2020 - 05:59 AM, said:

Honorary mention to artem who also contributed on some very early z5 stuff (Plus earlier takes on z5)

I believe he made quite a bit of z5a1 that ended up in the final game, the railtracks area near the start + the warehouse area + hospital corridor and lobby + early versions of the two outdoor areas (near the start and after the lobby). Though all of that was altered and expanded the original ideas and style were there. In order to get a good idea of the before/after one could look at very early development screenshots that were shared on social media, there is at least one screenshot of each of the early versions of the two outdoor areas I mentionned (I'm thinking of the screenshot with the waterfall and the one with the red truck in the background specifically) and maybe more.

oasiz, on 14 September 2020 - 05:59 AM, said:

methy - additional work on z1-2 and 4 during the final stretch, polishing up like adding sounds, enemy patrols, effects, etc.. Lot of help with wrapping things up.

Specifically the bulk of that was help finishing up some rooms in z4a2 and z4a4 like some of the rooms around the giant sprite staircase in z4a4 or in z4a2 the 2nd train platform and the staircase/elevator/corridor area at the end. Though in all those cases the layout/architecture and in some case some texturing were there and I only finished them. There was also some minor shading/texturing in z1 and z2. It should be impossible for anyone to tell what I did specifically, or at least I sure hope so, since the goal was to respect the styles and ideas already present.