[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)

Attached File(s)

•  capt0116.png (598.5K)
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•  capt0118.png (641.93K)
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•  capt0119.png (772.93K)
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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)
 capt0007.png (356.96K)
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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.

[Aleks]

All this discussion here made me wanna replay Ion Fury with that knowledge and see if I can spot some actually significant differences in each mapper's style. I played it right when it came like a year ago and haven't really replayed since, so it's all a bit blurry for me right now (had to do some mind gymnastics to actually remember which level was z4a4 for example). Also having refreshed my experience with Mapster after long years of practically not using it, I'll appreciate all these little effects more I suppose (not that I haven't so far - jukebox was actually one of the more memorable details).

BTW, MetHy = MetHunter? I remember long time ago when he didn't touch Build/Mapster at all (but was damn good at dukematches in early DukesterX times) - now that's some suprise he turned pro!

[MrFlibble]

oasiz, on 14 September 2020 - 12:41 PM, said:

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.

I think that's rather close to the role of a publication editor in that it is aimed at making individual parts into a consistent whole.

MetHy, on 15 September 2020 - 12:32 AM, said:

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.

I've had a lot of trouble catching up with the pre-release screenshots, would be nice if they were collected in a single place somewhere because I think some early shots are buried in several threads here, and as for stuff like Twitter I have no idea how to successfully find something there at all.

Aleks, on 15 September 2020 - 02:46 AM, said:

see if I can spot some actually significant differences in each mapper's style

I think the style change from Z1+2 to Z3 is very strongly felt no mater how you play this.

[Aleks]

MrFlibble, on 15 September 2020 - 03:53 AM, said:

I think the style change from Z1+2 to Z3 is very strongly felt no mater how you play this.

The theme was changing a lot during the campaign, but dunno about the style. Actually transition between Z2 and Z3 felt quite smooth to me - in fact now that I think of it, first level of Z2 with military base had a larger style change feeling to me to Z1 levels despite that both are made by Davox. Heskel's house level also seemed strongly different in style than the rest of the game, but that might be due to more unique theme.

In general, I think it's a lot better when the game follows a single, consistent and hardly distinguishable style pattern between many mappers. But I've felt the same for Duke 3D - I could never tell which maps were made by Blum or Levelord without checking and only started noticing their "style" when I've really given it some thought.

[MrFlibble]

Aleks, on 16 September 2020 - 07:09 AM, said:

The theme was changing a lot during the campaign, but dunno about the style. Actually transition between Z2 and Z3 felt quite smooth to me - in fact now that I think of it, first level of Z2 with military base had a larger style change feeling to me to Z1 levels despite that both are made by Davox.

I can only speak for myself, but I had a very strong feeling that Z3 is a lot closer to the Duke3D style of mapping (and consequently, gameplay dynamics) than the previous levels. Also Davox seems to be very fond of secrets where you need to make those directional jumps around corners, as well as of large, sprawling areas.

I've got a couple of general questions about gameplay mechanics. First off, the bowling bomb. In the primary fire mode, if used without any delay, they seem to not home on enemies at all, unlike the preview campaign (IIRC), and only explode on direct contact. If a bomb thrown with a delay, it tracks enemies and will home in on them even around corners when they're not seen by the player. But what does the time of the delay affect? Does it make homing more reliable, or simply affects the distance at which the bomb is thrown, or both?

The second question is about jumping. Here's an area in D.C. Meltdown:
 capt0017.png (231.66K)
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If I simply jump via space I cannot get to the floor above me. But if I jump and then hit crouch -- as if I wanted to land on top of the blue drawers -- I somehow get to the above floor. Is there some kind of (reverse) crouch-jump or something that I'm not aware of? I don't remember having this issue in the preview campaign, IIRC I could jump there without pressing anything expect space. But I'm not sure.

Also I discovered that in Alphabet Soup, it is possible to climb the orange pillars at the entrance, even though I believe the player is not supposed to do that (e.g. D.C. Meltdown has several much less steeply inclined pillars but you can't climb them.
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[jkas789]

MrFlibble, on 21 September 2020 - 08:29 AM, said:

If I simply jump via space I cannot get to the floor above me. But if I jump and then hit crouch -- as if I wanted to land on top of the blue drawers -- I somehow get to the above floor. Is there some kind of (reverse) crouch-jump or something that I'm not aware of? I don't remember having this issue in the preview campaign, IIRC I could jump there without pressing anything expect space. But I'm not sure.

I believe that is a bug that was there from the start and was kept because speedrunners where using it? Also it apparently was buffed. Here is what I have gathered from the Ion Fury channel on the 3D Realms Discord:

• "keep in mind that the height Shelly crouch jumps at is a little higher in later versions of the game than it was early on. When the game first came out, some of those secrets required jumping off chairs or enemies to reach, but crouch jumping was buffed shortly after launch so some secrets are a little easier to get that way now."
  
  
• "fun fact: the height Shelly crouch jumps at was actually changed by accident. I don't know what changes actually caused it but basically collision was really messed up in version 1.02."
  
  
• "the collision glitches were fixed in 1.1 but they kept the height she crouch jumps at, so some jumps are easier to make now than they were in 1.0"
  
  
• In version 1.02, there was a huge problem with sprite collision. You could walk into a sprite and it would do all sorts of crazy things. For example, the wall to your left at the very start of the game would be very glitchy if you walked into it. It was crazy. But 1.1 overhauled the way sprite collision works so they're way more stable now. The downside is that it made some crouch jumps a little harder, but overall, I like the way it feels now the best.

EDIT: I don't know if any of this is actually true, so we will have to wait and see if any of the devs confirms/denies it.

[MrFlibble]

The odd thing is that crouch jumping does not work like I'd expect it -- first crouch, then jump higher (e.g. like the Predator jumps in Aliens versus Predator 2). I wouldn't discover this had I not actually tried to crouch under the ceiling to get atop of the blue drawer.

BTW, also in D.C. Meltdown, that hidden-in-plain-sight secret with the medipack, I can't get ahold of making that jump around the pillar. It takes about half a dozen tries to get it right, as I either don't jump high enough or overjump the green platform and fall off. Am I doing this wrong or is it really that awkward?

We need to start compiling an IF FAQ

[Hank]

I think this is work in progress, for Ion Fury 2 ...

from
https://twitter.com/...482806533140481

[cybdmn]

Hank, on 22 September 2020 - 06:32 PM, said:

I think this is work in progress, for Ion Fury 2 ...

Nope. As you can see in the twitter post its work in progress for Supplice, a Doom megawad in the works for some years now. What it shares with Ion Fury is that textures and sprites are made by Cage.

[Hank]

All I read is Davox’s comments "Ion Fury Artist". Never heard of Supplice.
Oh, well, I ain’t on Twitter nor Discord, to ask them first, my apologies for jumping the gun.

[Player Lin]

cybdmn, on 22 September 2020 - 09:04 PM, said:

Nope. As you can see in the twitter post its work in progress for Supplice, a Doom megawad in the works for some years now. What it shares with Ion Fury is that textures and sprites are made by Cage.

For those who don't know about Supplice. https://forum.zdoom....hp?f=19&t=34856

BTW, Cage said the project will become a standalone game.

[MrFlibble]

Player Lin, on 23 September 2020 - 07:21 AM, said:

BTW, Cage said the project will become a standalone game.

AW YISS

[MrFlibble]

So hidden Easter eggs do not count as secret areas, or did I get this wrong?

Also, where can I find the official names for the enemies?
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I'm kinda missing this sort of feature in the game (yeah I know no Build engine game has it but still).

[oasiz]

Enemy names are something you can ask each dev and get a different answer.

[necroslut]

MrFlibble, on 25 September 2020 - 10:03 AM, said:

I'm kinda missing this sort of feature in the game (yeah I know no Build engine game has it but still).

Ion Maiden at least has the help screen -- that's already more than most these days. I'm constantly baffled by how many indie game ship without any kind of documentation whatsoever, not even a readme.txt.

Some basic documentation really requires so little effort -- much less than a tutorial or hint system -- and can often be more useful. Say if you put a game down for a while and pick it up again six months later, you might have forgotten how to do some moves or even that you can. Replaying the tutorial takes relatively long time, and a lot of times will even overwrite your save and stuff like that, while glancing over a help screen or readme often only takes a couple of seconds.
And that doesn't even cover all the other stuff you can put in there, like system requirements/tech specs, credits, contact information, links, FAQs etc.