Interface now actually completely done

(Categories: Art, Design, Hostile Takeover)

Aaaaaand here’s the final look of the interface:

I redid the stats bars in the upper right display to better fit with the overall style. And I’ve redone the combat mode border to fit the new interface elements. Finally, I made the blood splatters that will appear on the equipped item boxes when your arms are damaged (1-5 blood splatters on each to indicate amount of damage), as well as the splatters on the walk and run buttons when those selections are unavailable due to leg damage. The blood splatters shown here don’t actually match the damage to the player in the screenshot — it’s just to show what they look like.

So I’m now locking the look of the interface, except for any future features that may creep in. The minimap is quite buggy at the moment when the map is rotated and you can’t drag the minimap to examine the game world yet. So that’s next for me to do.

Interface pretty much done

(Categories: Art, Design, Hostile Takeover)

In between moving from our small two room apartment in Copenhagen to a larger and (almost) brand new three room apartment outside of Copenhagen, I’ve had a little time to finish up the interface for Hostile Takeover. Have a look see:

Starting in the upper left corner and going around clockwise, we first have the minimap with a simple outline of buildings and areas color coded green, yellow or red to show how restricted they are. There’s also buttons for rotating the map (and game world view) as well as for toggling on/off whether or not to keep the view centered on the player. You’ll also be able to drag the minimap around to examine the game world.

Next is the combat mode button and then the stats display. From top to button the stats are: Noise, Health and Suspicion. There are two noise bars; one showing the environment/background noise and one showing the noise you’re generating. If your noise level is below the environment’s, NPCs won’t hear you. The health bar is pretty self-explanatory with the character outline showing damage to specific body parts. Finally, the suspicion bar goes from 0 to 100 percent and shows how much attention you’ve drawn to yourself during a mission. That percentage will be deducted from your payout for completing the mission, so 50% suspicion raised during a mission means you’ll only get half pay.

We then have the movement buttons, which from top to bottom are: Kneel, Sneak, Walk and Run. Again, pretty self-explanatory, but damage to your legs will render movement options unselectable. I’m thinking 33% damage will remove run and 66% walk, or something to that effect.

I’m playing around with blood splatters on the buttons to show when an option cannot be selected because of damage. This will also work with damage to your arms. There’ll be blood splatters on the equipped item boxes, aiming will be more difficult and melee attacks will fail more often when your arms are damaged. I’ll slap up a screenshot when I have these blood splatters working properly.

Design ideas

(Categories: Design, Hostile Takeover)

I wanted to write a blog post about some of the design ideas I have for Hostile Takeover. A lot of the stuff I’ve been adding to the engine so far has focused on shooting, which has probably given off the impression that Hostile Takeover will be a very action oriented game. It won’t.

While shooting and melee combat will certainly play a part (you are, after all, an assassin), the game will equally be about avoiding direct confrontations through sneaking, diversions and puzzle solving. And I don’t mean puzzle solving in the sense of sliding around tiles to open a door (watch that end up in the finished game now!), but more in the sense of figuring out how to use your environment to gain access to locked off areas or tricking guards into leaving their post.

For each assassination job, there’s a maximum payout that you can earn for completing it. But the less stealthy you are and the more suspicion you raise in NPCs, the less you’ll get paid. Specifically, there will be a meter that tracks your level of Suspicion. Shooting characters that aren’t your target will raise your Suspicion, as will being spotted in restricted areas. Saying the wrong things to characters may also raise it (you might try telling a receptionist that you have an appointment with your target, but she checks the schedule and figures out that you’re lying).

Furthermore, all weapons will have two Suspicion ratings. One for when the weapon is concealed in your inventory, and one for when you’ve armed yourself with it and is carrying it openly (I imagine the latter will just be double the former). This means that while you could just take along your entire arsenal for a job and shoot everybody, your Suspicion rating will be sky-high and your payout will suffer – giving you less cash for buying more and new equipment for future jobs. Figuring out the least amount of equipment required to successfully complete a job will be key. I also hope that this will provide the game’s missions with some form of replayability in that even though you’ve managed to finish a job, there’s always the possibility that there might be a way to finish it with a smaller amount of Suspicion being generated.

The Hitman series is obviously an inspiration, but I always felt those games (at least the earlier ones – I haven’t played through the later ones) were too cut up into completely separate missions. Sure, there was some semblance of an overarching plot, but that didn’t really come into play in the specific missions all that much. What I want to do is give the game somewhat of an old adventure game feel in that items or information you get from one location or job, or characters you meet earlier in the game, will come into play in later jobs. There might also be multiple jobs for you to chose from at some points, but finishing one before the other may give you certain benefits. It’ll still be somewhat linear, though. I’m not making an RPG with a branching storyline. As cool as that might be, I’ll still want the game finished at some point!

Hopefully this will have given you a better understanding of what the finished game will play like. But, of course, the game is in early development, so everything is still subject to change.