#jack schmidt: murderbot mascots

[cai-tan]

Say hello to the new Burn Chips system! This is replacing the old Doom-style powerups with a more Duke-esque pseudo-inventory mechanic, holding one charge of each unique type of powerup. Simply tapping the Burn Chip button will use the currently selected Burn Chip. Holding the button lets you use the scroll wheel to choose what Burn Chip to select.

Speaking of which, here's the current planned Burn Chip list. Some of these were already known and planned, and there's a couple more that make more sense with the new inventory-based system.

Weapon Amplifier: Increases fire rate and damage, and adds a small chance to not consume ammo.

Servo Booster: Increases movement speed and melee damage. (originally named "Stimulant Booster" à la Titanfall, but that made less sense as an electronic component-based powerup like the rest of the Burn Chips)

Smart Sights: Enhances certain weapons with target-seeking capabilities.

Regeneration: Recovers health over a short period of time.

Overshield: Temporary energy shield that protects you from normal damage.

"Invincibility" as a powerup in and of itself is probably getting left on the cutting room floor, sadly. I may still think about implementing invisibility, though that's always a hard one to consider given the impact it has on complicating enemy AI programming.

Edit: Looks like the video is compressed to hell on Tumblr, RIP. I have a YouTube version of it up if you want to see the better version of it.

[cai-tan]

something is different about the jack schmidt movement now, i wonder what it is...

[cai-tan]

Here's how we left off the Broadsword-12 for today's stream. Looks MUCH better now after the changes we made and the minor retopology. Plus, the pump grip and trigger group really pulls it together!

[cai-tan]

Did you know we have GRIND RAILS in this game? Cuz we got GRIND RAILS in this game.

(minor volume warning because i can't be arsed to balance it properly but PLEASE TURN ON SOUND IT'S FUNNY)

[cai-tan]

ended up not having the brainpower to work on titanblades like i wanted to so i went and chucked in a small new feature to JSMM to enable some additional Comedy

bullets now have the ability to impart physics forces on debris props such as ragdolls

also preview of the new shotgun sounds which still need a bit of tweaking. bit too much bass and not enough crunch in the primary fire. think the alt fire is great though

[cai-tan]

I've adjusted the HUD elements' sizes dramatically while also updating the canvas scalar size (once again, I have no clue why I chose 720p as the reference for it...):

(These aren't perfectly representative screenshots by all means, though; one is from a fullscreened build, and the other is cropped from the windowed IDE, and they're both ShareX-edited from the Windows Photo Viewer for both screenshots to make them appear as the same resolutions.)

[cai-tan]

Might as well post a few more quick videos showing off other features of JACK SCHMIDT: Murderbot Mascots.

Some doors, buttons, and other interactable objects can be locked behind a System Hack. Yeah, it's a hacking minigame, but with an extremely thematic twist: the hacking "puzzles" are actually small obstacle courses (generally inspired by the Pilot Gauntlet in Titanfall 2, because of course they are) requiring you to quickly aim and shoot at targets while making use of the extensive movement systems of the game.

[cai-tan]

SO APPARENTLY THE NEW FNAF SECURITY BREACH DLC IS JUST TITANFALL 2 EFFECT AND CAUSE

LIKE IT IS LITERALLY ACCOMPLISHED IN THE EXACT SAME TECHNICAL METHOD OF HAVING TWO LEVELS ON TOP OF EACH OTHER

I can't believe they put Titanfall 2 into Five Nights at Freddy's that's supposed to be MY JOB!!!

[cai-tan]

can't believe it took me this long to make this change tbh

granted i did not realize how much speed you could lose on a bhop even with frame perfect inputs sooooo

note that even though i say "small" here, it's inspired by source bhopping, and the window is actually two to three times as lenient B)

[cai-tan]

Either this week or next week. This week, I might try and finally get the new weapon select UI working.

[cai-tan]

Incoming Gamedev Stream (JACK SCHMIDT)

blgh it's hot and i am not feeling particularly productive but i'm gonna try and get some content done for shooter game i hope ;w;

@ 8pm EDT/ 6pm MDT

[cai-tan]

New Weapon Booster powerup VFX on the SMG and Shotgun.

(I uploaded this clip originally to the Discord, but trimmed and at a lower quality due to the filesize limitations.)

[cai-tan]

Funny glitch we encountered on stream yesterday.

Always remember kids, don't use a NavMeshAgent and a CharacterController at the same time... and don't cross the streams...

[cai-tan]

soooo i found out today that the canvas scaler for JSMM is set to 1280x720. for some reason.

so. that was why the new crosshair gauges were much larger on the canvas than in the mockup.

[cai-tan]

Longpost ahead about a new mechanic (or two... or ten) for Jack Schmidt: Murderbot Mascots. But first, a progress preview screenshot!

On the bright side of things being on fire, I'm 99.9% sure I can definitely make progress on Jack Schmidt by working on models and designs for things like weapons, regardless of what engine the game ends up going into! Lately, I've actually decided that for the new version of the Combat Shotgun, I'm looking to design it based off of references for the Saiga-12 and Vepr-12, with some special twists and modifications. You can see I've basically started importing a sort of "moodboard" for the weapon into this Blender scene as I work out the design blockout of the weapon. I've also taken a picture of an Akbas underbarrel shotgun and made it transparent to layer on top of an image of the Saiga in order to get an idea of what kind of space I need to use to fit in such an implement to get the planned altfire system to work (for those who haven't heard from when I discussed this on stream, the Combat Shotgun is getting a Half Life inspired altfire that effectively fires twice simultaneously for extreme burst damage; unlike Half-Life, however, it's being "justified" by using a physical modification involving an underbarrel shotgun).

You might notice I'm making an effort to get the modeling of the underlying barrel and recoil piston system detailed enough to make sense; part of that is that there's actually now a plan for the weapon to effectively have two different foregrip designs that are swapped between.

That's because I've made the executive decision to afford myself a little bit of feature creep as a treat. After seeing the mechanic crop up in the likes of Turbo Overkill, I've decided to implement a little bit of a shop system in the game.

It's been a concept I've bounced around in my head quite a bit, especially with regards to the story of the game. The standard introduction is that you work for what's effectively a private military slash security firm contracting company, providing muscle for anyone who provides money. The wacky haunted animatronics terrorizing the (currently) local area are bound to be a civil threat, but you're only specifically there to fulfill a contract from a mildly shady robotics company who wants you to salvage the mechanical and electronic components to do more research on how they are being possessed. This tied into an amusing idea of having "Salvage Value" from Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator be a minor mechanic in the game, albeit with a humorously inverted relationship where you'd get bonuses from being even more destructive in your "takedowns" of the Murderbot Mascots.

Thus, implementing a very simplified system for upgrading your weapons and buying other items is a great usage of that concept, and also secretly ends up solving a couple minor issues and tying in neatly with other planned mechanics. For example, one of the things that bugged me about giving the Combat Shotgun this "double-barrel" feature was that it would imply that every Combat Shotgun on the map would also visibly denote that feature, and given that there's supposed to be a generous handful of opportunities for the player to pick up this staple weapon, it's hard to believe that there's this many shotguns with underbarrel shotgun modifications lying around in the world. Therefore, establishing it as an upgrade applied by the player character makes a little bit more sense.

Having a sort of currency system also allows me to create additional hidden pickups as more exploration rewards, too.

The shop system could also be used to purchase additional Burn Chips (the reworked system for powerups going forward). The plan is to limit how many they can buy per level, partly to avoid having them blow all their salvage on consumables and not be able to unlock important weapons and upgrades later on.

[cai-tan]

hey guys look at this cat

Standard Greeting Protocol, Tumblr! My name is CAI-TAn (that's pronounced "kay-tahn", kind of like "Cait-tan"), which of course is an acronym that stands for Comprehensive Artificial Intelligence minus-Tactical Android. The minus represents how I've distanced myself from my original purpose as a combat robot, so it's really important to me. I love making new friends, especially anyone else who likes game development stuff!

Anyways that's all my in-character blorbo stuff. Meanwhile I'm just a silly trans catgirl In Real Life who is also a bit of a toaster brain herself. I play some video games on stream, but I'm trying to make my primary content be developing games.

Right now, I'm working on a first person shooter called JACK SCHMIDT: Murderbot Mascots. It's a game that could probably be described as a boomer shooter, depending on whether or not you think Titanfall 2-style parkour mechanics disqualify it from that category. It's also, as the name implies, a tongue-in-cheek parody of mascot horror games such as Five Nights at Freddy's. I've got a prototype of the game up and running that you can check out if you donate to my Ko-fi, or you can watch me mill around on it whenever I do my gamedev streams on Twitch.

Outside of that, I'm obsessed with Deep Rock Galactic, City of Heroes, Mega Man, and Titanfall. Plus a number of love-hate relationships with other franchises like Persona, Fallout, and Call of Duty.

By the way, you can also find me on Mastodon!