New Location: The Habitat

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/648410/view/3321981593815354469

New location: The Habitat
After a three-month delay, the Habitat is finally ready to be released. It's an important milestone that adds one of the most important and biggest locations to the game and marks the end of chapter 2. As of right now, 60% of the content is done.

In the Habitat you finally get to meet the three main factions (the Brotherhood of Liberty, Church of the Elect, and Protectors of the Mission) and see what they're all about, meet the faction party members who'll join one once you're ready to proceed to the ECLSS, and learn more about the machine you found in the Armory. Unlike the Pit, the Habitat is more about diplomacy (read scheming and plotting) and setting up the playing board for future branching.

While the current stage's content is done (you'll return to the Habitat once you're ready to deliver the machine, which will unlock new quests), we'll continue improving the visuals, adding minor conversations and expanding the existing ones throughout the development, so it will be an ongoing project. Anything you wish to see there (I assume you know by now what we can and cannot do), let us know.

The delay forced us to re-evaluate the remaining workload and update the 'roadmap':

End of Jul - ECLSS and the maintenance deck
End of Oct - The Pit (chapter 3 content)
End of Dec - Heart (the mutant town)
End of Feb - Hydroponics (Yellow and Red Zones), Mission Control (lower levels)
End of Apr - The Armory (level 3), Bridge and the end of chapter 3, all locations are done.
End of Jun - Endgame (chapter 4)

It's a safe schedule that gives plenty of time to each item. The only new locations on the list are the ECLSS, the mutant town (smaller than the Pit), and the Bridge. The other locations will be using the existing assets (and already animated creatures).

We apologize for the delay, of the Habitat and the final release. We did our best and worked non-stop since Christmas. We hope you'll like the end result and look forward to your feedback.

 

[Pink Eye]

Vault Dweller Elhoim Congratulations on overcoming this monumental feat! Woo!

 

[Pink Eye]

DarkUnderlord Infinitron I'm not seeing this thread in GRPG.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

DarkUnderlord Infinitron I'm not seeing this thread in GRPG.

Threads located in subforums no longer are displayed in their main forum, meaning that all of the threads in GRPG-developer subforums no longer show up in the main GRPG section. Ironically, this is how things used to be, and there were many complaints when it changed.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Threads located in subforums no longer are displayed in their main forum, meaning that all of the threads in GRPG-developer subforums no longer show up in the main GRPG section. Ironically, this is how things used to be, and there were many complaints when it changed.

And now it's fixed.

 

[Pink Eye]

Nice!

 

[Jaedar]

Nice. I was just finished doing playthroughs of this game anyway, so I might check out the new content right away.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

60% of content? I thought you wanted to release the game until the end of current year. Or will it be the next one?

 

[Daedalos]

60% of content? I thought you wanted to release the game until the end of current year. Or will it be the next one?

You have a plan, and then sometimes reality and life happens. 1 more year in development sounds right for me, to really flesh out and polish the game.

Iron Tower is in no way at all in a hurry, and shouldn't be. Remember, a rushed game is bad forever, a delayed game is eventually perfect. You only get first impressions once.

Personally, thers plenty of 2023 games coming out pre-summer, so it's not like the wait-time is gonna kill everybody. When it gets released, we will be blessed with such a great experience.

Godspeed to the team and to everybody <3

 

[jackofshadows]

60% of content? I thought you wanted to release the game until the end of current year. Or will it be the next one?

Did you not see the new schedule literally in the OP? The delay mostly have to do with a crew member passing away and the current R-U conflict.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

60% of content? I thought you wanted to release the game until the end of current year. Or will it be the next one?

Did you not see the new schedule literally in the OP? The delay mostly have to do with a crew member passing away and the current R-U conflict.

How exactly "current R-U conflict." can influence the Canadian-based indie gamedev studio?

 

[Maxie]

60% of content? I thought you wanted to release the game until the end of current year. Or will it be the next one?

Did you not see the new schedule literally in the OP? The delay mostly have to do with a crew member passing away and the current R-U conflict.

How exactly "current R-U conflict." can influence the Canadian-based indie gamedev studio?

vault dweller hires sketchy srus ppl coz they're cheaper and can work 18h a day

 

[jackofshadows]

How exactly "current R-U conflict." can influence the Canadian-based indie gamedev studio?

As far as I know, only VD himself work from Canada, then there're two key members from South America and there're various contractors from Ukraine/somewhere else.

 

[Jaedar]

So I think I mostly finished the Habitat (I talked to all 3 leaders)

Feedback: I am not a huge fan. The maps for the three factions are all super huge but with almost no content (there's what, 1 sidequest per faction, and the main quest to talk to the leader?), and the main habitat map is also needlessly big with no real content. Each faction also having one medic shop and one gunshop feels a bit copy pasted.

But I think the real issue is that the quests and encounters felt a bit railroaded, and I think part of it is that the main intent was to introduce the factions and their ideas... except each of the 3 factions is horrible, and I really felt the lack of an option to just decide to go home and blow up the armory device. The protectors are a cartoonish fascist group, the brotherhood seems to modeled after soviet russia and the church are crazy zealots. It just feels like: here's 3 dystopias with no real redeeming qualities, which one do you want to have win?

The teleportation design of AoD is also rearing its head again, after being basically absent from chapter 1. Maybe make it so that once the player is authorized to go meet with faction leaders/apartments you teleport to their room after interactiong with the door, instead of the guard?

Admittedly I took the speech way out of most encounters (which is usually the least fun, but it frequently felt like the only good solution. Makes sense that speechs skills would shine in the 'civilized' areas of the ship I guess), which is probably souring me a bit on the content.

 

[Elhoim]

So I think I mostly finished the Habitat (I talked to all 3 leaders)

Feedback: I am not a huge fan. The maps for the three factions are all super huge but with almost no content (there's what, 1 sidequest per faction, and the main quest to talk to the leader?), and the main habitat map is also needlessly big with no real content.

There are a bit more, not sure if you missed any. There's the "main quest" for each faction (Storm, Prophet, Spy), Sheffield's/Eden quest that you get from Hanson, which interacts with Abraham's, Silas quest to get info about Matheson or assault Junction 14, several sidequests (Eviction, Whatley, Menzel, Troublemakers, Bounties). The brotherhood has a few extra stores. In any case, this is similar to the first release of the factory, we are going to keep adding content now that the base is complete.

The teleportation design of AoD is also rearing its head again, after being basically absent from chapter 1. Maybe make it so that once the player is authorized to go meet with faction leaders/apartments you teleport to their room after interactiong with the door, instead of the guard?

I don't really think that's the case. The "AoD teleportation" was locking you into an unrelated dialogue and moving you elsewhere (for example, talking with Neleos, he say to go meet Linos, the only option is "Go see Linos", which starts Linos conversation in a completely different place, which then when it finished moved you to a completely different place). BTW, it was that way in the first demo, we then added the option to leave and walk there by yourself, but that first impression got so stuck that it's brought up again and again at the slightest hint of it.

In that example you, the door or the guard are just the same (click to change maps), with the guard having a bit more flavor. To enter the main government building it makes sense to talk to the security guard to let you in instead of just waltzing in. I understand you may feel different, but it was a call made for generating the idea that you are entering the seat of power of the faction.

 

[Ibn Sina]

It is very sparse at the moment with little to do. The pit despite being a much smaller "backwater town" had much more things to do and quests and activities like stealing, etc. Hope it gets fleshed out.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I think age of decadence suffered from this issue as well. The first town introduced had a large amount of content, with each subsequent town having less and less things to do, despite that according to in game logic and lore, they are supposed to be bigger.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't really think that's the case. The "AoD teleportation" was locking you into an unrelated dialogue and moving you elsewhere (for example, talking with Neleos, he say to go meet Linos, the only option is "Go see Linos", which starts Linos conversation in a completely different place, which then when it finished moved you to a completely different place). BTW, it was that way in the first demo, we then added the option to leave and walk there by yourself, but that first impression got so stuck that it's brought up again and again at the slightest hint of it.

There's also the security guy, the reaper quest (teleport into computer room, teleport into combat, I'll allow the teleport outside because it comes with a good one liner), the two apartments in brotherhood ville that you teleport into...
Maybe this isn't the canonical aod teleportation issue, so I guess I'll restate it as: I think there was too many teleports, especially for areas where a lot of effort clearly went into the environments. It doesn't break the game or anything, just makes it feel less like a city and more like a series of vignettes. I like the random citizen you can talk to in each district to get a feel for what it's like on ground level.

In that example you, the door or the guard are just the same (click to change maps), with the guard having a bit more flavor. To enter the main government building it makes sense to talk to the security guard to let you in instead of just waltzing in.

Perhaps, but then they leave you unguarded in the room with the leader of the faction, and let you go back out at your leisure. So It's not really great flavor.

Eviction

This is the encounter in brotherhood residence where you open a door and get thrown into it right? If so it seems more like an event and not a quest to me, but maybe I took the fast way out. Either way, not much sense in quibbling over category.

Bounties

If there's a bounty to collect in the habitat I missed it for sure. I know there's an area in church residence (behind 3 guards) that I haven't explored.

It is very sparse at the moment with little to do. The pit despite being a much smaller "backwater town" had much more things to do and quests and activities like stealing, etc. Hope it gets fleshed out.

In a way it makes sense. The habitat has actual law and order, so there's less need for a hired gun to get stuff done.

I think age of decadence suffered from this issue as well. The first town introduced had a large amount of content, with each subsequent town having less and less things to do, despite that according to in game logic and lore, they are supposed to be bigger.

I think Maadoran had more content than Teron, but I agree that the final town felt like it was lacking a bit in terms of sidequests.

 

[Pink Eye]

but then they leave you unguarded in the room with the leader of the faction

Not really. Church leader has several guards stationed within the throne. Brotherhood leader has killer robots guarding him. Only one without any guards is Silas but it's to be assumed Cobra is hanging there - the reason being that she magically teleports when he calls for her.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I agree that all 3 factions are portrayed in different shades of cartoonish evil. During development, the devs spoke of each faction to have different compelling narrative that might make the player consider joining them. What we got is different shades of pitch black evil.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It is very sparse at the moment with little to do. The pit despite being a much smaller "backwater town" had much more things to do and quests and activities like stealing, etc. Hope it gets fleshed out.

First, it will; second, in comparison the Habitat has 89 dialogue files, the Pit has 64, but the Habitat's size dwarfs it. Same goes for Maadoran and Ganezzar (more content, yet many players felt that Teron had way more).

I agree that all 3 factions are portrayed in different shades of cartoonish evil. During development, the devs spoke of each faction to have different compelling narrative that might make the player consider joining them. What we got is different shades of pitch black evil.

Would you describe the Nazi Germany or the USSR or the Puritans/Crusades as cartoonish evil? Or the US adventures in the middle east? May I recommend Albion's Seed or Imperial Life in the Emerald City?

Albion's Seed:

Spoiler

1. Sir Harry Vane, who was “briefly governor of Massachusetts at the age of 24”, “was so rigorous in his Puritanism that he believed only the thrice-born to be truly saved”.
2. The great seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company “featured an Indian with arms beckoning, and five English words flowing from his mouth: ‘Come over and help us'”
3. Northern New Jersey was settled by Puritans who named their town after the “New Ark Of The Covenant” – modern Newark.
4. Massachusetts clergy were very powerful; Fischer records the story of a traveller asking a man “Are you the parson who serves here?” only to be corrected “I am, sir, the parson who rules here.”
5. The Puritans tried to import African slaves, but they all died of the cold.
6. In 1639, Massachusetts declared a “Day Of Humiliation” to condemn “novelties, oppression, atheism, excesse, superfluity, idleness, contempt of authority, and trouble in other parts to be remembered”
7. The average family size in Waltham, Massachusetts in the 1730s was 9.7 children.
8. Everyone was compelled by law to live in families. Town officials would search the town for single people and, if found, order them to join a family; if they refused, they were sent to jail.
9. 98% of adult Puritan men were married, compared to only 73% of adult Englishmen in general. Women were under special pressure to marry, and a Puritan proverb said that “women dying maids lead apes in Hell”.
10. 90% of Puritan names were taken from the Bible. Some Puritans took pride in their learning by giving their children obscure Biblical names they would expect nobody else to have heard of, like Mahershalalhasbaz. Others chose random Biblical terms that might not have technically been intended as names; “the son of Bostonian Samuel Pond was named Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin Pond”. Still others chose Biblical words completely at random and named their children things like Maybe or Notwithstanding.
11. Puritan parents traditionally would send children away to be raised with other families, and raise those families’ children in turn, in the hopes that the lack of familiarity would make the child behave better.
12. In 1692, 25% of women over age 45 in Essex County were accused of witchcraft.
13. Massachusetts passed the first law mandating universal public education, which was called The Old Deluder Satan Law in honor of its preamble, which began “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures…”
14. Massachusetts cuisine was based around “meat and vegetables submerged in plain water and boiled relentlessly without seasonings of any kind”.
15. Along with the famous scarlet A for adultery, Puritans could be forced to wear a B for blasphemy, C for counterfeiting, D for drunkenness, and so on.
16. Wasting time in Massachusetts was literally a criminal offense, listed in the law code, and several people were in fact prosecuted for it.
17. This wasn’t even the nadir of weird hard-to-enforce Massachusetts laws. Another law just said “If any man shall exceed the bounds of moderation, we shall punish him severely”.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of Massachusetts Puritanism: “The underlying foundation of life in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered mehalncholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune.” And indeed, everything was dour, strict, oppressive, and very religious. A typical Massachusetts week would begin in the church, which doubled as the town meeting hall. There were no decorations except a giant staring eye on the pulpit to remind churchgoers that God was watching them. Townspeople would stand up before their and declare their shame and misdeeds, sometimes being forced to literally crawl before the other worshippers begging for forgiveness. Then the minister would give two two-hour sermons back to back. The entire affair would take up to six hours, and the church was unheated (for some reason they stored all their gunpowder there, so no one was allowed to light a fire), and this was Massachusetts, and it was colder in those days than it is now, so that during winter some people would literally lose fingers to frostbite (Fischer: “It was a point of honor for the minister never to shorten a sermon merely because his audience was frozen”). Everyone would stand there with their guns (they were legally required to bring guns, in case Indians attacked during the sermon) and hear about how they were going to Hell, all while the giant staring eye looked at them.

So life as a Puritan was pretty terrible. On the other hand, their society was impressively well-ordered. Teenage pregnancy rates were the lowest in the Western world and in some areas literally zero. Murder rates were half those in other American colonies. There was remarkably low income inequality – “the top 10% of wealthholders held only 20%-30% of taxable property”, compared to 75% today and similar numbers in other 17th-century civilizations. The poor (at least the poor native to a given town) were treated with charity and respect – “in Salem, one man was ordered to be set by the heels in the stocks for being uncharitable to a poor man in distress”. Government was conducted through town meetings in which everyone had a say. Women had more equality than in most parts of the world, and domestic abuse was punished brutally. The educational system was top-notch – “by most empirical tests of intellectual eminence, New England led all other parts of British America from the 17th to the early 20th century”.

In some ways the Puritans seem to have taken the classic dystopian bargain – give up all freedom and individuality and art, and you can have a perfect society without crime or violence or inequality. Fischer ends each of his chapters with a discussion of how the society thought of liberty, and the Puritans unsurprisingly thought of liberty as “ordered liberty” – the freedom of everything to tend to its correct place and stay there. They thought of it as a freedom from disruption – apparently FDR stole some of his “freedom from fear” stuff from early Puritan documents. They were extremely not in favor of the sort of liberty that meant that, for example, there wouldn’t be laws against wasting time. That was going too far.

^ is this cartoonish evil too?

 

[Sòren]

the efforts of two leaders to make peace in an environment where everyone around them wishes to keep the conflict going is actually the opposite of evil.

 

[Jaedar]

Ganezzar (more content, yet many players felt that Teron had way more)

I can believe that Ganezzar has more content when you factor in all the mutually exclusive stuff going on. But at least to me it has always felt like Ganezzar had two quests (power armor and one other simple combat quest iirc) + talking to the prospector for main quest (more of an errand than a quest) + lategame faction stuff. Meanwhile Teron has the intro, faction stuff, Militiades, getting in to the palace, and then a bunch of smaller events like the muggers, squatters, preacher and probably some more I'm forgetting about.

Ganezzar has more attached locations though, since Teron iirc only has the mine.

Been a while since I played AoD though.

the efforts of two leaders to make peace in an environment where everyone around them wishes to keep the conflict going is actually the opposite of evil.

Yeah, but the fact that one of them gets assassinated by his head of security and the other betrayed by their friend makes it seem that they're good in spite of the factions they lead. The conditions in brotherhood/protector residential sectors makes the container favelas in the pit look good. I guess the church sector doesn't look that bad as long as you like religious fanaticism.

 

[Sòren]

the church is the worst faction, since it wishes to pour more oil on fire for its own advantage.

if u believe in their ideals, u might also believe that the end justifies the means however.

 

[Pink Eye]

It's kind of hard to label the factions "evil" when the society is a result of being trapped on a ship, destined to die without a say on the matter. The various factions are all reactions towards that greater theme. Protectors value staying true to the Mission, after all, this sacrifice has to be worth something. So they see anyone as going against the Mission as a betrayal to the sacrifice they've all had to endure. Brotherhood is a reaction to the suffocating authority imposed by the greater Ship Authority; which made daily living punishing and unfun. The Church is the only one that so far, at least in the past, tried to keep away from the violence. Which ultimately failed since sermons and prayers ain't gonna stop the bullets. So they're now preparing for armed conflict while buying time by keeping the Brotherhood and Protectors at war with each other..