Development Plan for Public Demo 2

Hi!

Here's an development/production plan in a chronological order towards the Public Demo 2 which is the main milestone this year.

1. Loot Challenge Catch-up

The first task is catching-up with that loot challenge (2 new items per week) since I'm few items behind because I wanted to focus on this Public Demo 1 v2 update. Public Demo 2 will have actually loot, loot tables and gameplay loop, so this loot challenge (+100 items) is needed for this purpose.

2. Item Context Menus + Item Usage

Once I'm back on track with that loot challenge, I will implement a context menu system for inventory items, so you can use/examine/drop items from a dropdown menu by pressing right mouse button. This then allows you to consume food items, use medical items and so on.

3. Medical System v1

I will be making the first iteration of the medical system pretty soon and this will focus on healing and having the first set of medical conditions which are going to be starvation, dehydration, bleeding, fracture and hypothermia. These will be linked to the character stats and each one will have minor / major properties to them that will also affect your vitals.

4. Ammo System v1

In Public Demo 2, there will be an ammo system in place which will be similar like in Stalker. The first iteration works through your inventory and you can collect ammo boxes (different caliber) and those will be automatically stacked in your inventory. Once you have compatible ammo it will show on your weapon UI (ammo slot) and then you can fire the weapon. Since this update will narrow down the use of different weapons, because you have to find the actully ammo boxes and some ammo will be quite hard to find, I will make a separate "Sandbox" option/mode in the main menu where you can test all the weapons and there will be all kinds of ammo available. The main Public Demo 2 gameplay will no longer provide all guns and ammo to you, you have to find those yourself.

5. Shelter System v1

This one is a must-have for Public Demo 2 and there will one main shelter in Area 05 which will act as you base. You will have an option to storage items here and save your progress. The only way you lose this progress is if you die in Vostok. I'm still iterating on this shelter idea since there's multiple elements that are linked to this and some are also lore related but in anycase there will first shelter in Public Demo 2 and you will also start the demo experience there.

6. Trading System v1

In order to make sure that I have time for everything, I might do a compromise and provide the first trading system through "black market" kind of approach. The actual trading system will be implement through in-game traders but since those are really time consuming, I will provide you a laptop or something in your shelter where you can access the first trader and so on. I think this is totally fine approach since the main goal is to provide that gameplay loop and this way you can still trade and it's fast to develop this approach.

7. AI System v2.

This will be made in multiple stages but the AI needs an upgrade for the Public Demo 2. There will be changes to the AI-sensor, animations, voice acting and the overall AI behavior. One key change is also that I will allow the AI to use multiple different weapons, so there will be different styles of combat that the AI will use (like snipers will remain mostly static on the high-grounds etc.)

8. Bullet Impacts

There will be bunch of new weapons and attachments for Public Demo 2, but I also want to upgrade the weapon experience through different bullet impacts and new visual effects. For example, if you shoot metal surfaces there should be different particles and sounds. This also applies when the AI shoots you, I want that there is this feeling when your getting shot that the bullets actually land near you and this needs those impact sounds and effects.

9. New Maps

I have currently Village, Shipyard and Sea (Transition) mostly ready and I have made about 50% of the Highway map. This means that I have to finish that Highway map, make the first crossing point and after this I will start working on that first Vostok map. This specific Vostok map will be visually quite unique compared to those Area 05 maps, since there will be different terrain textures, nature elements and the overall feeling is going to be different. I have pretty good faith that all of these maps will be made in time.

10. Small Features

Lastly, there are these small features that are not that important in the big pictures but I would assume that there's time to finish these. Here's a list of small features that I'm planning to implement/polish for Public Demo 2:
- Proning
- Swimming
- Fishing
- Breath control (aiming focus)
- Initial weapon stats (weapon UI)
- Lasers 2.0 (for esting purposes mostly)
- Custom keybinds

Now that the Public Demo 1 v2 is out, I will start working on these right away and there will be multiple Patreon Development Builds along the way for you to test those new features.

- Antti (Developer)