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The team recently attended the E-Sports Gaming Summit Indie Arena last October in Manila. You can read about it here, and here. Also, GGNetwork.tv made a review: GG Network.

If you have no idea what the heck is Shots Fired, let Ronnie explain it for you:

Since the GameJolt/Itch.io version in December, this was the first time we've shown the game in public. We have included and excluded various features and somehow customized the demo to be playable on a fast-paced environment expo like ESGS.

Things we added/improved for ESGS build:

• Mission clues! Instead of a picture of the target, the player is now given a set of clues so he can *hopefully* decode the appearance and behavior of his target. These clues may vary from flyers to receipts to phone call logs and IDs.
• NPCs with awesome animations. (Walk, Run, Die)
• NPCs with schedules! NPCs now walk from point A to point B to reach his destination.
• 2 additional maps! Aside from the much improved Park, we added Apartment and Train maps. Also, moving cars and trains.
• Realistic camera movement. (Not really)
• Blood splat! Gore! Yeah!
• 4 playable missions! Mission selection, contracts, and success/fail screens are gorgeous!

We excluded:

• Desktop
• Job Market, Bingo Book, and other Desktop applications
• Mission gains/losses

Why? We decided to not show these features because we really want the players in the expo to experience the puzzle part of the game. We want them to focus on deciphering the clues and aim those little pixel characters and shoot them in the head rather than get lost in a sea full of empty UIs.

Mission Clues

In the Ludum Dare build which is available in Game Jolt and Itch.io, targets are identified by their portrait and a flavor description that doesn't really mean anything. Jim Sterling said it's a Where's Waldo Sniper Game. Well, we kinda changed that.

For every mission, your goal is to eliminate the target. Finding your target is a bit of a challenge. Add that to your poor sniper skills and we have a game. But what if I tell you that your target's identity is now a mystery. That you have to decipher the clues, put it all together, only to find out that your target is a bald guy wearing a fedora hat and sunglasses. You know his name, say it. Say. His. Name.

Some examples we put in the ESGS build are receipts, flyers, twin's ID, call logs, and key cards. These are draggable in the mission contract screen and we're going to make it magnifiable so poor-eyesight people can enjoy them too.

NPC Animations

We have tons of characters and obviously, frame-by-frame animation will not work for us. To save time, we convinced ourselves that we're okay with puppet animation and apply it to every character. We're looking to add more animations overtime, from smoking cigars to multiple idle states and walking patterns.

New Maps

Two new maps are playable in the ESGS build: Apartment and Train Station. Apartment's perspective is set in a side view of the building, and characters can hide in the walls and are only visible when they pass by the window. We also made the rooftop walkable.

Since we're using Unity's NavMesh, the apartment map was pretty hard to setup. NavMesh was designed for 3D navigation so it only support X-Z navigations. Using NavMesh for the Park map was easy because you only have to fake the depth of the objects and let the system do its job. While in the apartment map, we have to fake the camera so it will look like the perspective is from the side.

The train station map works just like the Park map, except it has a train. We're trying to integrate the train itself to the game, where it can load/unload characters.

4 different missions

We introduced 4 different missions in the ESGS build: Another Assassin, Evil Twin, Walang Forever, Say My Name. All four have the same goals, eliminate the target. Though all of these 4 missions are offensive missions, we designed the clues differently for each. In the next blog post, we will highlight how and why did we design those 4 missions that way, including and specially the clues.

Plans moving forward?

We will announce something cool soon but I heard it has something to do with the early bird catches the accessible worm.

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