Development Update 03/21/14 news - Miscreated

It's been a few weeks now since our last update, so it's time to bring everyone up to date with the game's status and progress. First some business related stuff, then some actual game updates at the end:

CryEngine 3.5

As mentioned a couple of months back, we decided to upgrade to the new version of the CryEngine FreeSDK. The older 3.4 based version we were using was no longer being updated by Crytek, so we decided to migrate to it sooner rather than later. In the long run, moving to 3.5 is the correct thing to do, but it caused us a lot of extra work because we had to re-implement a lot of the features (pretty much all of them) that we had added to the 3.4 version over the last year. Most of that rework has now been completed and only a few of the features are left to be implemented. Graphically, 3.5 also makes the game look better than the older 3.4 version did, so that's an added bonus.

Alpha Release Date

We were targeting to release the alpha version of the game in April, but that won't be happening now, and here's the main reason why: We are dependent on Crytek making custom builds of FreeSDK releases for us, so that we can distribute our version of the game launcher to everyone (like we did to the pre-alpha testers using 3.4), but they haven't been able to provide one yet for the 3.5 version. In addition, as some of you may have heard from the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) press releases, Crytek is changing the licensing structure of their SDK and those won't be finalized until around May they say. As a result, we are resetting the expected month to June, but we'll need to see how things are developing as that time approaches. We apologize, but this is one of those things completely outside of our ability to control.

Development Blog Updates

Because the release date is being pushed out, we will again start releasing more frequent development blog updates like we were doing previously - hopefully every two weeks or so.

Steam Early Access

We will be submitting the game to the Steam Early Access program soon (right now we're just in the concepts area), so when that happens we'd love for everyone to go vote for the game so we can push it through the process quickly. Anyone that has already purchased the game will also receive a Steam key that they will be able to redeem for the game.

Now, for some fun game stuff!

Animations and MoCap

The 3.5 version of CryEngine fundamentally changed a lot of the way the animation system worked. As a result, all of the custom animations we made previously had to be remade again, however, the new animation system is a lot better to work with (once we figured out how it worked) and is already allowing us to do things that would have been a lot harder to do in 3.4. As an example, you can now pick up, carry, throw, drop any item in the world and see it in your hands when holding it. We are also experimenting with a motion capture solution, so we're very excited about that. As we make progress in MoCap, we'll definitely keep everyone updated on it.

Main Player Character

Our new main player character has been made and is fully functional and working in the game. We will be releasing some images of him over the next few weeks as soon as we do a little more tweaking on his textures. He is looking VERY good and I think everyone will be quite impressed.

Player Clothing

As part of the work on the main character, a system was designed to allow the player to find clothing and items in the world and to wear those to alter his look - like most typical RPG style games. That system has been fully implemented and is working beautifully. We don't have a lot of clothes made yet, but we're working on adding more as fast as we can. Right now a player can find the following articles of clothing to wear: hats, glasses, masks, shirts, gloves, pants, shoes, and jackets. There are also other attachment points, and features, we'll disclose in the future that will allow even more customizablity. The clothing system will allow players to greatly alter their appearance - beyond what other existing survival games are doing today.

Freelook System

For those of you that have played Arma-based games before, you're probably already very familiar with a freelook style system - where you can look in a direction that is different from the direction your player is heading. We have now implemented a similar system into Miscreated. It's working very well currently, but there are still some adjustments we want to make to it. Once our player character is ready to be shown, then we'll release of video of the freelook working.

Persistent World

One of the main issues we had with the pre-alpha versions that testers were playing was related to items being stored and retrieved from backpacks, tents, and vehicles in the world. In our new version we completely re-implemented the entire inventory system so that all persistent items work correctly now. It's also greatly improved on the efficiency side, so that players could store hundreds or thousands of items around the world inside of containers with no performance degradation.

Storage Objects

In our older 3.4 version, only backpacks could store items inside of them. In our current version we now have the ability for any item to be able to store items inside of it, if we wanted. We can have clothes store items, boxes store items, pouches store items, weapons store items, all sorts of fun and interesting stuff.

I've included a few images below for you to look at. We'll release more images and videos soon.

More pictures are available at Media section!