Game Beats
A lethal virus has infected Treasure Island,San Francisco. It is up to Captain Winter, a U.S. Army soldier working with the Center for Epidemic Research and Control (CERC), to stop the mysterious and deadly Pangu Virus from spreading to the mainland. The Cepheus Protocol is an independently developed top-down RTS inspired by XCOM, Company of Heroes, and Parasite Eve.
In Cepheus Protocol, you will make decisions that will force civilians to either rally behind you or attack you outright. How you decide to combat the virus is entirely up to you. You can fire bombs and leave no trace of human life behind or you can try and save everyone at the cost of your squad's safety. The game features a full day and night cycle and will adapt over time to make the Infected more dangerous as the days progress. The Infected will mutate and adapt to the player, creating a challenge at every turn.
You will control fully customizable teams that you will send into the infection zones to do CEDA Missions, help civilians, or just seek out Patient 0 . You will lose men if your arent careful and be forced to train and recruit from your player base. Each solider will be unique to a point with randomly generated traits and skills allowing you to tailor them with specific tactics.
You will have to use all the tools in your arsenal and research the plague to discover its origins. You will use your knowledge to cure it to stop the virus before it causes everything to spiral out of control. You will hunt Patient 0, a unique carrier with special abilities that gets stronger as the days progress. You will be confronting and fighting her over a span of main missions and side objectives riddled across the island.
Turkey Stuffed Update Dev Update #18
State of the Game
Over the week we got further elements relating to the main menu screens, level design interiors and gameplay mechanics integrated. Naturally our development was also slowed a bit by the rush of the holidays as well! We expect things to pick up even more as the team works to construct and get our big end of the year build constructed and everything just starts to come together.
Exciting News! We also formally started recording of the gameplay and SFX script and all VO roles have been cast for the project.
Haley C. McCarthy was cast as Dr. Juliet Wu
Jordan Haro was cast as Male Adrian Winters
Natalie Hitzel was cast for various Misc Roles
We will announce more over the next few blog posts!
Level Designers
Joel worked on the main menu's and collaborated with Clara to get the main menu sequences created. Final character shaders should be in within the next week or so! So say bye bye to those gray boxed characters
Joel also worked on a third main menu, but some of the poses were rather meh, so we requested a few paint-overs for new poses and hes collaborating with Clara to get them finished.
The first missions hospital planning and roof landing for the cutscene were constructed and scripting was done.
Thad worked on his interiors and play tested and ensured his zones were functioning properly. While they build and create their requisition lists.
Thad worked on a basic blockout for the TV Station interior while he waits for final assets to finish his blockout.
Vesa worked on finalization of the bank
Vesa also worked on the skyscraper interiors and getting that fully meshed out
Derek has been having navigation related issues so we did a few pow-wows and get them situated over the past few weeks. Building and getting them situated to ensure areas play as intended.
Concept
Ashley worked with Clara throughout the week doing paint overs of character modeling progress to help guide the progress of her creation.
Jon worked on a few icons that will appear above your units as you play to give feedback to what is affecting your units.
Programming
I worked on the call in's and got the Ammo Drop situated and fully working so you can correctly call supply anywhere on the map via this abilities panel.
Over the last week we also moved away from units have unlimited ammo and adding resources you'll have to manage like the amount of bullets they currently have to make players make more tactical decisions on which engagements they can take and which they should run from.
Derek worked on the building wall system and got that situated with various prototypes and proofs of concepts. Including setting up the zones you are allowed to build inside.
Character Modeling
Fabian finished the holy poly of our last monster type.
Andrew, Robert and Clara pondering some hair meshes and converting them so we could properly use them in the engine. So we started that process and hope to be wrapping the various hair styles up over the next week or so.
Andrew also worked on the base BDU for all males and female and is currently finishing up the morph targets for the differences between male/females.
We brought on a new character modeler Peter, hes currently working on various gameplay armors plus winters main armor type. Hes hoping to have this done over the next day or so and fully textured
John experimented with some hair modeling techniques
Clara did further character modeling adjustments following a few paint-overs by Ashley!
Modeling
Dimitry worked on the boat seen in the main menu scene
He worked with Clara to get a better skin/eye shader working in our game build.
Vlad did the AC130 and got some adjustments passed his way as with some retaining walls for the level designers. Over the week he'll work with Efrain to get all his vehicle textures in the engine as well.
Efrain test further extensive testing of his assets to ensure the collision and all aspects played nicely in combat and general gameplay.
Recruitment
Currently we are seeking talented individuals in the following roles. It should be noted the project is post launch compensation and we are incredibly willing to work with any individuals schedule that might be interested. Feel free to send me an example at with your reel.portfolio and/or website.
- 3DMax Animators
- Prop Modeling
Email : recruitment@halcyonwinds.com
Community Discord Server
We started a Discord! Join it and support the game we're still turning on the lights so it will be more filled in over the next few days!
