Things are moving along

Characters, Customization, Weapons

Things are moving along pretty nicely lately, though everything is still taking longer than we would like. Kris is working really hard on making sure one of the cornerstones of Ground Branch, the character and weapon customization, has a rock solid foundation to build on. This has proven more challenging than originally anticipated, but we think its finally working to our standards. It isn’t currently pretty…. but she’s got it where it counts! 😉

As I mentioned before, we will be releasing what we are calling the Ground Branch Tech Preview soon. This will be a small slice of Ground Branch to give people a general idea of where we are going with the project, though there is no gameplay specifically. The purpose is to give people a small taste of what to expect from the project as well as give us a platform to gather valuable feedback on crashes, system specs, performance and general stability of the project. The Tech Preview will not cost anything and we encourage people to pass it around, share, do videos, post screenshot and whatever else they want to to help promote the project.

The next step after that is to move to Early Access on Steam. We want to make sure that the game is as rock solid and polished as can be at that time. To do so, we have decided to make some things available for purchase to help fund our drive to Early Access and beyond.

Ground Branch Operator Edition

The Ground Branch OPERATOR EDITION is a way for people to help financially support our efforts very early on as well as provide valuable feedback through testing and using weekly development builds.

What you get:

» Immediate access to Pre Early Access development builds to help us design the game around your valuable early feedback

» A private forum area to discuss the game and ideas with other OPERATOR EDITION users and the game’s developers

» An Early Access Steam key when available

» Forum badge showing that you are a Ground Branch OPERATOR EDITION supporter

» The initial full release of Ground Branch on steam when available

» A Ground Branch T-Shirt

» Plus a special in game aesthetic upgrade item!

Ground Branch T-Shirt

For those that just want to look good, we will be selling the official Ground Branch T-Shirt:

We really do hope to have all this available very soon and will most certainly make announcements when it is. We are working very hard to make this happen. Not much longer now……

Q&A and development image

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We recently had a new forum member ask some good questions about Ground Branch that I thought would be good to bring more attention to.

1. AI. What can we expect from AI performance? will friendly character’s instinctively dig corners, pick up security, not run in front of your muzzle, follow directions ect. And will the enemy act more like a live role player? Run and hide, spray and pray around corners, be distracted, investigate noise ect.

AI is still a bit out, but Epic is doing some really nice things with their built in AI solution. Its not just bots anymore.

We certainly plan to have our AI react as humanly possible given our resources and time though.

2. Weapons. Im assuming the selection will replicate a highly funded and completely supported special missions unit like the SOG, but what about the
details? examples, a BAD lever making your reloads quicker (because they do) suppresors NOT making “damage” lower (because they dont) sub sonic ammo making the report quieter but reducing velocity and perhaps accuracy at certain ranges ect.

We are not setting out to make a huge arsenal of weapons. Modders will take care of that for sure. We will have a pretty standard set covering Pistol/SubMachineGun/AssaultRifle/Shotgun/LightMachineGun/Sniper/Explosive

We don’t plan on including any “active” reload situations or random fouling sorts of things. Yes, that stuff does happen in real life, but we feel its just an annoyance in a a game and just frustrates people for no reason. Attachments will have actual impact on the weapons/ammo as well. They won’t be just for show.

3. Breaching. Please tell me work is going to one of the most vital areas in a direct action game. Will there be different charges to choose from and have the appropriate effect? Will it be an option giving tactical leverage to the assault force, or just an amenity to add to the look which apparently RS siege has done.

We are planning on having extensive breaching capabilities for doorway entry…. including breaching shotguns, charges, kicking and other. We have even prototyped a way to allow players to block doorways from being breached. Not sure if that will make it in or not.

What we probably won’t have much of is arbitrary wall breaching and things like that. That isn’t an area we have the resources to tackle.

4. mission planning. Will we be able to plan the assault? and if so how detailed?

Mission Planning is up in the air at the moment. For CoOp, the plan is to have a pre-mission planning phase where live players can work out their “x’s and o’s” together, but planning for SP a’la Rainbow Six may be out of the scope of GB for now.

5. Sound. Different sounds for shooting indoors and outside? a small thing but would make a noticeable difference to the authentic feel im sure you would agree.

I’m not sure if we will have the budget to record different sounds, but we definitely have environmental settings that process sound based on indoor/outdoor. It all depends on how much funding we can get.

6. Tactics. Goes along with AI but is there a realistic approach or a “user friendly” action oriented approach. A better way to word this I guess would be. Are you going to feel like your conducting an actual raid, or just run and gunning at a slower pace becasue you go down in one hit? I hope that question makes sense

I guess that’s up to you and how you play I think. Ground Branch is not designed as a run ‘n gun game simply by the shoot/move mechanics and the way weapons work. We aren’t a sim though so we strive to make things as streamlined as possible. We don’t want you thinking about controls and key combos during play.

7. Maps. I think I already know assuming, but are we going to see some diversity. This is representing a unit that has no operational area, because its on a global scale. Can we expect to see this in the maps we play? As well as the likely CQB settings of houses, offices, industrial areas, schools and public places?

Yes there will be plenty of diversity. There will be locations all over the world…. think R6 in this respect.

And now some art.

We have a few art assets that has been around for a while, so I thought it a good time to start updating some things. Ground Branch will have frag, smoke and flashbang grenades…. even with various colors of smoke.

A small request with a big return

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As some of you know, one of my good friends Tom (our very own MONOLITH on the forums) is a very good writer. He has taken upon himself to do what he can to help our soldiers that are deployed away from home. Tom has started a project called Words For Warriors to send free books to those service members.

Please take a moment and help Tom out if you can.

http://www.tomreinhart.com/words-for-warriors/

Welcome to 2015

Characters, Customization, Gameplay, Level Design, Programming, Website

If you are still with us, and why wouldn’t you be…. welcome to 2015 with BlackFoot Studios! We have a feeling its going to be a really great year around here so we hope you keep hanging on and enjoy the ride. It’s going to start gaining some speed here soon. 😉

John starting working on the official Ground Branch Steam store page today! That is actually a pretty important milestone as it signals the start of moving into more of a public phase for Ground Branch. On that note, we are looking for some professional (either actual experience or work quality) to help out on the graphics side of things for the page. It’s going to be important to start off with a professional appearance so I’d like to do it right. If you think you would be able to help for reduced rates or even barter a bit, let us know as soon as you can.

We have also got around to setting up a public bug tracker so people can help out by submitting bugs once the demos are available. That is getting tested out by a private group as I type this.

On the game side of things Kris has been busting ass with getting things stable and features more completely implemented. He has also got the first pass of character and weapon configurations in and working. This includes the in game UI and saving/loading out actual constructed configs.

On the art side the existing training maps have received one more pass for visuals and some more detailing work. John has also started working on the main demo map that will be used to show off various gameplay features to get people interested in the upcoming Early Access. Sort of a ‘try before you buy’ for the Early Access. It’s a reworked version of the warehouse map that was shown in the UE3 screenshots and videos. We will use this map as a “proving ground” for gameplay types and features throughout development.

So we hope everyone had a great holiday and safe New Year. It’s time to get back to work!

John & Kris

New look!

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As you can see we have overhauled the site to be a little more streamlined. As we start to move into the next phase of the life of Ground Branch we thought it appropriate to give everything a “fresh coat of paint”. We will begin to update the content in the near future as well.

We would like to thank our contributor Zoog for all his hard work!

– John & Kris

Things are moving along

Ground Branch Operator Edition

What you get:

Ground Branch T-Shirt

Q&A and development image

A small request with a big return

Welcome to 2015

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