We were interviewed by One Angry Gamer blog

It’s not often in games that we get to play as bona fide spies. It’s even rarer that we get sandbox games that rely on stealth mechanics and espionage. In fact, the sub-genre is defined mostly by two series, Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid. Well, if things go well for the Kickstarter from Alex Maier and Jason Sams from Shy Snake Games, we could be adding another game to the list of turn-based, stealth-oriented espionage titles.

The name of the game is Spy DNA and it’s currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. The game sees players being put in charge of a squad of super spies, with the leader of the squad being the player’s own created character.

Spy DNA takes place in the not too distant future, and the game will feature more than 20 hours of gameplay with a variety of missions and locations to visit. I had an opportunity to pick the brains of Alex and Jason about their upcoming project, asking about the what makes this turn-based, sandbox, RPG different from other games out there as well as what you can expect from the actual gameplay. You can check out the Q&A below or learn more by checking out the game’s Kickstarter page.

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One Angry Gamer: First up, I think the one thing that stands out the most about the Spy DNA project is the fact that you are a husband and wife team working on the game. Is this your first project together or have you been working on games together previous to Spy DNA?

Alex: This is our first game project together, but not the first time we’ve built something as a team. We work very well together. After seeing the film “Oblivion” our inside joke is that we’re an effective team.

Read the rest of the article on oneangrygamer.net

Kickstarter update 4: Stealth

Update from Jason

It’s been a busy week here at Shy Snake.  We just pushed the update to move Spy DNA to Unreal 4.12.  We were waiting until our demo at AFK was complete so as to not break anything right before it was time to show.

I’ve been 100% focused on AI.  One big part of AI is making the system respect stealth.  In Spy DNA we have a system that gives each character attributes for senses.  These, combined with the characters skills, will determine how likely a character is to detect a player.  

Sound:

Everything a player does can generate a noise.  Some things such as sneaking are quiet, while firing a gun would be loud.  The sounds will dissipate over distance and with obstacles.  The sound strength when it reaches the character is used to make a check against the character's ability to determine if they hear it.  If they do then they may react.  For the players, when your character hears a sound, we add a symbol with an arrow to indicate the direction of the sound. 

Sight:

Sight in Spy DNA serves two purposes.  First is to detect a character.  The second is to evaluate the character.  Being a spy will often place you in locations where you will not be overtly carrying weapons.  This means that in an area mixed with friendlies, enemies, and civilians, an enemy would both have to see you and then decide you are a threat.  This means checks against their ability to spot hidden weapons, provided you don’t have a rocket launcher on your back.  Anything in your inventory that could blow your cover is a risk for detection even if it’s not equipped.  Obviously not having something equipped does make it harder for them to detect it.  This creates an incentive to carry light and concealable weapons on many missions. 

The sight AI includes a cone of vision so the enemies have to look in the correct direction to see you. If they hear a noise they will turn to look, provided they're not doing something more important already. The AI also ranks everything it sees in terms of “potential threat.”  A civilian going about their normal business would register near zero.  One running and screaming would start to move the needle.

Smell:

This isn’t really used to detect enemies, but rather hazards.  Gas leak, smoke, or a specific perfume could all be clues or hazards.  

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Alex has also been busy.  While I have been implementing stealth, she has been working to de-stealth Spy DNA and make sure the fans of thoughtful tactical games know about us.  If you know anyone that would be interested in Spy DNA, please give her a hand in getting the word out.

Kickstarter update 3: Homebrew arcade

Folks, we're currently on Kickstarter, and sharing a lot of our updates there. We'll be also sharing the updates here for your convenience. If you haven't yet, help us by making a pledge, sharing our project on social media, or be daring and do both!

Yesterday we went to demo Spy DNA at the Homebrew Arcade event. The demo day was held at the AFK lounge in downtown San Jose.

We’ve had a great time showing off the progress we’ve made with Spy DNA, and watching people take it for a spin. It’s really exciting to share the project we’ve been working on for over a year with like-minded gamers who enjoy strategy RPGs.

Thank you everyone who stopped by, and special thanks to Terry and Angelo who made it all happen!

Kickstarter update 2: Combat visualization

Folks, we're currently on Kickstarter, and sharing a lot of our updates there. We'll be also sharing the updates here for your convenience. If you haven't yet, help us by making a pledge, sharing our project on social media, or be daring and do both!

It’s been a busy week as we get ready for a live demo at Homebrew Arcade.

We’re focusing on improving the visualization of combat. Now it’s easier to see where the shots are going with trails on the 3D map. We also implemented cover and missed shot handling so it’s been a productive week. Missed shots means if you miss the intended target, we still track the shot in case you hit something else interesting. 

This also reminds me to briefly mention how cover works. We showed in the video how when a target is obscured it is grayed out to make clear what’s in and out of your line of sight. If you fire, and hit the cover, it’s actually treated as armor. So you really want to hide behind something solid. A concrete wall is good cover, a cardboard box, not so much. 

Here is a short video clip showing “missed” shots being used to effect. I forgot to remove the debug logging where I was fixing some hit location code this week so ignore the text on the left.

Next week will be focused on AI.

Combat in Spy DNA

This is Jason with an update on the Spy DNA combat system.  We’ve been making some graphics and demo videos for our Kickstarter pitch, and I thought we should share some of them with you. In today’s post, I’ll start with our new gunsight, that we use for aiming, and then move on to the combat system.

In Spy DNA we have put a lot of thought into making combat feel as real as we can.  One of the areas that’s often disappointing in games is the critically important mechanism you use to attack the enemy. 

Most games assign a character a simple chance to hit, usually modified by range and cover.  We use a full 3D world instead.  To avoid the problems, such as identifying obstacles and cover, when aiming in the  top-down view, we open a gunsight view when you pick a target.  

Single shot firing sequence

The biggest thing we do differently is replace the “chance to hit” with “Circular error probable”.  The rings around your aim point represent the 50%, 90%, and 99% likelihood of your shot landing within those rings. 

You trade off time aiming for more accuracy in your shot.  You can adjust it to try to get the first shot off quickly, or take some time to make sure you hit. You can also adjust the number of shots, burst, or burst length.  

When using automatic fire, burst or full auto, recoil will reduce precision of later shots as recoil adds up.  For single shot and burst your character will re-aim so follow on shots meet the same accuracy requirement you set.

Our damage model is based on your weapon and where you hit the target, not on a random dice roll.  So you will be able to aim for weak spots in the armor or for vital parts of your target.  Cover is handled the same way.  The ability to move the target point around lets you aim for exposed parts of the target. 

Now let’s talk about how our combat system works. We call our system Concurrent Turn-Based.  I’ll explain what this means.  We differ from traditional turn-based games  in some important ways.  

Let me start with what we are trying to accomplish. 

1. The player should have time to think and take in the battlefield and environment.  
2. The moves available to the player should as close as possible mirror the options that  a real-life soldier would have.
3. The results of actions should be be realistic.

After a lot of experimenting we have settled on a system where the game focuses on a character when it is their turn to start their next action.  So while combat is ongoing, the game engine cycles though characters as their turns come up.  In this way it feels like a traditional turn-based game.  There is one very important difference.  While the game is progressing to the next player turn, every character and object in the game moves.  

This was not a decision we took lightly.  We made this decision to avoid the time quantization problem that traditional turn-based games have.  Think of the frustration where near the end of the player turn you move a character and trip one or more enemies.  Now your character (or whole party) just sits there helpless while the enemy takes a turn (or full round) worth of actions.  This is a side effect of games trying to map combat to a mechanism that doesn’t exist on a battlefield.  

In Spy DNA we are trying a more direct simulation of the world.  The character that makes contact would actually have the initiative.  The characters that spots them would make a reaction time roll (based on their attributes and combat experience) to see how fast they can react.  Also because other characters in the player party may be mid-action, such as movement, you could cancel those long actions and give them a new task.

I made a short video where a character ambushes two unaware NPCs.  The action commands I give the game are:

• Throw a grenade
• Draw my pistol
• Crouch
• Aim and shoot to finish off the second target

About three seconds of game time actually elapses in this demo.

Compared to Turn Based games, we have two major differences.  The first is turns in Spy DNA are not uniform in size.  Turns come up as the character completes their previous command.  This means that fast actions such as firing a single shot will result in that character's turn coming up again quickly.  Slow actions such as moving a long distance will mean many other characters are likely to take their turns before coming back to that character. 

The second major difference is the turns progress concurrently, i.e. all at the same time.  So if you give a move order to one character, and a quick attack order to another,  each time the second character attacks you will see the first make some progress on their move order.  In effect, you will see time progress forward for everyone until one of your characters completes all the commands in their queue.

Should a character spot something needing your attention while they completing an command, the game will stop and focus on the character.  This allows you to react to things that come up mid action such as an enemy coming around a corner.  

I hope this gives everyone a feel for the type of gameplay we are trying to deliver.  

Gearing up for Kickstarter

As you may have heard us say once or twice, we’re getting ready for our Kickstarter campaign. Our goal is to launch it in a couple of weeks (so stay tuned!), when all the parts are ready.

What are all the parts?

Well, we’re updating the UI (see Jason’s post), and making the user experience better and clearer overall. We’re improving our game’s fog of war, and of course continuing to work on game levels and artificial intelligence (AI).

Then of course there’s the work on the campaign itself. Before we launch it, we need to define the funding goal so that it’s not too little, not too much, just right. Then there’s the stretch goals, which are things that we would like to include in the final game, but can do without, if we don’t exceed the funding goal by a sufficient amount. There’s some math involved, and also some inspired guesses.

Funding levels and associated rewards packages are also a big deal. We’re trying hard to find things that people will find appealing, and which we can realistically fulfill on schedule. I hope you like what we’ve got in stock for you!

And finally, there’s the Kickstarter video. You all know it, that’s the thing at the top that gives you the project pitch and explains the team’s motivations. We’ve been working on that too. And just like with the other stuff, it’s also not all that simple.

While we know what inspires us, and why we think our game is awesome, we could talk about it for hours. And we did, in front of a camera, actually. And then we had to cut all this footage down to five minutes. Ouch.

At this point, we have a pretty good approximation for what will go into the video, but we’re still finishing some of the demo footage, and looking for ways to make the video a bit snappier still.

So here we are, so close to launching our project on Kickstarter, and here's a little sneak peek for you.

Spy DNA gets a UI update

Jason from Shy Snake here with some screenshots from our UI update. We’ve been working through our UI, going screen by screen, to make it easier on the eye. While doing this, we have kept our focus on presenting information clearly to the player.

First up the attribute screen. This posed a bit of a challenge for us because we have a larger than normal list of attributes. We chose to have many attributes, to give each character a unique feel. For example rather than simply making a “strong” character you can be quick, powerful, or have great stamina.

Each primary attribute has three sub-attributes within it, to give the character extra detail. For the players that don’t want to see this level of information you can simply look at the major groups that give you an overview.

Next up the inventory screen. Here we went with a pretty standard list of icons with numbers to designate stacks of items. Selecting any item will fill the right side with a description of the item.

In this screenshot you can see some details on one of the games weapons. I’m taking this as an opportunity to show the attention to detail we put into the weapons in this game. While the values are not final you can get an idea of what we are building. 

At the bottom of the inventory screen you can see how we track encumbrance. In this case the character is lightly loaded so the effect is minimal. No significant effect on walking speed but a minor one to sprinting. We talked at length about the mechanics in an earlier post but here you can see it in action.

We've worked hard to make these changes, and the work isn't quite done yet. Tell us in the comments what you think of these updates!

Characters and animation

We’re getting ready to go to Kickstarter with our game, to help us raise the money needed for the custom art, animations, and hopefully original music for Spy DNA. This means we’re making a new video to show off the progress we’ve made in the past couple of months.

One important improvement you’ll notice is that we’re using custom characters to replace the placeholders we got from the Unreal Engine asset store.

The cool thing about using custom characters is that we can make them look all different, use different body types, skin and hair colors, and of course different clothing.

Now the challenge with that is that once you stray from the Unreal Store, you need to rig up and animate the characters from scratch.

While we’re working on funding custom motion captures, we’re using some animations we purchased from mo-cap vendors with our characters.
We have (finally!) settled on an animation workflow for the project. We use Autodesk MotionBuilder for working with animations. This allows us to retarget an animation from one character to another. This is important because depending on the source of the character they may have a different skeleton, which makes the animations incompatible. This tool allows us to solve this problem.

Next, we get the animations into our project in Unreal Engine. That done, there is still a lot of work to do. The first step is selecting which animation to play for a character at any given time. At last count we have nearly 1,000 animations captured. Selecting the right one to play at any given time is complex enough we had to abandon the normal UE4 blueprint system and move most of the animation logic to C++. Once the system knows which animation is to be played, it may be necessary to slightly speed up or slow down the playback to match the speed of the specific character. 

It’s at this point that things start to get hard (as if it wasn’t hard enough already, heheh). So now that you have your base animation, you want to adjust it for the environment, so that a character's feet don’t go through the ground or hang in the air. Also you want the character to look and aim in the right direction. For these effects we are evaluating some middleware solutions (HumanIK, Morpheme, and IKinema). These provide tools for improving the interaction between the animation, character model, and the environment. In some cases they can also generate animations on the fly in response to environmental stimulus. A good example would be falling down stairs after dying.

In the process of getting it all to work, we get to watch many animations that look pretty funny. Do you have your favorite animation bloopers from a game you played? Share it with us in the comments.