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Re: Discord Q&A on Friday Feb 22

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:34 am
by Dynamoon
Hi everyone, due to yours truly being down with a cold for a few days, this is a little late...but here is, finally, the summary of our last Q&A. There were so many interesting questions again, thank you! In fact, there were so many questions that this is hardly the ideal format for presenting them – we'll keep working on our Q&A methods, and for now we added a few subheadings:

Hot topics
Locations and lore
Difficulty
Wiring, subs and weaponry
Creatures and characters
Meds and crafting
Other gameplay and world features
Servers, griefing and security
Modding
General


Hot topics

Q: How much money will the game cost on release?

Regalis The current guesstimate is around 15-20 dollars.

Q: Release date?

Regalis I'd still be reluctant to give an exact date (although we have to do that pretty soon), but let's say the Q1 estimate isn't far off – the current release window is spring 2019.

Q: How far along is the testing phase, and also how is your guys day going?

Regalis I think we're progressing pretty nicely, the dev build is starting to be very stable and after the recent networking improvements the multiplayer is much smoother. So we're getting closer to the early access release. Today was quite busy, we spent the whole day recording material for a new trailer!

Q: How much longer will the testing rounds last, and when is the next version coming around? Any specific timeframes?

Regalis The alpha testers are free to keep playing the game and reporting their findings all the way until the Early Access release (and after the release too of course). The next patch for the closed alpha version is coming during the first week of March.

Q: So what new gameplay features are being added and has the AI been improved in the Steam version?

Regalis Too much to list here – yes, the AI has been vastly improved, and ItchyOwl is currently working on improving it further and getting rid of some of the bugs we still haven't squashed.

Q: How far ahead is the Steam release branch from current version?

Regalis It's waaay ahead. We've been working on the Steam release for over a year now, with a team of about a dozen people (compared to the handful of people doing it in their free time before the partnership with FakeFish), so there's a LOT of new stuff. Too much to list here, but you should take a look at the changelog: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Regal ... ngelog.txt :)


Locations and lore

Q: Do you plan on adding a mechanic to actually walk around on the surface or inside of the stations? Some variation from the submarine interior might be nice.

TorpedoMike Yes. Walkable stations are certainly going to be in, and in addition to that, we're planning on having different environments that are supposed to be explored on foot.
Regalis Probably not on the surface, but physical, explorable outposts are going to be implemented during the early access period.

Q: Will the outposts actually feel like people are living inside of them at some point? Restaurants, signs, living spaces, just general in-game worldbuilding outside of text?

TorpedoMike Yes. They will play an important part in the game going forward.

Q: For campaigns, will we also be able to sell, and not just buy items at a later date? (Given the addition of gathering resources at times and limited storage capacity of most submarines)

TorpedoMike Definitely. We’re going to be adding this when we update the outposts.

Q: Are you planning on adding more ruins content past whats already there?

TorpedoMike Absolutely. What we have there in the closed testing is us testing the waters of how much we can do and how you guys react to it. We have another overhaul planned in the future.

Q: Are there any plans on derelict submarines as a potential spawn in maps?

TorpedoMike There have been plans, but nothing definite. I would like this feature, but we’re going to have a few different dungeon-like areas, so I don’t know if this will make it. On the other hand, we have the technology.

Q: How much lore can we expect to discover in the full release of Barotrauma? I love the Coalition v. Renegade deep-space dynamic (and, of course, the alien ruins) and am excited to find out more as time goes on.

Regalis This is still a bit of a question mark, because the story side and what happens in the outposts hasn’t been fully designed yet. There will for sure be more lore, explaining what exactly the Coalition is, how and why people ended up on Europa, what’s the story behind the alien ruins… This will most likely be done in the form of NPC conversations, mission descriptions, some “hints” embedded into the environments (outposts in particular) and so on.

However, I’d still like to keep the lore somewhat vague and open to interpretation. Kind of like how the story is told in Dark Souls: most things aren’t explicitly spelled out to you, but you’ll be able to pick up some clues here and there and gradually piece together what’s going on.

TorpedoMike Regarding alien ruins, we've been toying with this idea of playing archeologist. You would find texts written in strange language that you would have to decipher and there would be a whole subplot of "what happened to the aliens?". They clearly had this big civilization and now there's no sign of them anywhere, except some random trinkets and guardians they left behind.

What makes this exciting is that it's a genuine mystery to everybody at this point. What I know is that we have planned a bigger overhaul of the ruins, probably during early access, so look forward to that!

Q: How is space travel handled in the setting?

Regalis Don't quote me on this, but my current headcanon is that the people on Europa don't have the resources for space travel. They might have some limited contact with Earth, but they're basically trapped on Europa. More details to come once we start expanding the campaign!


Difficulty

Q: When I used to play, hull breeches happened far too easily and flooding was too uncontrollable to save the sub ever, has this been addressed?

Regalis Git gu... I mean, yes the game is difficult and things get out of hand very easily. We've tried to make the difficulty curve a little less steep though, for example hull breaches tend to happen less often now and the leaks are slower than in the old version.
TorpedoMike We're constantly tinkering with the difficulty settings. I believe we had an issue with the walls and molochs specifically, but it should be fixed now. Some of these issues can also be addressed by sub creators.

Q: Any plans on ramping up the difficulty in general and adding more depth to missions? I feel like the game isn't really difficult, at least not enough. [...] I feel like missions can be a bit of a hit and miss at times due to some RNG and monsters not being that hard to avoid.

Regalis The Steam version has an improved, adaptive difficulty system that gives us much more control on the difficulty level (monster spawns and such), and I think it'll be able to provide you a challenge even if you're a more experienced player. We can basically ensure that there are no quiet moments: if there's not much going on, the system can for example dynamically spawn more monsters or cause some devices on board to break.

Q: I'm having trouble introducing my friends to barotrauma, probably because the learning curve is steep and the game seems daunting. An improved tutorial is selv explanitory, but anything else? to what degree can we expect the game to become noob friendly?

Regalis This has been a big challenge to us too, it's not an easy game to get into. The Steam version has a new tutorial that I think is a vast improvement over the old one: you basically start a normal campaign, and a short video pops up at appropriate times to explain how some specific game mechanics work. I'm still not quite happy with the new tutorial either, it's better but it could still use a lot more work. In any case I believe we will go with the approach of "teaching as you go" - you can play the game normally, but when you’re starting out, the game holds your hand a bit and gives you some instructions when you're about to do something you've never done before.


Wiring, subs and weaponry

Q: Wiring is so complex... maybe can it be simplified?

TorpedoMike I think the complexity in wiring allows for some cool things in sub building. It can feel overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard. Also, we're looking to write some guides on how to get started on some (most?) aspects in the game.

Q: Will there be auto-wiring? So you can press a button and it will wire everything up like it'll wire a light at the press of a button?

Regalis A fully automatic system would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to do - how would the system know how you're intending to wire things? But some kind of limited automation would be doable and a very useful addition. At the moment running a wire from an item to another takes a bit too many steps and could definitely be simplified.

Q: Has the reactor management system been changed? How so?

Regalis I feel the reactor system in the old version wasn’t very well designed. The cooling rate was pretty pointless, you could most of the time manage the reactor just by adjusting the fission rate. And the old system simply wasn’t fun.

In the new system there’s a few more things you have to pay attention to, and in general I feel it’s much more fun to operate the reactor. The character’s skills also have a much more significant impact on how the reactor works now: you have to keep the meters inside a “sweet spot” to keep the power output at suitable level, and the size of that sweet spot depends on your mechanical skill.

Q: Is there a way to disable the deteriorating system or slow down the deterioration?

Regalis At the moment no, but we might add it at some point. Although I would much rather try to improve the system so that player's wouldn't want to disable it. I'm well aware that the deterioration is pretty annoying now (we had lots of frustrating moments during today's play session for example), but we have some ideas on how to make it less of a chore.

Q: Is there a speed cap for subs (so u can make a engine stack)?

TorpedoMike I don't think there's a speed cap. Multiple engines will stack.

Q: Any plans to make the subs fully deconstructable and buildable from the ground up during rounds (not using the existing editor) thanks!

Regalis This is something that has been suggested a lot and we've also been discussing it with the team too, and I do think it might be implemented in some shape or form in the future. You probably won't be able to build a sub completely from scratch or have as much freedom as you do in the sub editor, but I would love there to be some ways to expand the sub and modify/upgrade devices, walls and other things that are currently completely static.

Q: Will the submarine editor be changed or improved from the legacy edition?

TorpedoMike There are some improvements made from the legacy version in the current dev and more are planned at some point, like undo/redo, group edit and such.
Regalis As of now it's mostly the same as in the old version, although with a few additions (for example item assemblies, scaling things, WIP undo support). But we will definitely be improving it during the early access period, making it easier to get a hang of and more user-friendly.

Q: Would it be possible to add many various types of railguns and more ammo? Maybe some bigger guns? :wink:

TorpedoMike If I have anything to say, yes. We're planning on having some more variety re: guns and other weapons.

Q: Are you going to add more firearms in the game, like diving shotguns and stuff? Or at least, are you going to make possible creation of firearms by modders, for example, assault rifles, which holds mags, which holds ammo?

Regalis Most likely yes, but I don't think we'll go as far with the firearms as BTE. Guns are fun, but they also add a ton of griefing potential. I also think creating weapons with mags is already possible in the Steam version.

Q: Are there any plans in the works in implement a tether attachment to the harpoon gun that allows it to reel in and tow objects/enemies?

TorpedoMike We have planned some items to help with movement and spelunking, especially when we're exploring on foot. Ropes on harpoons are a high possibility.


Creatures and characters

Q: Is the mud raptor functionally identical to the mantis it replaced, or is its behavior new?

Regalis It’s basically a reskin of the old mantis, although it does still behave quite differently from the old mantis due to all the improvements and additions we’ve done to the monster AIs.

Q: What is the coolest creature currently in the game and why is it the Charybdis?

Regalis To be honest, Charybdis is one of my least favourite monsters in the game. The design is kind of bland and unimaginative (just an upside-down tyrannosa… I mean a big dark fish), and the limitations of the ragdoll/animation system are painfully obvious when it moves.

I really like the Moloch for some reason (especially now after the overhaul done by our artists and ItchyOwl). The design is pretty basic, but somehow it works: I think they look really alien and threatening.

Q: Hey, will there be a Dead Face Sprite for humans and other monsters?

Regalis Damage will probably be visualized on the sprites in some way, but I'm not sure if we'll go with an additional sprite or if it's going to be some sort of a shader/system that renders the damage automatically.

Q: Will other races (for example, synthetics) add in addition to humans?

TorpedoMike Regarding non-human races, we have the question of what the guys that built the ruins look like and what happened to them. If they come back, sure, but to my knowledge, no non-monster races are planned.

Q: Are you gona add different sorts of husks?

Regalis Not a very high-priority feature at the moment, but I believe there will be non-human husks somewhere down the line. It’s kind of strange that this parasite only seems to target humans, so it’d definitely make sense to add huskified variants of the mud raptor, moloch and whatnot.

Q: Will there be an Endworm overhaul and/or another big creature as big as it? What size will the biggest monster be?

TorpedoMike I think there will be an overhaul or a redesign. Or it'll be replaced by something else. Regarding all big creatures, it would be important to design them so that their size isn't the only thing of interest, but we certainly want to add more creatures.

Q: What is your favourite parasite organism idea you guys have? Or do you just like the plain old husk.

TorpedoMike Something that enters the sub through the ballast and starts growing and multiplying there.

Q: Maybe some swarm type monsters?

TorpedoMike Crawlers are known to form swarms lately. I'd like to design some parasites that move in swarms at some point, no promises though.

Q: Are there any plans for more player roles than the currently existing set?

Regalis Making sure all of the current roles are fun to play and always have something worthwhile to do has been quite challenging, and I don’t feel we’ve quite there yet, so at least for the time being we’ll stick with the existing roles. But it’s entirely possible that we’ll add a couple of new roles in the future.


Meds and crafting

Q: In the recent blogpost, Broken legs are mentioned as a possible status effect. Is such an injury instantly curable via medical supplies, or only treatable and left to heal via time? What kind of negatives come with having broken limbs?

Regalis There’s now a damage type called “internal injuries” (which is received from stuff like impacts, some monster attacks, melee weapons and such), and if you receive enough internal injuries to your legs, your character will be slowed down. Internal injuries in any limb can be healed instantly if you have the right medical items.

Q: About the part of internal damage, can it happen that the damage is so severe you can walk or do your job properly and need the atention of a doctor? And even lose a limb?

TorpedoMike Having internal damage on legs severely hinders walking speed. Losing a limb, that is a cool idea. While it would fit the game nicely, it's a potentially huge design and code task (you'd have to consider all the animations, holding and equipping items, targeting, multiplayer sync...), so we can't promise it, though.

Q: Could there be other illnesses related to alien creatures, similar to husk egg infections?

Regalis Definitely! For the time being husk infections are the only “illness” you can get from the aliens, but we’ll most likely add more in the future.

TorpedoMike I wouldn't be surprised if the aliens left something behind in the ruins that severely screws with human minds. There could also be some parasites tagging along at some point, who knows?

Q: Will there be a new type of damage (for example, toxicity as in one unpopular game)?

Regalis We have tons of new damage types (or afflictions as we call them): poisonings, various types of intoxication, overdoses, addictions and more to come

Q: Could husk egg injections be used to revive recently killed crew members, as a horrible mad science experiment?

Regalis This could be an interesting addition, so perhaps at some point!

Q: Regarding the Medical System. Will thinks like "Psychosis" be visible always for the player aswell? In the video you showed that you will for example see fake fires. But then again you also see that you have a psychosis. Wouldnt it be then to easy for the player to ignore the fake fire?

Regalis I’m not quite sure yet whether to hide the psychosis icon from the player or not. I do believe the effects still work even though you know you’re psychotic - you know that you will see fake fires and floods and hear imaginary hull impacts, but you don’t always immediately know which ones are real and which ones are not.

It would be interesting to hide the icon from the player completely, but there’s one reason why I’m not sure if it’s a good idea: to people who know about the psychosis affliction and its effects it wouldn’t make much difference - as soon as they get their first hallucination and realize it’s fake, they’ll know they’re in psychosis. To players who don’t know about the affliction, the effects will just seem like bugs: I can already imagine the bug reports about the fires that wouldn’t go out or the floods that appeared out of nowhere.

Q: Are there any plans in the pipeline to include a wider variety of flora and fauna (seagrasses, corals etc) besides the monsters? Perhaps some harvestable plants that can be used to derive chemicals and what not?

Regalis Already in the Steam version. :) You can harvest all kinds of stuff from the environment and use them as raw materials for crafting.

Q: How advanced do you want to make the med system?

TorpedoMike Probably not as complicated as surgery or anything like that. We're planning on adding complexity to the medic by adding more afflictions and buffs and medicinal items. Maybe something like researching monsters to learn their weaknesses.

Q: Will there be a way to harvest rocks and minerals and more additions to medical features such as surgery?

TorpedoMike Yes, we can harvest minerals from cave walls and use them in crafting. Medic UI has gotten a bit of an overhaul, but no surgery as of yet.

Q: Will the crafting system appear?


TorpedoMike Well, we have almost everything in the game craftable through fabricators. There might be additions at some point to build/add structures to subs during missions.


Other gameplay and world features

Q: When can multiplayer campaign be expected to be released, and how will it work?

Regalis Very soon. It works pretty much the same as the single player campaign - the host or players who've been given special rights decide the missions and destinations and such, and the actual rounds are just a multiplayer version of the singleplayer rounds.

Q: What are the plans for multiplayer campaign persistence? How characters/inventories are carried over or other such?

Regalis Character persistence has been implemented in the dev branch. The server saves all of the characters’ stats and inventories, and you can keep playing with the same character until you die or decide to generate a new character and start from scratch.

Q: Is the traitor system getting an overhaul?


Regalis We were actually planning on giving the traitor system an overhaul last month, but we've been so busy with other stuff that it'll have to be pushed after the early access release. But I do believe the whole traitor mechanic needs a lot more rethinking - I think it has an enormous potential for interesting gameplay and "emergent stories", but the way it's currently implemented causes a lot of problems. I know it's way too easy to get kicked out of a server as a griefer when you're just trying to complete your traitor objective, and easy to have a traitor sink the sub and ruin everyone's round because "they were supposed to do it".

Q: Will you add in-game programming as SE keen did? It would provide more customization and a lot of features!!!

Regalis I’d love to have some sort of an in-game programming/scripting system, and I think it might be possible at some point in the future. We would probably have to make it somewhat limited though, otherwise there’s too much potential for exploits and griefing.

Another (probably much easier) way to implement something similar would be to expand the current wiring/logic system. I’ve been thinking adding some kind of a way to “combine” circuits into a single item, meaning that you’d build or design a circuit out of logic components, and that would become a separate item. That’d allow building very complex circuits and easily reuse and combine them into systems that would be extremely tedious to build at the moment.

Q: Is terrain deformation possible in the engine? if so would you pursue implementing it to add digging-type submarine parts/tools? (I think this would enable a huge array of new mission types: dig a new pathway, dig a way to this ruin to get an artifact...)

TorpedoMike This has been discussed a lot, as have other possibilities of expanding the scope of travel available. If I remember correctly, it's a huge programming task, so we've not pursued it further yet, but maybe later?

Q: Will the drink and food system be added?

Regalis I'm not sure yet, but I haven't been too keen about the idea of a hunger/thirst mechanic. It works better in a more slow-paced game like SS13, but I think the rounds in baro tend to be too short and chaotic to worry about eating. There's also the chance that it'd just become an annoying chore that adds nothing to the gameplay.

Q: Is there any plan for upgraded diving suits (such as swim speed or damage reduction) either bought or created?

Regalis Most likely yes. In general I would love to have more variants of all the tools, equipment and weapons - it would really improve the sense of progression if you could use the money you earn in the campaign to upgrade your gear and devices.

Q: Any additions to the movement/interaction system, like crawling/proning, jumping, grabbing/climbing, carrying (instead of dragging), better way to place items, visual throwing arch, etc.?


TorpedoMike I have been and will be lobbying for more movement options and it seems we're going to get some at some point.

Q: I wanted to know if there will be any upgrade to the player movement, will there be any camera changes like zooming out and in ?

Regalis We've worked a lot on improving the player movement, you'll see how it looks like now very soon when we release the new trailer.

Q: Might there be voice communication ingame?

TorpedoMike Yes, it's in the steam test and dev versions already.
Regalis Yes, there will be in-game voice chat, and it's actually already implemented in the latest dev version.

Q: Does the currently implemented ingame voice system use proximity? Does it incorporate the radio equipment?

Regalis Yes to both, it works pretty much the same way as the text chat (proximity effects, muffling, radios, etc)

Q: Will there be an opportunity to change the frequency in the radio?

Regalis This has been on the github issue tracker as a todo note for like 2 years now, but still haven't gotten around to implementing it... :D The functionality is already there (the headsets do have channels), but there's just no way to change the channel in-game.


Servers, griefing and security

Q: Will there be some sort of system for server hosts and admins to use like an admin GUI thats easier and faster to use than having to use console commands?

Regalis Yes, we will definitely improve the UIs available to the hosts/admins. I don’t know if you’re aware of NilanthAnimosus’s server mod (https://undertowgames.com/forum/viewtop ... =20&t=7451), but if you’re not, I strongly recommend checking it out. It adds a lot of things that make managing the servers much more easier, and it’s something we’ll definitely be taking inspiration from when we start improving the vanilla UIs.

Q: Pirates can hack your game and play (here Steam will not help anymore). What will you do?

Regalis Basically every game can be hacked and played for free, there's not much we can do about it and it doesn't really worry me. But hacking the game will still not get you around a Steam ID ban or let you join servers that require a valid Steam ID unless you figure out a way to hack through Valve's Steam ID authentication.

Q: What do you do against Griefing ?

TorpedoMike I don't know about specifics, but a karma system is in the works. Also steam authentication helps with banning unwanted players.
Regalis Yep, the karma system can be used to automatically detect and ban griefers. It's still a work in progress though, it's surprisingly difficult to determine if some action is malicious, an accident or done on purpose (like cutting a hole in a wall to put out a large fire for example).

Q: Will there be protection against VPN?

Regalis VPN:s shouldn't be an issue in the Steam version because the hosts can ban Steam users from the servers (and changing your IP won't help you get around that).

Q: Will there be official servers? hosted and maintained by you guys? or entirely community based?

Regalis TBA. We're a pretty small studio and don't really have enough manpower to keep maintaining and moderating a server as well as some of the current server hosts do, so I'm not sure if it's worthwhile if the unofficial servers are already doing a good job. But we'll see!

Q: I remember server perms being kind of a mess, will it be fixed or are they already good?

Regalis I'm not sure what exactly you mean, although I do know the server permission system has had quite a few bugs. It does seem to be working well now though, for example just today we spent the whole day playtesting and recording the game which involved giving the players a variety of special permissions to help them get some nice footage for our new trailer.


Modding

Q: Will there be steam workshop?

Regalis Workshop is already implemented and there's already a lot of cool stuff there. :)

Q: Will there be added more modding tools?

Regalis The item editor I mentioned earlier will be coming at some point, and I believe it's going to make things much easier for modders. We actually wrote a blog post about the modding tools a while ago, if you haven't read it yet you should go and take a look! https://barotraumagame.com/modding/modd ... -workshop/

Q: Will the closed alpha testers be getting more frequent update pushes to help fix/diagonose what bugs may exist (Given the new server-separation merge)? (I feel most bugs in the prior version are fixed/reported short of AI issues in singleplayer.)

Regalis We’re intending to release bugfix patches semi-regularly for the closed alpha version. The reason why there hasn’t been a new patch in a while is that we recently merged some major networking changes to the dev version (kudos to Juan), and needed to do a lot of testing to make sure we didn’t break anything. The build is starting to be very stable now though, and the multiplayer smoother than ever, so we’ll be able to release it for the alpha testers next week (first week of March).

Q: Will we have the ability (If we do not already) to spawn items from XML tags?

Regalis This is already possible, you can do it by adding a SpawnItem-element to a StatusEffect.

For example:
<SpawnItem identifier="someitem" spawnposition="This/ThisInventory/ContainedInventory" />


General

Q: What will happen to the old version after steam release?

Regalis We will not keep supporting it (the server list for example will no longer work, and there will be no further updates), but if you still own that old version, you can of course still keep playing it.

Q: Do you plan on adding new content to Barotrauma even long after release?

TorpedoMike Don't want to promise long after release, but we have a lot of stuff we want to add, so there's probably something after full release too.

Q: What's your dream for Barotrauma, and how does that differ from the planned early access release, and even planned full release? Please be honest, even if it's very unlikely to become a reality.

Regalis For the time being I’m focused in making a fun, solid “base game” for the full release, but there’s so much more we could do after that. Just looking at the collaboration section on the forums or all the feature requests on GitHub makes it clear that it’s the kind of game that you could keep expanding indefinitely. Even though we obviously can’t keep adding new stuff to the vanilla game indefinitely (it’s already a complex game and we don’t want to kill it with feature creep), I’m hoping the modding community will keep expanding it and trying new things for many years to come.

We do have some ideas and plans of our own for the time after the full release too. One crazy (and most likely very out-of-scope) idea I’ve been thinking of is some kind of an MMO-like mode, where multiple crews and subs play together on the same campaign map. You could do things like team up with another crew to complete a mission, run into a renegade crew that tries to pillage your sub, meet up with others on outposts and so on. But yeah, this might be a pretty far-fetched idea, so don’t get your hopes too high yet.

Another cool idea is this total conversion mod or DLC our lead designer Chad Husk came up with. I know DLC is a curse word, but trust me, if we were to release a DLC for the game it would not be hats and weapon skin packs: the idea would be to leave Europa and submarines completely, and instead dive into a Wayne Barlowe -style Hell on some kind of a heavily armored steampunk-ish vehicle. Could happen at some point, or it could not, but I think it’s a very interesting idea and a great example of the kind of stuff we could do after the full release.

TorpedoMike I would like to see Barotrauma become a cult game that people still play after 10-20 years. There's obviously already lots of dedicated players and modders and there's a potential for it to be huge.

More specifically, there are a couple things I personally would want to see in the full release or after (note that these are only ideas at this point):

1. Continually upgrading, building and adding to the sub over the course of the campaign. It would feel great when you slowly upgrade a small tin can into a doomsday machine that tears apart molochs.

2. More sub-on-sub action. It would be a shame if we didn't expand on current pvp gameplay.

Q: We need overpriced DLCs, when can we expect them?

Regalis I believe most updates will be free, although there's a chance we might release some kind of paid DLC at some point. But it would have to be something that's actually worth paying for and adds something significant to the game, like that "helltrauma" total conversion idea I mentioned above.

Q: Will the game appear in other stores than Steam?

Regalis At the moment we don’t have plans to release it in other stores, but it could be possible after the Steam release.

Q: Will the game "barotrauma 2" be developed?

Regalis I think it’s a little early to start thinking about a sequel when there’s still so much work to do on Barotrauma 1. But who knows, maybe some day!

Q: What will be the absolute maximum players a barotrauma server could have?

Regalis I think bandwidth and your CPU are the biggest bottlenecks. If you have a beefy computer that can run a large number of ragdolls and a decent internet connection I think it could handle 2-3 times the current maximum number of players. There's a lot of room for optimization though so it would be possible to push the limit further.

Q: How's performance looking for the Steam release? The game can sometimes dip a lot depending on what's going on even on the mightiest of PCs, any fixes and improvements on that coming with the Steam release?

Regalis Optimization is an ongoing process, we still have a lot of work to do but for the most part the dev build runs pretty smoothly.

Q: Will be game translated on different languages?

Regalis Yes, actually one of our programmers is working on improving the localization support right now and we'll start working on the actual translations very soon.

Q: Will there be any community translations besides mods?

Regalis We're planning on providing official translations for a lot of languages, but the community is of course free to create their own translations. And if they're good, and there's no official translation available, it could be possible that we'd integrate them into the game as official translations (assuming the people who did the translation would be fine with it).

Q: Why MonoGame?

Regalis Because I knew C# and thought MonoGame looked simple and had all the features I needed. I hadn't used game engines like Unity or UE back when I started making Baro, and I thought why bother learning a big, complicated new tool if I know I can implement the stuff myself with MonoGame. Looking back, it might've been faster and easier with something like Unity, but still, I don't think MonoGame was a bad choice.

Q: I wanted to ask how and in what have you made the textures?

Regalis I think our artists rely heavily on photobashing (combining and editing actual photographs) and painting over them, and I believe they mostly use Photoshop. For some assets they’ve also used 3D models made with 3DS Max as a base.

Q: I'm not a huge fan of some of the visual effects in the steam version of barotrauma, will there be graphics options to turn some of the filters/effects/whatever they are off? or would that ruin the atmosphere you are going for in barotrauma?

Regalis There aren’t really that many new filters or effects in the new version, the only post processing effect we have is a very subtle chromatic aberration effect that can be disabled in the settings. I think the “effect” is simply caused by the new artstyle of the sprites.

You could get the game to look more similar to the old version by building subs using the old devices and structures (which are still included in the game to provide backwards compatibility with old subs). I’d also be surprised if no-one made a mod that would swap all the sprites with ones from the old version.

That being said, I hope that you will give the new artstyle a chance. When we originally started upgrading the graphics and the game started looking very different from the old version, I didn’t like it either and was worried about the direction we were taking. But I believe it was just because I was so used to the old style - it didn’t take much time for the new style to grow on me, and now I can’t look at the old version without cringing a bit.

Q: Will there be more hats? New clothes? What will player customization look like?

Regalis There will be more variety to clothing for sure, but I’m not sure yet how exactly character customization will work. There could be an option to select from a set of pre-configured “gear sets” for each class, for example.

Q: Can i expect Jorge in this game?

Regalis ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Re: Discord Q&A on Friday Feb 22

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:58 am
by NerdCuddles
Honestly i like the Quiet moments