Hey everyone!

Unfortunately all I have is another feature preview… By now, I really had hoped a new update would be shippable, but it seems I’ve been much too optimistic about this. I’ll write more about this at the end, so to begin with, here’s what’s been worked on!

New Features Preview

So the list is quite long, so long in fact, that I had to exclude some things. If it couldn’t be in a video or image, it’s not included below. The features excluded mainly involve movement changes, UI Tweaks, bug fixes and AI improvements, so nothing major, but it probably will be noticeable when the update releases.

character creator

That’s right, there’s more character creation / customization now! It’s kept fairly simple, with just two body types for now, the ability to change hair style, beard / no beard, and then colors for skin, eyes and hair. There are several color sliders for the skin however, for added accuracy and detail.

The video above is a little old, and it actually has a bugged player character rig, but I promise this has been fixed already! So if you think the arms look weird, it’s already fixed.

I think this amount of detail is about as in-depth it’ll be, but there will be added more options in the future, potentially before release. It may also seem a little silly to have character customization in a FPS game, but I feel like establishing a better connection with the character you play is important. It may also play into other things I have planned, but no more on that just yet :^)

Equipable melee weapons

It’s now possible to find and equip melee weapons. Right now they only differ in models and stats, but more elaborate differences are coming soon. Different types of melee weapons are meant to encourage different kinds of playstyles, so it’s not just weapons being better or worse than each other, but instead about what you as the player prefer.

Armor system

Another inventory slot, now there’s armor choices too! In short, armor grants defense, and unique looks. But, different tiers of armor will affect other things too. Armor has a weight stat, which modifies how fast it’s possible to move, and how effective dodging is. It also makes step sounds louder, increasing the risk to be heard by enemies nearby.

This is to encourage playstyles yet again, with heavy armor making you less descreet and mobile, but granting higher defense. Light armor will then grant some defense and not affect weight too much. There will then be a last tier, which helps in stealth, but this is yet to be fully implemented, so more on this in the future :^)

For the time, the armor sets in the game are only placeholder, but expect anything from clothing to heavy knight armor sets to come!

consumable system

The very last inventory slot to be added to the game, meaning the inventory system is complete*. I say that with an asterisk, because I’ve contemplated if there is need for two or more consumable slots which can be switched between, but this needs testing to determine.

Anyways, there are a couple of consumables right now: Buffs, and throwables. I think this is all there’ll really end up being, but let’s see.

Essentially, throwables are extra weapons or utilities to use. An example right now is a throwable bomb for extra damage and crowd control, as well as a rock, which is not the best weapon, but may prove useful when sneaking.

For buffs there is currently implemented “Gonne Oil”, which can be used to improve damage with ranged weapons, for as long as the effect applies. Other consumables are planned too, but exactly what they’ll look like is unknown.

Now the good thing is, the design of this is systematic. Adding new consumables with differing effects and sorts of throwables, is really quite easy. So it’s only a matter of design and a few art assets to make it work now.

Memories

As part of teaching harder to understand mechanics to players, a new type of optional tutorial elements have been added. These “Memories” explain in text and image how a certain feature works on e mechanical level. But if you’re not interested or already know what it does, they can simply be run right past as well.

Input prompts

Another tutorialisation feature is input prompts. On the side of the screen at certain scripted moments, a pop-up may appear explaining the prompt to use. It’s of course dynamic, and changes the input icons to whatever key it is bound to in the settings menu.

“Guide” / log system

Replacing some old UI, and extending it’s functionality, there’s now the new “Guide” system, where holding the G key (default binding) expands a list of recent events to show recent pickups and messages. It should be harder to miss a recent pop-up like “Picked up door key” as it’ll remain in the guide menu for longer.

(Also shown in video above)

Damage warning indicators

Some attacks are parryable, and others aren’t. Further, sometimes attacks come out of nowhere or from behind, and in FPS games it can be tricky. So there’s been added a warning indicator system, which should help keep track of incoming attacks.

It’s been particularly helpful with bombs and the way they bounce all over :^)

Parryable projectiles

It’s not only attacks that may be parried, it can also be projectiles themselves. This is harder, but if you spot a crossbow bolt flying towards you, you could try and give your sword a swing to destroy it before it hits you.

For bombs, you can knock them out of the way, or right back to whoever fired it at you. Particularly useful when there’s not enough time to get out of the way.

New Death Screen

Death won’t be as sudden anymore, so the visuals are being changed a bit to give some more time to comprehend what happened. It’s been quite jarring for some players, and while I partly wanted to keep it that way, I decided (for some technical reasons too) to change the way death is experienced in the game.

Overhauled UI elements for new items

Previously it could very easily be missed when a new item was added to the inventory, and what it was. Now there’s both visuals added, as well as a “Interact to OK” to remove the prompt. This allows players to either just skip right through it, or quickly examine what they got.

Changes to saving

There’s also some changes coming to how saving and loading will work. It’s nothing too major, and really, it should just let the game play better. Currently every load loaded the player into Sanctuary (the hub world) to then allow for travel back to the Realm of Mortals. This will no longer be the case.

Instead, you will load into the last “safe” position. Basically, you’ll continue the game right where you left off, after a save and quit. In addition to this, the rifts won’t only take you to sanctuary, but act as checkpoints, and respawn points in gameplay, removing the need to teleport back from Sanctuary each time.

There’s a couple of reasons for this change, mainly in that as the worlds will grow in scale and complexity, it would increase loading times and become quite annoying to have to load into sanctuary, only to have to load into the last place you were. It was OK for the prototype, but it’ll simply be too annoying in the future, so the change is being made now.

Changes to Stats

Lastly of the features / changes, there’s alterations to how player stats are calculated and evaluated. Firstly, there’s a new seperate list of attributes. One such attribute is “Vitality”, which determines the player’s health Stat. The way it’s determined is by using a curve asset, which has mapped a health value to each vitality level.

(Seen above is an example of a curve, where X axis is the level, and Y is the amount of it should be at that level)

This method allows for better long term scaling, as all I need to do is modify a curve asset and that’s it. It also allows for more control over the highest amount of stats, by introducing soft caps and hard caps. A soft cap for those not familiar, means each level put into a attribute gives less points in the stat. For example again with Vitality and Health, level 50 in health may give less health than previous levels did, and by level 90 or 100 it may be the hard cap, where no more health is given at all.

It’s a neat feature, and wasn’t so hard to implement, so I think it’s gonna be really good for the future :^) There’s more tweaking with the stats to be done, and how they scale and all, but it’s well on it’s way to being great I feel.

Upcoming features and work

Now I want to go over some of the features and additions planned, which have yet to be implemented!

Stealth

It’s already briefly been mentioned, but I want to elaborate a little on the core idea behind this. CINIS is first and foremost a Action FPS game. Make no mistake of this. So while a more stealth oriented class and playstyle is planned, they will still be viable in combat, and even required at times to engage in combat. But some scenarios would be stealth appropriate.

The idea is more so to design a class and playstyle which can sneak through sections, or take out enemies in a very deadly way, in surprise attacks. In full combat, it would focus on precision, target priority, weakpoints, and weaving in and out of combat at a high pace. It won’t be a “go slow” character, if all goes well.

What it mainly involves is ways of hiding, changes to enemy behavior and senses, and some additions to armor and other systems. It will be totally optional however, if you as a player simply prefer arena combat action, and more traditional QUAKE gameplay, it is 100% also always an option. The goal is to support more types of play, never to force any one specific.

Armor, Melee & Consumables

Of course there’s more content to come. Actual armor sets, new melee weapons, and more consumables. When it comes to armor and melee there will be some sub types being implemented, all for creating more variation in how the game can be approached. As for consumables, more will come but exactly when is yet unknown… As stated earlier, they’re quite easy to make however!

Enemies

For a while I’ve wanted new enemies, or new enemy abilities, but the design process and implementation is longer than I’d like… Of course more is on it’s way, and I have ideas, and I hope to get them in soon. This may also come with changes to existing enemies, but I also may keep them sort of as is, then add different more complex enemies instead. This I haven’t yet decided on.

I’ve definitely been thinking about orthogonal design of enemies, where each of them behave in a fairly predictable role based way. So for example the knight is a melee character and encourages you to move and create distance. A sort of flying enemy would force you to look away from the ground, and expect attacks from anywhere. An enemy with the ability to create danger zones of sorts forces the player to pay attention to their environment, even in a fight, etc.

And that’s basically all for the features, new and planned! So, why did it take this long? When can we expect it?

Bad decisions = many delays

My plans for a long time were to release at least one, maybe two updates before the end of 2025. One would be centered around some world content, the other around the final mechanics of the game. However, there were two major problems in achieving this. One was bad planning and scope, and the other was just a simple lack of time. I’ll go over the two issues separately, but mostly focus on the “bad planning” part, as this is where there is most to learn from.

The bad decisions

So, when it comes to my planning, I think for the most part, prior to 1.4, it’s been decent. The focus was pretty clear, and scope wasn’t too big. So this part went by pretty well. Where it went wrong with 1.4 is that, it initially was to be a world update. But I also decided to plan to prototype new features. As I was making and testing features, it became apparent for every mechanic I made, the world would need changing.

I think the most prominent case of this can be seen after I’ve mapped out all of the first level, but both during, and after the block out process, new features were introduced, which lead to iterations on the map. In the end, it’s gotten so bad in fact, I think several parts of the level need to be overhauled completely.

This is a clear and obvious prioritization mistake. I really wanted to expand on, and built out new maps and content, but clearly, the rest of the game wasn’t really in a state to actually build this just yet. So, the solution became to take a stance: Is the update about world content, or about gameplay features?

I decided that I would delay the update, and scope down from 2 updates to just 1, and ideally still get it out before the year is over. This one update would then focus on just introducing all the new gameplay and the final features of the game, so that come next year, it would only be a focus to work on the content for the game. This seemed like the obvious way to go, but then…

Busy, busy, busy…

I am a full time student right now. So, while development has been pretty rapid considering the features implemented, there was a sudden slowdown. It’s finals season. This past Friday in fact, I had my finals for this semester. And right now? I’m away on Christmas break, celebrating the holidays. Now, that’s not to say nothing will be done, and no work will be done, but the crunch needed to get an update out? Not even possible in this time frame from now till Dec. 31.

So, what is happening from here?

Next year and beyond (hopefully)

I at least have good news. In the days up to, and a little during, my Christmas break I will be working still. Some work will be in design, some in actual features, some in lore or concepting of areas and encounters. All of that is prep work for next year.

The real good news is that early next year, from around January all through to at least April, and perhaps further into June even, I will be working on the project full-time. This is because while I am still a student in that time too, I am using CINIS for my class work as well. I’ll be doing a self-internship, where development on CINIS will serve as my daily tasks. From April to June then, I’m doing my very final assignment for my degree, so here there’s a few requirements of what topics to work on, and it’s a little undecided as of yet what that’ll look like exactly, but the short is:

Goal for next year is a fully playable demo, of the final game. If all goes well, it’ll be a considerable open world cut out, or a playable more linear level. What exactly I don’t know. But the goal is for this demo to be on Steam, as well as probably here on Itch.

Thank you

For reading, for playing, for engaging with CINIS in any way!

I’ve been working away at versions of the game for quite some time now, but it’s because I really do see value in it. I think the RPG aspect really feels like a perfect fit, and I can’t wait to really start building out the adventure and world of the game as soon as the systems are in place.

Only a little more work on systems left before almost all work is poured into variation and content instead. While it sometimes feels like I’ve been spending a long long time on just mechanics instead of content, I also have to remember this is only part time for now, I’m working solo when it comes to features, levels, and visual art. It’s also not even been a year of development on this RPG iteration! I feel like it’s been going quite well behind the scenes as well, and it really is coming together.

I’m beginning to itch for going into content production, but holding off on it for now as I really want to make sure the features are in place, so that when I begin work on the world and levels, it will click and feel feature complete.

I hope to give another update or release something playable very soon, but until then, thank you once again, and take care :^)