Open world top-down tactical shooter for PC/Windows/Linux

Hey there!

Al Tabul -multiplayer madness on Sunday June 9, 6:00 pm UTC, don’t forget! Keep this http://itsalmo.st/#rwr_time open on Sunday, it’s handy!

0.89 is out with some great updates! First, we’ve got the sixth map in now, “Al Tabul”, which is a desert themed assault map with plenty of tanks and other vehicles, we even added a few stationary weapons for the defense.

Second, we’ve got the third faction in the game, and this means you can get those multi-faction battles going on easily now. From my experience, Stalemate and Sainte-Anne make just perfect match for 3 factions; had a great time fighting over the central bases when every faction is attacking to the same location, just hilarious!

The map view has gone through some improvements, zooming is now supported on mouse wheel and from keys which has been needed for quite a while now with the map being a bit tight for all the icons we have in there these days. We’re also starting to experiment with how the map view should actually look like, and 0.89 features the first iteration of that work.

Spotting mechanic has been added now too, so if you’re one of those players who end up strolling behind the enemy lines causing all sorts of mayhem by assaulting their less defended bases, destroying the enemy comms truck or stealing their cargo truck (note, cargo truck theft is only in Invasion online currently), you also get rewards from your faction by locating their vehicles, just hover the crosshair on the vehicle to identify it. This also means for multiplayer that other players will see the vehicles in their map and get notified about them.

All right, that concludes the major new gameplay changes for 0.89, there’s at least 30 other bug fixes or additions, check out the full change log here.

RWR @ Steam Greenlight

Hey there!

So, we’ve finally made it to a point that we got

1. medikit as support item,
2. vests that transform getting killed into getting wounded,
3. squad loadout configs that enable AI soldiers with medikits to be favored in squads,
4. AI that looks for a moment or a call in a fight to help out a wounded,

to get the medic feature into gameplay! While you might wonder why opt for getting wounded and hope for a medic to come to get you back into game rather than just dying and running back to the zone as another soldier, it’s primarily the rare weapons that are meant to make you want to get that vest on; otherwise you’ll lose the rare weapon on respawn.

In this version, we’ve also enabled the rare weapons in classic single-map matches, which means those PvP oriented online matches, or single player, might experience some players getting temporarily overpowered if they manage to find a rare. Easiest way to find one is to listen, it’s the bots that usually happen to bring them into a battle, but you might find one in a crate too.

Other than that, plenty of tweaks here and there, a new weapon, a new mortar call, and a hefty amount of new modding potential; map size is open now, for one. See the detailed change log here.

0.89 or 0.90 will see plenty of changes under the hood to make it easier to create server-specific settings for match resources without having to download overlay mods to be able to join a server. This should make it easy to alter active weapons, items, vehicles and factions strictly on server side, clients will get the relevant info from the server to configure their game session accordingly and load the needed resources if they have them available. This will make it possible to set up a broader variety of matches in single player too, hopefully including single player Invasion!

Hey there!

RWR 0.87 continues on the path of extending support in multiple development areas, see the full change log. We’ve now got our second radio call request type in addition to the good old mortar strike: paratrooper reinforcements! This one will certainly help to organize those surprise attacks against the less defended enemy bases away from the main battle area, and thus actually succeed in capturing them too. Just watch out for enemy comms truck, it’ll jam your radio

Another highlight in 0.87 is the tank: two gunner seats, one with MG and the other with rocket shooting cannon, with tracked steering. We haven’t polluted all the maps with this beast in fear of it being overly overpowered, but we’ll see how it ends up being. At least on InvasionUS yesterday, a few of us happened to start the invasion from Suburbs, blessing us with the tank, but we still had to fight hard the swarming Greys coming at us. The havoc was awesome, but in the end we certainly took a beating that time

We’ve also added cargo trucks here and there in Invasion, the main objective outline being to locate the enemy cargo truck, steal and deliver it safe near an armory at a friendly base. Great thing is that it’s handled as a server side script module, allowing us to tweak it on the fly without client side updates required from players.

Beneath the hood, the battle system has gone through some nice upgrades, basically allowing more than 2 factions in battles now. We’ve yet to set everything up so that it would be easy to choose the faction setup in the UI, and actually we don’t have assets other than Green and Greys at this point, but we should come around to it sooner than later. In the meantime it should be possible to use the skin mods and set those battles up manually, would love to hear about it if someone gets to try it!

Hey there!

0.86 surfaced a few days ago, bringing a hefty amount of changes with it.

The basic system of mortar strikes as XP milestone based rewards has been completely revamped to better support more variant types of call requests. These calls are now obtained by using a money-like currency at the armory, we call it RP i.e. resource, reward or relation points, not quite sure which one RP is accumulated automatically over time once you rank up to Sergeant, and you can further earn RP by delivering valuable items to your faction through the armories. We’ve added 11 of these items in 0.86 to get started with it, expect to see more coming!

The inventory UI has been changed somewhat, still work in progress especially on usability and appearance, and the carrying configurations have been rebalanced. 0.85 had an issue that backpack could be misused by carrying plenty of primary and secondary weapons in it, effectively making you a walking multi-class arsenal. In RWR we feel it’s important that you mostly stay within your role and have to make a decision what that role is.

In addition to the unlockable stock weapons, Online Invasion mode now has the first few special non-stock weapons. We’ll be adding more of these in later updates; it’s great that Invasion as strictly cooperative mode enables this sort of content integration where some weapons can be significantly better than others, as it’s not so important to keep everything balanced like in the regular mode which is also targeted for PvP battling. Invasion will eventually be also playable in single player, but for now, single players will have to endure a while longer

Check out the full change log here.

Hey there!

Don’t forget the multiplayer madness event today Sunday 7th at 6pm UTC (and since no one knows what the time really is anywhere, please refer to this universal countdown instead) !

RWR beta 0.85 appeared in Desura a few days ago, with new features focusing on enabling new future features The item system has gone through some good refactoring work which allows new item types to be added more conveniently, with stun grenade and riot shield making an appearance in 0.85.

The idea is still not to start introducing items just for the sake of having lots of items. Stun grenade actually right now feels awkwardly similar to the regular hand grenade, just that the blast makes the soldiers recover for a time making them easy targets rather than insta-die. As such, it’s more of a proof-of-concept item at this point, we’ll be experimenting with it to see if there’s a specific case where it fits perfectly, and if it doesn’t, we’ll just drop it and think of something else, easy as that!

Riot shield enables you to block bullets and stun grenade blasts with the tradeoff that you don’t have anything to shoot with when using the shield. Bots will see you as additional cover – I hope other players realize that too – so you can use the mechanic to become mobile cover for others in an otherwise open space.

The other significant upgrade and enabler in 0.85 is the inventory UI. You can now hold down the pickup-key to manage items near you on ground, in your currently equipped gear and in your backpack. Interaction with weapon racks is also carried through the new UI.

Backpack currently allows you to carry a number of additional weapons and grenades making it stand out a bit from the usual direction RWR has been going. This is also due to experimentation going on, but we will see a more specific purpose on having the backpack with you which ultimately is not allowing you to carry more varied firepower to the battle, at least not without an appropriate tradeoff. Join the discussion on the forum about the new inventory system, suggestions and ideas are always welcome!

These item related enablers largely benefit Invasion mode servers and the future extended single player campaigns. In the regular single match -like sessions the backpack will mostly be a burden you don’t need to deal with – for this reason, everything also still works just the way it has been; tap pickup-key to swap to the nearest weapon on ground and throw away your current, and now it works with grenades and secondary weapons too.

Man, I could go on about the changes and the stuff they will enable, the server side data flow system for external control has gone through some great updates, it now works on Windows too, which basically means that with some easy hacking it is possible to control a single player game too already. This system will be used for scripting objective tracking logic for side-objectives, it can also be used to add custom chat message commands and who knows what; especially modders able to script a bit should find it handy once I get the examples published!

Hey there runners!

We are finally wrapping up some loose ends in beta 0.84 which will impact the gameplay with and against AI a huge deal. Check out the full change log here.

You know the APC’s in RWR, which feature a 40mm machine gun, but the AI very rarely fires any rounds and mainly uses those killers for transport? There, that’s changing right now. I just got the highly regarded facepalm award trying to assault an enemy APC alone, now I know I’ll try another tactic the next 4 times

Also, we’ve extended the squad commanding through the use of Squad command modifier key to allow having control over your vehicle and infantry separately, especially again for APC, but it’ll function the same for other vehicles as well. This comes especially handy once you rank up enough to have a big squad with you.

Other than that, beta 0.84 features an extended XP rewarding system, currently utilized with enemy vehicle damaging and certain achievements, and the usual stuff, balance tweaks and bug fixes.

Make sure you watch our latest cooperative stealth video, if you haven’t seen it already:

Hey there!

Beta 0.82 release barely managed to grow one day old with 0.83 coming out already – a little mishap with some weapon test settings finding their way into the release, but that’s all bygones now!

0.83 adds two new burst mode weapons in the game and generic support for unlocking weapons using rank. The normal sandbox mode people play single player and on most servers won’t restrict weapons other than grenades and bazookas just the way it has been, but we’re starting to experiment with this idea on the Invasion_US now set up as the cooperative-only online campaign test server.

If you join up Invasion_US, you’ll notice that you start off as a Private with access to 3 weapons. Work your way to next rank and new weapons will become usable. More weapons will be added into Invasion mode almost every release, and we’ll make some crucial changes to enable proper looting to take place. Stats and ranks are saved server side over map changes already, you can peek the scoreboard and status here.

Back to topic, we’ve got plenty of major fixes in the AI, weapon handling, stats and online code, check the change log over here.

Last but not least, enjoy the new cooperative stealth video we put together, can’t wait to get to compile the best of outtakes of these sessions

Hey there,

For 0.81, the AI has again learned some new tricks with behaving in water areas. They now basically know how to navigate the boats, and won’t consider the rocks beneath water as desirable place to find cover – that was the biggest reason they used to just swim calmly in the shore when a gun fight was taking place right in front of them

The other maps got some weapon racks now as well, Sainte-Anne south area has been changed completely, and Aeolian Coast has got radar trucks driving around now too. Check out the full change log here.

Hey there!

So, again we bring plenty of AI, vehicle and control fixes, check out the change log for the details, but the highlight of this release is our brand new map, Sainte-Anne!

We also have the initial steering implementation in now for vehicles in water, with Sainte-Anne featuring a few drivable rubber boats. AI currently neglects them pretty much, the navigation logic needs a bit different approach than the on-ground vehicles, looking forward to work on that for 0.81. Hope I can squeeze in the “AI battle-taxi” feature for that too, can’t wait to get into some beach assault action!

Also, the online servers now support persistent player profiles (per server), which means that if the server has been set to store the profiles over battles and map changes, you can have your stats, rank, mortars and weapons with you again when you reconnect. One of the official modulaatio-servers will be soon set up as something we call Invasion; players only join Green faction, they all start with 0 XP to fight through all the maps in randomized order, each map starting with Green faction having one base with some over capacity to get the invasion going, with XP and items carrying over map changes.

We’ll be adding plenty of new items in the near future, we’ve been talking about vests, rare weapons, support items and new calls logically similar to mortar strikes, which will fit the persistent cooperative Invasion mode really well!

Hey there!

0.79 is out now with focus on improvements in the AI behavior. We’ve got some patrolling going on in the non-alerted bases, walking, crouching and moving on prone affects how detectable soldiers are to AI and there’s a new designated role for one AI soldier to drive the faction’s comms truck in Vaaleakoski map. Check out the full change log.

Destroying the comms truck has a fancy result: the extra information in the map goes dark, intel about vehicles and soldier counts doesn’t get delivered anymore and the commanding AI becomes seriously defective. Should make a powerful way to get a temporary boost on the main attack!

There’s another get-together match coming up next Sunday, this time it’s got a theme. Will be fun to get to try the effect of having comms trucks around in multiplayer then for real!

See you on the battlefield!