Finally it's complete. All the content I wanted to put in for the first commercial alpha release is in and we're now doing last bits of testing (getting our faces melted in the needlessly hard dungeons and toning the stuff down)

If you want to know what's new in this release you can go check out the dev log posts from the last couple of months, but let me just quickly recap the highlights:

• Huge new urban zone consisting of 8 areas
• Big new 'dungeon' consisting of 6 areas (twice as much as the last one)
• A couple of 'mini-dungeons'
• New quests
• New feats
• Traps skill
• Some updated game mechanics
• Re-balanced economy
• Food
• More weapons and armors
• Updated crossbows (feats, special bolts, damage boost)
• Various other smaller stuff

I'm almost done with quest implementation for the new areas. There's still a couple smaller ones to go, as well as some support scripting and dialog to do, but that shouldn't take more than couple of days. After that I'm going to start the work on the next 'dungeon' area and that will be the last bit of content for this release.

I do intend to revisit these areas post-release and add more quests, but for now this will do.

I've also added some new weapons and armors:

• One new model of each firearm type: pistol, SMG, assault and sniper rifle
• One new crossbow type
• Knives and sledgehammers made of tungsten steel
• Tungsteen steel armor
• Regenerative vest that slowly restores health but consumes energy (can be used in creation of tactical vests or steel armors)
• Acid resistant leather armor (this will be useful in the upcoming dungeon)

I'm currently mostly working on area designs for the new release. By the end of the week I should have most of it in place (except the new dungeon which I'll tackle later) and then it's time for quests implementation.

I've added food to the game. You can consume different meals to gain (and sometimes also lose) different base stats for 5 minutes. You can only have one type of food buff on your character at any given time. Here are the meals I've prepared so far:

• Rathound Barbecue: +1 strength
• Cave Hopper Steak: +2 agility
• Burrower Burger: +2 constitution
• Eel Sandwich: +2 dexterity
• Junkyard Surprise: +(1-3) random stat, -(0-3) random stat

* * * * *

I've also added a couple easy but important changes to game balance and mechanics.

First of all I changed a bit how stealth works. You'll still be detected over time depending on your stealth skill, enemy's detection, lightning and positioning like before, unless your stealth skill is too far behind the enemy's detection in which case you won't be able to hide from them at all. This will be indicated with a silver eye above the detecting character and the true-sight is now represented by a golden eye (previously silver). The problem was that even the non-stealthy characters were using stealth excessively to move around undetected (and have guaranteed combat initiation) and it worked as long as they didn't stay too close too long because of the way the revealing speed is capped. This change should prevent that while not changing how stealth mechanics work for stealthy characters (those who invest in stealth skill and wear light armors).

Also another minor tweak to stealth - I've added a notification when you bump into other characters and fall out of stealth for that reason. Some people were confused as to what was happening, but keep in mind that if they can't see you their pathfinding won't tell them to go around you.

I increased health scaling with levels, for both the player and non-player characters. Previously, the damage from weapons and other sources was far out-scaling the character health as you progressed in levels which ended up in very volatile fights. This change should ease that up a bit while keeping the early game unchanged. Keep in mind, though, that damage is meant to out-scale health to a certain degree because characters also have access to tougher armors and other protective stuff as the game progresses. Because of this change I've also increased the amount of health that hypos and bandages restore.

I've also doubled the psi point pool as well as psi restoration from psi boosters (also psi boosters now require three mindshrooms to make). This will allow the player focusing on psi abilities to have more sustain in combat. Some people felt like psi points need to regenerate over time, but I want it to be a resource you have to manage just like ammo and batteries. I'm considering adding other ways to restore limited amounts of psi outside of using boosters, though. We'll see.

I've significantly increased based damage multiplier of snipe ability so it should now be more powerful than aimed shot in the early game as intended (since it's a one time opening ability requiring stealth). This attack can no longer critically hit, though.

Keep in mind that none of this is set to stone. These are the changes I've arrived at by watching other people play and from hearing the feedback on the forums. Once the new version is released I will continue to keep an eye out and make changes for the sake of fun and balanced gameplay as best as I can.

One of the common complaints in the demo, and one of the things that I personally wasn't very happy with, is how the crossbows were playing out. Using crossbows as primary damage source was practically impossible, so I've taken some steps to bringing the crossbows up to par with firearms and making them a viable alternative.

First of all I've increased base damage of crossbows, so their straight up damage per turn potential is now about the same as 7.62mm pistols (which is another weapon class with 2 attacks per turn). Originally I kept the crossbow damage lower as I wanted to emphasize their special bolt attack strengths, but I went a bit too far there and they ended up being too weak, especially in the early game before the player could pick up any special bolts. Also, because crossbow attacks already incur more of mechanical damage resistance (125%) and have no way of overcoming that in regular attacks (no armor piercing rounds) there is no need to penalize them further by assigning them lower base damage.

The second problem was a lack of multi-target special bolts, so now I've added two of those. They fulfill similar roles but in different ways.

• Shock Bolts - These bolts inflict additional electrical damage to the primary target, stun it (works on machines as well) and then jump to nearby targets dealing smaller chunks of damage (no stun on secondary targets) in similar fashion as strikes from Shock Sledgehammer.
• Incendiary Bolts - These bolts deal heat damage to the target and have a chance to set it on fire, dealing more heat damage over next couple of turns (and, of course, panicking the living targets), but the bolt also burns everything it comes near on its flight to the primary target, dealing smaller chunks of heat damage. Keep in mind that this bolt is doubly useful against enemies that fear fire (such as rathounds).

I hope you guys like these changes and that they'll get more of you trying out crossbows in the future.

Originally I planned to add traps to the alpha demo but ended up postponing that to get the demo out earlier. They're in now, though.

There are currently three types of land mines you can rig up: frag, high-explosive and EMP. When they're triggered they have same effects as their grenade counterparts. You can also craft these yourself if you have high enough chemistry/electronics. There will be more traps in the future and not all of them will be mines.

Except rigging up the area before a battle and luring your foolish enemies into minefields, I figure trapping will also be very useful in eliminating patrolling enemies. At least those not skillful enough to spot and/or disarm your traps.

Speaking of NPC behavior, I've also introduced a new concept to the game called zone control.

I was thinking of how the game should handle player criminal behavior such as murdering people through various means. And more specifically, I thought about how NPCs should react to you placing traps everywhere and turning their private quarters into mine fields.

I want to prevent exploits such as carpeting an area with traps and killing off high level non-hostile NPCs in the middle of their home base without triggering hostilities and then promptly looting their kickass gear. But on the other hand I want to sometimes allow player to use traps as an assassination mechanism where it's actually appropriate as I think that can be a lot of fun. Ideally the NPCs would be very smart and once a trap has been set off they'd start an investigation and look for a culprit, etc. However, Underrail is not a simulation game and that kind of AI programming is way out of the scope of the game.

So I went with a simpler solution which is to tag each area with certain control level - full, partial or none, which indicates how safe it is for the player to mess around with traps (and in the future murdering, etc) and how the controlling factions of the area will react to your shenanigans.

The UI shows the zone control indicator in the upper right corner and you can mouse over it to see what sort of action you can get away with and what is too risky in the current area.

As far as traps are concerned:

• In fully controller areas (such as SGS station) if someone from the controlling faction detects your trap, you'll immediately get in trouble with that faction;
• In partially controlled areas you'll only get in trouble if someone from the controlling faction sets off your trap
• In uncontrolled areas you can set traps as much as you like and if someone happens to set it off and get killed, no one will be able to trace this to you

I've hinted earlier that I'm considering alpha funding for Underrail and now I've officially made up my mind. I originally planned on launching a crowd-funding campaign but that turned out to have too many limitations based on where I was located, so I decided alpha funding is a better option.

The game will be available for purchase in its alpha stage on a couple of digital distribution websites, and who ever purchases alpha version will, of course, receive the final game at no additional cost when it's done. Also, I plan on releasing regular content updates throughout the game's development.

I'm currently working on the next major update that will be the first purchasable version of the game. It will include a major new quest hub (sneak peek above), a new "dungeon" area, more weapons, utilities and other items, new character skill, some updated game mechanics, and more.

I'm expecting the update to be ready sometime in October. Stay tuned for more info on the new stuff.

Also, check out this cool Underrail title screen fan alternative by Jason Seow:

First let me just remind everyone who hasn't seen it yet that Underrail is up on Steam Greenlight now. So if you'd like to see it released on Steam eventually please hop over there and up vote and favorite the game.

These last couple of days I made a number of changes to the game, based on the feedback and my own observations. This is not the definite list of changes, though, but these are all the changes that will eventually get into the updated demo release, whenever that may be. Unless I uncover some critical game breaking bug I won't be updating the demo build beyond this. And of course there will be no additional content added to it. So here are the changes:

• Tweaks
  • Buying prices are much higher than selling prices now so you won't be able to get rich quickly anymore; this also make mercantile more useful
  • Ammunition and some other resources are more expensive and scarce now
  • You cannot start combat immediately after transitioning into another area (5 second cooldown added); this should prevent most of the transition exploits
  • Critical hits are better distinguished in the scrolling combat text
  • Batteries now restore more energy, but are also more expensive
  • When attacking a passive object in real time the attack will stop after a single hit (no more auto-attacking)
  • Added more blueprints as static (non-random) merchant inventory
  • Improved some quest text to be more specific (number of outposts, barracks location, shooting practice)
  • Player movement speed slightly increased
  • Grenade damage increased
  • Flashbang duration increased to 2 turns
  • Enemy remains are now visible through walls at all times (don't have to hold down TAB or Z); this should also prevent them from being stuck behind a door or other usables
  • Added inventory sorting (merchant inventories are sorted now as well)
  • Added more item filtering categories
  • Items are unbound from action bar when they are all used up, dropped and such
  • Help option will now blink until you open it (so many people missed it completely)
  • Dragging items/ability off the action bar is made a bit less sensitive now so you shouldn't have that much trouble clicking abilities while the action is unlocked
  • A number of abilities are automatically bound to your action bar at the start of the game
  • When you mouse over an equippable item in your inventory it will highlight the slots in which the item can be equipped (this should help with the special bolts confusion among other things)
  • You can double click items to equip them / put them into the trading window
  • When mousing over an item you wish to purchase it will show the purchase value instead of the nominal value
  • Only currency will be used during auto trading
  • Auto trading will no longer try to trade currency for currency
• Bug fixes
  • Saves and user configuration are now stored in Documents\My Games\Underrail so the game will no longer require admin privileges to run
  • Saving while transitioning out of SGS into the caves will no longer get you stuck between the two gates
  • Killing the sentry near the Mushroom Cove will no longer mess up the factions
  • Attacking SGS sentry bots will no longer mess up the faction and turn your own electroshock sledgehammer against you (it was dealing electrical damage on hit to you as well)
  • You no longer remain in stealth after attacking a camera or other passive object
  • Item duplication bug fixed
  • Rathound Alphas should now properly use their Rend ability
  • Lockpicking is no longer instant with Burglar feat, but this feat has been improved to reduce lockpicking and hacking times by 75% (up from 50%)
  • You can now power up outposts in the caves after turning in the quests
  • You can no longer acquire the Sprint ability without picking the feat
  • Reloading from quick reload bar will now load up the weapon with as much ammo as you have regardless of how it's split in the inventory
  • No more blue flashes on saving the game
  • Removed "computer skill" references
  • Path estimation in turn-based combat should now be drawn properly in all cases
  • Minor AI bugs
  • Other minor map bugs

So it's been couple of days now since the alpha demo was released. People had time to play it and provide lots of feedback. So now is a good time to start addressing that feedback.

I'm happy to say that the impressions were very positive overall, but there are certain aspects that a lot of people felt could use some improvement. Here I will try to summarize the commonly recurring complaints that I gathered from forums (the official one and some others), direct feedback and from just watching other people play live and on the internet.

Technical problems:

• Game crashes on starting a new game - The problem here is that during the development it was easier for me to just store the save games and other user data in the working directory of the game. This is bad practice because of the User Account Control feature of the newer operating systems prevents you from writing in the Program Files unless you explicitly run the application as an administrator. I completely missed this because every computer I tested it prior to the release had UAC disabled. I will definitely change this so that the future builds use My Games folder or whatever is the appropriate location on the three operating systems I'll be supporting (XP, Vista, 7). Currently, the workaround is to just run the game with explicit administrator rights.
• Sometimes game would crash on transitions in the lake area - This is a semi-rare bug that can be fixed by applying this patch - http://www.indiedb.com/games/underrail/downloads/underrail-alpha-demo-v0141-patch.

There's probably more stuff that I can't remember right now, but it'll pop up eventually, don't worry.

*  *  *  *  *

Another thing I wanted to briefly touch on is the prospect of the game being crowd-funded. Some may remember that back in June when the demo video was released, and after being pleasantly surprised by the amount of positive feedback it received I said that a crowd-funding campaign is likely to follow the playable demo release. Unfortunately, things got a bit complicated. Because of where I live, a lot of crowd-funding features are not available to me which limits the kind of campaign I'm able to launch.

I'm currently looking into other forms of crowd-funding, such as alpha funding on Desura.

No need to freak out, though, Underrail is still due to be released in the second half of 2013. even if I have to self-fund it all the way. It's just the matter that being able to secure some form of funding at this stage would really help me make the game as big and as diverse as I would like;and I guess that's something that a lot of you would like as well.

In any case, I'll get back to you guys soon to let you know how it all worked out.

Alpha demo is finally out. You can download it from IndieDB.

Enjoy and be sure to let me know your thoughts on the forums once you've played it.

This is just a quick update to let you guys know I finally got around to setting up the forum. So if you have any questions hop over to http://www.underrail.com/forums. I would especially appreciate if you take your time to report any bugs you encounter in the upcoming demo and, of course, provide feedback on various game aspects.

Speaking of demo it's now content complete. That is, I got all the content I planned for the demo done. Tomorrow, I'm having some friends over and we'll be play testing it throughout the weekend to ensure there are no showstopping bugs or glaring imbalances and also that the game and its individual parts are not too hard or too easy.

I've got the remaining audio stuff done rather quickly. I've added a few more atmospheric drones so that each area type (caves, lake, metro...) has its own now. They are not perfect fits, but they'll have to do until I get someone to do a real soundtrack. The only thing that is sorely missing is the main theme music, though I guess it's forgivable for an alpha version.

Next, I cleared up that pile of minor bugs that was sitting in the corner, and I also did significant optimizations in couple of areas in the engine:

• I optimized the isometric renderer so it works a lot faster now and should have no problems rendering at higher resolutions where there's a lot of tiles on the screen
• I've optimized the way the processing time is distributed between sight, lightning and pathfinding components; the major CPU hogger, the pathfinding, should now properly use the time unspent by the other components; this, coupled with freeing up more time by optimizing the renderer, should have game running smoothly at all times
• The NPC now move near-instantly while out of sight of the player during turn based combat, so this should speed the combat up a lot in areas where there are patrolling NPCs

I present you Underrail's title screen. Drawn by Diego Candia.

I finished updating all the existing areas and creating all the missing interconnecting areas, updated dialogs and added a few more encounters.

New creature type has been added to the lake areas. Psi Beetles can invoke a number of psi abilities. They have a passive ability that increases their psionic skill levels and allows them to invoke more powerful psionics the more of them are around (the only reason I'm fine fighting against three of them on the screenshot below is because I used cheats).

So basically most of the essential content is now in the game. Now I've got some audio stuff to do before I start working on a pile of minor bugs and improvements. After that I'll get the deployment preparation stuff done - making sure the release build works well (don't remember the last time I ran it), make an installer, etc.

After I get all that technical stuff out of the way, I'll get back to content making. There's still a few quests and areas I want to add, as well as another interesting creature type.

I finished laying out all the areas in the home station (South Gate Station) as far as the demo is concerned. The parts that are not done will be locked off. I've also done some supporting dialog and updated all the merchants (and added new ones).

Now, just keep in mind that for most of these areas this is not their final state and I intend to improve them after the demo. The cantina and the medical sector in particular suffer from the lack of appropriate furniture assets, but they will have to do with what I have just now. I wouldn't want to delay the demo further by drawing those assets now.

This means that the bulk of work in the phase two is done. I still need to do a few things around the home base, such as update some dialogs and scripting, before I move to the cave areas.

Caves shouldn't take this long to update, as they are mostly all layed out and just need some more details added, loot tables updated, encounters balanced out (I haven't played some of those areas since I've switched to turn-based), etc. I'll likely add a few more smaller cave areas around the existing ones, but those are really easy to make.

And there are also those two new creature types I mentioned earlier (you can see one of them on that last screenshot).

I've added a bunch of new feats. The grand total is 37 now, which should be enough for the demo. I tried to cover all the major areas (ranged combat, melee combat, stealth, psi, even some crafting stuff) as well as add enough general feats.

This about concludes the phase one of the demo preparations. The only things left to do are add two new creature types, but that'll have to wait for a few days (models are not quite ready yet).

Now I'm moving into phase two which involves:

• adding some more areas
• improving existing areas (adding more details, more scripting where required, etc)
• updating old quests to work with the reworked (simplified) quest tracking system
• adding more quests
• adding more NPCs and dialog in general
• restocking merchants with the new goods
• making the starting areas and quests more cohesive
• probably doing a bunch of smaller stuff I can't remember now

I'm done with items for the demo. I'll surely add a few plot items here and there once I start working on the areas and quests again, but no more blueprints, components, usables, etc.

Just a quick explanation of the inventory image above. I mentioned utility slots a long while before, I think, but doesn't hurt to brush up on the subject. Some usable items are expected to be used by everyone, such as healing medication and other restorative items, non-combat items, etc. You can use these items directly from the inventory at any time (they might have cooldowns though) or by dragging them onto the action bar.

Other items are special usable items that each can have great impact on your playstyle, particularly during combat. These are 'utility items' and to use them you must first equip them in a utility slot (on the left), the number of which is limited. You have two utility slots to start with, but can get more from gear or feats. The idea is that you must make a choice of what additional tools you are going to bring into combat depending on what playstyle you are going for and also what kind of enemies you might face.

For instance, if you're going to fight robots, you'll want EMP grenades, but you won't need poison bolts. If you are going to fight multiple enemies, it's good to equip frag grenades. If you want to avoid combat altogether, go for a cloaking device, tranquilizer bolts, flashbangs, etc. I want the player to have to think and adapt to the situation. There is no perfect set of tools for every encounter or every character build.

Anyway, here's the list of the stuff I got done in this last batch:

• Special crossbow bolts
  • Poison bolt - applies stackable poison effect that deals bio damage every turn (currently there's only one type of poison, but there will be more; you can extract poisons from glands of poisonous creatures with biology skill)
  • Tranquilizer bolt - puts the target to sleep; the less constitution the target has the longer it sleeps
• EMP grenade - deals irresistible electrical damage to machines and disables them for 2 turns; also, drains all the energy from the target's equipped electronic devices and deals electrical damage equal to 50% of the energy drained
• Cloaking device (powered) - doesn't make you automatically invisible but greatly increases stealth and somewhat increases evasion;
• Bandages - heal lights wounds when out of combat (can only heal above 65%)
• Antidote - removes 3 stacks of poison
• Flare - lights up an area for 30 seconds; also reveals all stealthed creatures when it lands
• Boots
  • metal / leather
  • springs - movement bonus
  • spikes, blades - extra unarmed damage
• Belts
  • Utility: +2 utility slots
  • Bullets Strap: +1 utility slot; reduces AP cost of reloading firearms; minor intimidation bonus
  • Doctor's Belt: +1 utility slot; reduces AP cost of using medical consumables
• Headwear
  • Metal helmet - minor resistances bonus; reduces chance to get critically hit
  • Goggles - increase perception; can support night vision module (powered)

I think I fixed all the existing game mechanics that needed fixing for the demo:

• Fixed the stealth calculations; most notably, it's not possible any more to slip under other characters' very noses no matter how high your stealth is (if you're standing right in front of the NPC, he WILL detect you); I've also restricted how quickly you can be detected at different ranges so you'll always have time to react and move away if you are near the edge of the sight range; All in all, it works much better now
• Made the unarmed attack damage scale with level and strength; that is in addition to scaling with skill level; since you can't swap out your arms for a shiny new pair (maybe in a sequel), this should make up for gear progression that you get with other types of weapons
• Fixed the flickering lights affecting hit chance in turn based combat - it doesn't matter now if you fire while the light is on or off, the mean lightning value will be used
• Allowed swapping out equipment during combat but only weapons and utility items (not armor and other clothing pieces); unequipping an item is free; equipping costs 50 AP (whole turn); Used to be very tricky if you ran out of ammo with both weapons and couldn't swap to your unarmed attack

• Three new psi abilities
  • Frighten (Thought Control) - makes your target run away from you unless it passes a resolve check
  • Force Emission (Psychokinesis) - toggled; while active, your unarmed attacks do additional damage and have a short range, but each attack costs 5 psi
  • Force Field (Psychokinesis) - A very useful ability. Creates an impenetrable force field that lasts 10 seconds / 2 turns. You can use it to split up your enemy forces, isolate yourself until you can heal, cut off escape routes or thwart your pursuers, etc. It actually might be a bit too good in its current form, so I might nerf the base version a bit and require the player to pick up a feat to improve it.

Next on the agenda are more items and after that more feats. Getting close to completing phase one of the demo preparation.

I did a lot of interface work these last couple of days:

• Reworked all the controls/windows to be able to scale to any resolution (or at least those that should scale)
• Added an options page with video resolution, audio levels and some gameplay settings
• Added interface sounds
• Replaced the remaining placeholder icons
• Added indicators that will show you which target's you'll hit when invoking AoE abilities (no more  accidentally getting caught in my own pyrokinesis)
• Other minor tweaks

Next I'll be working on a number of changes and additions to game mechanics, before getting back to producing more content, starting with a couple more psi abilities.

All the weapons I've planned for the demo are in, along with their crafting components and blueprints.

Of all the weapon classes for the final game, only the energy rifles are not in yet. Of course, only a 1 or 2 models for each weapon class are done as of now, but that should be enough for the demo. Anyway, adding more models and weapon enhancements is pretty easy (and fun), it's creating the crafting mechanics that's a lot of work.

Anyway, here they are:

• Knives
  • can be crafted out of any type of metal
  • can't have any extra enhancements, but there are several types of knives you can make with different molds: regular combat knife, serrated knife (chance to inflict bleeding wounds), dagger (bigger critical chance, damage that pierces the armor is increased against organic targets)
  • incur 125% mechanical damage resistance more (harder to penetrate the armor)
• Sledgehammers
  • high damage output (especially in hands of a strong character)
  • high strength requirement
  • ignores mechanical damage threshold (damage can never be fully mitigated)
  • 10% chance to stun target on hit
  • can be enhanced with special components for extra on hit effects
• Pistols
  • only firearm with no skill requirement (any character can be fairly efficient with it)
  • AP cost varies greatly with caliber (high calibers are good vs armor targets, low calibers are good for spending remaining APs)
  • no moving penalty (can move and shoot without precision penalty)
  • no melee penalty (enemies in melee range do not reduce your precision)
• SMG
  • single and burst fire
  • no moving penalty
  • no melee penalty
  • can be enhanced for increased burst precision (less likely to miss/hit other targets)
  • moderate skill requirement
• Assault Rifles
  • single and burst fire
  • slight moving penalty
  • no melee penalty
  • high damage output, especially with short range burst (most powerful close range firearm in hands of skilled character)
  • high skill requirement
  • moderate strength requirement
• Sniper Rifles
  • powerful single shot attack, great against armored targets
  • high moving and melee penalties
  • high skill requirement
  • high damage output (especially from stealth)
  • low strength requirement
  • high precision when firing without interference
• Crossbows
  • versatile weapon
  • incur 125% mechanical damage resistance more (harder to penetrate the armor)
  • slower projectiles allow easier energy shield penetration (energy shields are not implemented yet, though, and won't be in the demo)
  • can fire special bolts (poison, tranquilizing, etc; this is not implemented yet but will be in the demo)
  • cheap ammo
• Energy Pistols
  • Lower damage potential than an average firearm of the same quality
  • Increased precision
  • Does energy damage which easily penetrates most armors
  • Bad against energy shields
  • Very expensive
  • Uses energy rather than ammunition (charged from batteries)

Got all the ammunition calibers done as well, but only the standard, tungsten-carbide (AP) and JHP (anti-personnel) rounds. Each caliber will also have at least one special bullet type in the final game.

There are 6 bullet calibers in the game: 5mm, 7.62mm, 8.6mm, 9mm, .44in and 12.7mm. They are all packed into a universal cartridge that any weapon class can use if the weapon is of that caliber (I know it's not how it works in the real world, but there it is). When crafting firearms, one of the components is the barrel which will dictate the caliber of the weapon. Not all weapon classes and models and use all calibers.

Next on the agenda is tweaking the game interfaces; most importantly, adapting it to high resolutions.

Btw, here's my new favorite weapon in the game:

It's been a crazy week since I released the demo video. It went better than I hoped. I got a lot of positive reactions to it, and also some attention from a couple of digital distribution platforms.

Next big step is to release a playable demo to the public. I made a big list of all the stuff I want to get into it.

This week I got the three armor types done, with blueprints, components and all. Now before I talk about the specific armor types it's important to understand what the basic properties of armor mean:

• Damage Resistance / Damage Threshold - most people will be familiar with this. DR is a percentage of total damage that is absorbed by the armor, while DT is the flat amount of damage that is subtracted from the incoming attack. So basically DT can absorb the whole thing, so only attacks that do more than it can actually hurt you. But unlike in some games DR and DT don't add up, the armor will either absorb the amount of damage specified by DR or by DT, not by both. It will use the one that absorbs more damage.
• Encumbrance - this property indicates how much the armor restricts movement and how noisy it is. Dodge, evasion, stealth and movement points are reduced by this percentage.
• Minimal Strength requirement - if you wear an armor and do not meet the strength requirement, it will reduce the amount of action points you have (and this is very bad).

The final game will have at least two more armor types, but I haven't decided which ones yet.

Next week I'll be working on weapons, with focus on the ones I haven't done much work on yet - the automatic weapons (SMGs and assault rifles) and melee weapons (knives and sledgehammers).

I'm almost done with the first big "indoor dungeon" I've been showing ventilation plans for earlier. Two levels done, one more to go.

It's going quite slowly right now because I'm also adding a number of features, as well as refining AI and adding more special abilities to enemies you can encounter so far.

As I've mentioned before I would, I've added security cameras. They have two purposes:

1. You can use see what's happening in all different corners of the area if you find the surveillance room

2. If you are in a hostile area (and couldn't take control of the security system) you should avoid the cameras themselves because if they detect you, they will be calling in reinforcements (System Shock style).

And in this particular area it'll summon sentry bots that are patrolling around the area. I think I made these a bit too powerful for the level you're supposed to encounter them and they are all but impossible to deal with without cheats currently. They have a lot of mechanical resistance, a fairly powerful main attack and two types of disabling attacks. I might be toning them down a bit, though they are not that many and once I introduce EMP grenades they will be easier to handle.

Personally, I think it would be fun to have an enemy you circumvent in the early game (by using ventilation ducts, stealth, distractions, etc) before you are powerful enough to deal with them, but we'll see.

In other news, I've reworked the melee and ranged hit chance calculations. The final hit chance is now displayed when you mouse the target as well.

Most buildings in the Underrail will have a ventilation system you can access and use it to move around or hide from the enemies. It'll be a particularly good way to scout ahead, as I intend to implement a 'peek' action you'll be able to use from within the ventilation to see what's outside a particular ventilation opening before stepping out (have to implement context menu on objects first for this, though).

All this doesn't mean that ventilation ducts are the safest place in the game, however. There will often be nastier things than you hanging out there.

Currently any character can access the ventilation, but I'll be adding skill checks later on. There will probably be two ways in which you can open a ventilation shaft:

• have enough points in lockpick and use a special tool (will probably need to rename 'lockpick' skill into 'burglary' or some such)
• have enough points in strength and use a crowbar

Last week I worked on more graphics for Lower Underrail areas.

I also added pistol and crossbow blueprints and some basic parts to be used to create "lower tier" weapons.

But most importantly I went back and worked out the remaining real-time to turn-based combat conversion stuff, including stealth. You will now properly detect stealthed characters during your turn as well as be detected.

So to explain in a bit more details: previously the detection checks were performed every 0.5 seconds against all the surrounding characters.They added or subtracted from your stealth buffer for that particular detecting character (your stealth value is being tracked against each individual NPC, it's not a global thing) depending on your stealth skill and their detection value (which is based on their level and perception). These mechanics have been retained for the real-time mode, and in turn-based mode this check is performed after every 10 action/movement points you spend, but the stealth buffer change that it causes is halved. This is because in turn-based mode while you are playing out your turn you are both detecting and being detected. So basically you are being detected both during your turn and your opponent's turn, unlike in real-time when everything is happening simultaneously; hence the halving of the stealth buffer change value.

So all that stuff that I explained in the original Stealth update way back still applies to the turn-based combat, but the detection checks are a bit more granular.

Since the character movement speed is reduced when in RT mode, it's movement points are reduced in TB mode.

The actual steath/detection levels still need tweaking for both RT and TB mode, though. Currently, you can unreasonably hard to detect with enough points in stealth even at very close distances and that's not the idea. I'll be fixing this at some point soon.

I also fixed other various problems with TB combat, so I can say that it is now pretty much fully functional with all the features that were present in the RT mode.

Been doing a lot of different stuff the previous week. Here's the highlights:

- I've created graphics for a new type of area. In contrast to the Lower Underrail stations which are large open areas, there's a vast network of narrow passageways around and below them. Around the active stations they are usually patrolled and safe, but the farther you stray the more dangerous they become.

- I've added blob shadows to characters.

- I've removed the Wisdom stat. It served no purpose anymore except for forcing the psi-based character to split stat points between it and Will. All psionic skills will now use Will stat instead, just as all science skills use Intelligence; and Persuasion skill will now use Intelligence.

- Redesigned the stat system somewhat too. Previously you could assign values between 5 and 15 for each stat (Strength, Dexterity, Agility...etc) at the character creation. The system had D&D like purchase aspect (or whatever you call it) where the higher the stat goes, the more expensive it is to increase it. The new system works much like the stat system in Fallout. Where you start with 5 points in each stat and have 5 additional points to spend, or more if you decrease some of the stats (no stat can go below 3). You'll still gain stat points as you advance levels, but it'll now be only on even levels. Basically I made it a bit more straightforward.

I'm finished with changing stuff to work with turn based combat for now. I converted most of the abilities, psi powers, items and feats. The change was usually straightforward with the exception of stuff that affected movement and attack speed which sometimes required redesigning.

The only thing that I haven't touched yet is the stealth system and related abilities, feats, etc. I have some idea of how detection will work in turn based mode but it's going to be a bit tricky to implement. There's also some other AI related stuff that doesn't work as reliably as it should yet. I'll deal with these things later, as they are not critical to this iteration.

I also added a few more features to the turn based mode UI. When you want to move to a another tile a path will be visualized for you. The color of the path segments will tell you how far you can get with only using movement points and how far you can go if you use action points as well. Also, the points you'd spend on this action will be highlighted on the action point bar. And for those situations when you need to micromanage your action points, there's also a numerical display on how many points you currently have, how many you'll spend on this movement and how many will you have left.

If you don't like some of these features and think they're clogging up the interface, don't worry, you'll be able to turn them on/off individually in the final game.

These features only work with movement action for now, but they'll work with all actions in the end.

I wasn't happy with how the combat was working out, so I was playing around with damage to health scaling, combat speed and other parameters. But I couldn't strike the comfortable middle between too quick and hectic (narrow corridors, obscuring walls and other isometric stuff didn't help much here) and too dragged out and unnatural. So last week I set down and implemented a turn based combat mode.

I considered doing this before but I was reluctant due to some real-time dependent (not necessarily combat) features I have planned. But I gave it another thought and I think I can still manage it despite the combat being turn based.

So about the combat: Not all skills and abilities are implemented to work with turn based combat yet, but it's coming along nicely. The system I'm currently using is action point based with separation between action (all purpose) points and movement points (green and yellow on the interface respectively). I'm still deciding on how much of each a character should have and what stats should influence them.

In the following week I'll be mapping the rest of the stuff to work in turn based combat as well. As for the future of the real time combat in the game, it will still stay for battles that don't include the player character, but the player combat will probably be exclusively turn based as I don't want to have to balance all the encounters for both. Have too much stuff to do as it is.

The different loading options for weapons (full magazine, single bullet) resulted in a need for items to have multiple 'capabilities' as I call them. This in turn required some sort of context menu to appear when using these items from your inventory, so I created a radial menu control.

You can also use this control to set the active 'capability' on the item you've dragged onto the action bar. An icon representing the currently assigned capability will appear alongside the item icon in the lower left corner as well.

In the process of doing this I also fixed a number of interface bugs and tweaked a few things I meant to for a while.

Making changes to UI and producing new types of controls is one of my favorite stuff to do. Perhaps because it's easy and I get to see the results quickly, owing to the solid and versatile UI framework I wrote as the part of the game engine way back at the beginning of this project. I can't remember exactly anymore, but I think I wrote it even before I set the foundations for the isometric rendering component. It's likely because the rendering component is a UI control itself (that is, it derives from the base control class).

Anyway, in some future iteration I intend to implement the radial menu as the context menu of usable objects for invoking alternative actions. So you'll be able to, say, right click the door and choose between opening them (default action), locking them and picking the lock, instead of having to invoke these stuff first and then target the door.

Ranged weapons now use ammo - bullets, energy (recharged from energy cells like other rechargeable items) and bolts for firearms, energy weapons and crossbows respectively.

First two also have limited magazines (depending on the weapon) so once you're out of bullets (or used up all the energy in case of energy weapons) you'll have to reload. The crossbows do not need manual reloading as you're effectively reloading it after every shot.

I've added magazine indicator to help you keep an eye on when you need to reload.

When the firearms are concerned you'll only be able to load the bullets of matching caliber into a gun, of course. There's also specialized ammo types such as armor-piercing and anti-personnel rounds.

This will effect the gameplay in two ways.

First, it will allow more tactical options of what ammo type to use against which opponents. For example, you'll want to use anti-personnel ammo against various critters and unarmored humans, while using armor piercing rounds to more easily destroy sentry bots and turrets. And because you're allowed a primary and a secondary weapon, you can load different types of ammo into each if you're facing a mixed crowd. Also, when out of combat, you'll be able to load your firearm bullet by bullet, setting up your magazine just right for the coming fight.

Secondly, because ammo is another resource you have to manage now, you'll be required to use it more sparingly and more intelligently. For example, you might not want to kill off each rat with your high caliber sniper rifle if whacking it with a crowbar can do the job. Remember, bullets will both cost money (or equivalent value goods) and be in limited supplies.

I've been mostly working on graphics for a new area in the previous week.

The are two major metro networks in the Underrail: Lower and Upper Underrail.

Lower Underrail (shown on the screenshots) is sort of industrial/military zone that back in the days of its prime housed a number military training grounds and production facilities, power plants, warehouses, secret research facilities, prisons and more. Some of these locales are abandoned now and some are inhabited and adapted by small groups or independent mid sized colonies.

While everyone protects their own station and the immediate surroundings, no larger faction has a decent grip on the Lower Underrail so it remains largely unpoliced. Wondering its long dark sprawling tunnels is dangerous business, especially if you venture unprepared.

Throughout the Underrail the player will encounter a great number of computer consoles. These consoles will have multiple security access levels that the player can attain by finding the required key card or by hacking.

The consoles have various purposes, such as:

• Store documents (general texts, blueprints, messages)
• Control electronic doors and storage lockers
• Control automated turrets, sentry bots, etc.
• Provide view through remote cameras

So investing in the hacking skill will allow you to change the environment to work to your advantage in combat, or avoid the combat altogether. In some cases it will also be an alternative to persuading/bribing/fighting your way to the key card in order to progress in some locations because you’ll just be able to hack your way through.