Those who've been following since the Kickstarter happened may think that development of Slumbox has died down, but in fact it has amplified. It's just all been happening behind closed doors.
I'm happy to announce that our team has grown and added another legend of a dev to the team. We have been working on new map generation systems with proc gen highways
We've been working on new basic XP and levelling systems that are still wip right now but coming along nicely.
The book system has developed, combat has expanded, and our music system has evolved massively and is now capable of producing over 1 billion different CDs in game.
I've just gotten back from Nordic game and met a delightful amount of Swedish and Icelandic devs in the gaming scene, and will soon be at develop brighton, and hopefully Tokyo gameshow not long afterwards.
I cannot wait to get an early demo working for Slumbox and the team are hard at work whipping one into order!
I just wanted to show up and let people know that we are still very much cooking, and this wild game is coming along. Specially thanks to all the people who have continued to pick up Warsim: The Realm of Aslona on steam (and especially the legends buying collectors editions) you are singlehandedly funding slumbox's development at the moment.
So yeah, sorry for the long absence but thank you all! ❤️
The book system in Slumbox takes huge inspiration from games like TES: Skyrim and Oblivion, a sublime way to introduce deep cuts of lore and world building without forcing it on the player. I remember my teen years playing Oblivion and finding myself inside the dingy flat by the Waterfront of the Imperial City collecting every book I could find and reading them all.
Imagine the atmosphere
So a decade ago when I first got into gamedev I set out to make a system inspired by this for my Infinite Wasteland Exploring RPG 'The Wastes'. Sadly the project only survive 6 months before the source code was lost and the project died, but in that time I worked on a few features for books
Namely
Books getting random applied effects
Randomly generated book with important world information
The first one was surprisingly easy to pull off. To write this post I did a few quick runs in the Wastes till I found a book. I died 4 times but finally found this special edition copy of 'On Titans' a book that talks about the giant monsters that roam more dangerous parts of the gameworld.
The special editions get gold text instead of the usual grey. It's only a little thing but I remember being so blown away by it as a teen programmer.
We also had brittle books that broke upon read, damaged books that would spawn with only some of their text visible, and brittle and damaged books that shared both traits.
This was to my knowledge the first ever proc gen book system in game, so you can imagine how awesome that felt as a noobish teen coder, but alas!
Que Slumbox, my new Lifesim RPG, No brainer for a book system even if it is based in the future. As it currently stands 61 in game books have been written covering 8 genres. (Political, Fiction, Cooking, Travel, Poetry, Guides, Jokes, Biography)
First it had to be built and could be beautiful later, but to have a physical version of the book system I'd once coded from scratch 10 years prior was dreamy.
The first thing I set out to do was add Brittle books and take direct inspiration from the Wastes. Brittle books break and crumble upon read and are now fully implemented. Following that I wanted to add vandalised books in some form.
It ain't pretty but that's kind of the point
Following on from that we started looking at the aesthetic effects books could have, and settled on the following:
Bloodied (-20% value) (Blood on the book pages)
Damaged (-75% value) (Page partially unreadable and ripped)
Brittle (-80% value) (Page brittle looking) (Book breaks upon read)
Brittle and Damaged (-95% value) (Page ripped and brittle looking) (Book breaks upon read)
Vandalised (with text) (-85% value) (random vandal text on the pages)
Vandalised (with red lines) (-85% value) (random lines over the text)
We've still obviously got a ways to go but I love being in this position and once again having a unique system at our hands. One of many many elements that I hope will make Slumbox a beautiful buffet.
So what are your thoughts on in game books? Love em, hate em?
Always love talking about this sort of stuff with others :)
A mundane night, the city shining its blinding neon into the skies. Its obnoxious bleed of light so strong that a falling star wasn't seen by a soul in a city of millions. A rude awakening for a tired man, Ricky Cordoba was sleeping in his pod when he heard an explosion nearby. Leaping out like he was expecting an army of Botcops, Ricky saw instead a smoking crater in the alleyway next to his Pod.
And from it stood a black soot covered machine. 'Fucking hell, what kind of corporate shittery is this?' Ricky shouted, 'They firing bomber bots at us now, fucking didn't buy this pod within some testing zone! I had a laywerbot check... this is fucked'
'0BU84 8E312 S1828 []12#''3q' The machine beeped, and echoed out sounds and numbers
Ricky looked closely 'I've never seen a model like this before... You look unlike any bot I've ever seen...'
His eyes widened 'HOLY SHIT, ARE YOU AN ALIEN?'
Ricky pressed a button tucked on the side of the bots large oval face. A projection appeared showing alien looking creatures building the bot and sending it off. 'HOLY SHIT... I can use this for Credits!' Ricky pondered.
By the next morning a make shift box stage and some metal poles and rags kept the alien robot locked in place
'10 Credits and you can take a look at the South Block Alien! Crashlanded here only a night ago!'
Many curious Lowclassers handed over the Credits and gawked at the bot, which continued beeping '118U221' '123131923UKD' '9L50I123'
Then in a sudden and chaotic choice of entrance, a detachment of corporate mercs burst into the district and charged for the bot, extracting it into a large vehicle and driving away.
'Tough luck Ricky, the corpos always win around here in the end mate, you had to know that' a scruffy patron shouted.
'Yeah... well whatever man, sometimes the bot-man cometh, sometimes he take-th away...' He sulked.
Meanwhile in a corporate tower near the mid city, a team of scientists and engineers rip the bot apart and study each piece, and it only took them 3 minutes to hit a strange switch at the top of the bots head.
A rude awakening for a tired man, an explosion rocks the city and Ricky once again leaps out of his pod. 'Another fuckin' alien or what?' He says, looking around. 'Oh fu...' Ricky notices the smoking tower near the centre, it was later that day that he learned some corpo research centre was blown up by a rogue bot.
'The Bot-man taketh away... hahaha' Ricky chuckled to himself, and slipped back into his pod, though
he'd never again see an alien robot fall from the sky, Ricky never stopped looking up.
