Time Warp: Music!

We've moved on from the story! Who'd have thought it, we only took 3 posts, 2 of which were corrections for changes to the stuff in the first post. safe to say, anything that isn't set in stone I won't be writing overly detailed posts on again. Actually, I will, but not on the story. Nothing spells disaster like false hope to fuel the hype train. Anyway, we have a more important topic to discuss in this post! Can you tell what it is? That's right, because you read the title! Music!

Now, let's get something out there right off the bat. I'm not a composer, and I cannot make music for the life of me. If anyone could recommend any free programs or tutorials or anything (literally ANYTHING) then I'll be happy to take a look. But for now, I'm stuck with the world's supply of music. Immediately when thinking of music, my mind jumped to royalty free music. Why wouldn't it? I used to run a YouTube channel (I still upload to it occasionally), and I've used a number of royalty free songs in my videos.

But I always find that royalty free songs have a certain...generic-ness to them. That's no comment on the creator's abilities, it's far better then I could ever hope to achieve, but it just seems to be sort of normal. There's no real stand out orchestral songs that would serve for a sound track, they all tend to play it safe and stick to genre-based formulae of how to compose music that fits comfortably in the "good but not quite Carling" field of quality. It lacks an oomph that makes it distinguishable as both a track, but also as the soundtrack to this game. Basically put, it sounds royalty free.

However, I've always had one idea sitting at the back of my head, just waiting for the right time for it to come to fruition. I've sat on it for a while, but now I think it's a good time to bring it out for use. A man, named Gustav Holst, once wrote a orchestral suite consisting of 7 movements. Don't know what that means? It means he dropped a sick ass live performed seven track album, but before albums were a thing. Or recording was a thing. Anyway, this suite was called The Planets, and is a very famous classical composition. If you've ever watched 2005-ish era Top Gear then they used it quite a lot.

This is where I unfortunately have to give you both a history lesson and a law lesson. You see, here in the UK we have laws about copyright. Mainly, you can hold the rights to your work, as is rightfully so. But, nothing lasts forever. You see, after a certain amount of time, differing from country to country there is a time period that acts as an expiry date for the copyright, so as to not limit works for all eternity by some stingy dead guy. This is usually the year of the composer's death, with an amount of years added onto it. In the UK, this is 70 years. So, Holst died in 1934 of heart failure at age 59, and yes, I have done my homework on this. When it involves laws, you really do have to do this properly.

Anyway, Holst died in 1934, plus 70 years for the copyright on his works to expire and this gives us a solid number of 2004, meaning his works have been copyright free for 12 years! Crikey, it's a wonder you don't see it popping up more. But either way, since the copyright has expired completely, this essentially makes it open for whatever you want to do with it. In this case, it will be our sound track. Remember how I said it was a suite? And how I described that as like an album? Well each movement (track) had it's own name, which are listed as so:

1) Mars - The Bringer of War (composed in 1914)
2) Venus - The Bringer of Peace (composed in 1914)
3) Mercury - The Winged Messenger (composed in 1916)
4) Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity (composed in 1914)
5) Saturn - The Bringer of Old Age (composed in 1915)
6) Uranus - The Magician (composed in 1915)
7) Neptune - The Mystic (composed in 1915)

Those are in order, by the way. I know that they were composed out of order, but whatever, that's how it's supposed to be. Each one is themed on a different planet, and is essentially a different emotionally-styled piece, each intended to invoke different emotions in the listener. However, what we're interested in is the movements Mars, Venus, and maybe Jupiter. The others may be used here and there in bits, but these three will be our main basis.

I say basis because they won't be staying how they are. You see, they're free of copyright, meaning I can edit them however I see fit. In this case, I intend to break them up into segments, so that I can play different parts when the player hits different triggers, making the music match what is happening in the scene. Why choose this suite over other ones? because it offers a good variety without losing it's cohesion, and plus I really like it. Why classical music? Because when done right, classical music is awesome, largely for soundtracks such as this.

One last comment about the music as we start to wrap up here, is that this music won't be non-diegetic, like most soundtracks. This means that It'll be physically in the story, as a real thing that the main character is supposed to be able to hear. This basically comes from a audio system built into his helmet, which story-wise will be to keep him calm and focused, but deep down it's because he likes it. He just doesn't want any one to know what Mr Bad-Ass Assassin Man listens to his tunes while on the job, he thinks it makes him seem unprofessional.

Anyway, that's about it for the music for now. This should be pretty final in terms of sound track, but you never know, as the story has proved. I've made some refinements to the AI and game mechanics, so they'll maybe be the next posts, but we'll see because I might end up splitting them up into separate things cause they're both quite hefty, I think. I'll leave you all to listen to the Planet Suite, because you know you want early access to the soundtrack. It's pretty cool to listen to, it's about 50 minutes in total so enjoy.

Time Warp: Story, Part Three of the Story-Line-Failure Trilogy

So, the other story is, as it turns out, ass. If you don't know what I mean by that, I mean I'm rewriting it. But I'm not stupid, so I'm not going to post about the story any more because the more I post about it the more I have to keep making posts about how I'm changing it. The 2.0 story's main fault was that it wasn't so much level based as it was one continuous string of levels, which all directly continue on from one another. This isn't good, mainly because it really, really, REALLY doesn't fit with the main mechanic of the entire game, which proves to be a pretty big problem in the grand scheme of things.
So, It's going to be changed to be more segmented and level based, and I'll rework the parts of the story that are required in order to get it to fit. The story is second after gameplay, after all.

Anyway, we'll finally have sections on music and the mechanic soon, as well as some other stuff, so keep your eyes peeled. I'm going to be typing them up next, though weather there'll be GIFs and demonstrations I've yet to decide. I'd like to, but since I've accidentally forgotten to update my graphics drivers I've been getting a couple of crashes when using Unity every now and again, which has caused me to loose some major work on this project, mainly relating to the AI and how it interacts with the world and the player. Not stuff that can be redone lightly, I might add. Still, it seems to be fixed for now, so check back for updates on the other promised stuff.

Time Warp: The Story is a Lie!

So, it turns that I'm wrong about that story. Way wrong. That's not going to be the story used here. Why? Well, it poses a bit of a problem really. I experimented with some models, textures and different shaders for the war train, along with various other elements that would be used, and I encountered a huge problem. Everything looks disgusting. Literally, no matter what, everything looks weird, out of place, and wrong. The backstory is generally fine, there isn't a great deal of it shown so I can keep that, but the actual game story? The War Train? Using it as a battering ram? Nope. Gone. Poof. It sucks, I know, but it's gotta go. I'll keep it for another game, and I'm sure that it'll come in handy in some way, but for now, it'll be locked away in the Great Vault of Forgotten Ideas™.

So, our new story? Well, like I said, a lot of the backstory can stay. I'm still happy to have it given out in some form of easter eggs and things, just to keep things simple more then anything, but the whole train-ram-home-base-explode-y-thing will have to go. In it's place, here's what we've got: The true, actual original idea was for you to play as an assassin (as evidences in my first post, where you are in fact described as an assassin), but some things will change. Mainly, your goal. You will be dropped into an enemy held city, where you'll be escorting a valuable package to an extraction zone, and when you arrive you'll be provided with a first class ticket to Anywherebutheresville. Sounds easy, right? Well, keep thinking that, because making your way through a heavily defended city in occupation by the enemy with no outside support at all is tougher then it first seems.

So, some stuff to clarify about your mission. firstly, avoid the streets. Get anything near the 5th story of a building and you'll be gunned down quicker then you can say "wow, that was quick". This means rooftops and the upper floors are your main level area, using the connecting sky bridges, connecting tunnels that join adjacent buildings, or your ingenuity to cross the gaps. Secondly, your package doesn't turn the entire story into a gigantic escort mission where you're constantly having to protect something. Well, I guess technically it's an escort mission, but you're not really defending anything. I'll keep what you're escorting secret for now. Tertiary, you'll be dropped near a building of the IRIS Intelligence Agency, a shady organisation in charge of the military's intelligence (some shady people indeed) and will therefore need to make a short journey to the building, but once there the package should be of assistance. Once the package has been collected, you'll then set out to get it out of the city.

So, that's what we've got for now. Having it set in a city will be a welcome change in setting from the failed artistic style of the war train, and we'll probably be looking at something more Mirrors Edge's City of Glass and halo Reach's New Alexandria then Blade Runner's Los Angeles. What I mean by that is, more white bright tones then darker ones. Darker ones don't really work, as discovered when I tried to make the war train. By having Something more like this, I can also have more of a pastel colour pallet without it looking strange, as militaristic colours and shades don't blend well with the current settings. I'd also like to show some time progression through having the city slowly reach sunset the closer to the end of the game you are, more as a measure of time for the player then anything, and it'll allow me to make some nice looking sunsets with kick-ass colours. Anyway, next up is those promised posts on the music and the main mechanic. If you want a hint: Mars is sounding good this time of year.

Time Warp: Story! Music! Bending Time to your Will?

So it's been a while! Probably the longest between posts, 5 days! The longest I'd gone before was 2 days, but that shouldn't happen again because I have updates! Many updates! As the title suggests, there are three main topics to be covered here, but each one is pretty huge. I mean, it's basically the entire game, right? The story, the musical score and the gameplay? That's the main building blocks for it! So, what I'm going to do is split it up into a number of posts, mainly three. In this post, I'll be covering the Story aspect. In a later post, I'll be covering the musical aspect, and finally the gameplay will be talked about AND DEMONSTRATED (hype) in a final third post. Not final as in last one ever, good god no. We're nowhere near the end. But we're inching ever closer. So anyway, onto the story!

Let's start out with a small history lesson. Not any important history, like WW2 or Hitler's rise to power. Instead, let's talk about my history. Specifically, when I was a wee little laddie. I used to love trains. Like, love them. They were great. It was never the technical aspect that got me, and I couldn't care less about the pulling capacity of the ANU5-B4G steam locomotive during it's prime. I liked them cause they were huge, they went fast, and they looked fancy and cool. But you know what I loved more then trains? Train crashes. Not for all the innocent lives put at risk, but just the sheer destruction of it. Like, have you ever seen a train explode? As in, properly? Take a look:

Look at that. Look at that wonderful mushroom of coolness. If that doesn't get your inner child excited, I don't know what will. I had a train set that went around my room, and all the time I crashed the trains into each other, just cause it was cool (I'm sure it was much cooler in my head). But recently, I replayed Medal of Honour: Frontline. It was the first proper FPS that i'd ever played, and I loved it. I had it on the GameCube, and we had one in my room, so I played it over and over. But one of the levels in particular was my favourite: Riding Out the Storm. This level was set on a WW2 German War Train. Don't know what a war train is? Let me educate you. It's a train with guns, a lot of guns. and armour plating. And then even more guns just in case. And lots of troops to man those guns, plus some spares because everything is always better with spare bits.

So, you're asking is my history lesson is about trains? Yes. And why is it about trains? Because these war trains are THE PERFECT setting for something of this nature. The basic mechanics of the game basically require firefights to be kept to relatively simple encounters, taking on a number of enemies at a time, before moving onto another set of enemies. I could set this in a building, going from floor to floor in a Bruce Willis-style They-Took-The-Thing-We-Want-It-Back, but that lacks a certain...oomph. Sure, you might give a reason, there might be classified information in this building. Cool, the player is saying, what does that do for me? Well, player, it does nothing, just some off screen characters that you probably don't care about. Great, now the player has lost interest because this means nothing to them. Why should they be invested in this building, or what you're doing in it? There's no personal gain.

You know, I've just realised that I'm still not telling you the story. you've been reading 4 paragraphs waiting for it, and I've been rambling about trains. That's probably not as interesting to you as it would be to me. Anyway, the story. So, humanity. We're always fighting things, right? No matter how much Star Trek will tell you otherwise, humanity can never settle itself with anything else, even sometimes its own. This is why we have all the wars history has and such. Well, this time, it's the future, and we're at war. I know, it's a very original idea and you may need to sit down. but here's the kicker: we're actually fighting many different forces on many different fronts. Everyone's fighting everyone, so we're all left in a bit of a tiff with each other.

But is humanity united to stand against the forces who seek to destroy us? Of course not! We're humanity! There's always conflict between us, and this time it comes in the form of the Zealot Military. These people aren't very happy with the bulk of humanity, and how we handle matters of humanity-based vindication. they mostly aren't happy because of how some things have to suffer in order to fund the war efforts, mainly in the working area. Those in certain critical positions have sought to gain power through negotiations to have a stronger input on humanity's war efforts. And having been told by everyone else "can we really not have this discussion later?" they got cranky.

So, they've been taking more and more violent shots at the general human population for quite a while, getting more rowdy each day. However, this time humanity has decided that we've had enough, because theses assholes have hijacked a train. But not just any train. This one was taking vital supplies to the front lines. Mainly, hundreds of tanks and armour, thousands of weapons and an uncountable amount of other things that they'll regret getting their grubby mitts on very soon. This war train taking vital supplies has been stored in a train yard. How do we know it's there? Because it's our bloody train, of course we can track it, and it's huge. Remember how I said lots of tanks and armour? Yeah, this think is building-size huge. I think you'll like the designs I'm going for when I show them.

So, they have a train. Big deal. Use another one, surely we've got a spare somewhere, right? Well, it's not so much what they've got it, more that they're fitting it with explosives. A lot of explosives. enough explosives to crater the earth with a hole a couple of kilometres wide. The moon's radius is 1.737 kilometres, for scale. This party train is being lined up for a straight line to humanity's main base of operations, and given that this line is vital for transport to the front lines, we can't really blow up the tracks or damage them. think of it as a giant battering ram, each carriage weighing the same as a building. Not good, not very stoppable either. This is where the player comes in. Assault the train while it's in the train yard and disable it, and if it manages to get away, make sure you're on it when it does. If you are, then decouple each of the cars, leaving them open to proper disarming and stuff.

TL;DR: There's a big ass train heading for home base with many explosives, board it and disable it before it is used as an explosive battering ram on your home base.

If it seems like a lot to cover, then don't worry, it's really not necessary for the game. Most of it won't play in, and won't be flat out told to the player through some overly elaborate cut scene. Mainly, it'll be saved for those aforementioned terminals as extra world building for those who go looking for it. But how does this in any way fit into gameplay? is it all just a fancy backdrop for no reason? If i'm typing that question as though you've said it even though you probably didn't, you know it's probably wrong.

The whole train layout allows for a basic section/level-based game without it feeling disjointed. Each carriage is a level, filled with it's own unique points that make it different from the rest. Some cars are transporting supplies in crates, these are your basic firefights in an open-ish space. Some of them are used for the storage of tanks and APCs, to which the enemy will use against you, and you can use against them, changing up how the level plays out and how the player can interact with the level. Some carriages contain armouries, some will have completely open floors with walkways running above that must be fought on, with the rails speeding by underneath your feet. Some will force you to be out in the open, limiting the effectiveness of guns like the Ricochet, as they have nothing to bounce off.

Obviously these are just some examples of the possibilities that this presents, and hell, I might end up changing everything up if I find something that works better. But this is what we're going for at the moment, and the levels will be designed as such. As the carriages will have both indoor and outdoor sections, I'll have to get to work on weather certain things play into the current art style and if I can't come up with anything, Then I may have to drop the whole idea in favour of something better suited. If something with a similar section-based idea comes to mind that would be easier to visually work with while offering the same variety benefits, I'd be open to that. I'd probably use the same backstory, just keep the whole train stuff for a future game. We'll see how it goes. But for now, that's what we have! If you've reached the end of this post then you deserve a medal, that's a crazy amount of reading and you should be proud of yourself for supporting indie devs and their whack-job ideas that are way too dumb and risky for AAA studios to ever even think of considering.

A Quick Concept Art

Totally not getting distracted or anything, after I wrote last night's post (I wrote the Quick Notice post and a post that's coming out later on together, but I thought I'd split them up a bit because it's a long one) I did some sketching and drew a quick concept art of what the player models would be like. Obviously parts would change due to customisation, but for now I quite like the look. He doesn't look bad, but I could probably do a better job when it isn't 3 am. That being said, he's got a certain look to all the weird lines in the under suit that I quite like, I'm not 100% sure what nighttime will was thinking with them but they look good in the form of pipes or wires running through the suit. Also, yes, he has no legs, but I'm awful at drawing legs, I'm surprised the hands came out looking so human.

A Quick Notice

Something that I'd like to point out, due to a recent discovery, is that Photon Unity Networking can support 100 concurrent users. I've always used the Photon Cloud servers, which can only support 20, and I feel dumb as hell. I've been after making an FPS multiplayer game for years now. I've even made a few attempts here and there. But I've always held myself back because of that godDAMN 20 CONCURRENT USER LIMIT. GODAMMNIT. GODFREAKINGDAMNIT. I've never been so annoyed and happy in my life. This is more of a forewarning then anything: you may soon start seeing some concept artwork crop up here and there for arena-style maps and human/alien weapons, and maybe some armoured super soldiers. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning any of my current projects, but it's just been bumped up the list to next in line, so when Time warp is all wrapped up, this'll likely be the next one going.

Time Warp's AI, Story and Additional Content

I know I said that I'd write an update on Friday after I uploaded the sketchfab post, but that didn't happen. Not that it matters, as now I have a better update to share: progress on project Time Warp's AI! I've also had some story concepts, but I'm not 100% sure on weather to share them yet, because they are just concepts and might not come to fruition. I'd live them too though, they allow for quite a bit of creative freedom and allow for a story line that's engaging but simple, not overstepping our boundaries. Because, lets face it, writing a heavy backstory into a relatively simplistic game is just a recipe for disaster. I was going to talk about the AI now, but I think I'll detail a bit more on the story for a bit. Because it's my dev blog, after all.

Anyway, so as I said I'm not sharing much on the story yet because that would be dumb, because as a lot of the game is still in development things will change often and most things aren't set in stone. Except that sniper rifle model. That kicks ass. So, as previously stated, the story will be kept relatively simple, and will be largely told through text and other visual means, because I'm an awful voice actor and we've got a budget of £0 to make this game with. That's not the main reason, however, I fell that it's less likely to cause issues with the main mechanic of the game, as voice clips would have some...unexpected issues while playing. The main mechanic is almost done, so you'll see what I mean soon.

But anyway, my story plan is this keep it simple on the surface, but plant of seeds of a larger story (or even just tell one) for those who explore the levels and look for secrets. I love exploring levels, and also love it when my exploration is rewarded; finding those extra ammo crates, or that little Easter egg, or maybe even a hidden power weapon to help complete the level. However, the main case in point of this is in Halo 3, where Forerunner Terminals were present on forerunner stuff, telling an underlying story that adds deeper layers to the relatively simple story that you play through. I loved finding these, it gave more backstory to the locations you were in, introduced lore characters that led to the events that brought you here, and even unveiled present character's hidden motives, including little details that hint towards their ultimate roll either as ally or enemy.

Screenshot from a video by Youtube user HaloSpartanGamer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TFhJki2goA

So, I plan to tell some underlying elements of my story through a similar means. I'll probably plan out a story far in advance of this one, maybe just to give me some hints about where things could go from here, etc. However, one thing that I do like to do it keep a sense of similarity through all my games: each one references another, and they're all intertwined, one way or another. My first ever game, Defender: Last Stand has links to Fighter Prime, a game that'll be put on steam in the near future, which has ties to Galactic Combat, another space-related title of mine. This has links to Gravity, which has ties to The First Strike, which then links into The Dead Planet and so on and so fourth. By the way, most of those will never see the light of day, but here's to hoping that I get round to finishing them as some point. It would be nice. But what I'm saying is that most of them have similar looks in one way or another, in both a story half of linking everything together and the developer half of re-using assets. Anyway, stories in layers. Like onions. Onions have layers.

Also, I said in the last post that I would be unveiling something about weapons in the next major post, but that won't happen so deflate your hype balloons. It's a perfect example of what I was just talking about: adding new weapons offsets the balance and pacing of the game, leading to all sorts of variables player-side that I can't account for. Some of the planned weapons included a pistol, an SMG and a shotgun as a secondary choice of firearm. However, after fiddling with a number of variables and trying out different combinations, a problem arose: what was the point?

If you have a long range point-accurate sniper rifle, then why do you need an SMG? and if you have a reasonably accurate semi-auto pistol, then why have a sniper rifle that does the same, but fires slower? why have a shotgun, when you can just 360 trick-shot ricochet no-scope a dude while he's right in front of you? Point is, those weapons all offset the balance of everything, and therefore were removed. They might be added back if i find a way, but for now, bye bye to the SMG model I made. It didn't look col enough anyway.

Hey, it's finally time to talk about the AI! who'd have thought I could delay it for 6 paragraphs?! That probably holds some kind of record for dodging topics. Anyway, the AI is...erm, yeah. It wasn't looking good until a few hours ago. As a a matter of fact, it still isn't looking great. But it's a start. I'm pretty proud of some things, they work well, some others though, maybe the less said about them the better. Let's start off by looking at how far we've come. Not a great deal of in-progress screenshots and stuff unfortunately as most of it was problem solving, but I have some lovely professional GIFs to show you, such as this one:

See? Are you proud? Isn't it looking great? What? You think it looks weird and unnatural and want to have your dreams unscathed by it's presence because you can't deal with the nightmares anymore? Well great, me too, but we don't all get what we want. In this case, I wanted some way to have a ragdoll correctly react to being shot, so I attempted to simply incorporate AI code into the rag doll. "Simply" maybe isn't the word for it. Maybe unreasonably difficult. I've never done it before, so maybe it's easy to those who have, but to me it was awkward. I didn't want to enable and disable the physics on each bone or anything because surely there's a more efficient way of doing it.

Turns out if you don't, it just flops around like a man-shaped fish. So my solution? Pin his head in place. Of course. Why didn't I think of it sooner? It'll hold him up and i can maybe animate the arms and legs individually and call them as needed. But that's dumb apparently, because this is the result. I suppose I could make a game with no ramps, edges, stairs, ledges, walls or objects, but I think that might compromise gameplay. Dumb solution to a dumb problem.

I basically wanted to avoid what I've come to call "Source Syndrome", which is a condition that seems to affect a lot of Source games (sorry Gabe). Basically, when an enemy is killed, for a frame or two, sometimes you can see their t-positioned ragdoll spawn before it's corrected to the right positions Sometimes, they don't even correct at all and just leave it t-posed! It's especially evident in G-Mod, which I know isn't the best example of a polished game but it's the best place to see it. Anyway, the use of ragdolls already in position came from this, and also I could get accurate hitboxes and reduce what's been come to be called by me as "Payday Syndrome", where leg and arm shots don't count because they don't fit into the (I assume cylindrical?) collider that they seem to use. Especially given the game, these physics need to be on point. Absolutely on point.

So, after some tweaking I decided to give in and disable each bone in their prefabs, and then enable them again when they're killed. turns out that's actually the best way to do it, and it allowed me to get some actually kind of cool physics results. Basically, Using the particle effects and their hit positions, I can apply force to specific parts of the ragdoll as it's enabled,m ending in a seamless transition from living to dead, but also giving a better effect of being shot. For instance, shoot a guy in the head? His head'll whip back as his low-poly brains are catapulted allover a nearby wall. Bop a guy in the shoulder? He'll spin in that direction from the force of the impact before collapsing on the floor. Popping a sniper in the foot? His appropriate leg will give way, and he'll collapse leg-first into the ground, or off a wall if he's standing on one. Take a look at some examples:

Leg shooting

Head shot!

You spin me right round baby right round

Chest bop

His buddy wanted to see what was wrong with him

Possibly my favourite, leg-hitting enemies on walls and watching them tumble

So, as you can see from this increasingly GIF-heavy post, things are going...alright. The AI is still missing the whole second part of that whole "Artificial Intelligence" thing, as currently all they do is seek out locations marked as cover and stand there, randomly selecting a new one at random intervals. I've missed around with them shooting the player and it all works, I just haven't got the whole player death stuff down yet. It's nearly finished, just needs a little tweaking. Also, I added a little blood effect when they're shot which comes out of where they were shot, but I'm not sure about it; I don't think it fits with the whole aesthetic. However, none of that matters because you can Sparta-shot them off of a ledge and they go tumbling, and it's my favourite thing in the game so far.

Bonus GIF: firing Extermination shots into a crowd in a small room, with the impact force ten times as strong as intended. Additionally, shots bounce off of enemies when they hit them

However, once we get this AI business down and tweak the main mechanic to get it perfect, we'll be pretty much set to start creating levels. Oh, and we'll get a story down of course, but I don't really know where to go with that at the moment. My current plan involves sneaking aboard a form of transport to sabotage it, but we'll see. Stealth mechanics aren't really something I'd like to implement in this as it doesn't really fit with the gameplay as a whole, so we'll see. Maybe a rethinking of that concept is in order. Either way, I'm looking forward to making the levels. Some concepts so far involve allow for quite a bit of creative freedom in their design given the aesthetics; Plans for cityscapes, intense sky combat and thrilling train rides are so far on the table. but for now, that's your update. Maybe you'll get the main mechanic next time, who knows.