A NEW HOPE: Will2k's Dying Light Single-player campaign [WIP]

Quote from blackdog

On 12/21/2018 at 8:32 PM, blackdog said: Nice

OT: tools allow you to make Battle Royale maps now that they’ve launched the DLC?

Dying Light:Bad Blood is not a DLC; it's a full standalone separate game that uses the Dying Light engine with updated assets/meshes/materials/entities.

The current developer tools only cater to Dying Light and its DLC (The Following) and does not contain the new assets of Bad Blood.

I'm not sure if they will release new dev tools once the game leaves early access; we'll wait and see

Almost there - possibly the last update before the final release

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of this WIP thread; it's been a long road but I loved every minute of it.

Major update today as the 3rd and final part of the campaign/map is almost done.

I'm now fine tuning the finale (location/scripting/NPCs) as well as one of the side quests. Once everything falls in place, I'll be shifting towards the final detailing/art pass, finalizing the foliage system, nav mesh manual tuning, final lighting tweaks, and gameplay misc optimization (invisible player/NPC barriers, etc...)

Stay tuned

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And finally, a taste of things to come in the finale (without spoilers :))

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Quote from blackdog

15 hours ago, blackdog said: Can’t believe one year has passed so fast ? huge congrats for sticking it!

Thanks

2018 flew by pretty quickly and I enjoyed learning the tools and working on this project.

Coming soon

Whatup folks! I'm back. I've been away for more than 3 months (116 notifications once I logged in now ); real life issues and work always manage to get in the way

Nevertheless, I've been working tirelessly towards finishing this campaign that turned out to be huge in scope and consumed every bit of free time I have. I now basically design scripts and quests while sleeping and dreaming too

I had a couple of minor setbacks while designing the finale and I had to counter it by... creating my own custom AI specific for the finale.

A year and a half ago when I started this project, I knew little about scripting; now I'm creating my own AI presets and scripts as well as more than 870 lines of quests script.

I'm working late nights on this and still have to finish the last 10% of this WIP (final art pass, detailing tweaks, FX, sounds, power lines, AI barriers...), and if everything goes well, I should be going public and releasing this campaign somewhere this month.

Now for some screenshots to compensate for the lack of updates in the last 3 months

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Quote from blackdog

1 hour ago, blackdog said: I hope the devs see your thing and decide to support you in the release, I dunno some featured DLC with all this effort would be super cool.

Grazie mille Flavio; you've been a constant voice of support and cheers along this project. (congrats on becoming a dad; just recapping with what happened during my absence here :D)

Quote from Radu

45 minutes ago, Radu said: @will2k how long does it take to play through it atm?

damn, I leave for little over 3 months and you already are with Ubi!

Jokes aside, congrats on the position :).

The gameplay will totally depend on player skill (knowledge of parkour and Dying Light mechanics) and style (explorer or just speed-running thru the main quest)

If one will choose to go as quickly as possible thru the quests without any exploration of remote locations, points of interest, scavenging, fighting or random encounters with NPC, then you can finish the campaign in approx 2h 15 min (give or take 10-15 min)

If you decide to enjoy the campaign as it is supposed to be played, then you could easily sink 3-4hrs +; it's yours to play as you see fit

Quote from Radu

13 hours ago, Radu said: I waited for you, Will, but you took too long!

Thanks, it's not exactly level design, but *at least I'm getting relevant industry experience*.

Sorry for asking about the length again. I just scrolled up to see I also asked back in january. Damn, it's almost summer? Anyway, looking forward to see this released.

One open door leads to another, so having a foot at Ubi is a good thing and will lead to exciting things in the near future.

I just scrolled back and saw your January post; I was already gone by the time you posted, hence the no reply

Regarding the amount of hours, it really varies from day to day, week to week.

To give a rounded average, I have clocked around 1500 hrs in the dev tools over 18 months, which makes for 83.33 hrs per month on avg, 2.77 hrs per day on avg (assuming every day work)

Lighting tweaks While daylight is pretty straightforward (sun light that takes care of most lighting), night light in contrast requires the designer's manual intervention, some tweaking, and playing with a combination of dimmers, omni-directional, spot-shadow, and volume lights; once nailed correctly, it can produce some atmospheric scenes.

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Quote from Radu

3 hours ago, Radu said: When?

My plan was to release in end May-early June and as the saying goes "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face"

I had a series of unfortunate and unforeseen setbacks that inevitably delayed the above plan of release.

My mother is going to have surgery by the end of this month and this is a priority (family comes first :)) with all the pre-surgery appointments and taking her to the doctor and whatnot.

Next, I found a new and better way to implement my NPC dialogues and player monologues so i had to re-adjust and re-write considerable chunks of dialogs and the corresponding quest script lines.

To add to this, Techland patched the game in early June which in turn screwed the developer tools; the map started crashing at loading screen and couldn't work on it for a week

Finally, E3 happened and everyone, developer Techland and the active player base, has their eyes on Dying Light 2. Any content for DL1 will probably go unnoticed so we will wait a bit until DL2 hype sets down a notch

The map is 95% done and under active development, so that is reassuring after all the above setbacks.

Thanks everyone for the continuous support and for sticking around for this long, I hope it will be worth it in the end

Another 2 months hiatus, but justified

As I mentioned in my last post above back in June, my mother had her knee surgery in July. I've been by her side for over a month now as she slowly re-adapts to the simple task of walking, through intensive and painful physical therapy and rehabilitation.

All level design activities were basically on hold for all of July and a considerable part of August. I resumed work by mid-August, at full speed to cover the last remaining 5% of this project. I also went back to earlier parts of this campaign that were designed in late 2017-early 2018, and did a visual overhaul as well as scripts/quests cleanup to bring them to the level of the later parts of 2018 and 2019.

But wait, there's more . I also added 2 new side quests and a player challenge on top of the already existing 5 quests.

Some interesting facts and features:

- More than 1100 lines of quest script - 400+ lines of dialogue and player monologue with custom dialogue audio - Custom original storyline that ties into the main game and its expansion - Proper rewards for each quest (XP, cash, items, weapons...) - Vast open world, free to explore - Plenty of areas to explore and loot, with secrets, easter eggs, crafting blueprints, weapons... - Scripted NPCs to interact and chat with - Boss fights ...

The campaign is mostly done, I'm putting the final touches and doing some tweaks/polish before the public release, which will be announced soon on this page. Stay tuned.

Here's a 5 min short video showcasing random gameplay in the newer parts of the campaign (the actual map is twice the size of what is shown in the video). No quests, special events/fights, or spoilers are shown in the video so people will get the full experience, spoiler-free, when they download and play the campaign.

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback, cheers, and general support during the almost 2-year lifespan of this massive project; truly appreciate it.

Scripted NPCs gameplay/dialogue

Another short video (5 min) before public release.

The video showcases scripted NPCs going about their various daily activities in the survivor hub called "The Sanctuary". The video also shows some NPC dialogues, and how NPC activities change during the day, and when transitioning to evening, then night.

Someone is a mechanic, others are farmers and tool makers; some folks stand guard to protect the safehouse while some lazy asses just sleep or play guitar all day long . Many kids are also playing games under the watchful eyes of the guards.

Many NPCs switch between activities that change as the day progresses (1:45 in the video). In the late afternoon/early evening, most stop their activities to catch some rest while others play cards and hit the bottle (2:28 in video)

Finally, at night, most go to sleep while a few remain alert to guard the place (3:35 in video)

As usual, the video is spoiler-free with no critical tasks or quests shown; the small dialogue shown in the video is also not affecting the quests or storyline.

It's mostly done

I noticed a pattern while looking at the timestamps of my earlier posts here in this WIP thread: I seem to go offline for 2-3 months, then pop up with a major update, then go totally dark for another 2-3 months, then show up again, then radio silent,...you get the point

Real life has been a rough ride for the past couple of months and development time took a hit but as always, I was able to fight back and compensate in a big way.

I added not one, but 2 new big side quests that tightly integrate and complement the main story quest. A new addition is also a quarantine zone challenge (takes place in a newly created additional map) which brings the total to 2 main storyline quests, 8 big side quests, 1 parkour timed-challenge, and 1 quarantine zone challenge.

Since the campaign takes place in a vast open world, that is free to explore (1km+), I added fast travel through the tunnels/sewers system once the whole map is unlocked and accessible.

And for the icing on the cake, I created an intro movie fully animated in-game in first person perspective to keep player immersion.

Finally, a LOT of time has been spent on art passes and polishing, backstory embellishment, as well as bug fixing to make this campaign a smooth ride from start to finish.

After 2 years (on and off), this campaign has evolved into a game (or DLC) on its own with roughly 4-6+ hours of gameplay. If I were using a licensed engine (UE4 or Unity), I would've probably released it as a standalone game

As I stated in the opening paragraph, campaign is mostly done: just doing some final touch ups as well as some intensive playtesting (and waiting on some feedback from a tester); once all is green, the campaign will go live

Thanks again to everyone who's been on this train ride with me for the past 2 years with support and uplifting cheers; special shout out to @blackdog and @Radu

Some new screenshots to make up for the lack of updates in the last 3 months

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The new quarantine zone

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A new sidequest where the player will probably shit their pants

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The sewers leading to the countryside (intro movie)

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