Open world top-down tactical shooter for Windows, Mac and Linux

Long time no see! We’ve been taking a bit of extra time to improve RWR over a longer stretch recently before hitting Steam Early Access. Version 0.93 will be released soon (hating that word as much as you do), within 1-2 weeks I dare say, soon to follow with an updated demo and 0.94 for Steam. Also it’s that voting time of the year again, so give us a thumbs up by clicking somewhere on the enormous banner at indiedb.com 2013 IOTY awards.

One of the bigger changes coming in 0.93 is the new inventory view. The new approach is more fluent to use with item type based arrangement and shortcuts on mouse buttons, and we also wanted to make it less obtrusive with the floating design.

Another big changer is the way how the campaign is played out from now on. Previously the system was a linear sequence of maps, not a very open world approach, so now it will allow more free adventuring to ensue instead by traveling between maps using marked extraction points. Conveniently it also enables retreating when it seems you’re hitting a dead end.

In the combat toolset, a sticky remote-detonable C4 explosive has been added for destroying static targets such as radio towers now featured in certain maps. It also sticks on to vehicles allowing to execute certain stunts or create traps – can see plenty of hilarity coming up in online because of this! The grenade launcher, M79, has been added in the available set as a new primary weapon type too. Moreover, the complete faction specific weapon sets are now in, so all three factions have their unique weapons.

In addition to these major changes, the minor changes go almost in hundreds!

Once we’re done with 0.93, quick update 0.94 for Steam and all the promo video work, 0.95 will feature some exciting changes as well. We’ll be adding the mini-bosses, strong high rank enemy AI bots with different outfits to create that occasional disrupt in balance, and also the final stage battle setups for campaign to mark a proper ending for defeating another faction. Some new quests/objectives for the campaign will be added as well, and I hope I can get around to teach the AI to utilize the sandbag barrier construction soon too.

Have faith my fellow runners, 0.93 is almost there, then we’ll do everything we can to get RWR in Steam Early Access as soon as possible!

All right, another milestone reached with RWR receiving the greenlit status in Steam! Thanks to all who voted and helped us get there! The hope’s up RWR finds its way in Steam Early Access soon, but don’t have any data available at the moment.

Also, 0.92 has just been released, we’re sort of skipping 0.91 as it took so long this time. This also means lots of juicy changes.

Like seen in the screenshot below, there’s some new tech in the game that allows having plenty of effects of warfare on the ground. Especially those bloodthirsty runners may now rejoice, but there’s also skidmarks, dirty footprints, and well, just more dirt in general.

On the gameplay side, it’s now possible to create cover barriers, allowing a greater amount of ways to fight through the more open spaces in the maps, highly useful in Stalemate for instance.

Some of those obvious low hanging fruits have been finished in 0.92, vehicle takeover from friendly soldiers is now possible if you have the rank to do it, and you can “whistle” for a driver to stop and wait to get you in. These kind of things make the game feel more responsive to various actions, part of polishing the gameplay towards 1.0.

On another front, loading times are greatly improving, went down a whooping 30 seconds on my dev PC. More commander AI bugs have been eliminated, making attacks function more like intended without that much running back to base.

Invasion is starting to see some additional RP sources emerge, the armories are now asking for specific enemy weapons and will think highly of anyone doing the deed. I know I would’ve needed that in 0.90. The two new maps from 0.90 have been added in the sequence as well, making it now an epic 8-map run through about 60 bases. Plenty of adjustments still coming for Invasion in the later releases, I’m having a gut feeling we’ve perhaps completed roughly 40% of the feasible ideas for content for it.

Call request handling has gone through a revamp, you’re now able to make calls without having to get them first at an armory, meaning as long as you can afford a call, you can do it. We also threw in some new calls, there are 2 artillery strikes now, rubberboat, jeep, humvee and tank drops. That’s right, there’s a humvee! Special thanks for Gniolliv for loaning the model, it is awesome!

I’m running out of space here (what an excuse, eh?), so I’ll just conclude that in addition to these highlights, a lot has changed in the menus, backpack handling, visual quality, maps, plenty of bugs have been fixed – we are after all in the 0.90-1.0 era which means all the stuff made during the past 2.5 years now need to start coming together!

P.S. new demo coming soon and .. did I just see a tiny sparkle of light for Mac port?

Hey there runners!

RWR Beta 0.90 has finally seen the light of day and is now available in Desura and BMTMicro. The change log is huge, with highlights at two new maps designed for King of the hill -action for three factions, and the first development iteration of the single player Invasion mode.

The Invasion campaign enables you to play with one profile through the maps in predefined order and settings as familiar from online Invasion, we’ve set XP progression rate much lower than usual for this, the factions have access to specific weapons only now, the cargo truck objective is there in selected maps and so on. 6 maps are included in the campaign currently, so expected playing time is somewhere around 6-9 hours, give or take, but don’t feel bad if it takes longer — I had my timer telling me 7 hours and I was still fighting for the second base in the 5th map

You can also activate the server on your single player campaign and invite your friends to play cooperative with you. Their profiles should become similarly stored in your game, so reconnecting with the same username later would allow continuing from the previous soldier status.

The campaign feels pretty challenging, at times it’s even too easy to end up having a stalemate right there in your first base in the region, but most of the time there is a way around it though it might require some initiative on your part. The campaign obviously isn’t complete yet, this is the first cycle, we’ll be adding a few new surprise maps in the coming months and new objectives, settings, resources and possibilities.

Talking about possibilities, 0.90 provides plenty of new stuff for modders! Faction specific resources aside, the generic support in calls and weapons has extended to allow any resource spawning on request, so it would be possible to set things up for transforming an item into a stationary weapon or cover, or calling a tank drop for that matter. Vanilla 0.90 still doesn’t use these, we’re still working on the content and polishing certain bugs, but I’m sure this feature won’t be left unused!

On tactical level, vests have been revamped to fit their purpose better by having 3 stages for reacting to lethal hits – first one gets deflected, second stuns, third finally wounds now. This should give you a bit of clue how close you are to become wounded and consider if you’re in a position where a medic could help you – if there’s a medic in the first place. Shields are also more useful now with AI, they are able to shoot behind a shield better and the shield carrier also gets a reward split from kills made by those protected by the shield. Also, AI now uses paratrooper calls occasionally which can really turn the tide in a battle.

Hey there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

RWR @ Steam Greenlight