News and developments

Today we’re sharing a joint post from the development team (@jcastro and @jontxu).

First of all, we’d like to reiterate our thanks for your participation and the warm reception the Christmas event received, thanks to which we were able to find many bugs and also improve some aspects of the client and server.

And now, let’s get to what really matters… the new features!

From the very first day the event launched, we’ve been working on new features, and we’ve now reached enough milestones to make this announcement—so here we go.

Character Creation

To make it in time for the Christmas event and, above all, to test features we considered quite critical, character creation wasn’t available during the event, and we all logged in with the same character—with the exception of the GMs, who had a customized model to set us apart.

That has changed as of today. We’ve now implemented the character creation system, quite similar to the one we all remember but with a few improvements…

As you can see, we still have the 3 slots to create our PCs, and on the right is the current description of the selected character, their name, the crime for which they’re behind bars, their cell “address,” and their current stats.

So far, everything is very similar to what we’re used to, but this is where we’ve decided to improve on the existing system.

When we played Prison and created our characters, we always felt that the available character phenotypes were quite limited, and when you entered the prison, you’d often encounter many repeated or identical characters. That’s why we’ve included a slightly more advanced character creator.

As you can see, we’ve added the ability to customize and select the following separate options for your character:

• Hair Type: Change the hairstyle and facial hair
• Clothing: Choose from different types of clothing
• Clothing color: Change the color of the garments you choose for your character.
• Head: Modify the avatar’s head type (size, cheekbones, lips, nose…)
• Body: Increase or decrease body mass. (We don’t want a Mafioso to look the same as a Thief, do we?)

Thanks to these elements, which will be even more specific in future versions (allowing you to modify each part of the character separately), we can go from what you’ve seen above to this:

This allows for highly detailed customization of the PC with whom we’ll dive into the Prison experience.

The final step is, of course, assigning points to our PC.

Although this part is still under development, the basic stats are already being saved correctly and can thus be taken into account for the next milestone.

Below is a video of the login and character creation process:

Combat

Something we felt was necessary to introduce ahead of the upcoming event is combat.

Currently, this is a very early version of combat and is exclusively geared toward server and client testing; character stats are not taken into account, there are no unique abilities, no weapons, and no elements that modify attacks.

However, it does follow the prison’s combat system: turn-based combat, with two attacks per character, and opposing factions.

Here is a video of a battle against a bot:

Artificial Intelligence

In most games, you’ve probably heard about NPC artificial intelligence, and in all cases, this refers to the set of actions and guidelines they follow. But in this project, we wanted to take this to another level.

To do this, we’ve equipped our NPCs with Neural Network AI.

What do we mean by this? It means that if you approach an NPC in a courtyard and ask them anything, they’ll answer you. Not with a predefined response. Not with a randomly generated phrase. They’ll answer in a way that makes sense given what you’ve said and who they are.

You can ask any NPC anything, such as how to get to a specific location in the prison from where you’re talking to them, how to complete a mission simply by asking, ask for their opinion on how to improve your character, or how to learn a certain skill.

One of the interesting aspects of this AI system is that if you approach a level 1 NPC while you’re level 100 and threaten to beat them up, they’ll most likely try to negotiate and avoid trouble. On the other hand, if you try to intimidate a level 100 NPC while you’re level 1, their response will likely be dismissive, if not aggressive.

Our intention is to apply this AI system to all aspects of the game where it might be interesting, such as combat.

Imagine an NPC that doesn’t just perform the predefined attacks in its programming but is capable of making intelligent, improvised decisions.

For example, you’re fighting an NPC that almost always misses, and when you see that it can’t hit you, you decide to pass your turn to execute a sneak attack. If the NPC had a weapon in its inventory that always hits, it might decide to use it to prevent you from completing the combo.

It could also heal itself if it deems it necessary, call for help from nearby NPCs, try to intimidate you during combat, or attempt to beg for mercy in exchange for something…

The possibilities are almost endless.

Here’s a video of us talking to one of the doctors in the infirmary:

Best regards!

The Prison Reloaded Team