Greetings, operators. This next update is taking longer than expected, so I thought it'd be good to let you all know what's going on behind the scenes. Or rather, BEYOND THE SCENES. (That's a joke about Unity's scene graph system.)
So! The scenario editor's been missing from the game for a while now. You can still use it on the old-version beta branch, but it's clunky and missing features, and the workshop is disabled. Is it ever coming back? What's going on?
Since the world's gaming press has VERY rudely not yet approached me for an interview about my insane steel battalion revival project, I'm going to write this as if I was being asked questions by an openly hostile interviewer, similar to that one nightmare I keep having.
(If you're a games writer and would like to talk please get in touch on bluesky.)
It sure is! I'm actually surprised the game hasn't received more pushback on this. I guess expectations are low for Early Access games, and even lower for VR games. The lack of pushback has actually given me the mental space and time I needed to take a risk on this quite stupid task: building an entirely new campaign inside OVRLRD's own scenario editor.
Well, it's not really starting over. I was in the middle of migrating the campaign to the new terrain and graphics system, and designing entirely new maps in Unity's scene system was taking forever. It was also bothering me that all this effort was going into new one-off environments that would only be used for one mission, instead of into iterating the megamap, Zaliznyy, which players will be spending much more time on.
I thought it'd be better if the whole campaign took place on Zaliznyy, in the style of classic milsims, in a story that takes you from one end of the island to another, describing an evolving conflict in a setting you gradually get to know better and better. This was the original wish for the project back when I started, but I didn't know that it would eventually be possible.
I realised then that if there was just the one map, the missions would need far less data associated with them. Then I remembered that the scenario editor still needed rebuilding to work with the graphics and terrain update.
So the choice became: do I keep building the campaign like this, slowly and painfully, and then build the scenario editor as a separate system which works a different way? Or: do I build the best scenario editor I can, then start migrating the campaign into that, iterating and improving the editor as I go?
To an engineer that's an easy question. To get the best tool possible, you have to use it yourself and refine it as you go (grossly, this is called 'dogfooding'). That's how all my favourite game developers do it, so I figured it made sense for me, too. That way, once I'm done, the players get access to the same tools I had, and can make campaigns just as complex and interesting as the one I ship myself. (Probably more so.)
I understand being skeptical of this sort of thing - I've been disappointed by many projects for which the killing blow was somebody announcing "we're starting from scratch and it'll be better!" That announcement is usually the time to pack your bags and get outta there.
This actually would have been the case if I was wrong. Fortunately I kept my stupid mouth shut until I was sure, and now the editor is basically done. I've already designed some missions using it and if I was to estimate, the process is about 10-20 times faster.
No, really. This is largely because the old way was SO SLOW. Here's me putting together a simple mission with logic flows, NPC routines and scripted events in under three minutes:
Under the old system even a simple mission like this would take 30-60 minutes.
I've also unfortunately got better at design in the last few years, which means the old campaign missions seem kind of bad in comparison, so this way of working will result in a better final product.
Not that you would know because, statistically, you never used it. The old editor was very unpopular even when it worked. Here's the breakdown of why I switched:
The old maps were tiny and it was no big deal to hold them in memory in 3D. Megamaps are enormous (15x15km) and vastly more detailed, which reduces the amount of overhead you can afford for editor systems.
When I were a nipper, I loved playing with the Operation Flashpoint mission editor. The flattening of the map into a 2D plane and abstraction of the units and logic into simple icons made it accessible. Approaching it as a 2D map just makes it vastly easier to comprehend spaces and design experiences within them.
Reducing the cognitive load and the time it takes to get started makes it less mentally daunting to design scenarios, and will hopefully result in more people making and sharing them.
It just kinda looks cool and I don't have a boss telling me to do it another way.
Actually that's not all! That would be boring as hell.
The scenario editor supports everything you need (and everything I need) to build narrative-driven operations like you'd play in classic milsims or mech games. You don't need to know any scripting languages or muck about with complicated graphs.
You can:
Create objectives from a list of types, and have them activate at the start of a mission or when something specific happens.
Place trigger areas that respond to units or the player entering them, or which detect special events like "a specific hostile was detected by the player", or "someone fired a weapon for the first time".
Define scripted events which listen out for triggers and then set off 'effectors', which can activate new NPCs, pop up messages in the HUD, or give orders to friendly or hostile NPCs.
Most crucially, you can easily and quickly record voiced dialogue inside the editor itself, assign it to ingame units and structure it as conversations between NPCs, with subtitles!
It took a long time to really make these systems work together, but the results are super fun. For example, you can have an objective that triggers different events on success or failure, which can then trigger different conversations based on whether you let that convoy get stomped or not.
As I continue iterating on the campaign, if I need to add a new objective type or a new trigger input, I can just write the code and add it to the list, so players will be able to use that same stuff in their own scenarios.
WRONG AGAIN. I'll be releasing it on a beta branch for testing as soon as I can. Interested users can check in on the discord for access, and together we'll refine the editor as much as possible before it drops publicly.
I really want OVRLRD to be a fun, expansive single-player experience for a long time. I don't like battle passes and live-service games, really, and I miss spending weekends downloading weird maps for my single-player games and playing them over and over.
If you have a strong map-making community and good tools to support them, you don't need to run an endless live-service nightmare to keep people playing your game. If people want to play more of it than exists, they can make more of it, and I just think that's nice.
Yes. It will keep happening until I am stopped by force.
Immediately once this is out. I'm tired and I miss adding explosions and lasers and stuff.
I don't know, but it's definitely a matter of weeks rather than months. Keep an eye on the Discord if you want more granular updates.
That's about all there is to discuss right now. Once I'm done with the mission editor I think it's time for the big AI and combat update we've been waiting for - I've been working on that quietly in the background, and I hope to include more weaponry, more ways of fighting, and more interesting squad-level NPC behaviours. More to come on that soon!
Right, I need to get back to work. Don't forget to head over to the discord to discuss the game or get any specific questions answered.
As always, thank you for your patience and support of what has turned out to be a real megaproject. Keep stompin'.
-nige