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[TimeSlip]

Hi there!

I've been working on Prometheus Wept for over 2.5 years at this point. Prometheus Wept is a party and action point turn based RPG set in a near-future, post-digital Earth, where the majority of our digital technology has been corrupted by a virus. The game offers hardcore squad-level combat, meaningful choices, deep character progression and an advanced crafting system and uses the code for Vigilantes as a starting point.



Setting:
Imagine a near future earth where technology has become increasingly integrated with daily life. Imagine the sudden corruption of all this technology, in less than a day, by a potent computer virus. A virus which affects everything from the smart kettle in your home to communications systems, automated agriculture, manufacturing and the  transport network. Imagine the widespread loss of life, generations of chaos and conflict, the loss of knowledge, and the fragmentation of nations into insular city states. The virus sweeps the earth rapidly, corrupting all digital devices it encounters.



The events of Prometheus Wept occur some generations after the Event, in a strange, depopulated, low tech world where human communities huddle in the ruins of the mythical mid 21st century, wary of old world technology and surrounded by chaos.

Not all digital technology was destroyed by the virus. Simple devices experienced software corruption and hardware failure. A small number of more complex systems were modified through their contact with the virus, gaining the potential to evolve. These first true AI are beginning to emerge, resulting in conflict with nearby human communities whom the AIs cannot understand, nor be understood by.





Features:

System infiltration:
Transfer your character's consciousness into the treacherous environment of a corrupted computer system, while allies protect you from physical world threats. Employ a range of scripts (abilities) to overcome corrupted system security, and commandeer physical world systems like defenses and doors from within the machine.  




Party and AP turn based combat:
Battle it out with a variety of melee, ranged and explosive weapons, with aimed and special attacks, cover, powerful perk-based abilities, attacks of opportunity and more. Destroy cover to leave enemies exposed, and exploit interactions between the primal forces of fire, water and electricity to your advantage.




Deep character progression:
Choose from several male/female character models, with adjustable skin tone. Build your team using the ADAPTER character system, which comprises 7 stats, 17 skills and a huge variety of perks. Meet and ally with exceptional individuals, each with a unique set of perks.




Deep Crafting System:
Create a large variety of weapons, armour, explosives, gadgets, combat stims and medical supplies, at multiple quality levels based on skill, component quality and the blueprints you possess.



If you have any feedback or suggestions, please do leave a comment

[TimeSlip]

This development log covers the work on Prometheus Wept for January 2022. The work includes the addition of extra objective to act 1 mission 1, the addition of act 1 mission 2, and the re-introduction of environment weapons, and a revision to the lethality system.

[Armorman]

You can tell its Cyberpunk cause a guy has Things in his eyes...makes you think.

[TimeSlip]

Hey Armourman. Yeah, it's something of a tell tale There's a mix of post apocalyptic and cyberpunk - the main character is one of a handful of people with in implant which allows them to inject their consciousness into corrupted computer systems to retrieve valuable old world data.

[TimeSlip]

Here's the Feb-Mar dev log for Prometheus Wept, a dark, turn based RPG set on a near future, post digital earth.

This dev log covers the addition of act 1 mission 3, where you must negotiate a food shipment to ease the food crisis in Sunny Pines.To reduce the price of the shipment, you can improve your relationship with Jim Rawlston, the owner of the farm. One of the ways to do this is to go after the wolves closing in on his farm. If you opt to do this, you'll be joined by Red, a farmhand who has been doing his best to keep the wolves at bay.



Key Changes:

• Act 1 Mission 3 is complete.
• Act 1 Mission 4 is designed in depth, with an initial draft of the writing
• Wolves have been enhanced with traits, and alpha wolves have a unique, activated skill
• Temporary allies can now be killed and permanently removed from the game
• Added a relationship system
• Created final versions of Sunny Pines Militia and Rebel character models
• Improved the code for saving characters & managing conversations

Dev Video:




Feedback, questions & comments most welcome

[mobilelast]

I love how the Earth looks like in the first post. Very thought-provoking and symbolic: like the atmosphere (or something else) is escaping.

[TimeSlip]

Hey mobilelast - glad you like it. The virus reminded me of a black hole, which consumes all digital technology and prevents anything (including data) from escaping. People knew that the world was going dark, but they didn't know what was causing it.

[TimeSlip]

Hi!

Below you will find the dev log for April 2022. I've made good progress on act 1 mission 4, where you must locate the missing Dr Kriesler by finding evidence, questioning people and searching for him. It's a big mission, which spans multiple locations and introduces two new outlaw gangs.





One of these gangs is the Blue Screen of Death Tribe. They believe the virus that wiped out all digital technology in the mid 21st century was a divine manifestation, which sought to free humanity from the shackles of technology.



How you handle act 1 mission 4 has numerous consequences. Whether or not you can locate Kriesler will have repercussions. You will also have to choose which of two factions to support, which will in turn decide which of two potential allies will join your party.


Key Points:

- 2 out of 3 maps required for this mission are complete
- 4 out of 10 character models have been created, optimised and made game ready
- Started second draft of writing
- Added 2 new outlaw gangs
- Spent a fair bit of time on unavoidable company admin work :/
- The company admin work is finished now

Thanks for reading / watching and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

All the best,

Daithi

[Alain]

Nice, it seems like you are making good progress! I'm looking forward to try out Prometheus Wept, do you plan to have a demo at some point?

[TimeSlip]

Nice, it seems like you are making good progress! I'm looking forward to try out Prometheus Wept, do you plan to have a demo at some point?

Hi Alain. Thanks for asking and sorry about not getting back to you. I'm not getting notifications on here. There is a demo here, which I'm currently working on updating. Plan to release the new demo in the Steam Next Festival in Feb.

[TimeSlip]

Hi there,

I hope you're having a good day. It's taken longer than I'd hoped, but Act 1, Mission 4 of Prometheus Wept is complete. Here's the development video, and you'll find additional information below:





Act 1 Mission 4:
In Act 1 Mission4, you are charged with locating Dr. Kreisler, who has gone missing under unusual circumstances. You begin by visiting multiple locations in Sunny Pines, including Kriesler's house, to search for clues.





Once you've narrowed down the search area with clues, you get a number of search attempts to locate the missing doctor. Along the way, you'll encounter a number of unusual gangs, who have formed as a result of bizarre misunderstandings about the pre-virus world.






If you managed to find enough evidence, you will locate Kriesler. If not, Sunny Pines will have to do without him. Either way, you will encounter an usual entity with big plans for Sunny Pines, who will either join your party or serve as the primary antagonist of act 1, depending on your choices.

Release Schedule:
The intention is to release an updated demo for Kickstarter backers in the coming months, to participate in the Steam Next Festival in February, and to release on early access in Q1/2 2023.

Work on Illustrations:
All of the 40+ character illustrations have been improved, as have some dozens of the item illustrations.





World Map:
Code to implement the world map has been added, as has a provisional map for act 1.



That's all for now - sorry this update was delayed - I appreciate your patience and will check in again next month As always, feedback is welcome!

Talk soon!
Daithi

[TimeSlip]

Hi again-

I've just completed the work for the current update. The focus has been on content, wrapping up the crafting system and adding shopkeepers. Feel free to check out the video / text info on the update, and do let me know if you have any feedback or comments.





Content: Weapons, Crafting Recipes & Perks

Eight weapons, around 30 crafting recipes and 15 perks have been added to the game, which more or less completes the content required for the updated demo.

My last game, Vigilantes had weapon tiers, and each new tier largely rendered the previous tier obsolete, or at least sub-optimal. This resulted in there being a handful of optimal weapon choices at any time. For Prometheus Wept, I'm aiming to make nearly all weapons viable for the entire game, and for weapons to have unique traits to differentiate them from one another.

The cleaver provides greater bleeding damage, and additional damage against animals.

Baseball bats do high damage, and additional damage when targetting an enemy's head.

A scattering of perks have been added to the game, and the perk UI has been updated. Where possible, I've made perks more deterministic, so for example, rather than a 20% chance of a free attack, every 6th attack costs no action points.



Systems: Shopkeepers & Crafting
If you played Vigilantes, you may remember that there's a single, off-map shopkeeper in the game. Prometheus Wept requires multiple on-map shopkeepers, so I've added code to support this, to start the trade interaction, along with saving, loading and managing shopkeeper inventories. In Vigilantes, there were separate buy and sell screens for the shop and merged the old buy/sell interface into a single screen.



I've also worked on crafting system, improving the display of information and adding the ability to upgrade weapons and armour, after they have been crafted. Some layout and visual adjustments aside, this wraps up one of the more complex systems in the game.

The main parts of work to be completed for an updated demo are balancing and testing, which I'll start working on next. I'll keep you posted on progress, and if you have any questions or feedback, let me know!

All the best,

Daithi

[TimeSlip]

Hi again-

I've just completed the work for the current update. The focus has been on content, wrapping up the crafting system and adding shopkeepers. Feel free to check out the video / text info on the update, and do let me know if you have any feedback or comments.





Content: Weapons, Crafting Recipes & Perks

Eight weapons, around 30 crafting recipes and 15 perks have been added to the game, which more or less completes the content required for the updated demo.

My last game, Vigilantes had weapon tiers, and each new tier largely rendered the previous tier obsolete, or at least sub-optimal. This resulted in there being a handful of optimal weapon choices at any time. For Prometheus Wept, I'm aiming to make nearly all weapons viable for the entire game, and for weapons to have unique traits to differentiate them from one another.


The cleaver provides greater bleeding damage, and additional damage against animals.


Baseball bats do high damage, and additional damage when targetting an enemy's head.

A scattering of perks have been added to the game, and the perk UI has been updated. Where possible, I've made perks more deterministic, so for example, rather than a 20% chance of a free attack, every 6th attack costs no action points.



Systems: Shopkeepers & Crafting
If you played Vigilantes, you may remember that there's a single, off-map shopkeeper in the game. Prometheus Wept requires multiple on-map shopkeepers, so I've added code to support this, to start the trade interaction, along with saving, loading and managing shopkeeper inventories. In Vigilantes, there were separate buy and sell screens for the shop and merged the old buy/sell interface into a single screen.



I've also worked on crafting system, improving the display of information and adding the ability to upgrade weapons and armour, after they have been crafted. Some layout and visual adjustments aside, this wraps up one of the more complex systems in the game.

The main parts of work to be completed for an updated demo are balancing and testing, which I'll start working on next. I'll keep you posted on progress, and if you have any questions or feedback, let me know!

All the best,

Daithi

[rainy grey]

Hey, I love the concept of "haunted" technology and problems dealing with non-human intelligence. The narrative aspect of your game could use some more attention in order to make the setting come through. I would love to give it a go if you're interested!

[TimeSlip]

Hi Rainy Grey - thank you for the kind words! At the minute, I'm going to keep working on the story solo, but if that changes, I'll be sure to reach out!

[rainy grey]

Sure, thanks! I could just give you some more feedback at an appropriate time. Good luck!

[TimeSlip]

Hi there,

Good news! A provisional release of an updated windows demo is on Indie DB, will be available on Steam in the coming days, and will participate in the Steam Next Festival next week. Mac and Linux versions will be available in the near future. Here's a dev log covering the demo, which you'll also find in written form below.





Demo Link: https://www.indiedb.com/games/prometheuswept/downloads
Forum Link: http://timeslipsoftworks.com/forum/index.php

Can you help with feedback?
If you have time to try it out, I'd really like to hear what you think. You're welcome to reach out any way, on Kickstarter, Steam, the forums, or email. With development entering the phase of public releases, I'm going to get the Timeslip Softworks forums going again, please consider signing up if you're interested in helping with feedback and testing. Just remember to drop me a message with the email you signed up with, as I need to manually activate the accounts to stop bots flooding into the forums.


The map of act 1.


The disappearances of the militia and the sudden migration to Sunny Pines. All the evidence points to this individual. Be they friend or foe?

About the Demo:
The demo showcases around 50% of the first act. It's close to feature complete, with the notable exception of breaking down weapons into components. Content wise, the main questline is fairly polished, but there's not much to do outside that yet. You can expect the addition of smaller encounters and conversations to develop the world and the characters in later releases.


The player team, kitted out with self crafted body armour and helmets.

There's a scattering of weapons, items, crafting options and perks. There will be many more in the final game. I've completed multiple balancing passes and combat should be manageable on normal difficulty. Crafting and dialogue checks are less tuned, but if there's time before the Steam Festival, I'll have another look at these. I'm also in the process of negotiating more music for the game to improve the musical variety.

There were a couple of things I didn't get to, particularly improving automatic camera control, and some usability improvements, but it would be too high risk to try to deal with these now.

I look forward to hearing what you think!

All the best,
Daithi

[TimeSlip]

Hi there,

I hope you're doing well! I've finally wrapped up “Whispers of the Old World” in which you investigate a mysterious old world bunker, and run afoul of its guardian, Hec8. Here's a brief development video covering recent work on the game, and more information can be found below.





The Mission:
Whispers of the Old World is a more story focused mission, with a number of routes through a hostile environment controlled by a deranged artificial intelligence. As such, there's a ton of scripted events, and a boss fight which can be approached in a number of ways. These two factors accounted for the majority of the time spent working on the game.

The Boss:
To defeat Hec8, you can either face it solo in cyberspace, while your allies protect you in the physical world, or overcome the automated security, and destroy the servers on which it resides. You can also opt for a simultaneous attack on both fronts. The battles on the cyberspace and physical layers are interconnected, so if you destroy a server, it affects Hec8 and any automated security, while damage to Hec8 debuffs automated security.



I wanted to avoid the boss battle being determined by the character with the highest stats, so Hec8 goes through a number of phases of attack, utilising special abilities which can be countered with your own cyberspace scripts.

Script Lab:
To make this work, I added an interface, much like the crafting screen, which allows you to create and upgrade cyberspace abilities using the software engineering skill. The file size of the scripts increases as you develop better versions of them, and the number of scripts you can load is determined by the amount of RAM in your data warfare suite.



Combat Drones:
Combat Drones have been added to supplement the static defenses provided by sentry guns. These are hard hitting units, which hover, and are thus unaffected by any tile affects, such as fire.



What's Next?
I'm currently working on the food convoy mission. This is the first mission which can be played from two sides, that is, supporting either the rebels or the militia. It's likely to take longer than a regular missions but it's unlikely to be as time consuming as Whispers of the Old World.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions, or share your thoughts on the game. Have a good day!

[TimeSlip]

Hello again!

I've wrapped up the rebel side of the food convoy mission. Here, you will ambush and attempt to capture a food convoy destined for Sunny Pines. Below, you'll find the dev log in video and text format.





The Mission:
This scenario is comprised of three battles. In the first, assisted by rebels, you must halt the convoy and incapacitate as many guards as possible before it flees the map. You can carry out a variety of beneficial actions, such as chopping down a tree onto the convoy's path to occupy some of the guards in clearing it, or making caltrops to slow the truck. Any guards not incapacitated will join the defenders of the next encounter.


Using Time Units to chop down a tree in the convoy's path will force some of the escorts to focus on clearing it, rather than on you.

The second battle tasks you with assaulting an entrenched enemy at the militia outpost the convoy has retreated to. You will be joined by Gordina, the awakened, old world postal robot, who is a skilled tactician and very durable, but cannot be repaired in combat. The defenders have destroyed the bridge and your options will include searching for traps, building pontoon bridges to de-risk the river crossing, and sneaking some troops across the river bed.


Having an awakened old world postal robot on your side isn't going to hurt!

The militia have more firearms, but you have access to an off-map smoke launcher, which can deploy smoke at no cost, once per turn. After defeating the militia, your departure will be interrupted by a final attack, where you will lose the convoy if defeated. Failing to capture the convoy, or losing it will have a substantial impact on the act finale.


You have a number of options at your disposal to crack the militia outpost's defenses!

[size=14t]Additions:[/size]
From the start, I've operated on the belief that gameplay variety is one way to elevate the game experience. To facilitate continual gameplay variation, minor and major, a number of new features have been added.

The convoy type mission, which can be played as escort and ambusher is the most significant addition. These missions appear occasionally through the game, and will play a significant role in act 2. Changes to AI behaviour were required for computer controlled characters to balance maintaining a distance to the convoy and attacking.


The convoy's militia are much better equipped than your rebel troops

Time Units, a resource which allows you to manipulate the battlefield in your favour were also introduced. This facilitates a series of choices, rather than a single choice, being made to shape the upcoming combat, and greatly improves tactical depth. Some of the choices available in the convoy missions include blocking the convoy with an obstruction, destroying bridges, creating them, placing sandbags, placing traps and detecting them.

There are now two ways to deploy your troops prior to combat. When you have map control,  dialogue options may allow you to move your characters X number of tiles before combat begins. In cases where you lack map control, or are preparing an ambush, you can use skills to unlock new tiles to deploy to – for example, by using lockpicking to gain access to a building, you can open up more advantageous deployment slots for your troops.



These recent additions all contribute to a deeper bag of tricks I can use to improve gameplay variety. It's a time consuming approach... hopefully the results will merit the effort  

That's it for this dev log. I'm going to start working on the finale for act 1, and worldbuilding, and will check in again in the near future. Thanks for reading/watching, and if you have any questions or comments, do let me know!

[TimeSlip]

Hi again,

I hope you're doing well! Work is well underway for the finale of act 1, in which you must side with Sunny Pine's Militia, or the rebels, to determine the future of Sunny Pines. Before the fighting starts, you can enhance your faction with recruitment, crafting or purchasing better equipment, acts of sabotage and more. If you'd like to be among the first to try out Prometheus Wept, you can wishlist it on Steam.



New Map Added: Homestead Heights
I've added the last of the five districts of Sunny Pines, Homestead Heights. This is the seat of manufacturing in Sunny Pines. It houses most of the worker population and the Shaded Pine, the local pub. It's a little depopulated at the moment, but you can get the idea.





Development will slow down, but not stop over Christmas, and I'll check in again around the end of January. On that note, I'd like to wish you a nice time over the Christmas holiday

All the best,

Daithi