Post-Alpha FAQ
Before anything else, everyone at Stellar Jockeys would like to thank you for your reception earlier this month. Considering what we were up against, and how deliberately narrow we made the announcement, we were taken aback by how much attention we ended up getting for the first public build of Brigador Killers.
29/02/2024 Patch Notes (version string bed4e758a)
Fixes:
- "Clyffe Rock" prop set properly occludes the player
- Various dive-related fixes: exiting vehicles in a dive should properly apply a damage reduction period; and made "sprint + crouch to dive" a toggleable option, defaults to off (since it prevented players from powersliding)
- Units flagged as "kill on exit" can enter vehicles
- Using an invalid exit returns the player to the menu instead of crashing the game
- Mechs no longer infinitely do the can-can when their side speed/acceleration is set to 0
- Disallowed hot-loading story variables while in conversations
- Map connection text render underneath dialogue boxes, instead of over them
- Fixed issues with certain conditional spawn logic
- Units with flinch (or "pain state") animations now stop flinching, instead of continuing to flinch and reset eternally
- "Flopped" units respect their given prone_height. A prone height of 0 will still allow units to slide under wheeled vehicles (not an intended feature but very fun anyway)
- No more ghost reticles if a mech does not have weapons
- Exiting vehicles should be less lethal
Additions:
- Levels can have specified music and ambient tracks via playlists
- Check out the FMOD Debug tab in the F1 debug panel to view playlist data and functionality
- Music and ambient effects will, with a slight pause, continue playing through level transitions, but only if the next level uses the same music or ambience
- "Use Handler" script functionality now allows multiple types of actions per interaction
- Added MAVS BK tracks to the sound bank
- Added MAVS ambient tracks to the sound bank and implemented several in levels
- Added prototype versions of ambient foley to various levels
Technical debt repayment:
- Reorganized the strafing & kick code for better maintainability
- Streamlined level loading and spawn override systems
- Removed some redundant FMOD events
Known issues:
- The utility corridor does not have a music or ambient track associated with it
- Mendac will urge you to collect more brain tapes after the first, but there are no more to be found (yet)
N.B. pack file spelunkers: some of the MAVS tracks in the sound bank are very loud. Be careful with your ears and headphones.
Wait, what? There’s a build of Brigador Killers I can play?
Yes, and we wrote a few paragraphs to prime you on what to expect. Please read it, especially if you are a complete newcomer. And yes, it’s only here on Itch for the time being.
What’s the music track that plays in the menu?
It’s called Approach and it was composed by Makeup And Vanity Set. It has been uploaded to our YouTube channel.
What’s the font for the two new splash arts?
The loading screen splash is an homage to the title cards in Katsuhiro Otomo’s "Memories" (it’s free to watch on the Internet Archive).
The English text is set in Arial, regular and bold, with the Japanese set in GL Tsukiji 5go. The “haze” effect is achieved by making a drop shadow and an outer glow in photoshop with the following settings:
The text color is an off-white with a hex code of #e8f2fb. The outer glow color is #cdf4e9 and the drop shadow is #dcf4ec.
For the revised Brigador Killers logotype that can be seen on the recent Makeup And Vanity Set video posted to our YouTube.
“Brigador" is set in Cassannet bold with the color code of #e8f2fb. "Killers" is set in Times New Roman Bold Italic with a color code of #db214c. The Japanese text is set in Kozuka Gothic Pro Heavy (H) with the same color as "Killers". Here are the drop shadow and outer glow settings for for “Brigador”.
The drop shadow color is #d2f6f6 and the outer glow is #81b4d7.
The outer glow on the Japanese text uses the following settings with a color code of #ff0000.
The two splash arts and just the logotype can be downloaded by clicking these links.
Sidenote regarding most issues
Things that have not yet been dealt with and that aren’t covered in detail here – for example “Why do the menus look the same as in Brigador?” – are typically because those things overlap with so many other parts of the game’s code or are connected to systems that haven’t yet been set in stone. In other words they’re not just “one thing”. Instead, they are multiple things often tangled up with even more things, so tackling “one thing” would in most cases mean doing all of them at once. This is not unique to us or to Brigador Killers, and is better known as tech debt. That said, there were plenty of frequent questions or observations.
Why could I possess Froggy?
There’s a flag on the data of all mech-type NPCs that, if enabled, permits the player to “enter” it as if it were a vehicle like a tank or a mech [Side note: almost all NPCs are considered “mechs” in the game engine - even the agravs]. Usually this flag is for empty vehicles, but they weren’t set properly for every NPC placed on the maps and it wasn’t intended for people to “drive” Froggy or other non-hostile NPCs either. This is also the reason why players could enter multiple NPCs like a kind of Russian nesting doll even if it made no physical sense.
Needless to say very quickly many players in our discord server reported gleefully driving around as Froggy and setting off Froggy’s flop animation, before getting their Froggy into a Fork and stomping around.
We have since changed the data on various units including Froggy to no longer permit this behavior, but it is trivial to reenable Froggy piloting for those experienced with the debug panel.
Why does the Settings menu not change the movement of the cars?
There are three categories of things that can be changed in Brigador Killers’ settings:
- Mech & Tank movement
- Agrav movement
- “Suit” (or infantry) movement
These three categories cover four movetypes, but behind the scenes each “mech” in the game can actually have one of six movetypes. This is most noticeable when driving any of the new wheeled vehicles, but the wheeled vehicle movetype cannot be altered via the Settings menu because there is currently no category for it.
Why was the Fort NPC repeating the same line over and over?
It was due to a bug with the storylet system not working as intended. It has since been fixed.
Why was my character stuck in a particular pose after getting out of a vehicle?
The short version is “because it’s an alpha”. The longer version is that the game’s finite state machine broke in a way that stopped things from animating properly, hence why the player character could remain seated in mid air after getting out of a car.
When can we get our hands on SJTiled?
SJTiled is the tool we use to make maps in Brigador Killers and in the Secret Alpha post it is mentioned that this tool will be made available - and that will happen. A few things need to be pointed out.
The first is that although there are plenty of props to make maps, there is little in the way of enemy spawns to make interesting combat encounters. For instance in the BK build you can acquire the Fork mech or the Betka tank, but you don't get much of a challenge with them as there is nothing equivalent in force to those vehicles to give you a challenge.
Second is that we don't want to run into a problem we had with Brigador with breaking people's maps by performing any major revisions to the game’s assets. We don't expect to do this frequently but we do want to add in some newer stuff to both SJTiled and BK first so that you can make something more interesting than on-foot gunfights before we potentially break things.
Third is the modding document alluded to in the post that helps explain some of the new features is a WIP and will definitely be rewritten (and probably re-rewritten) over time.
Once SJTiled is ready to be distributed, it will be done so initially via our discord server.
I have a crash bug!
Report it to the #bk_bug_reports channel on our discord server or email it to our team account. For the time being we are keeping any feedback to as few channels as possible. It makes our jobs much easier if we can reliably reproduce the bug you’ve encountered, so detailed explanations of the problems you have encountered are greatly appreciated.
If you’d like to support our development of Brigador Killers, consider sharing the fact that our first game Brigador: Up-Armored Edition is on sale on Steam until March 4th.
