Kickstarter

Greetings Backers!

We are happy to announce that we are going to be hosting a Reddit AMA tomorrow morning at 11am CST! Please visit http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/ tomorrow to Ask [Us] Anything - your questions can be about Project Awakened or Phosphor or any of us Phosphorites!

Today we wanted to take a bit of time to showcase how we are building our ability creation tool and what this means for you modders out there, and for the amount of powers we can create.

Our ability tool will allow you to mix and match visual style, animation, damage, effects, sounds, and more to mix-n-match from amongst our ability libraries, or use new content that you create, to make anything you can imagine.

The first thing you'll do when creating a new ability is to select the ability targeting type

• Passive (always on)
• Target Self
• Target Location at Reticule
• Target Player at Reticule
• Shoot Projectile (you choose speed, size, etc)
• Beam (you choose width, length, etc)
• Globally affect all players
• Melee Impact

Once you've done this you can select the type of effect caused at the target. You can have multiple effects happen at once. For each effect that occurs, you can choose the type of effect

• Instant
• AOE (choose radius)
• Persistent (effect occurs over X seconds)
• Permanent (until respawn)

And the actual effect itself (choose multiple)

• Affect Allies, Enemies, or Both?
• Damage (choose type)
• Healing
• Energy recharge
• Slow
• Immobilize
• Stun/Knockdown
• Alter AI state (+fear, enrage, confusion, sleep)
• Disallow current/all abilities for x seconds
• Add X damage over time or healing over time for Y seconds
• Add/remove damage vulnerability (amplify fire, ice, bullet damage, etc)
• Add/remove player effect (+speed, invisibility, jump height, hover etc)
• Shield X damage of type Y
• Add/Remove X Melee Damage (choose type)
• Physics Effect (add impulse or alter gravity)
• Create Summon (which you can define - summon anything from tornadoes to Swat troopers to fight for you!)
• And more!

Once this is done, you have the functional part of your ability. But the fun doesn't stop here. You can choose how the ability visual distinguishes itself from others

Choose which socket the beam/projectile/etc emanates from (Eyes, Mouth, Hand, Chest, etc). Choose the Animation that plays when the ability is used. Choose the particle effect used for the projectile/beam, and the effect that is played on the impacted characters. Choose the sound used when you use it, and the impact effect/decals left after it is used. Choose the energy cost per second, recharge time, and ability "power" cost.

You will start with the huge and diverse library of effects, animations, and sounds which we provide, but with community mods, new particle effects, new materials, meshes, and sounds, you can create almost anything that your heart desires! And you don't have to be a professional programmer or experienced artist - all you have to do is find the content created by your peers and add whatever you want!

We will use the same system to build the game as you do. Here's an example of 3 abilities you may have seen in our previous CAP update

In Disintegration1, you can see the following selections

• Projectile fired from hand
• Hand targeting pose
• Projectile particle - laser
• Impact particle - fireball + char decal
• Instant Damage Effect (fire)
• Character Effect upon Death - Disintegration

In Disintegration2, you would have the following selections

• Passive ability
• Melee Damage Bonus (energy)
• Add weapon material - White Glow
• Character Effect upon Death - Electrocution

In Disintegration3, you'd select these settings

• Beam fired from Eyes
• Face targeting pose
• Beam projectile - Laser
• Impact Effect - Fire gout + char decal
• Add Damage over Time (Fire)
• Add AI alteration (+fear)

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how the ability system will work in our game. We will use this system to generate a huge variety of abilities. Some of them may function very similarly but just be simple visual tweaks (for example, fire beam from hand vs from eyes, with all the same properties). The abilities we create will be the ones balanced for sanctioned MP and the stock Single Player campaign.

However, assuming we reach our stretch goal for modding, you could use this system to create any new abilities for your own multiplayer mode, or just to play through Single Player in "casual" mode, using whatever powers you see fit!

Next updates on the horizon: Multiplayer vid, and a UE4 character demo! Stay tuned!