Spy DNA has received the green light from Steam, meaning that we're still on-track to ship the Early Access release in Q2 2017. Read on to learn what will be in the Early Access version.
Platform upgrade
For Early Access release, we have migrated Spy DNA to Unreal Engine 4.15.1, so we can take advantage of all the newest features and improvements that the engine provides.
User interface update
From the demo, you're already familiar with the ability to toggle the first-person view ("body-cam") on and off to improve performance. For the Early Access release, we're planning to change this behavior to toggle between the body-cam and a minimap. So while you will be conserving system resource, the game will be using the now freed-up screen real estate to display tactical information.
A very visible change you will see that we're working on is the UI look-and-feel update. The functionality and layout of the UI will remain mostly unchanged, but many of the text buttons will be replaced with icons, and all UI elements will receive a style update in order to make the game more visually rich.
Work in progress: UI look-and-feel update
Map edges
To help make the Spy DNA world more immersive, we'll be extending the edges of the map past the area accessible to the player, so that you won't be seeing those hard map edges anymore.
Because we are generating the maps at runtime, it is fairly straightforward to extended the map, but it brings with it a performance trade-off. The area beyond the playable map will be extended a bit, and beyond that point, there will be a fogging effect, to make the map edge less noticeable/distracting.
As originally announces, Spy DNA will supprt three map sizes: 256x256 meters, 512x512, and 1024x1024. To raise or lower the difficulty one notch, each mission map will also be available in one size larger or smaller. This means for the largest map, you'll be able to play on a 2048x2048 meter map for highest difficulty, and for the smallest map, you'll have the option to play on a 128x128 meter map.
Missions
When it comes to selecting who you take with you on the mission, you'll now also have a choice to pick equipment for each individual character.
Every squad member will have a default load-out for each appearance/uniform that they can wear (fancy, field, and casual), and if you edit any of them, the changes will only impact that specific appearance, and the others will remain as they were.
Spy DNA Early Access will also include procedurally-generated missions. In the current demo, we have provided missions that use one of the two map types: either 100% hand-made OR 100% procedural. However, the mission objectives, as well as the NPCs you encounter on those missions are pre-set.
Going forward, storyline missions will use either a hand-made map, or a procedural maps, with predefined objectives and NPCs.
For Early Access, we’re expanding the game to include 100% randomly generated missions, similar to "random encounters." Those missions will have the map, objectives, and NPCs all generated at random, and will pop up in the intelligence screen, to give the player a lot more to do between the storyline missions. They’re going to be optional, but will offer a good opportunity for building skills and advancing your characters.
Finally, we'll be introducing a new mission phase (also optional), called "infiltration." You will be able to use this phase to set up for the main mission (or not; if you prefer to go in guns blazing, without any prep, be our guest). Typical things to do on an "infiltration" mission would be to pre-position characters such as your sniper, hide a weapons cache or plant some surveillance equipment, steal access cards/keys, disable/sabotage the alarm, or general recon.
On such a mission, success is good, but depending on how badly your infiltration fails, you may be changing your main mission objective to rescue your infiltration team.
Let us know in the comments below what you think of these new features and improvements!