I cant do updates as good as Andreas where he get the entire post here in a nice formatted way.

But I am super happy to give you - Early Access Update #1.

Read more here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2079547763/jagged-alliance-flashback/posts/892034

And see the super cool and vvveeeeeeerrrryyyyyy different trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OniyfFUeDc8

We had a blast making it all :-D

I'll stick around a few days more to check up on any problems that might arise, and then I'm off on a week of vacation too.

Enjoy summer and thanks for your support!

Best

Thomas

Very nice trailer and update!

Have a nice, deserved rest Thomas, and thank you for the support during this first "vaccation" week.

The trailer is hilarious. Good job on that one!

Thumbs up for trailer

+1 funny. but i really don't like you cowpigs

Agree with Loki - this "cowpics" are looking too "sweet" and too Disney-like.

Please make their face more natural. Or give this animal explosiveness.^^

Your chickens are cool. :-) Perhpas they could get not only their current random behaviour. Would love to see them rushing excited in all directions when the shooting starts. 

Yeah I like that you put many animals in the game but maybe they can look a little bit more real also from their sizes. (Pigs and goates are way too big) Sometimes I feel like I play a farmville game, because everything is so colorful and the animals are so cute :-D 

But remember its a bad motherfu...ing mercenary game and therefore we need a little bit more serious environment.

yes it should not be comic style. It's real war.

+1

Yeah also the flowers on the grass, coudn't agree more on the animals!

Don´t get me wrong I like the details and how nicely the devs design the sectors but it´s really too much flower-kids-sunny-rainbow atmosphere in this. I think it´s good that the game is not too serious and must have funny moments but at the moment it is too much disney flair.

Overall I like that the devs wanna bring more life in the sectors but please don´t make it too childish

Now that we have a weather system that spawns a truely tropical storm maybe we get some swampy terrain textures that reflect better how the jungle actually looks like. I am thinking something like mud knee deep stuff (that actually slows down movement?), reef/tall grass (that block view) and lianas. 

And I agree, cut down on flowers and butterflies. And make the damn pigs much smaller. Or let us kill and cook them over fire.

I agree. On sectors where is no village, there shouldn't be any chickens. In general the sectors are overloaded. In JA2 mostly the animals were separated on willow or stall.

I know this sounds sad:  At the moment I just don't care about my mercs,why? Not in the way that FC did anything wrong.

- lips and eyes not moving?
- no story that introduces first NPC so I can care about (Ira, Miguel)

Or because I expected combat to sound look and feel more like it ja2 - but combat is not really finished, the AI does not move forward fast enough, stand and shoots. My mercs die even in full cover. And I want to care but there a missing pieces. How did JA2 reach this goal that we cared about these tiny moving 2d pixel-mercs on the ground?

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Edit
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Still thinking about what is missing. Small things which have to be implemented. So I played JA2 again and compared a JA2 lets play video against the early access video on yt. These are my prelimanary findings:

• The mercs portrait pops up on the top and he talks about: weather, nice people, item drops, opponents appearing, etc... while in combat, there is so much missing speech so that combat is a bit technical not emotional enough. I can't care.
• My merc walks forward, sees new enemy and DOES not continues moving but sais "crap" and stops. So I can make a new tactical decisions. Because I care. Can you please implement that before interrupts?
• If mercs or enemies are hit, they should moan/groan all the time like in JA2 as it hurts to be shot - in JA:F it is just this "flitch" sound, that the bullet hit. So enemies just don't care that they are hit, which makees me not care at all. It should be different for mercs, as they have different character/voice. If enemies die, the moaning should be different versus the hit sound effect too.
• What hit chance has the enemy, If I have full cover? On edges(corners) on buildings, cars, is there is a bug? I got hits all the time there!
• UI: If the mercs wears gear, that can be represented on the portrait on the bottom of the main screen, it should be represented by an actual picture replacement or small icons for sunglass, headphone, night ops etc.
• UI: On the mercs portrait on the bottom there is so much space wasted round the head, body. In JA2 only the emotional part (face, eyes and mouth movement) was shown. So zoom in a bit on portraits, make portraits smaller too!
• Zoom out of the map, so we see what is going on the screen. Change angle a bit more.
• Comments while in turn based mode seeing enemy:
  When a merc sees a new enemy while in turn based mode, he should comment hits with a sentence, like "more opposition, trash, more dudes...,enemy spotted" and the camera shows the move of the enemy. camera moves back to merc. This is how in JA2 you knew what was going on. In JA:F there are only comments when changing from real time to turn based, or am I wrong?
• Comments about each other during combat and real time (that is what you promised, personality).
• When there are tons of enemies appearing in line of sight, comments like this should trigger "more crap"
• When using grenades, there is a chance that the enemy burns (new animation). This is usually commented like this: "I'm crying" (ironic tone by Stereoid e.g.). So JA2 had it all and was more dark in this way, not disney like. Grenades should bounce 2-3 tiles before destination, the just don't fall with 10G on the ground.
• More emotion with "death animations" not for special weapons like grenades, but also for nice shots (again, I know...)
• If an enemy will shot my merc and has good chance to do so, a pop-up text can appear from the enemy: "This will hurt". So they (not often) comment about their anger while fighting. So could be depended on how many of his friends I killed or if he is already hit. Yes, this is part of JA2.
• I have to feel success (nice combat progress) and fear and anger in comabt, which can only achieved by mercs that talk about action and feelings during combat!
• the cool burst mode is missing which adds a lot atmo, I know it will come, but this is my list for now
• reload, bandage icon etc. on cursor, showing how much AP needed and what action is performed.
• If enemy does not hit, but it was close, the merc should comment about this!

Yeah the combat needs much more improvements. At the moment it doesn't feel like the JA combat of the older titles. But I hope in the next update with the new UI there will be also big improvements coming to the combat animations, bullet system and the whole "Chance to Hit and be Hit"-system. Big steps in terms of the AI should come later they said.

Now to the mercs: It is clear that the mercs in JA2 lived, because of the great animated faces, written dialogues and epic voice acting. These are the three big points that are so important for living mercs. 

At the moment JAF lacks a little bit of good voice acting.(Especially the agent!) So I hope in the later development there will be good voice actors and they will change the agents voice, because it kills much atmosphere when the voice acting isn't good but I can understand that it is not easy without a big budget to get great actors.

The portraits are also so important, because they give us the expressions and show us how the merc is feeling. Here the devs must invest much work also for the written dialogues and comments, because that is what makes Jagged Alliance so great. 

Funny dialogues and expressions to the actual combat situations and the relationships of the mercs are  the points that makes JA so unique and special and no other games have these features.

All this is still not in JAF so it is clear why it doesn't feel like a real JA. The lacks of a really good working combat system and the living mercs with their expressions and dialogues (animated portraits) are what keeps the JA flair still from JAF at the moment.

But I think the devs know that and try to bring back the JA atmosphere as good as they can. They did a good job with the sectors and with the merc portraits. Now they must get the other big part in this game which makes JA truly special and unique. (good voice acting, well written dialogues, good animated portraits, better combat animations/system, economy) 

When those points are in this game then I think it will feel like a good jagged alliance title. When the devs focus on every important point I wrote then they can't go wrong. But it is clear there is much hard work necessary to get everything done for a great successor.

I hope we all together will bring this game to the next level. I can see the devs passion for this game and so I think they deserve much respect for their work. But we must help as good as we can, because a JA title is so enormous. But I think we can handle this all together :-)

there is a lot to do in every aspect, but i trust FC to do the necessary work

Loki, trust is not the point. I trust them, but I wanted to express, why combat still doesn't feel like JA2 did. Next FC is going to implement the strategic layer - so I felt that is time to remind myself what exactly is missing. All these messages have to have triggers and need a bit of coding. Other stuff is important too, animation, gore, personality, bullets, etc. - a lot of work ahead. 

With the vacation time the next week after the worldcup the team will be very productive...I'm sure and I know that they have passion for the game and great ideas. Still in my list could be an aspect, which is not on the internal project sheet. =)

I think the animals were just put in there without any tweaking. A lot of the elemtns you mentiion can be tweaked and polished at a later point, which is why I think the team haven't done it yet. As we're pressing forward to add new sectors, new assets and new features there's little time to polish up these elements, but I agree that tweaks are needed here and there. 

The cowpig is sorta a joke, so we just used it for the trailer...I expect it to be changed. 

Animated portraits have not been implemented yet, will of course add some proper feel to the game. Unsure, where that feature is sitting at the moment. 

Story is still not finished and will be altered along the way :)

AI surely needs improvements, the overall combat experience is next on our list so adding interrupts and clearer loS indications as well as making a smarter AI.

• I don't actually know if this is something they'll add, but shouldn't be too hard to incorporate. Filip made a post earlier with the design for this where a speech bubble would appear on top of the Merc portrait. That will most likely change as the position of the portraits have been moved and the size is smaller. 
• Making them stop when they see an enemy is important for sure, have poked the coders for it a few times, but it's not my job to prioritize. it should happen once interrupts are implemented.
• I don't think that system is fully built yet, just implemented, but I've noted it down and will show it to Roman.
• it's not easy to say as it is dependent on the weapon and the distance between the merc and the enemy. We didn't want to add too much info to the screen, but maybe it can be made optional at some point. 
• I don't know how much it takes to add something like that to the portraits, but it definitely doesn't take priority over so many other things. 
• UI will be changed for the next big update, portraits will be smaller there
• Guess that can be tweaked some more...what angle exactly ? will change the look completely 
• Overall the whole interaction between mercs and enemies is not in yet or at least it's not been setup and fully designed. So I can understand why you feel this is missing
• Will add grenade bounce to the list...but it could be soft soil :P
• noted down about the enemies 
• Don't know if it's already in for the new UI, if not poke again about the ap cost on the cursor + indication 

Thx for clarification and for a lot of poking :p

I understand that you think this is only polishing. Be patient...I want to be, but there is a point where you need to polish things to see the next level, then you see problems you were not aware of before. It is like humans need the basics food, love first and then you think about culture later. Emotions and story are the culture of JA2. At some point we need to see the next picture before adding new, to be polished, features. Perhaps the game development process is different, but that is my experience from a quality management perspective.

• Speech bubbles are ok, as long as they don't look cute. Then a "I will hurt you big time" will sound a bit ironic =)
• Portraits should be smaller and the faces should be cutout more. Just smaller portaits is not enough, the face is important. That is how  emotions and not background came into play in JA2. (only in the AIM-Buy-Screen they used backgrounds and zoomed a bit so you actually can see a background. This small trick could do us all a favor by putting focus on the animated part of the portrait.

As we are near august the time is running too fast. Do you really think all can be done until december?

There is really a lot of work still to be done and nothing seems nearly done yet.

@Archo

Yeah, at some point you do have to stop up and checkpolish what's there

Fair, just not sure it will work for the new UI. Let's see. 

I  think that the artist are creating the portratis based on JA2, can't remember, so they should fit. But since the portaits will be made smaller they may need to be cut/zoomed in more. 

@Loki

For the Core game yeah. Just don't know how much from the nice to have is going to make it in there..impossible to say...time will tell. 

I guess when the next update will bring big changes to the game like working economy, new UI, better combat mechanics, merc skill system XP, perks, map with enemies that conquer sectors back and so on than it could be possible to ship this game in november.

But the next update must be really big, because now is the time to bring the most features in the game so that there is only tweaking, bugfixing and more sectors plus a new AI and the animated portraits, dialogues, more quests, more loot, more mercs ... that are necessary to finish the game.