The Steam release

Roadmap

To Steam

Overview and purpose

This page captures the features, capabilities, bugs, and general tasks of particular concern to the future Steam release of Beyond All Reason (BAR). This page groups and prioritizes these concerns to aid organization, tracking, and communication of the team's progress towards the first Steam release.

This list will be used to help the team ascertain the readiness of BAR for Steam release. Such a decision will be made by the team, considering all factors including those that have not been captured here

Priorities

A “must” item means that we cannot, under any circumstances, Steam release without this item completed. A “should” item means we cannot Steam release without either completing it or having a viable workaround.
Everything here is of course subject to change.

Scope

Only items (such as features, capabilities, bugs, general tasks, et cetera...) that impact the release of BAR to Steam are considered in this document. It may not necessarily contain every such item if that would interfere with the purpose of this document (for example, small tasks that can be resolved quickly enough that recording them here is not worth the effort.)

Roadblocks

Chapters

Internationalization

Must
  • Full game internationalization, in at least the major European languages WIP
  • German, Spanish, French, Polish WIP
  • Support for glyphs from other languages (e.g. Russian)
Should
  • Far-eastern languages
Want
  • Voice internationalization - A lot of notifications are generated using robotic text-to-speech with added post-processing, English voice. English still isn’t fully ready. Internationalization will be quite the work.

Gameplay Content

Must
  • Seamless first play experience: The first play experience, from the point the player clicks Download in their Steam library to issuing the first command to their Commander, must be seamless - it must be error free with zero points of friction. (This encompasses the download, the install, the first launch, the first menu navigation, the first game load, and the first game start)
  • Single-player campaign (2 faction-specific storylines around 15-20 missions each) 
  • (Fully scripted) Tutorial mission. WIP
  • All (or most) missions except the tutorial must be playable in coop mode with an arbitrary number of players.
  • Improve AI’s further so chances of bugging/stalling/getting stuck is further reduced. As AI is very(!) important, we need it to work as well as possible. There still are multiple situations AI handles poorly. WIP
  • ✅ Make AI work on metal maps!
  • Finalize on Raptor & Scavenger game-modes
Should
  • In-game cutscenes between missions.
  • Narration.
  • Add multiple AI behavior presets (like turtle, aggressor, defensive, balanced, easy, medium, hard)
  • Improve specific gameplay options/modes and make them work (f.e. Play as Scavengers or Raptors)
  • Remake Ruins and all blueprints with better balance/unique styling and ideally new/more varied models/structures
Want
  • Ability for players to create their own missions, using a mission editor system, along with the ability to share these missions and play them cooperatively with friends.
  • Ability for players to create/save presets of settings for their favorite play-style, so they can jump in their ideal game faster (and share this with friends/community)
  • Addition of a 3rd PvE/Coop game-mode that involves fully dynamic battles, based on a ‘seed’ so other players/teams can share/compete in their survival / victory-rates / times. Game-master-AI controlled events like dynamic weather changes (solar eclipse, sand/thunderstorms, acidic-rain, solar-flare), random dropship-events, awakening of underground Raptor hordes, Scavenger attacks, etc.
  • Control gamemode needs to be fleshed out

Graphics & Sound

Must
  • Finalize design on UI and build it - Possibly re-build with GL4 WIP
  • Investigate and decide on RLMGUI framework WIP
  • Upgrade un-finished/polished UI parts for uniform styling
  • A lot more Sound notifications + upgrade from Allison V3 to new Allision V4 (roughly 30-40 notifs)
  • Depending on choice for tutorial missions and/or dynamic tutorial notifs
  • Improve/replace old/legacy textures with improved ones in quality/resolution WIP
  • Some new/missing cursor animations WIP
Should
  • Upgrade GUI to have a more character/design WIP
  • Add more/unique sounds to Scavenger and Raptor units and weapons
  • Design modal(s) for use in Scenarios/Campaign (f.e. Tutorial Guide-book)
  • Clean up & upgrade of some particle effects for mainly shell/unit explosions
  • Find a proper/universal fix for live-stream stutter when recording/streaming with specific settings (jitter)
Want
  • Improve overall quality of the UI with better scaling/anti-aliasing
  • Add (more) subtle animations & sounds
  • Easier UI configurability

Middleware server

Must
  • No github blockers
  • Clustering/scaling of middleware server
  • Tachyon protocol WIP
  • Basic matchmaking/match finding WIP
Should
  • Scalable moderation (automated/semi-automated)
  • Ranked matchmaking
Want
  • Tournament integration

Mapping

Must
  • Fix a handful (or two) of maps with older tech / or (slightly) broken parts/features WIP
  • Finalize a list of ‘BAR Certified’ maps, likely (some) included in the release
  • Centralize map data into BAR infra WIP
Should
  • Add ±10-20 more maps to support asymmetrical play, slightly aimed at PvE/Coop/Solo players. WIP
  • Also some more FFA and Metal maps are welcome. 
  • Upgrade (some) maps with proper atmospheric & sound effects (like fog, mist, fireflies, dust, sand-whirls, river/water/sea sounds, etc.) WIP
Want
  • A fully new set of Civilian Structures to be used as ‘ruins’ or previous civilizations/settlements/outposts.
  • A high-quality set of modelled/crafted cliffs, boulders, rocky-ridges and other natural/organic features, for more rich maps, with a higher quality design / atmosphere. WIP
  • Possibly centralize all Mapping objects/models/textures to game (instead of map) WIP

User Map Creation

Must
  • Support the texturing and splatting process, and result in at least somewhat passable looking maps
  • Must be able to create decent splats, and the texturing must be pathing-aware.
Should
  • Single-click exports of distributable maps.
Want
  • Fully working on all possible channels from height, diffuse, normals, specular, reflectivity, metal, splat weights, features, grass, water, et al.

Engine

Must
  • No github blockers
  • Find weird small bugs with culling and grass popping
  • Changing resolution can have very noticeable buggy effects
Should
  • Extensive cross-platform and cross-hardware testing and validation
  • Per-frame sim load variance reduction
  • Better/new way for rendering Special Effects like Cloak/Distort/Shields
  • Inclusion of volumetric lighting for map ambient effects, units, weapons/projectiles and explosions
Want
  • Some additional multithreading optimizations [Tarnished Knight]
  • Improve unit pathing and movement, minimising path issues such as clumping of air units and eight-way movement of sea/land units [Tarnished Knight]

BAR Lobby

Must
  • Feature parity with Chobby (current lobby)
  • Completed interface
  • Basic integration with Steam
  • Matchmaking
  • UI for keybind customisation
Should
  • Internationalization
Want
  • Integrate superbly well with Steam

Dedicated Server (SPADS)

Must
  • Support of new Tachyon protocol
Should
  • Reduce RAM usage of SPADS (currently 100MB per room)
Want
  • Better horizontal and vertical scaling