John did this awesome image for The Spectation Update!

I have been working on the latest big update for too long now, and I’m back from most of my summer travels, and I think it’s time to do my least-favorite thing in the entire world: publicly commit to a release date.

The Spectation Update is coming Friday, July 24th!1

There, I did it. It’s not clear to me why I’m so averse to committing to dates, but it’s something I need to get more comfortable with because I’m going to try moving to a tiny-team-baby-steps version of the “big named updates” release strategy that Valve pioneered on Team Fortress 2 and the Awesomenauts folks have written about as well. More on that later.

So, what exactly is in this upcoming update?

There are two really big features: Spectation and Replay Sniper Mode

Spectation

SpyParty is a 1v1-only game (for now) with no meaningful single-player mode, so if you go in to the lobby to play somebody, and you happen to be the odd person out, you are a sad agent of espionage:

I am sad.

Currently, you have no recourse but to wait for somebody else to join. There is text on the lobby screen telling players to hang out, but a) nobody reads text, and b) even if you do read the text, who wants to just sit there and wait for another player? I made it so you can minimize SpyParty and it doesn’t use much CPU, and it’ll beep and flash the window when you’re invited, but still, what a drag. Often the wait is only a minute or so, but there are way too many cases of one player logging in, waiting a few minutes, and then logging out, and then literally seconds later another player joins, and the cycle repeats.

Another related problem is that recently people have been joining the beta in pairs, so they both log in together and usually only play each other, so if you’re sitting there waiting, then two people will join and immediately go into a game together. I’m not sure why this has been happening more recently than in the past, because I haven’t yet done any of my plans to actually encourage this, like discounts on two copies, spawn copies, gifts, and the like, but it anecdotally seems to have increased over the past few months. Maybe it’s that a lot of the big streamers and youtubers always play with friends, so people who learn about the game that way start out with the goal of playing with a friend, but who really knows? I should probably ask people how they heard about the game when they sign up…

Obviously not being able to get a game when you want one is a big problem for multiplayer games, especially indie ones, where building and maintaining some kind of healthy player community is vital to the experience.

I have a lot of different plans to help solve these “lobby stickiness” problems, and the spectation feature is a big one. After this update, when you log in, you will see this:

Now I am happy! No, the red lines aren’t in the actual UI, but maybe they should be.

Now you have something to do in the lobby! You can watch the ongoing match, and if others are watching it you can chat with them, and you can even “play Sniper” in the match as you’ll see below!

Spectating a game looks just like watching a replay, with all the same controls, so while you’re spectating you can pause, switch cameras, rewind, slowmo, whatever. Here are two clients spectating a match, all running on my laptop:

Two spectators! PS. Four simultaneous copies running is not great for framerate.

Spectation is obviously awesome for casters, because now they’ll be able to live-stream tournament games without requiring individual contestants to stream, which isn’t possible for some folks due to performance or network issues. Spectation shouldn’t cost the people playing any performance at all.

Plus, the way I implemented it, the server is now recording all games, and so it is the beginnings of a complete “Replay Database” of every SpyParty game played. Exposing that awesomeness to players to download and analyze is going to take some thought and time, but for now, the games are going to be collected on my side.

It’s just going to be the basics of spectation at first, but there are a ton of things I want to add, including the ability to do quick round-robin tournaments and ladders, maybe even fake betting, and I’m sure the community will have tons of ideas and post them in the Beta Forums.

So, spectation is pretty cool. However, I think players might think this is even cooler…

Replay Sniper Mode

Whenever I mention “single-player SpyParty“, the first thought most people have is, “Hey, why not set it up so the Sniper can play against old replays?” I include myself in “most people” and thought this was a great idea until I realized the feedback from the Sniper’s laser position and angle to the Spy drastically changes the Spy’s behavior, and I plan to add more ways for the Sniper to have feedback into the game in the near future. So, I went from thinking playing replays was a clean and easy solution to half of the single-player problem to thinking it’d be kinda neat but not very useful.

Well, I’m back on the It’s Awesome train again. When I got spectation working, I figured it’d be worth the day or two to throw in the ability to play as a Sniper against the Spy you were spectating since it would give waiting players more stuff to do, and it turns out it’s way more interesting and real-Sniper-feeling than I thought it would be! And once I realized it was working, a whole bunch of new cool variants came to mind.

The way it works now is it looks like you’re playing a regular Sniper game. You can highlight and lowlight, zoom, and you see the (hopefully) exact same information you’d see if you were really playing Sniper. If you shoot somebody, they obviously don’t die since you aren’t in the actual match, but the game tells you if you shot the right person, and if you didn’t, it keeps going.

You sort of have multiple bullets, an oft-requested feature.

If you are totally lost, you can switch to normal spectation/replay mode by hitting ctrl-shift-tab, or by trying to shoot everybody until you get the Spy, at which point it will switch over automatically.

This works on normal replays as well, so you can practice offline against a given opponent as Spy if you know you’re going to be playing them soon. You can even practice against yourself, by playing replays where you were Spy!

Now things get crazy…the server is going to (eventually) have curated lists of replays of games that make for good Replay Sniping, and it will be able to stream those to you while you’re waiting in the lobby. So, imagine you log in, and people are already playing, and you can play a set of 10 replays picked by another player called “Bugtastic” where you know the Spy will always bug, and you see if you can catch them, or play Sniper against the finals match from the last tournament to see how you match up? I can imagine a zillion variants here, including curated sets by difficulty, player, maps, game modes, ranking, etc.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the streaming games thing in for this initial build, but Replay Sniper Mode will at least work live while spectating and from your own replays, and hopefully I can at least get something simple in for streaming to get things started.

What’s Left To Do

I still have some big things left to do before I can release, so I’m going to need to crank this week. The list currently looks like this (strikethrough means done):

• Should I start a new room for a spectated match or not?
  Right now, you stay in the lobby while you’re spectating, so you can keep chatting. I support players being in multiple rooms, so I think I’m going to start a new room for a match, and then add players to that room, so they’ll still be in the main Headquarters room, but also will be in the match room. It needs a bit more thought.
• Store the Replay Sniper laser movement and events to the server.
  I’d like to archive all the Replay Sniper games as well, and that way I could do visualizations of all the lasers moving around the room simultaneously, which would be awesome, plus I could do analysis on them.
• Update the loadtest robots to test all this stuff.
  Spectation adds load to the server, since it manages all the streams. It’s not much, but I really should test it at scale before releasing it. Really, I should.
• Actually implement streaming games for Replay Sniper.
  All that cool stuff above about curated lists of games being streamed to you in the lobby doesn’t exist yet. I need to figure out if I can do a baby-steps version of that to get things started.
• Bugs, bugs, bugs.
  There are lots of bugs.

Those are the big things, and they’re all relatively optional, meaning the current thing works pretty well, but they’re things I’d like to have, so I’m going to try for them. Wish me luck!

I will probably stream development of some of this stuff this week at http://twitch.tv/spyparty

1. Obviously quality comes first, so if I reserve the right to slip this date if I need to for the good of SpyParty, but I’m really really going to try to hit it! [↩]

It’s my pleasure to introduce the next five SpyParty characters! Wait, did I say five? I meant six.

Meet the new guests!

It’s true, we have added identical twins in this group, making this group six new characters total! A bonus character, no microtransactions required! More on that below, but first, check out how crowded the whole cast picture is getting:

It’s getting crowded up in here…

I think we’re going to need a riser for them to stand on or chairs or something for the next group shot when we add the rest of the characters.

More Saturated Colors!

One of our big goals for this batch was to really push the color saturation of the outfits. We actually thought we were being really colorful with the second batch, but after living with them for a while, it was clear they were drawn towards the blue/grey/brown video game gravity well.

This time, as you can see in these thumbnails of the progression from left to right, I think we’re finally at a good level of color saturation:

I was asked during an interview if I thought we’d go back and modify the colors on the older groups, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. It’s not that nobody can wear blue/grey/brown, and in fact, those are stylish and sophisticated colors, it’s just that everybody shouldn’t be those colors, so I’m glad we’re mixing in some fully saturated primary and secondary colors now, I think it’ll make a big difference in the look of the game, and also in how quickly the players can identify the characters and manage their attention.

Diversity

As always, having a diverse cast is another goal of mine for SpyParty, and it is really a great game for exploring this. Not only is there the obvious visual interest that comes from having all these unique looking guests, but the gameplay benefits from it as well. The idea of “attention as a resource” is one of the aesthetic goals for SpyParty, and the more distinct and striking the characters are, the easier it is for the Sniper (and the Spy) to keep mental notes about their behaviors and movements during the game, and I can go deeper on the subtle stuff. Plus, did I mention they just look cool?

Meet the Latest Guests to Arrive at the Party

And here they are…as before, these “letter names” are temporary, and we haven’t decided how we’re going to come up with the final names, but I’m hoping we can involve the community somehow. In the meantime, the beta players come up with their own nicknames for all the characters, and then I end up using those too and nobody is going to care about their real names anyway, are they?

Mr. K

He’s a Sikh, and is our best-dressed guest. John Cimino, the amazing SpyParty artist, loves headgear and elaborate hairstyles for making recognizable silhouettes, and a Sikh’s turban is a perfect example of this. We’ll need to be respectful with how we treat the Sikh aspects of the character, so for example his beard is long and untrimmed and he’ll drink water. Hopefully folks will let us know if we make any mistakes here so we can correct them. Update: I was nervous about referencing religion in the game because it’s such a sensitive topic, but looks like it might be okay! Seems like a positive first impression!

Ms. L

She’s a rocker, think Chrissie Hynde or Patti Smith. We went with the leopard sleeved leather jacket and the silk shirt so we could really push the bright yellow; she’s got our most saturated and brightest primary colors in her outfit of all the characters. She also happens to be based on my girlfriend…I figured John put his girlfriend in the last batch of characters, so it was my turn!

Drs. M & N

Identical twins! How will they affect gameplay! I have no idea! What are they doctors of? I have no idea! As you can see if you look closely, they have a few subtle differences between them, and we’ll probably start out with those and see how they play. We can always make them more or less differentiable to tune them, but I’m hoping we can keep it really subtle. Once I add personalities and propensities to the characters (planned for this year, called “dossiers”), then I’m probably also going to look at adding a draft or pick/ban phase to the game loadout so the Spy and Sniper can negotiate who’s invited to the party, and I’ll be very interested to see how the twins are treated in that environment. Will the Sniper allow them both, then highlight or lowlight one to tell them apart? Will the Spy use them as a diversion, or pick to be one of them? So much stuff to play with here! As a technical side note, I’ve always said we’d have unique skeletons and animations for every character, but I’m breaking my promise for the twins; they’ll be instances of the same character model, so instead of having 20 guests in the 1.0 version of SpyParty, we’ll have 21. We reserve the right to give them different animations for some actions as tells.

Ms. O

John’s “sculpted clay” hair style for SpyParty pays off again! We modeled Ms. O as if she’s of a Mediterranean origin, like maybe Greek or Italian. Again, like with Ms. L, we pushed the primary color saturation on Ms. O. Compare her green blouse to Mr. G’s uniform; she should be much more visible at the party. We thought he was really green last time.

Mr. P

Or should I say Señor P? I will admit Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim was one of the inspirations for Mr. P. The cowboy hat has the obvious positive impact on his silhouette, but he’s also got the bright and saturated color scheme, and that sweet belt buckle. We’ll have to name him “Salvador Perez” or something similar to have plausible deniability that we didn’t put the video game’s name on a character’s belt buckle.

Group Shots

Here are all the group conversation shots so far, including the new characters mixed in!

When will they be in the game?

John is animating them now, so we’re aiming to have them in the game by PAX in Seattle at the end of August, or hopefully before that so we can actually test them! These guys gives us 16 total characters, so we’ll be able to do the Courtyard maps, Ballroom, and almost Veranda (which has 17 characters in the old art version).

I can’t wait to have these new folks at the party!

Here’s a teaser with plenty of clues in it for the observant…

How very mysterious…

Our friendly beta tester canadianbacon discovered an anti-tell1 with the way NPCs vs the Spy stopped walking when they reached their destination. This allowed him to lowlight most of the party over time, which turns out to be a pretty good way to find the Spy.

Here is the story of me trying understand and fix it:

Here is a quick (144 seconds) excerpt of a super long (4 hours, 49 minutes, 43 seconds, or 17383 seconds) debugging stream I did for fixing more pathing bugs. Well, it started as a single bug, then kind of multiplied:

1. something only the NPCs do, so you can lowlight for it with confidence [↩]

The latest build is up for your enjoyment, and contained within there’s a beautiful new map called Pub!

The new Pub level, playable now!

Pub was obviously inspired by the cool old pubs in London, with their flowers and patrons drinking a pint on the sidewalk. In fact, if you look at some of the reference images we used, they basically look just like SpyParty levels, complete with conversation circles and everything!

To be true to this look, there are no conversation circles inside the Pub, they’re all out on the sidewalk. Inside, there are two statues, and window pads looking outside. There’s even a window pad looking inward where the window is open to the Sniper’s right, similar to the one you can see in the second reference image, and yes, you can flirt with somebody through the window!

A Pint of Wells Banana Bread Beer, Barkeep!

Of course, once we have a pub, we need a bartender, so Toby got a second job, and a whole new behavior…

Toby works two jobs.

There’s no waiter on Pub, only the bartender, so to get a drink, you need to go to the bar and order it. This also means the Purloin Guestlist mission completely changes on this map. Before, the guestlist would be on Toby’s tray, and you’d steal it (or have somebody else steal it if you got a “green Action Test”) when he served you a drink. Now, it’s on the bar or in his pocket. You can either pick it up yourself, or choose to delegate the pickup to another guest by going into a conversation.

If you delegate, the NPC goes to order a drink and steal the list, so the Sniper has to think back to who was in which conversation and when and with whom, which adds a significant layer of subtlety to the mission.  SpyParty beta testers have even figured out that you can use the delegation to force the Ambassador to go to the bar, so you can get a fingerprint from the drinks later! It’s a good test for the upcoming “recommendations” feature I want to add. More on that later.

The other major gameplay change is some pathing and movement tuning to hopefully eliminate some of the “hard tells” associated with trying to move through congested areas. Time will tell how these pan out and if they help Spies not get shot in doorways.

Irene Adler

Some have asked about the name of the pub, The Irene Adler. My daughter and I are currently reading our way through the Complete Sherlock Holmes, and Irene Adler is an interesting character in one of the stories, A Scandal in Bohemia. It turns out Carole Nelson Douglas wrote some fun books from Irene’s point of view, so we’ve been reading those too. I figured, if Holmes gets a pub named after him in London (you can see it in the reference images above), Irene can have one too!

An Experiment

This build was actually a bit of an experiment with the beta process as well. Unlike previous new art maps, this time I didn’t release the ugly prototype version for public playtest. zerotka and I played it a bunch with internal builds, but I decided to try going straight to the finished art version for the public release. I would say this experiment was a bit of a failure, like I expected it to be. There’s incredible value in getting the prototype level out there for people to pound on, and doing the final version takes a lot longer, so during that time people could have been testing it. Plus, beta testers seem to like getting access to the ugly version and then seeing it hit with the pretty stick. Not that my version of it didn’t have a certain charm…

Beta players couldn’t have handled this much awesomeness.

From here on out, I’ll probably go back to releasing the prototype version first. I think that’s the better and faster way to get to an awesome level with fewer expensive changes needed to the high quality version.

We’re going to update again early next week with some minor changes and tuning, but Pub and these changes is live online, so if you’re in the beta just hit Play on the main menu and you’ll get them, or join the SpyParty beta and check them out yourself. Or if you want to check it out live on Twitch, you can follow the main SpyParty account, or follow @SpyPartyStreams to get notified when anybody streams!