Knights!

It has been a little longer than we expected since the last update – a month and 3 days – but we’ve got a massive slew of news today including new artwork, the snow leopard reveal, exciting language pack plans, details about the first upcoming Exec Producers meeting, reward deliveries and more. We've got at least one more Kickstarter update scheduled before the end of June, so we'll keep the pace a little more snappy.

With that much to cover, let’s get going – and remember to Wishlist now on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

Introducing the Snow Leopard!

Thanks to all of our backers, we unlocked cyber cats and the Assassin Job at the $225,000 stretch goal. Even better, we decided to unlock the additional cat breed from the $235,000 goal as well – because, two cats are better than one! And then, in a run off between three possibilities, you voted for the Snow Leopard to be the additional cat breed.

And that leads us to today, where the concept art team – led by some cat lovers! – has delivered this amazing piece for the snow leopard design. What a beast! Clearly, this will not be an easy cat to find and recruit, but to have such a majestic animal at your Assassin’s side will never grow old.

Announcing Plans for Language Pack Support!

Since the close of the Kickstarter, we’ve been extremely busy building new engine components and adapting our workflows and content building systems for Cyber Knights. These are some major tasks that will set the foundation of Cyber Knights and include items like rewriting our UI toolkit and establishing a proper text management system within Unity.

Each of our future Kickstarter updates is likely to touch on the results of some of these major engineering tasks. Today, we’re excited to share our plans and progress for translating Cyber Knights: Flashpoint into many languages. Despite being only available in English, our previous game Star Traders: Frontiers has a large international fanbase and we’ve always hoped to be able to translate the game for those players. However, this is much easier when we have a fresh start and this Kickstarter and Cyber Knights has afforded us that opportunity.

We have not finalized our language list or exact system for how translations will be available; however, the engineering work has reached a point where we can commit to translating Cyber Knights: Flashpoint into multiple languages. During the alpha, we work with interested players within the community to help test out the full translation pipeline and provide some initial community-led translations. Depending on the success of those efforts we will further engage the community and bring in professional translation services as needed to complete the project.

While we can’t commit to specific language nor which languages might be available when the game launches on Steam, the UI toolkit is now ready to play and we’ll be keeping that support tested, polished and primed for translation throughout the entire game development cycle.

Stretch Goal Outfits

There were 3 different new outfit sets (street, military, corp) unlocked as the project marched up its stretch goal ladder and we are excited to debut the first set today – the street outfits. The corp and military additions will follow soon enough, but for today we’re looking over a street berserker and an all too cool bubble-gum popping street blade.

Forum Badges Delivered

We have now completed the sweep of social rewards due for the project, with every backer who entered a forum username for either the backers badge or the alpha badge now tagged on our forum. For our alpha backers, this badge will grant you access to the private forum boards used for feedback, suggestions and bug reports during the alpha. Now is a good time to check your forum account and make sure you are a badged! If you want your Cyber Knights badge to be shown as your active group, you must set it to be your user’s display group under Edit Profile > Settings > Display Group.

First Exec Producers Meeting

As the project has been picking up speed, we’re now preparing to sit down with our 22 Executive Producers ($1,000 reward or higher) and give them the first big behind the scenes look. This first meeting is focused on the game’s artwork and the process of visualizing, designing, drawing and then 3D modeling the Cyber Knights world – not to mention putting it all into motion. The Execs will get a special tour of the process, the tools we use, and get a sneak peak look at a lot of the work-in-progress art as it stands.

Backer Pen & Paper Game

When we last covered the pen and paper game for @DrSpendLove in our May update, we’d played the first four sessions of the campaign. Last night we played out the 13th and penultimate session with the final showdown looming inexorably over Yoss and his team. Some huge final choices have to be made and the consequences will ripple through New Boston and the game's story!

From where we last left Yoss, Cat, Shimmer and Lupin they dove straight into spoiler territory for the game. Their investigation led them through illicit gambling houses, corporate shadow banking and onto the trail of a secret shell corporation – Nordic Financial Holdings Limited. “In these situations, you have to follow the money,” Shimmer said at the time. The Face’s quote has haunted them for the rest of the campaign.

The trail of money has led them through shell companies, to secret orbital communications relays, to the very top of the Matsumoto board and back down again into the dirty and bloody Los V streets of Ward 4. The trail of the money ran deep and they have peeled back layer after layer of a dizzying conspiracy until at last they saw how it all connected in Session #11. The deadly cat and mouse game has continued unabated, each side landing body blows as the team has destroyed both some key enemies and assets but have lost their safehouse, friends and limbs in the balance. The chips haven’t all hit the table yet and there are still more to fall.

Progress Bar Report

With each update, we always include the Progress Bar report so the current status is nice and clear. With this update, the only change is to mark off the Forum Badges as now completed and to add the little "3D" icon to those assets that have their concept art completed and are now in the hands of the 3D modeling team.

Here is a swift summary, but see below for more details and art.

• All concept art for the stretch goals (dogs, drones, cats, outfits and environments) are in the hands of the concept team and most are in the review and tweak stage or completed.
• Our concept art team has completed 46 or the 55 heads turned in our backers and the concept art is getting reviewed, finalized and ready for 3D processing.
• We’ve completed 13 sessions – almost 40 hours – of the first reward pen and paper Cyber Knights campaign. We will play our last session next week and bring the campaign to its nail-biting conclusion. We will miss the weekly chance to visit New Boston – it has been so much fun!