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OUTBRK - Storm chasing game, first multiplayer footage

cr0w

Old Member
This actually looks really interesting. Hopefully they can get the weather systems looking a bit more realistic, otherwise everything else looks great. I've been obsessed with tornadoes since I was little, so I'll be keeping an eye on it.
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Hi,

I'm one of the creators of that game ! Glad to be joining this community!

Outbrk has been in development for many years now, and we also got a successful kickstarter campaign.

I just want to clarify some things about other games of the same genre. As a storm chaser for 15 years, I decided to start working on that project quite a while ago, and decided to have a super transparent development so that people interested in the game could see it being developed.

About a year (very approximate, I don't recall exactly) after opening our discord community and social network pages, this game Storm Chasers was announced. We were pleased to find out that the project had inspired other indie devs. The Storm Chasers game, apart from the theme, is not really comparable to outbrk. They have a small map with random weather events spawning across the map and some missions. Pretty fun actually, but very much the arcade version of the storm chasing genre. Fun game!

Outbrk has a 625 sq km original map and weather is simulated from actual real weather data, and everything you see in the game scientifically makes sense, in a way that you could either learn stuff about weather when playing, or use your knowledge to have a successful chase. Our gameplay design is also centered around multiplayer elements and systems and we're designing a robust progression system so that the game can be fun for a long time. The scope of the game is so big, that's why it has taken us so many months/years.

To us, Storm Chasers proved that our concept had potential right when we were developping it and that people are looking for a game about storms.

Seeing "another storm chasers copy cat" always makes me smile but you couldn't know, and we're not released yet, so you know, jokes on us 😁

Anyway, we're getting much closer now and it's really getting exciting for us.

Thanks so much for the interest by the way ! And I'll be glad to answer any questions about our project.

Cheers!
 

Polelock

Member
I'm pretty excited for this! I was in a tornado when I was five and I have been fascinated and terrified ever since. Can't wait.
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Any particular reason why the framerate is kinda choppy in trailer?
Are you guys running some sort of complex simulation or is it just because it's early in development?

Good luck with the project!
It was our first playtest with some people from all over north america, some with potato computers (chosen on purpose) and some with quite expensive rigs. Although our goal was to analyze our gameplay mechanics and how they were understood by players, we kinda wanted to see how it ran on low end computers.

We asked the players to record and send us the video afterwards. So that's the reason why you can see a variety of framerates in the video.

Not only were some of them recording on a low end computer, but they were also recording while streaming to us on discord.

Important to mention: we do not consider the game optimized yet, meaning we are finishing up the gameplay mechanics polishing and networking stuff before we give a go to a team of professionnals to boost our performances.

Thruth is, every time I tackled a bit of optimization in the code, we got a decent fps boost, and we're very confident we're gonna have very good perfomances.

As for the simulation, it is a very complex one, but it's precomputed and the game is essentially what I would proudly call "probably the first realistic 3d rendering of scientific weather data" .

The game is basically doing the playback of the data that takes some pretty big computer power to generate. And then there's some gameplay design on top of that to make it fun.

Hope that answered your question! Thanks for the wishes :)
 

bender

What time is it?
Oh, I'm in the suck zone baby.

fark_uPAjls8AJTAurf1dgZpnCAUPAlc.jpg
 

Inviusx

Member
This is actually a pretty cool idea for a game. What's the goal for the player? What happens if you drive into the tornado?
 
I'd love to know the number of people who just drive into the tornado once they find one.
I legitimately saw a psycho that required a wheelbarrow to haul his massive testicles drive a cigarette boat into a small waterspout in the middle of Tampa Bay as I was crossing the Sunshine Skyway. The waterspout actually broke up after he did that. This was more than 20 years ago.
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
This is actually a pretty cool idea for a game. What's the goal for the player? What happens if you drive into the tornado?
Thanks. The player has multiple ways of making points.

1. Take photos of weather phenomenons
2. Accurately report the weather events
3. Place probe in the path of the tornado to gather data

The goal is to make more points than your expenses (gas, car damage from collisions or from large hail) and of course by staying alive. Kind of a weather raid.

If you drive in a tornado, it'll be like in real life.

I myself got hit by ef0 tornadoes a couple times and I'm still here. I wouldn't be if I had driven into a stronger one.
 
Hi,

I'm one of the creators of that game ! Glad to be joining this community!

Outbrk has been in development for many years now, and we also got a successful kickstarter campaign.

I just want to clarify some things about other games of the same genre. As a storm chaser for 15 years, I decided to start working on that project quite a while ago, and decided to have a super transparent development so that people interested in the game could see it being developed.

About a year (very approximate, I don't recall exactly) after opening our discord community and social network pages, this game Storm Chasers was announced. We were pleased to find out that the project had inspired other indie devs. The Storm Chasers game, apart from the theme, is not really comparable to outbrk. They have a small map with random weather events spawning across the map and some missions. Pretty fun actually, but very much the arcade version of the storm chasing genre. Fun game!

Outbrk has a 625 sq km original map and weather is simulated from actual real weather data, and everything you see in the game scientifically makes sense, in a way that you could either learn stuff about weather when playing, or use your knowledge to have a successful chase. Our gameplay design is also centered around multiplayer elements and systems and we're designing a robust progression system so that the game can be fun for a long time. The scope of the game is so big, that's why it has taken us so many months/years.

To us, Storm Chasers proved that our concept had potential right when we were developping it and that people are looking for a game about storms.

Seeing "another storm chasers copy cat" always makes me smile but you couldn't know, and we're not released yet, so you know, jokes on us 😁

Anyway, we're getting much closer now and it's really getting exciting for us.

Thanks so much for the interest by the way ! And I'll be glad to answer any questions about our project.

Cheers!
Looks cool. But, your timing seems odd to bump this though right after the deadliest series of tornados just hit several states, killing many and several more people are still trapped in rubble waiting for rescue.
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Looks cool. But, your timing seems odd to bump this though right after the deadliest series of tornados just hit several states, killing many and several more people are still trapped in rubble waiting for rescue.
I got accepted to this forum around 1 month after requesting it, that's why I'm only posting now.

As for storm chasing, no one can stop tornadoes from occuring, but we can contribute to people's safety. I myself reported funnel clouds to the national weather service before the rotation was evident on radar, contributing to the warnings. I also got contacted by them as they saw my location, and told them there was no imminent danger, even though radar was showing rotation. This contributes to lowering the rate of false warnings.

That's also why we decided to throw the whole "get more points by being in greater danger without dying" and replaced it by doing accurate reports. We're doing a scientifically accurate simulation, so might as well encourage good behaviour. Dropping probes will be the most dangerous but staying safe and alive will be rewarded, while reckless actions will be punished, and hopefully (if our immersion is right) feared.

I understand your concern though, but I can assure you I've been waiting to come here and talk about OUTBRK way before this unfortunate event occured.

That being said we are massively sharing this to our community - if you want to help people :
 
I got accepted to this forum around 1 month after requesting it, that's why I'm only posting now.

As for storm chasing, no one can stop tornadoes from occuring, but we can contribute to people's safety. I myself reported funnel clouds to the national weather service before the rotation was evident on radar, contributing to the warnings. I also got contacted by them as they saw my location, and told them there was no imminent danger, even though radar was showing rotation. This contributes to lowering the rate of false warnings.

That's also why we decided to throw the whole "get more points by being in greater danger without dying" and replaced it by doing accurate reports. We're doing a scientifically accurate simulation, so might as well encourage good behaviour. Dropping probes will be the most dangerous but staying safe and alive will be rewarded, while reckless actions will be punished, and hopefully (if our immersion is right) feared.

I understand your concern though, but I can assure you I've been waiting to come here and talk about OUTBRK way before this unfortunate event occured.

That being said we are massively sharing this to our community - if you want to help people :
Good on you and I assumed it was not purposefully timed, just unfortunate.

I live in Oklahoma, so I'm no stranger to tornados. I live through several warnings a year that result in us taking shelter. But, it's extremely rare that there is a large life loss from tornadoes as there are in other natural disasters like hurricanes or massive earthquakes.

These latest ones that ran through Kentucky, Illinois, etc were a pretty case though.
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Good on you and I assumed it was not purposefully timed, just unfortunate.

I live in Oklahoma, so I'm no stranger to tornados. I live through several warnings a year that result in us taking shelter. But, it's extremely rare that there is a large life loss from tornadoes as there are in other natural disasters like hurricanes or massive earthquakes.

These latest ones that ran through Kentucky, Illinois, etc were a pretty case though.
That was awful, there is a chance it gets a final rating of ef5, which didn't happen since 2013. Survey will begin monday.

Can't wait to go back to OK finally in 2022 ! Covid stopped us from going since 2020, so we're overdue. What I love about your area is how it's often just a beautiful phenomenon in an open field, not destroying people's lives !
 
That was awful, there is a chance it gets a final rating of ef5, which didn't happen since 2013. Survey will begin monday.

Can't wait to go back to OK finally in 2022 ! Covid stopped us from going since 2020, so we're overdue. What I love about your area is how it's often just a beautiful phenomenon in an open field, not destroying people's lives !
Thanks for sharing your experiences with storms and game development with us. It’s a huge bonus when a developer has a real life passion for the subject of the game.
Will there be controller support and a single player experience?
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Do you plan on adding a mode that lets us *be* the tornado?
No, since we're going for the simulation + storm chasing immersiive experience, to us that would mean adding a super arcady mode where you destroy stuff for fun, and in a multiplayer context that would be like "be the blue circle" in pubg. Im exagerrating for course but I'm sure you get my point :) there is also a lot of games out there that offers that, including Storm chasers on steam !
 

marcremillard

Neo Member
Thanks for sharing your experiences with storms and game development with us. It’s a huge bonus when a developer has a real life passion for the subject of the game.
Will there be controller support and a single player experience?
Thanks for the kind words!

Yeah everything is being made to support all sort of controllers, including steering wheels. As for single player, we will have an offline mode, but we didn't hit the last stretch goals on the kickstarter campaign to develop a full single player campaign or story. So with the money we have, we chose our fights, basically. That being said if we ever do well, we'll invest it in the game and that could come eventually.
 

KRYPT83

Member
This is great I would change the name to Storm Chazers or something and put a tornado were the Z is chazers. If they could somehow use maps like Microsoft flight simulator and then simulate the storms that would be amazing. Great idea non the less
 

sainraja

Member
4EBR5DQ.jpg

^^ Here is a picture of a Tornado I saw when going back home from my friends place. We don't usually get tornadoes so when there was a warning I didn't think much of it, only to go on to see it and see it as close as you could be to it. Some of the cars next to me were making quick u-turns but I stayed put and took this picture, lol.

This picture is from a time before the iPhone exited haha.
 
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Thanks for the kind words!

Yeah everything is being made to support all sort of controllers, including steering wheels. As for single player, we will have an offline mode, but we didn't hit the last stretch goals on the kickstarter campaign to develop a full single player campaign or story. So with the money we have, we chose our fights, basically. That being said if we ever do well, we'll invest it in the game and that could come eventually.
Completely understandable. I’ll still be checking it out.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
This actually looks really interesting. Hopefully they can get the weather systems looking a bit more realistic, otherwise everything else looks great. I've been obsessed with tornadoes since I was little, so I'll be keeping an eye on it.
Have you played just cause 4?

just-cause4-just-cause.gif
 
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