Dear backers,

It’s holiday today here in Denmark but as you can see we are not resting. We want to get our Kickstarter back in gear and gain some more speed.

Therefore we put this Video together to show people who don’t know the Jagged Alliance franchise what was so great about the game and what Jagged Alliance: Flashback will be like.

So yes, for those who know the game in every little detail, this won’t be something new. Getting new fans of Jagged Alliance is one of the areas we will give some focus.

More game details for the rest of you will be given over the next days!

YouTube video

Community Efforts

The community is hard at work and have several competitions and initiatives going to promote our campaign.

The success of the campaign will be determined by getting more backers. So every community driven effort counts. We are very happy about every little push you give.

BIG thanks from here!!!!

Steam

Steam Group

You can join the new steam group created by the community, in order to get a shot at receiving free steam key for the game once the game has been released, the more people in the group the more keys to give away!

Bear’s Pit initiatives

Merc One-liner

"Write a Merc One-Liner and Win a $220 Pledge", sponsored by galf and open to all JA:F backers (and only backers). All you need to participate is a bit of inspiration and a screenshot of your pledge sent to gdalf's inbox. If you already pledged more than $220 you can always gift the goodie bag to a friend. Let's not make gdalf feel like his effort and money went unappreciated, ok?

BIG BAD BEAR meme

The "BIG BAD BEAR meme thread (with an occasional hamster snack)" creativity contest that we're running in order to provide social network memes for those who need to plug the game (or just have a laugh). Even FC tried their hand at this http://imgur.com/yJi4X3e

We’ll have another update ready for you tomorrow and also some new Unique Tiers

Until next time!

The Full Control JAF Team

Dear backers,

It’s Friday and we’re all looking forward to a busy weekend. We’ve seen some good discussions on new pledges and add-ons and the community have come up with some pretty great suggestions.

We have looked them over and decided to implement what we think is the best solution for both add-ons and pledges at the moment. So lets get to it and see what’s in this update :)

Team Video

It’s finally here!! After battling poor filming skills and massive sync issues we are ready to present our Full Control Team Video, enjoy :)



Overall Changes to Tiers

The dog tag with a special unlock gift is moved from the $1000 Tier to the $250 Tier and the Signed collectible 9 inch tall game character figurine is move from the $5000 Tier to the $1000 Tier.

For the $200 tier we will add the option of having choices to pick from for the appearance (Gender, Hair style, Clothes) + They will all have a special vanity item that sets them apart (e.g. a special hat, colored belt/jacket/item) to set them apart from others.

To even things out a little we've also added the $42 reward to the $65 Tier.

Since it’s impossible to change the tiers someone have pledged to, we ask everyone to use the reward spreadsheet, which will also be updated after the update is out. There’s a link to the spreadsheet on the Kickstarter frontpage. We’ll also improve the add-on section.

New Add-ons

DIGITAL:

Beta Access $20 (From $25-$65)
Alpha Access $40 (From $25-$220)

PHYSICAL:

Paper map $7 (For $65, $100, $125)
Dog tag with Special Mercenary unlock $30 (From $100-$220)

Simply add the amount for the add-on to your current pledge tier and we’ll sort it out though surveys once the project is funded.

New Tiers

$15 Support your Fellow Man Tier: You’re doing the right thing, so you get: The Jagged Alliance Classics Pack (Also included in the $5 Tier and up) + Official digital sound track (ONLY THIS TIER) + Get half price off the game once released

$42 Ahh You’re That Guy Tier: I thought I recognized you, therefore you get: All previous rewards + Get your name in the NPC name pool and write a simple short response. Every time you start a new game the names will be re-shuffled, so you have a chance to encounter your own NPC in the game.

$62 You’re on my List Tier: That’s why you’re in the game: All previous rewards + Get your name in the Enemy name pool. Every time you start a new game the names will be re-shuffled, so you have a chance to encounter yourself on the battlefield. (If you go for the $85, $220 or $400 Tier, your response will be connected to the enemy name)

$8000: You’re the Boss Tier: And that’s why you’re rewarded with: All previous rewards + Become a base commander, get your own base and help co-design both the base itself and the commander + co-write the dialogue/responses. Limited (1)

NEW All DIGITAL TIERS

$650 It’s Time to Party Tier: So get your guns out and lets go, you get: All previous DIGITAL REWARDS + Become a Bartender (Help co-design the bartender and the name of the bar + co-write 3 responses) Limited (3)

$650 Running low on Fuel Tier: Maybe you should find a gas station then, you get: All previous DIGITAL REWARDS + Become a Gas Station Manager (Help co-design the gas station manager and the name of the gas station + co-write 3 responses) Limited (3)

FRIDAY UNIQUE TIER

$850 ICE CREAM *Ring Ring* Tier: Get your money out and treat the kids to an ice cream, for that we reward you with: All previous rewards + You’ll have your very own Ice Cream shop in the game and have the Shop NPC named after you and you get to choose the name of the shop. (Co-write 5 responses of your choice) Limited (1)

The rest

We’re slowly closing in on 4,000 backers and we already have sector in mind for the 5,000 mark, which we are sure will be well received. A lot of backers have also been asking us about stretch goals and even though there’s a $200,000 sticker on the stretch goal box, we’ve decided to reveal the first two in the next update.

We hope you like all the changes

Until next time

The Full Control JAF Team

Dear backers,

We have had a tough week producing videos - those suckers are great to watch, but take ages to make. And we wanted them to be good - not just video for the sake of video.

With those out the door, the next updates will concentrate on the game again.

World Economy

At the core of the economy we will go with a single currency similar to JA2 - moneh!

Discussion in the team about different options with multiple currencies all turned out to make the game way too complicated and not that much fun at all. Why? Easy one: That’d add a lot of unneeded micromanagement and players would spend way too much time with doing math on how to change this amount of that currency to another one to gain maximum profit. And to be honest: We’re making a game, not a geo-financial simulator.

So we will stay close to what Jagged Alliance 2 did, where you gain perpetual income from controlling sectors, solving missions, selling items and so on. And you will need that cash because your mercenaries need to be paid, militia needs to be trained and your base needs to be fortified. And with that system we are also going to balance the cashflow: Costs of fighting a war versus income gained from your sectors. But we’re also thinking about having some sectors which will cost the player money.

On this tropical island of San Christobal income sources are
◾ Taxes from controlled villages and towns
◾Controlling sectors with production facilities like factories, banana plantations, opium poppy fields, brothels, ice cream trucks etc. These replace the “mines” from JA2
◾One-time revenue from missions, intercepting drug traffickers, selling weapons, used condoms and so on

We have the idea of letting faction loyalty have an influence on incomes. If you are in bad standing with the drug lords, then running a drug producing facility will give you lower income as workers will be nervous all the time for retribution. Being good friends with local population will give you a little higher tax from towns as people will like you and work a little harder, therefore generating more money.

Control over a sector is exerted by you starting to train militia and/or fortifying it. The heavier controlled, the more control and the higher upkeep. Although training militia and fortifying the sector won’t be cheap.

Money is also spent on your mercenaries. Similar to JA2 you will hire mercenaries for a given period of time and you have to renew their contracts. Bringing in mercenaries loyal to other factions is possible, but might cost you a little extra. And some mercenaries simply will refuse to join you as long as you a rooting for the opposing faction.

An idea up for discussion:
◾ We are thinking about making some sectors a money-sink. For example a military base or a hospital. Because these things can become quite expensive in terms of maintenance.
◾You can lose control of some sectors if your faction loyalty shifts.
◾Roads and otherwise “empty” sectors cannot be controlled by anyone and thus cost no upkeep.

So nothing revolutionary here besides the faction loyalty being an influence. Your decisions about who to support will also be a decision about the money in your wallet.

Until next time and thank you for your support!

The Full Control JAF Team

EXCLUSIVE OFFER FROM MODDERS TO BACKERS
Get your name in JA:F, we put your name in JA2 v1.13

First let us thank our resident code genie, Flugente, who made all this possible with this magic. And the entire legendary team of v1.13 modders. We won't bother you with technical details, the basic idea is that he made it so we can add a large number of names to the enemy pool (just as JA:F will have) from an XML config file.

Dear backers,

A new week and 10 days to go! We are past the 50% after a good weekend, and we are gearing up for the final push.

We are thus slowly closing in on the $200,000 stretch goal reveal mark, so we would like to show you the first two stretch goals as a carrot.

Stretch Goals

$ 375,000 Mountains, Mines and Pits

The first stretch goal will be an additional themed zone bringing the mines back into the game. We would like to add 10 sectors with mountainous region and at least 2 mines. Each with their own mining town.

We will create an art set themed for mountainous regions where locals have been digging for materials for decades. Riches lie beneath the earth in form of coal, iron and even precious metals.

Several small mining towns exist in the different mountain regions and can be controlled by the player or the enemy factions. So they serve as an income source as well as give interesting opportunities for fighting in the dark pits.

Mountain regions have also been known to have hostile animals like bears and hamsters!

Image


$ 400,000 Map Editor

Keeping in line with wishes for additional modding options we’ve decided to go for the map editor as one of the first stretch goals.

We want to build a level editor that scales with the costs needed, therefore we're starting out with a high level editor (for those of you accustomed to halo's forge editor this is something along those lines). You will be able to pick between different preset terrains where you can start placing buildings and props.

Additionally you will have control of spawn points for NPC’s, hooks for dialogue scripts, triggers that can be linked to e.g. alarms or the faction loyalty system.

We are basing the editor off our internal tools used for especially Space Hulk. A older version of the editor tool can be seen here for a quick demonstration of a Space Hulk like environment using Frontline Tactics art:

Youtube Video


While the editor in the video is used to place corridors and rooms on a black/blank grid, it could easily be used to place a house on a ground plane instead.

New sectors created with this editor can be hooked into the strategic map and override existing sectors.

It will not enable you to do _everything_ into small details, but it can be used to easily expand the world with new exciting sectors that you make up. For hardcore modders it would even then give the ability to redo the entire island.

The map editor is a standalone executable, and does not require Unity or programming skills.

Diorama Progress

As Javier and Jesper are chewing their way through creating the diorama scene, we wanted to give you a fresh work-in-progress shot of the art as currently in Unity.

Remember this is totally WIP and the final look might differ.



Full Size Image Link

Here is an up close of the M16 that Javier has been working on as well.

Image

We are all looking forward to a new and exciting week and we will keep our efforts on the same level and even higher them in order to get this project funded. Work on the Diorama is progressing nicely and we’ll be covering certain aspects of it in the upcoming updates.

Until next time!

The Full Control JAF Team