Dear backers,

Thanks for getting us past the $100,000 mark! $250,000 to the initial goal with 24 days left - lets go! We’re constantly working on more art, more info and are communicating with a lot of different sites in order to raise awareness for our campaign.

On that note we’d like to announce that our CEO Thomas will be doing an IAMA on reddit tomorrow, Tuesday 30th at 2pm Eastern Pacific Time (20:00 Central European Summer Time) and he will try his best to answer all of your questions We’d also like to announce that we’re starting a new backer initiative, which will be added to the main Kickstarter pages as it progresses.

For every 1000 backer we get, we’ll be adding 1 extra sector to the game, which can either be special sectors with unique content or more common sectors with small hidden secrets. The sectors will be illustrated as squares, so for each 1000th backer we’ll add another square to the mix.



Now lets move on to a subjects that has been heavily debated within the community and especially our Russians friends - The setting.



Story Setting

As you all know by now, the story is set in the late-1980s, on the Caribbean island group of San Christobal and the cold war is coming to an end.

Following a coup d'état a socialist regime has been established on the island, a change that undermines the U.S. presence in the area. A vigilante Russian General, leading an elite U.S.S.R. military unit, decides to take matters into his own hands and establishes a military base right under the nose of the U.S. Seeing this presence as a potential threat the U.S. sends out order to the CIA to assemble a team of professionals to restore the democratic government on San Christobal and drive out the U.S.S.R. presence, by any means necessary.

Once you reach the island you discover that something doesn't add up and that there may be more than one reason why the U.S wants to get rid of the crazed General. Suddenly you find yourself faced with some very hard choices - should you continue to fight for the U.S or should YOU decide what the right move should be. No matter what you decide, you’re not interested in a new world war breaking out and you want to make peace on the island.

The story opens up here where you have to convince old friends and new people to become your trusted allies in the fight for peace on San Christobal. In the classic Jagged Alliance fashion you decide where the story goes from here and where to send your troops. The choice is yours, you can try to convince the Russian forces to join your cause, or if the best approach is to utilize the drug cartels on the island or running a mix of it all - playing every faction against each other.

Story Structure

There will be a Main story - A story filled with twists and turns, where your allies quickly can turn into your worst enemies. The choice of how to solve the conflict with the Russian splinter group is yours, but they are not the only enemy you should fear.

Side and optional missions cover individual background stories for mercenaries - both new and old. How did Ivan leave the Russian army and what made Shadow part ways with the military to become a mercenary? These are all stories we’d like to explore further.

One of the things we really want to do with Flashback is to introduce a varied bunch of enemies. The game is not black and white, east vs. west, there are shades of grey - the russian presence introduces a massive amount of turmoil on San Christobal, and various factions will compete against each other, some more active than others.
Trust will play a central role in the game, because it’s not everybody you can trust, especially the CIA.
It’s entirely up to you how you proceed and portray yourself throughout the game, are you ruthless enough to leave wounded enemies to die or will you be merciful enough to gain the trust of the resistance?

Factions

Flashbacks story is built around an open world where the player can choose to decide his own path through the game. Many of the missions are entirely voluntary, and follows the same design principles as other open and semi-open world games.

We want to introduce several other factions that the player can choose to do missions for, this in turn will open up a system based on trust - completing missions for some factions will raise their trust, while in turn it will lower your trust with competing factions.

Some factions in Flashback will not participate directly in the events happening on San Christobal but will support one or more factions - or none all-together.

The major factions of the conflict are;

Active Factions

Alpha Group, the U.S.S.R special forces splinter group lead by a ruthless hard-line general.
CIA clandestine group.
Resistance force

Neutral Factions

Drug Cartel
Local Population

We have a lot more news coming your way tomorrow and we’ll add the reddit link to all social sites once we go live.

Until next time!
The Full Control JAF Team

Dear Backers,



A short update this evening :)





Amazon Payments Issues

Last night we experienced some issues with Amazon payments, resulting in 4 hours where people were unable to support our campaign. Unfortunately we won’t be getting those hours back, but we’re happy it didn't happen within the last 48 hours of our campaign. If you get an error again please just give it an hour or two and try again.

Reddit IAMA

We completed the reddit IAMA yesterday evening and we’re very pleased with all of the questions we got on both Space Hulk and Jagged Alliance. 1½ hours just flew by, you can see all of the questions and answers HERE. We’ll be doing more of these sessions during the campaign.

Community Coverage

There have been a lot of feedback and support from the community both on our Kickstarter forum, Facebook, Twitter and especially on the comment section of our Kickstarter page. We even have our very own support group called Jagged Bloodcats, and a fanmade teaser video to raise awareness for our Kickstarter. THANK YOU !!!

You can see the Video and read more about the Jagged Bloodcats initiative [url=http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/forums/topic/we-need-a-cult-group-for-the-ja-kickstarter/]HERE

We also just started the Backer Bonus initiative and the next unlock is right around the corner:



We would like to get your opinion on what the next sector should be, so post your suggestions in the the comment section of this update or at the Kickstarter forum and we’ll put them up for voting in our forum.



New T-shirt

We’re also announcing that we have decided to add our lovable commando hamster as a new T-shirt option. We even added a few more elements to the image. See below:



Before we end we would just like to mention our friends from Onipunks, who are currently running a Kickstarter for their game C-wars, which is presented with the headline: What happens when Cyberpunk apocalypse roguelike meets RTS in pixel art? C-Wars. Go check them out if you have a few extra $ to spare and love pixel-art HERE

As the final note, we’d like you to share your thoughts on what kind of updates you would like to see us share in the near future. Character customization, weapon customization, Art style walk-through or maybe a more detailed introduction of the team - Let us know in the comments!

Until next time ^^

The Full Control JAF Team

Dear backers,

We’re slowly moving forward and are still confident that we’ll reach our goal once the campaign concludes. However, we still want to raise the awareness of our campaign through more social sites, as the majority of backer have currently come from press, Kickstarter and people searching for our campaign.




If you’re a great redditor or top tweepster feel free to share your tips and suggestions in the comments section.

Diorama

Yesterday we asked you what kind of updates you would like to see from us in the future and we can assure you we’re working hard at planning and producing content for upcoming updates and press releases for the duration of the Kickstarter.

For a while people have been asking us to show more of the game in terms of gameplay and therefore we have decided to make a 3D diorama version of the ruins sector we’re planning, which will give you a real feeling of what we want the game to look like. You will be able to rotate the camera 360°, the distance will be fixed.

Below is a very rough concept of the stage:



The scene will show your mercenaries having fallen into a trap and now caught in a firefight with enemies inside the hidden ruins.

We decided upon this little scene, as it would give you a visual slice of how the game could look like.

We plan to follow the project as it progresses, making small dev diaries, focussing on different aspects of the diorama for each video.

We’ll be covering Props, Character, Assembling all the different pieces and finally releasing the diorama for you to explore.

We understand that it’s important to people to get an actual feel for what the game will look like, so we’ll do our very best to get a great looking diorama in place.

Team Video

You’ve also been requesting to learn more about our team and we can gladly announce that we will shoot the video tomorrow and release it one of the following days.

In the video you will get a short presentation from some of the core members of the team, get to see a portion of their work and what they are currently working on. Thomas will share his thoughts on the team and we will all give you a warm goodbye. Hopefully you won’t be able to spot the community guy :)

Competition

As a follow up to yesterdays update, we would like to shoot of a competition, which everyone should be able to participate in! A Killer Hamster Meme

Here’s our attempt:



You can copy the image from this post and alter it in anyway you want, as long as you leave the JAF logo in there. Send your attempts to competition@fullcontrol.dk and we’ll choose the best one and post it on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook.

It’s a competition, so of course there’s going to be a prize. We’ll let you write a one-liner for a mercenary in the final game :)

We’re looking forward to see what you come up with!!

Have a lovely evening!

The Full Control JAF Team

Dear Backers,

It’s Friday and we are ready for another update. This time we’d like to share our thoughts on an important aspect of the game - weapons.

We also have some special pledges that are ultra limited in our “Friday Special”. First come, first serve and they will not come up again. So hurry hurry!!

Weapon Customization

To give you the high level rundown here, there are things we definitely want to do and then we also have some ideas in our mind that we want to hear your point of view upon. As a basis, we will run with Jagged Alliance 2 for stats and balance. Then look at 1.13 for balancing fixes and additional features. This approach gives us a good and sound baseline to start with.

We have the following on our must have and to do list:
◾Different classes of weapons similar to Jagged Alliance 2 (e.g. Pistols, Machine Guns, Shotguns etc.)
◾Skill tree for classes of weapons based on usage
◾Customization via attachment points
◾Ammunition with different properties
◾Weight and inventory space has influence on the gameplay (e.g. AP and movement speed)
◾Dual wield small weapons




And we have some ideas to discuss:
◾Using a weapon will slowly damage it to the point where it's destroyed. The more you use a given weapon, the more damage it takes.
◾You will be able to repair damaged weapon at your base at a cost (not only at the base actually, but if a weapon is nearly done, than you'll need to do it in the base).
◾Selling worn weapons gives you less money than a new weapon would.
◾As you use the weapon you gain skill in using said weapon to give you more damage, accuracy etc. But at the same time there is an negative effect on unlearning other skills. This counters building ultra powerful characters with 100 in all skills and then destroying the enemy. So balancing out your team suddenly matters more
◾For the base building we want to have a shooting range, where you can both test out weapon customizations to see the effect before committing to it. And at the same time you can spend time+money on training your mercenaries.



More Details

Adding attachments will decrease or increase your weapon stats. The choices you make will determine things like weapon range, weight, repair expenses and most importantly, damage! Weapon customization and development is not about crafting weapons from the ground up, but taking the weapons you find or buy in the world and tweaking those by changing or upgrading their parts. Only by recruiting a character such as a gunsmith will you get access to the meat of weapon customization and repair options.

All weapons are grounded in reality, so that means no science fiction, no lasers, no nothing that goes beyond shooting hard lead out of a barrel or rocket propelled explosives. We will cover a wide variety of weapons that are divided up into these classes:
◾Pistols
◾Submachine guns
◾Rifles
◾Assault Rifles
◾Sniper Rifles
◾Shotguns
◾Light Machine guns
◾ Grenade and rocket launchers




Weapons manufactured up to the point of when the Jagged Alliance: Flashback story takes place are eligible to be included.

Weapon Attachments

Attachments for weapons are diverse and the amount of attachments depend on the weapon and its number of slots. Slots included on most weapons are the top (scopes), muzzle (silencer, fire suppressor), under barrel (bipod, handgrip) and stocks but the amount of slots can also be expanded via modifications such as rails. Please note some weapons will have a lot of room for customization, while others will not (A pistol with grenade launcher attached wouldn't make too much sense most times, eh?).



Using modifications such as rails it's possible to open up for even more attachments, like flashlights, laser sights etc.

Weapons and changes to them can easily be tested in the shooting range, this allows the player to test a weapon build before leaving to conquer the rest of the map or solving optional missions.

The list also does not include melee weapons which is part of the CQC training skill characters will need, which opens up for (silent) lethal, and non-lethal takedowns.

Ammunition

Flashback will feature several different types of ammunition for weapons, some will not be available to all weapon classes, some will be extremely expensive and rare (will require difficult raid missions of drug lord strongholds for example. You never know what a warlord has stored in his safe, do you?) while others wear down weapons after use (see Depleted uranium ammo). Taking inspiration from the 1.13 community mod, these are some of the ammunition types we really want in.
◾Normal bullet - effective against soft armor and unarmoured enemies. Useless against heavy armoured enemies.
◾High quality bullets - Higher quality ammunition that boosts a weapon's effective range and damage.
◾Rubber bullets - handy shotgun ammo for incapacitating soft armoured and unarmoured enemies. Don't expect to shoot anything else with it. Useless against heavy armoured enemies.
◾Depleted Uranium - Powerful bullets that severely damages weapons used with it, effective against all enemies. Incredibly expensive and rare.
◾Stealth bullets - Standard bullets with some gunpowder removed to reduce weapon sound. Effectively paired with silencers for very quiet incursions. Less powder means less damage.
◾Grenades (HE, Fragmentation and gas) - High Explosives is effective at destroying vehicles, while fragmentation is against soft armoured and unarmoured enemies. Has little effect against heavy armoured enemies. Gas is effective against all enemies not wearing gas masks (be sure you wear one when moving through areas of gas too).
◾Heavy explosives (C4) - Available as radio controlled or timed explosives.
◾Antipersonnel and Anti-vehicle mines - High explosives will kill or destroy anything that moves close.
◾Rocket propelled grenades - For use in RPGs, available in HE or Fragmentation versions. Highly effective against light vehicles and all types of enemies.




Special Friday Pledges

As mentioned earlier we’re adding a unique pledge every Friday and today we’re actually adding both a unique Tier and a limited bundle.

$400 Tier: It’s all in the bag Tier: So bring it home and enjoy the rewards, you’ll get: The all previous rewards + A mercenary one-liner + An enemy response + You get to make a name for the enemy name pool + You get to write a NPC Quote. (ALL ONLY THIS TIER) (10) Limited

$850 Tier: The magnificent Tier: There can only be one, so you’re rewarded with: All previous rewards + A statue of you or your likeness in the game, with a description (ONLY THIS TIER) (1) Limited



Backer Sectors

As you all know we’ve been running a poll on our website to figure out what the next sector should be and it ended up being the “Abandoned WWII Outpost / Bunker”



We’ve shot the team video today and I apologize in advance for not having a steady hand! :) The video is being cut and processed as we speak and we hope it’ll be ready this weekend. Just needed to get the shots in before everyone escaped the office for the weekend.

Have a nice weekend!

The Full Control JAF Team

Kicking it Forward

The “Friday Special” statue went really fast yesterday! Congratulations to Nicholas for having his beautifully bearded face and body forever and ever immortalized in the game.

Yesterdays update stirred a lot of discussions - great! A quick followup on that is, that we are still operating on concept art and pre-production. Nothing is set in stone and we are listening.

We believe in a strong story coupled with hardcore turn-based combat being the right mix. So that is our vision for this project if that is unclear in any ways.

And - this is important to say - we are making an entertainment product and not a simulator. We are with Flashback concentrating on the story part, the role playing of mercenaries having personalities and the game being fun to play. We are not! going down the ultra-realistic path and trying to make a tactical combat simulator. Flashback is not the Arma of turn-based RPG action.

So if we in the story have a plausible reason to have experimental and ultra limited uranium depleted ammunition as part of the story - then its going to be in there. It is not science fiction - but still fiction.

The inventory and the overall user interface has to be a joy to play as well. While we believe in inventory management being part of the game (who can carry 10 MG’s including ammo?), there is still value in having things like weight that you carry around being an influence on your movement speed, stealth and how fast you become fatigued. But it simply has to be fun to use as well, so for example being able to pick up items on the screen directly without having to move over to them - totally makes sense to do.

This might rub the wrong way for some and be the right direction for others. We simply wanted to make this clear up front, and with the modding possibilities there are other people than us that can work the game into that direction - or stick with some of the JA2 mods.

Kick! Kick! Kick!

We also believe in Kickstarter being a great alternative for working with the fan gamers and to finance otherwise forgotten games and genres.

That is why we are happy to announce us joining the Kicking it Forward initiative set up by Brian Fargo and inXile.

This means that we pledge 5% of the revenue of Jagged Alliance: Flashback sales back into future Kickstarter projects. We have chosen to primarily use the money to pledge towards turn-based tactical/strategic digital games.

You can read more about this on http://kickingitforward.org

Hamster Galore!

Wow there were some great hamster memes made by you! We had great fun looking them through, so thanks for everyone participating.

We will pick the winner tomorrow! So still a chance to throw your hamster meme towards us!

Diorama Progress

Javier has been throwing some spare time into working up a nice AK-47 into the art style we are going for in the game.

And here it is, the first ingame model for Jagged Alliance Flashback!

The art style we are considering can best be described as a form of stylistic realism where the environment along with props and characters will still keep their overall proportions and details, but the textures will be mixed with a hand painted look.

We want the game to be more vibrant, and the use of colors will play a larger role in establishing mood in the environment.



As we produce more and more art for the diorama of the lost ruins firefight, we will share these with you!

Have a nice weekend!

The Full Control JAF Team