The Hit

The Hit is a multiplayer stealth-shooter, set in a fully-explorable open-world city. Kill your target as quickly and cleanly as possible, before other players get there first. Try to stay incognito, or photograph other players and take out hits on them.

The game is currently in active development. I've actually spent the last two and a half years rewriting the core systems, as well as researching and iterating on several experimental systems I'll need to make the dynamic narrative system a reality. I've been trying to complete enough of the systems in order to move forward into a phase of rapid iteratation, releasing new updates and adding new features regularly, and I've finally reached that point.

Features already working in-game

• Voxel volumes. Developed for The Hit, voxel volumes are solid objects which can be damaged, broken apart or deformed.
• NPCs. The engine currently supports up to 36,000 NPCs in-game, or 500 with dynamic pathfinding and avoidance. This is still in development, with the eventual aim of having 100,000 NPCs in-game.
• A massive, generated city. I've settled on 1km square as the ideal city size, small enough to manage, but large enough to surprise you.
• Building destruction. One feature I've been planning since the beginning is suitcase bombs. I don't want to fake anything (I've seen too much canned destruction with restricted bomb placement), so you'll be able to place bombs anywhere, and destroy anything you like.
• Flesh damage. NPC's heads already have destruction enabled, and I'll be adding visible damage to the bodies when I next update the character generator.
• Weapons. The pistol is already useable, in case you want to test out the flesh damage system, with other weapons on the way.

Features in development

Most of these are already prototyped and working in separate builds, but I now need to get them working seamlessly with the rest of the systems. I'm aiming to most of these done before the end of the 2016, but I'm looking for ways to accelerate development.

• Player-Driven, Dynamic Narrative. The core of this project, and the reason for everything I'm doing. This article outlines my intentions for a player-driven dynamic narrative system, the framework for which I'm currently building into the game: Dynamic Narrative in The Hit
• More destruction. Roads, pavements, glass, metal and wood.
• More variety. More building types, more characters, more outfits, more guns and more city. I'm also planning to make female characters distinguishable from the male ones.
• More height. Hills and valleys are prototyped, and close to integration with the city generator.
• A universal editor. I want your city to be your own, which means that everything must be editable, and every system configurable.
• Vehicles and traffic. Destructable, drivable, editable vehicles. Open doors, stash weapons, equipment or bodies in the truck or run people over. All the fun of real-world vehicles, with none of the court costs.
• Dynamic, large-scale AI. Core systems are already in place, and working on a small-scale, but the next step will be to use the new AI system to control crowd reactions. Fire a gun, or set off a bomb, and NPCs will run and hide, while police will be alerted, forcing you to run and hide (shooting your way out of trouble will rarely be a viable option with the police. This ain't toytown, brah.).
• Deep interaction. This has been a challenge, but I think I'm on the right track. The interaction system I'm developing should allow for simple, intuitive control of your character, and a huge range of actions you'll be able to perform.
• Multiplayer. I'm aiming to get the single-player component working properly first, but I'm writing everything with multiplayer in mind. I can't promise multiplayer soon, but it's on the way.

Anyway, I hope you like the look of what I'm doing with The Hit, and I hope you'll join me as I turn my ridiculous collection of feature prototypes into an actual game.

Thanks for your interest,

Dan (aDFP)

TheHitGame.co.uk

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