Risk of Rain 1 & 2

Hopoo Games DevBlog
Blog of Hopoo Games, developer of Risk of Rain and DEADBOLT. Currently working on Risk of Rain 2!

   RoR2 Q&A 12/2/17

   Since we got a million asks, I’ll collapse all the answers periodically into one giant QA so it doesn’t ruin your tumblr feed. I tried to answer every question - if yours isnt there, someone else might’ve asked the same question. Expand below to read!

   Q: Are you thinking about putting out a beta version to test or are you just waiting for the game to be fully released
   A: Not sure exactly how we want to do it – we HAVE to have some way of getting the game out to testers, especially for networking/matchmaking testing. It will most likely be some form of closed/limited beta, but we really haven’t though too much about it.

   Q: Any ideas on what the system requirements could be? Will they be high or playable on most machines? Also will it work with integrated graphics?
   A: Most likely the game will be pretty light for GPU with our graphical style, but CPU intensive. What that actually translates to won’t be until the game is closer to launch, where we start optimizing.

   Q: [celle-là c'est pour toi @ange ] ROR1 most loved thing me and my friends liked to do is ruining the framerate with all the items that we had. we had lots of fun crashing the game for whoever hosted the game. might this still be able to happen? I’m looking forward to the release anyway and so are my friends especialy with peer to peer now we can connect better.
   A: Uhh hopefuly you won’t be able to crash the game, but the game will still scale infinitely like it did previously

   Q: Could you make it so that when you use Unstable Watch and timestop, all colors in the game become inverted for the duration? And if you want to go all the way with a certain reference, have only Chef’s cleavers stop in midair at the edge of a radius from an enemy, and when the timestop ends the cleavers hit at the same time.
   A: No memes

   Q: Super excites for risk of rain 2. Im real glad i found it in a steam summer sale, bought then and after that bought it for my ps4. Are we going to see any new characters? (Bandit will always be fav so as long as hes good im happy)
   A: Yes, definitely new characters!

   Q: can you make one of the new death messages be “HOST WHEN?”
   A: No memes!!!!

   Q: While Vita’s out of the question, what about the Switch, which basically seems to have slotted itself in the ‘more powerful handheld device’ niche?
   A: We’d obviously love to be on the switch, but that ultimately depends on A. can we optimize the game to run on the Switch, and B. do we have the technical know-how to actually get it running? Porting to consoles tends to be a much more dramatic change than people expect, even if the engine natively exports to it.

   Q: Hi. I’ve been a fan of risk of rain for the past few years. I just want to ask: in risk of rain, some mechanics like heaven cracker can pierce a line of enemies and the huntress’ ability to hit and run. With the change from 2D to 3D  environment, how will they work? There are many other abilities and mechanics that i also want to ask about, but these two were the first ones that i could remember immediately.
   A: We’re not going to bring back any mechanics that don’t fit just for the sake of continuity – however, the Heaven Cracker I can see being actually more fun in 3D since you have to actually align yourself with the enemies. Since everyone can shoot and run in the 3D version, Huntress’ niche is sorta gone, but we have some clever ideas to make that back

   Q: In DevBlog #8 you explain some of the steam integration going into Risk of Rain 2 which will make a lot of people happy but will RoR2 also be available without steam for those who prefer? For example will I be able to buy it on GOG like I did RoR1, and play LAN games without steam?
   A: Right now we’re focusing on making it work via Steam P2P, but (I believe) that we haven’t done anything to explicity lock out connections via IP. You just won’t get the same Nat punchthrough benefits (I’ll have to ask Jeff, our network dude about it to make sure this is correct, but afaik I think that’s right)

   Q: Would you guys happen to have an idea of when you think the game would be realeased?
   A: Nope! Hopefully not too long!

   Q: Hello! I loved Risk of Rain 1 and it is great to play with friends. I have two questions (technically three, I’m cheating). 1. I am assuming you’re going to release it on steam, so that said will there be steam multiplayer integration? Like… Invite via steam, games are created with the help of steam peer-to-peer. It was a pain to get 4 people playing on one server without port forwarding. 2. Will there be a better way to keep track of items? 3. Can you add a menu to see what items you have?
   A: Yes, steam invites and all that are the goal. I know we talked about holding TAB to expand the item menu so you could see more at once, but we haven’t actually done that yet. I know it was a bit silly for it to be uncropped and expanding off the screen.

   Q: Is this still in development?
   A: No we’re just pretending

   Q: Are you gonna have the same soundtrack from the first game? A different soundtrack? A mix of both? (Don’t get rid of the Dried Lake or Sunken Tombs songs).
   A: That’ll ultimately be up to Chris, but I’m sure he’s in the same boat as us and doesn’t want to cover the same ground that we did previously.

   Q: I was telling a friend how excited I was for this, and he expressed a concern I’d like to ask you guys about. He said that, being 3D, the game might end up either not as hectic as the first, or too hectic, what with the hoards coming from all around you. What’s your take on this? (I’m not actually too worried about it, but I still wanna hear your take on the matter.)
   A: Currently, we’re using SFX as a tool to present not only how close an enemy is, but what state they’re in and how many there are. Since I’ve also been playing the game for like a million hours I’ve also developed the ability to recognize which enemy by the frequency of their screenshake… but that won’t be relevant to most players. We’re really hoping to avoid radars or anything like that for awareness.

   Q: Just wanted to say, RoR2 is looking to be coming along fantastically. I really love that you are constantly taking things in unexpected directions– I never expected to see the game translated to 3D but you have done it and I can imagine many hundreds of hours spent playing. Will Chris Christodoulou be working on the music this game as well?
   A: Yes, he will be back!

   Q: Have you considered calling the second Risk of Rain “Risk of Twain”?
   A: Not until now

   Q: This is kind of a question and a half. How big will the RoR2 maps be and will all the RoR1 maps return in 3D with the additions of new maps or just overall new maps?
   A: Overall we’re not really looking at the previous maps for the inspiration for our new ones – we’re not making RoR 3D, but a sequel, so we don’t really want to recreate too much old stuff!

   Q: Since RoR2 is moving to more dynamic network model, how will people with screwy NATs be affected? NAT Punchthrough is great and all, but if implemented incorrectly can lead to multiple users on the same NAT being unable to join servers outside of the NAT (See Rainbow Six Siege). Will users still be able to host dedicated servers like the old game? What does this mean for users buying the game through GOG/Humble Bundle? Really hope everything goes swimmingly because port forwarding sucks.
   A: This is the exact reason that we will have to have some form of limited beta, because this is something that we can’t recreate in office. I honestly don’t know enough to respond accurately on what would happen in that particular situation, but thanks for the heads up

   Q: Relative to the first one, will Risk of Rain 2 be a sequel, prequel, completely unrelated, or even have story at all?
   A: Sequel!

   Q: How were you going to implement artifacts this time around? Is it going to be based around areas that are randomly generated and you sometimes have access, or multiple spawn locations, etc.
   A:  Dunno, we haven’t implemented really any form of map permutations yet. The artifacts also ended up taking a much more important role in the game than we initially expected – not sure if the old way of unlocking is strange if it’s to be a core feature.

   Q: (Big fan) I just had some curious questions; How many characters do you intend there to be in RoR2?, How differently do you plan on changing the previous characters?, Any hints on the final boss? pls, What is the estimated price of the game? and will their be any chance of PvP? Cannot wait, super hyped and keep up the great work
   A: We’re aiming for 10 characters on launch. No spoilers or hints! Definitely not PvP in any official capacity since the networking structure wasn’t designed for a good PvP experience.

   Q: I’ve got three questions : 1) Will it be called RoR2 or will you find / have you found something else ? 2) Why the hell is there one more 'o’ in the tumblr URL than in the actual 'Hopoo’ name ? 3) What’s the average of the team’s favorite meals ? thx xoxo <3
   A: I think it’ll just be RoR2. The hopoo tumblr was taken on creation of this tumblr, so we had to make it hopooo instead

   Q: Will RoR2 reveal why the Contact Light was carrying a teleporter linked to a planet crammed with hostile lifeforms?
   A: I’d like to explore what the heck is up with the humans in this game, but I sorta wish I had a better avenue that’s not just item logs and monster logs.

   Q: I’m going to ask the real questions, is Sniper a man or woman? This is important because reasons.
   A:

   Q: Theres something that confuses me alot about risk of rain 2. It’s the lore. If the characters have left the planet, why would they come back?
   A: Canonically, the returning characters were never on the Contact Light to begin with (and presumably there could totally be like, a bunch of engineers and commando suits.)

We plan for consoles for 1.0, but it's definitely a big technical challenge. I don't think we're planning on Early Access on any consoles.

— hopoo (@the_hopoo) 29 mars 2019

What's different (and what's not) in Risk of Rain 2, out now on PS4: https://t.co/JY4gAYCVl8 pic.twitter.com/2BGjRfYnZm

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 1, 2019