No Video This Week

Hey everyone,

There won't be a video this week for a few reasons.

To try and keep it short, I volunteer for a youth scouting group and we had a campout planned for this week. I forgot about it when I was making last week's video, but assumed it wouldn't take much out of my week.

I was wrong. All my careful planning was uprooted and my coding week turned into more of a couple of days after all was said and done. I'm just barely back at home as I write this. I'm tired and beat.

Luckily it was a very productive time all things considered. I fixed the problems with the modding project, added in a new room, redesigned room placement, built in the backend for timed construction and room functionality, and started work on better visual placement of room objects.

There should be some awesome new stuff to demo this coming week. I'm sorry it had to be delayed.

I'm going to go crash and sleep now. Cya!

Crazy Tags and Behaviours

Welcome to another update for The Foundation.

This week its about tags.

I've mentioned tags many times over the course of my videos but there is a question I seem to receive almost every video.

"How do you plan to implement over 2000 SCP articles?"

I thought I would take some time while I'm deep into AI to answer that.

I'm not.

Wait Riscvul you said every article would make it into the game? Are you changing your stance?

No, but I recognized when planning this project out, that implementing over 2000 different anomalies would be impossible. At the very least it would take too much time. So I aimed to find a different way of tackling the problem, tags.

Each article on the wiki is tagged for ease of searching. You can find these tags at the bottom of the page. Lets take the infamous 682 for example.

We can see this article has the following tags: adaptive, heritage, keter, reptilian, scp, self-repairing, sentient. So what does that do for the game? First the 'keter' tag can be useful for determining the general power level of the object. A safe object is not going to pose as much risk as a keter level object in general. The next benefit comes when the AI and behaviour of this object are concerned. Each tag will have a list of actions that it will grant that entity in combat or containment. The AI can choose between these various actions to decide how it will act. The actions will be weighted so the AI will known which attack is stronger for example, or which movement method is more useful.

For example, 682 has the self-repairing tag. This would grant him a healing/repairing action that when scaled with his keter rating will be quite powerful. His reptilian tag would likely grant him a bite attack, and his sentient tag might give him an action to curse the player when no other actions are possible.

Finally tags will give the ability to greatly simplify the number of models, textures, and animations that will be required by placing tags in groups. Currently I am thinking about having the following main groups. (This is definitely subject to change and debate)

• Animal
• Automaton
• Amorphous
• Contagion
• Humanoid
• Location
• Plant
• Tool

Each of these groups will have a main action set, a visual representation, and animation set that goes with them. 682 would fall under the animal group for example.

But wait, animal is too generic there are tons of different looking animals!

So true, so certain child tags of a group will override the base appearance with their own. The animal tag group will have an override for avian, reptillian, canine, feline, etc. However the general goal of simplifying the amount of content generation will be met.

This will allow for every article even new ones to get represented in the game, without the need for time intensive content generation. However, as you probably have already determined, it will not accurately replicate the nuances of each article, in fact sometimes the behaviour might be way off from the original article.

However there will be a solution to this as well. I'm not ready to talk about the specific details yet, but I am building in a modding solution for the creation of specific implementations of SCP objects. When the game creates an anomaly during a session it will first check to see if a mod exists. If it does it will use the mod created visuals and behaviour instead of the generic tag-based behaviour.

The mod structure and method of development is still under construction, but its looking pretty good so far.

This should give a good overview of the tag system and my plans for it. I would love feedback on this as there are likely gaps in my logic. I look forward to hearing from you!

Demo Prep and Paradigms

Welcome to another Devlog for The Foundation!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to create a video this week. My travels brought me away from my normal technological exposure and I didn't have enough power to create a video (I really need a laptop). Hopefully this Devlog will be a sufficient update.

So update news. What happened this past week?

• Added volume control functionality to settings menu
• Cleaned up main menu and added background music
• Added credits screen and filled it as needed
• Added camera sensitivity controls
• Started debugging resolution controls
• Finished cleanup and debugging on Personnel screen
• Design work and discussion on the Research part of the game
• Research on creating installers for the game on all three platforms

Its coming together and its exciting. I know there isn't much of a game together yet, but it feels awesome to be ready to share this. I'm also excited to be able to work with so many people to make sure this game is solid and reflective of this awesome universe.

On that note I have made some progress on Paradigms. You may remember in my previous post there was some ambiguity over the definitions of each paradigm. I have now eliminated much of the ambiguity and wanted to re-present the paradigms as they currently stand.

Much of the ambiguity rested in the third paradigm. It wasn't well defined and pretty much defined the middle of the other two groups. As I mulled over this problem it finally clicked what the third group should be.

If we look at The Foundation it doesn't stand in the middle of reality and esoteric thought. It rejects both lines of thinking. To make this a bit clearer look at two of its enemies, the GOC and Serpent's Hand. The SCP Foundation typically never destroys an SCP and typically never utilizes their abilities. It doesn't follow the paradigm of either of these opposing factions.

If it follows neither of these paradigms it must have its own and this paradigm must revolve around its obsession with containment and the status quo. The typical view of the Foundation makes them to be an organization obsessed with protecting their vision of normalcy. Destruction and utilization are viewed as too high of a risk with this goal in mind. With this in mind I redefined the three paradigms.


ESOTERIC : An Esoteric Foundation embraces anomalies and focuses on harmonizing with their existence. The universe cannot be prevented from producing the absurd and impossible so one must embrace it. They are the foundation that creates MTF-7, Recruits humanoid scps, builds anomalous weaponry, and makes deals with the elder gods. This all may come at a high cost, but the future lies with those that learn to live with the unpredictable nature of the cosmos.

REALIST : A Realist Foundation is dedicated to the eradication of all anomalies without and within and focuses on the purification and stabilization of the universe. Anomalies must be destroyed and their creation prevented in order to secure the future of normalcy. Although they may seek to preserve world order, a stable future is more important.



CONTAINMENT: A Containment Foundation resembles the current foundation of the wiki. They lock away and catalog anomalies focusing on a continuous, uninterrupted flow of normal life. SCPs are locked away from humanity and researched for better understanding and to strengthen the Foundation's capabilities in the future.


I would love your feedback on this revision and I'm looking forward to your feedback on the prototype.

Giving a Face to The Foundation

So the Foundation now has a Facebook page!

Yeah I know I'm slow alright. Despite some people hating it, Facebook is still one of the best ways to spread the word and share updates as emphasized by this study.

So go check it out, give it a like, and help share the word about The Foundation.