A Message from Wetware and Shadow Circuit WIP
Hello! First and foremost we all want to say that we're super excited to be on Steam Early Access! Being a group of college senior students, we honestly never expected to come to this point; but the opportunity arose and we decided to take it. Please keep in mind that this is a l
Hello!
First and foremost we all want to say that we're super excited to be on Steam Early Access! Being a group of college senior students, we honestly never expected to come to this point; but the opportunity arose and we decided to take it. Please keep in mind that this is a labor of love and for those of you that have played Shadow Circuit we are extremely happy to see any feedback, and bring issues back to the design team. As our first foray into commercial release, there are bound to be missteps, but we are hoping that in time most of these will be addressed and will serve as a learning experience for the future. On behalf of Wetware, thank you all for the support.
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The team has been busy at work this past month developing many quality of life updates to Shadow Circuit! There are many things to touch point on, but first we feel it is necessary to address our lack of communication and updates:
Since we've released on Early Access, UE4 has released an update that the team has been interested in implementing; 4.15 offers the Widget Interaction Component, which allows us to more easily integrate a UI into the game. Those of you who have played may have noticed a lack of menu, and it is for this reason. However, along with this engine upgrade (2 versions!!), there were a number of setbacks including FPS loss and a problem with constant collision detection. While we have solved the former, the latter appears to be an issue widespread among developers in UE4 4.15, and has gone on record by Unreal to be addressed in their next update. We are unaware of their roadmap for 4.16, but because of this, until they release a fix Wetware cannot release a functioning build of Shadow Circuit.
With that being said, we hope you understand and bear with us while we resolve this issue. Across the next few patches, the plans for Shadow Circuit include:
- Updated stage texture - Emissive detailing along the arena
- Animated Emissive
- Fixed light bug along capsule spiral lights; now accurately reflects chosen team color
- Added light fog and dropoff
- Light animation on game start
- Baked all exterior/non-interactable lights
- Changed most geometry to static
- Work-In-Progress raising FPS from ~45 (initial release) to 90+
- Creating 'Launch room' complete with game type options at game start
- Adding 'how to play' splash on back wall of Launch Room
- Creating simple tutorial stage with dummy AI for practice and familiarity
- System for swapping team color on goal based on team selection
- Modifying arena play area size for better AI readability
- Adding more art to Outer Environment for Quality of Life
- Updating AI Model/Texture
- Adding Grab/Miss whip animations
- Increasing whip grab thresh hold
Here's a glimpse of what all that means (still WIP):
As always, this is Wetware's Site and progress can be followed on Our Dev Blog