Final Update:
We started The Sorrowvirus quite a few years ago now as a means to learn more about the Unreal Engine 4 so that we could return to developing Faceless, our multiplayer title. Originally intended as our first game, Faceless was postponed for a number of reasons. With The Sorrowvirus out and the final patch completed, we will be returning to developing our multiplayer title! Why is this the last patch for The Sorrowvirus? I always strive to aim for "perfect", something that is unobtainable, and eventually, it's best to say "enough is enough" and move on. Unless there are major, game-breaking bugs, The Sorrowvirus will no longer receive updates, with the exception of further localisation support. After the conclusion of the Winter Sale & our extended Final Update sale, (12th January 2021) the price of The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short Story will increase from £4.99 to £5.99 to further help support our game development endeavours.
Abridged Branch:
Along with this patch comes the Abridged Branch, which players can opt-in and out of at any time through the game's beta tab! (Here is a handy guide if you're not sure how to do this.) One of my major concerns when writing for The Sorrowvirus was whether or not I would ever get another opportunity to make further games within the Faceless universe. I was already writing a book on Faceless. This led me to cram too much into one short story, when I should've kept it relatively streamlined in terms of its narrative. The Abridged Branch does just that. With the Abridged Branch, dialogue will not change per instance, aside from the intro dialogue, and the number of notes will be reduced. This allows players to see hints of the story, rather than be subjected to a massive dose of unwanted and unrelated exposition which belongs in other Faceless-related Short Stories.
Please note, obtaining the Art Of Sorrow achievement is not possible in the Abridged Branch. Also, additional in-game text has been added into the Abridged Branch to substitute for notes, these texts are only available in English and cannot be localised.
Nvidia Ansel Support:
With Nvidia Ansel, we now have a Photo Mode! Take photos to your heart's content. To start Nvidia Ansel, press Alt+F2 while in-game, and feel free to use the mode to take creative screenshots, and even break the game's boundaries if you absolutely want to!
Localisation Tool:
When we first released The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short Story on Steam, we also quietly released a Localisation Tool. Now that a guide is fully available, users can freely use the Localisation Tool to add further language support to The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short Story, as well as any of our future titles. We decided to approach this method as we are an exceptionally small team with very, very limited funds. We want to ensure that our games are accessible to as many languages as possible, and this was the best way for us to at least try to achieve just that.
While this is our last update, we will endeavour to add further languages to the game if/when popular community-made ones are available!
Conclusion:
This update is essentially our final update for The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short story! Any future changes will only be made after we have completed our multiplayer title. We intend to return to developing our multiplayer video game, Faceless. If you do not already have it in your wishlist, please consider doing so!
It would also mean the absolute world to us if you could take a few moments of your time to review our game on Steam, if you do so, please feel free to write what you liked about the game, and even what you disliked about the game, we want to learn what worked best for you for our future endeavours!
Complete Changelist:
- Updated to Unreal Engine 4.25.
- Major performance improvements, improved level streaming to ensure less stutter/load-times when loading/unloading sub-levels.
- Added more settings for players, including framerate cap, inverted look, field of view, and further post-process options.
- Added cartoon posters for Faceless' in-universe cartoons 'Dottore & The Dastardly Demons', 'Wendy & The Wondersome Webtales', and 'The Chronicles of Wendy & Dottore'.
- Ending scene added to the True Ending inside Fallen Grace Church.
- Updated Intro sequences.
- Updated candle and candle stand meshes/materials and separated sub-surface colours. It is now clearer which candles are red or white.
- Updated paint can meshes, which were previously very low-quality.
- Fixed issue where radios were being occluded by invisible volumes, causing the dialogue to be muffled or dipped.
- Added falling leaves particle effects.
- Fixed issue where players could continue turning a padlock dial after it was solved.
- Added four new achievements, "Altered Colours", "The Gallery", "Darkwen", and "Darktore"
- Fixed issue where Rosco's Wristwatch would grant the player temporal immortality, but still display the visual effects of time running out, causing players to be permanently stuck in a severely visually warped surrounding until they either died from an Anomaly, or restarted the game.
- Added a message to clue players in on Rosco's Wristwatch.
- Added a message to clarify to players that they are always in Purgatory, and not the real world when transitioning between Dark and Bright rooms.
- Players can no longer interact with the "Instance" option on the Main Menu until after completing all four instances.
- Players can no longer access the Soulrender's secret room until the clue has become available to access.
- Names and Locations are now highlighted in yellow.
- Fixed issue where objective-related items in the cave did not glow brightly enough, making them difficult for some players to see.
- Adjusted volume of pain sounds when getting too close to an Anomaly.
- Adjusted note positions from Cassandra Noble's room for better concentration in Cassandra Noble's room where players were getting distracted by notes.
- Adjusted other note positions.
- Replaced some of Daniel North's voice lines with up-to-date retakes.
- Fixed issue where a softlock would occur if certain lines were empty in another localised file.
- Fixed issue where a softlock would occur when players died after losing their lighter, then respawning without one.
- Removed "I need to check in with a clock" line from the bad Fallen Grace Church ending.
- Fixed issue where the flashlight would not work in some parts of the cave.
- Fixed issue where players would be set to sprinting after descending ladders.
- Added text when picking up Daniel North's book from the cave, indicating better to players that the book changing was a consequence of entering Cassandra Noble's room.
- Added clue above the interior door of the Fallen Grace Church.
- Fixed unusual headbob/fast rotation when rotating the mouse as the player exits the waking-up animation.
- Other minor fixes/changes.