It is with great pleasure that I announce that The Trud was completed reworked and is now much more fun to play.
Many of you bought The Trud, and many hadn't the experience you expected with the release version of the game. That was the reason that had motivated me to take a time to go back to the development and turn it into the best experience possible. I've decided to make an overhaul about various aspects of the game, always based in your suggestions and opinions.
This update brings various changes and new things, and has been made to deliver the best experience for you. See below the list of changes done to the game:
New Features
- A lot of new events were added to the game as well as a new ending.
- Nana is the new monster now present in the game, she will appear in some moments and will try to chase you, if you hear her is better hide yourself into a locker or below the table if you care about your life.
- A Diary was ripped apart, and the pages are now all over the school, you can now find them and try to understand what's happening there.
- Along with the diary, an inventory system was added, where the players can read the pages found and track their items.
- The game now has steam achievements that you can check in the game's store page or the library
- At last, the game is now available also in Spanish
Gameplay Improvements
- Player movement system rework
Now the character is at least twice as fast as before, which prevents the player from wasting time walking from a place to another. Along with this, new walk and run animations were added as well as a camera shake to make the movement feel more fluid.
- Better map
Some empty or less important rooms were removed, the available interactions in the game are now much more packed together, which makes the map feel a lot more filled.
- important items now glow
Some important items that used to look faded in the middle of the game now have a glowy effect when the player gets close which helps you don't miss them and get stuck.
- Gameplay flow and events
Now the events are a lot less linear, the entire system that manages the order of events was rewritten, and now the player won't need to worry too much about what to do next. I've worked to make the actions needed to an event more obvious too, using sounds, tips or temporary restrictions to the playable area. All of that within the game context, of course.
- Saving and Respawning
The game now is saved trough computers around the school, in oppose to the old system that was done in the menu, which avoids most of the possible bugs related to the saving system and allows for a more immersive experience. Beyond that, when the player dies he may lose some of his recent progress, putting some weight on dying, but without going back to the last save.
Story changes
- Story model redone
The game's story now follows a more subjective and less expository storyline, which fits better with the purpose and budget of the game. Along with that, the game now focus on a branch of the story, in oppose to simply follow the events that take place in the game. The bad lines of dialogue were replaced by the diary, that will be the place where the character will express herself now. Beyond that, some changes were made to old cutscenes to fit the new model.
Graphical and performance improvements
- The game's lighting has been completely redone. Now we have better shadows quality, less lighting glitches and a more consistent lighting between dynamic and static objects.
- The game's post-processing effects were redone too. Now you can expect a more colorful and higher contrast image as well as a more clear vision.
- The new lighting along with other performance tweaks brings a better performance, higher and more stable frame rates and less VRAM use.
- The old fluid simulation was replaced with a new one, more realistic and with better performance. The new system also get rid of the stuttering at the start of the simulations.
- Lockers now have new visuals as well as some glass objects
Bugs and problems fixed
- Fixed a bug where the walk animation was being cut, giving the impression that the character was limping in some systems.
- Fixed an issue where the flashlight wasn't available right after the player picked up the item.
- Fixed a bug where the Butcher could clip through objects, walls or float after grabbing the player.
- Fixed a bug that caused mouse sensitivity not to be persistent across systems.
- Fixed a bug that caused the flashlight icon to appear even when the player didn't have the item.
By coincidence, it's now been one year since the game's first launched. I'm sure that I should have done this update before, but since the game is being developed by only one person, any personal problem can turn into a development problem, so I couldn't finish this before, I apologize for that. I want to thank all of you for your patience and for your contributions, opinions and suggestions and I want to thank for all of you who bought the game. Furthermore, I hope you all enjoy this update.