Ahoi! Lead dev here!
And I've got something a touch out of the ordinary to talk about...
So Viscerafest, as I'm sure you are all well aware, is a WIP game, and as a consequence, there's a lot we have yet to do. Beyond missing content, we're talking known bugs, half and un-implemented features, stuff that's old and needs to be updated, etc... So I wanted to make a post to help give you guys a glimpse at some of what will be changing between now, the games full release, and potentially post release.
TUTORIALS:
Naturally teaching players how to play a game is very important and if I may be honest I think Viscerafest's current tutorial level does not do a good enough job of introducing the basics to new players. So we'll be revising both the intro level itself and how tutorials are handled to make the player's abilities easier to comprehend. We'll also be providing visual examples through said tutorials of the game being played to help newcomers better understand what they should be aiming for.
CHAPTER 1:
Viscerafest's first chapter is... old... the first versions of the chapter 1 maps were created in 2016 and whilst they've been updated a lot over the years they're currently getting completely remade behind the scenes. The layouts will be pretty similar but there will be minor additions, new areas, altered secrets (Hi pagb666 teehee...) tweaked elements of the overall layout, and of course, they will be much more handsome devils with updated geometry and texture work.
The Great Divide Maps:
So for those of you who don't know "The Great Divide" is a plane in the Viscerafest lore that binds the differing realms together. It's that void space with the bloo balls and white architecture. Yeah, all of those maps (which there are currently only 2 of in the EA) are getting remade. Specifically "C1L6 - Wayward Watchers" and "C2L5 - Ceremonial Sacrilege". C1L6 is as stated prior, pretty old and a couple of its segments need to be touched up, as well as its visuals updated. But C2L5's *current* version was... rushed... and as a result, it's a bit of a rough map to play particularly if you struggle with the game's movement. Various tweaks will be made to help mitigate the frustrating elements, introduce some of its more unique mechanics in a gentler way, helping the map play more smoothly and of course, look nicer.
Le Hub:
In a similar vein to the chapter 1 maps, the hub is old, it's a bit empty, a bit ugly, and in general needs a facelift. A lot of its planned features were never going to be present until full release anyways and as a consequence, it being remade was pretty much planned from the moment it was added to the game.
Lighting:
So here's a weird one, ambient lighting tends to look very flat when it's not broken up by dynamic light sources, and it can be a big issue in maps like C2L4. As shown below in areas where there is lots of one color (or similar colors) the flat lighting causes things to visually blend together. The way we hope to address this is by basically doing what the original doom did. In dos doom, things that are further from the player are darker, which helps to create a sense of visual depth that we hope to loosely functionally replicate. We'll also be doing a second lighting pass on a bunch of the maps which we hope should help to alleviate this as well.
Gotta Go Fast:
I don't want to elaborate too much on what we're doing for this one just yet as it's nothing is set in stone. But in essence, we want to provide more incentives for players to engage with the already existing systems in the way that we intend them to. Giving things like bunnyhopping more advantages than just purely going fast and making you harder to hit, so that players (particularly ones who play more cautiously) have more reasons to take advantage of them.
Overall Balancing Changes:
There are a fair few issues I personally have with the game's current balancing. For starters, I feel the ramp-up in difficulty is a pinch too extreme, so we'll be aiming to level that playing field a bit. Secondly, the pacing of enemy reveals primarily in the early game will be getting sped up a pinch, as the first two levels can be melee only'd with ease. And finally, the difficulties, in general, will be getting reigned in a bit. Nightmare will be going from an intentionally unbalanced mess to something a bit more playable and consistent, and the easier difficulties will be getting a bit more love and restructuring as it seems that's where most players will be spending their time.
The Ammo Situation:
Viscerafest's balancing when it comes to ammo is quite obnoxiously meticulous, with the intent being that players are forced to think about what they use before they use it. Viscerafest is not a game about spraying and praying, it's about pushing the resource management and enemy prioritization side of the retro shooter subgenre to its logical extreme, this then, of course, is tied in with the game's focus on aggression and close quarters bruiser combat with the necessity of melee having to be factored into ammo balancing. Because of this, we will pretty much always expect the "Why is there no ammo?" complaint to be a common one amongst players who don't understand what the game is going for, picked a difficulty they can't handle, or who shoot at NPC's with the Quad Shotgun not understanding why that is a bad idea. We've had this argument many times, and our stance on the matter is not changing. *However* we are going to be making a slight balancing shift going forward.
Ammo will be getting slightly more abundant, not by much, but in general, we plan to make things *slightly* more forgiving. But part of addressing this issue will also be dealt with in the tutorial changes. I feel a part of the issue is we've just done a poor job communicating some aspects of this part of the game to players, and that in making the utility of melee and the intentions of the games core clearer, this alone will help to alleviate some of the complaints on this front.
With all that said, the changes to the balancing itself will largely be as follows.
- Ammo in the open will be *slightly* more abundant
- Ammo in secrets less so
We actually don't balance Viscerafest around secrets anyways, when playing myself I actually never get them. I don't think it's fair to expect players to find something blatantly out of the way, so they're treated more as a light reward for being vigilant. But it's quite easy to overstock on ammo if you know where they all are due to their accumulative nature, which is something I've never liked. So in that, we'll be shifting the scales a bit.
Step Height Jank:
So as of writing, this has already been addressed in our dev builds, it's just not been pushed to the public ones yet. Step height in games effectively detects the height of a surface an object is moving to and whether or not when it hits that surface it will climb up atop it, or stop against it like the object has hit a wall. This is why the player for example is capable of climbing upstairs without needing to jump. Up until now, we've been using unity's default systems for this, and it's caused some janky awkwardness, particularly with objects that are just high enough that the step height is kinda unsure of what to do.
With the tweaks we've made, movement around scenarios like this feels much more fluid, we may refine it more, but where we have this stuff internally is already a massive step up from where it was prior.
Boss Jank:
Both of Viscerafest's major bosses currently have some light jank to them that I don't care for. Things like the Banshee's spinning laser attack clipping through the pillars, her AOE sigil attacks spawning in midair/lava, or just the way Mortice moves and or occasionally gets stuck on level geometry... just lots of little edges that could do with some smoothing out and refining.
Enemies Sliding:
Enemies in Viscerafest have hard-coded states during which they are supposed to stay absolutely still and not move. Like, say if an enemy is winding up for an attack, or if they get stunned. Sometimes they, however, they don't... and it can occasionally lead to things like thunderbirds just homing in on you and getting a cheap hit (and often kill) in. This is a bug and we're currently working to address it.
The Pung Cannon:
The Pung Cannon's hit detection at close range seems iffy... sometimes projectiles will just fly straight through enemies which is... not ideal... it's very rare but it's also incredibly annoying when it happens. Once again a bug we're looking to address.
Explosive Inconsistencies:
Hit detection on explosives is kinda borked sometimes. Sometimes explosions will clip through walls and damage you or enemies, and sometimes they'll think the tiniest ledge is a brick wall in the way of an enemy, robbing you of a kill or damage you clearly should have gotten/dealt. This one is much harder to address but it is something we are aware of and want to fix.
Enemy Interactions:
Currently, enemy projectiles can only hurt the player, and will just discharge into anything else having no impact. For me, it leads to them feeling jankily disconnected from the game world in a way that I don't care for, so we'll be aiming to address that. The plan is to allow enemies to do damage to each other (within reason) and damage or destroy props in the environment. Depending on how this plays out we may exclude barrels for... uh... obvious reasons. But ultimately we won't know how it will play until we try it.
And Probably More:
What's mentioned above makes up a great deal of what we consider to be some of the most important things that we need to address. However, naturally, being that this is game development there are likely more that will crop up, and some that we've not listed here for one reason or another.
We should have a new patch coming out likely within the next month that will aim to address some of the issues that have been reported with the most recent public build, as well as one or two of the smaller things mentioned here. More than likely, however, the bulk of this stuff will be addressed down the road.
We'll be aiming to give you updates and sneak peeks as we move forward, but note that after this next patch things will likely get a bit quieter around these parts us as we put our noses to the grindstone.
If you'd like to stay up to date on all things Viscerafest, or just hang out with us and the community we've got a nice lil discord you can join here: https://discord.gg/E2pUkxe
And a twitter you can follow here: https://twitter.com/Awesreek
As always we thank you for your support! And we hope you have a wonderful day!