As our first game, we learned quite a few lessons with Flashlight. The initial vision of Flashlight was a simple team PvP game of capture the flag and team deathmatch. However, we quickly realized it's difficult to put a game out that's heavily reliant on having 8+ players in a room at once with no upfront player base. While we had a lot of fun and the pvp rooms worked out really well with testing groups, nobody else really got to experience that post-release. The game did include the 'story moode', but in hindsight it still needed quite a lot of TLC. It certainly wasn't in a state we were proud of upon release.
Rather than leaving it in that state and moving on, we decided to start fresh and rework things into something we'd be hopefully proud of. So we completely reworked almost every aspect of the story mode and it is light years better than when we initially released it. Below is a list of some of the changes and reworks we made. We hope you enjoy the changes!
New mechanics and features:
- Buildings have roofs and cannot be seen into until approaching them. Cone of visibility mechanic before entering, and then a darkened space inside the building.
- Various building events added. Traps and events can appear when picking up a data module. Level events also occur, based on a timer visible to the players. Explore and get supplies, but manage your time wisely!
- Grabbing data modules marked on the minimap is a part of the regular gameplay loop on non-boss levels
- Added more variety between levels, including a creepy forest and a city square. There is still RNG to most buildings, but there are now individual level types that have different aesthetics.
- Flashlight Kill Beam! - Getting skill kills (kill streaks, kills using the secondary fire modes on some weapons, blowing up zombies with red barrels) adds to your score. These skill kills increase your new Flashlight beam charge. Getting the beam charge to the full amount will result in brief invincibility, an AOE damage explosion, then a flashlight kill beam that has a high force on it to make zombie parts go flying.
- The Flashlight Kill Beam charge gets a slow passive update when staying near teammates while getting kills
- A baseball bat has been added as a melee weapon to the game. This will help you crack heads when you’re out of ammo, or just because it’s fun! Baseball bat deals higher damage when sprinting and can knock off zombie heads.
- Equipment System – An equipment system has been added to the game. Many equipment mods currently exist. Damage Increases, Laser Sights, Cryo Rounds, Quick Reloader, Piercing Rounds, Spiked Bat, Auto Mod for pistol and shotgun, Machinegun attachment for Rifle, Wide Flashlight, and more! These can greatly change how you play the game, and can be fun in team comps.
- Inventory menu revamped to support new equipment system. Equipment can be swapped in and out as the player chooses. Can turn inventory items into scrap. Can add mods to weapons and to player. Mods and ammo can be dropped for other players to pick up.
- Tech Drops – In addition to skill perks at certain score thresholds, Tech Drops can also be acquired at certain thresholds. Tech drops are a randomly rolled selection of 3 choices. The choices can be adding a drone that hovers around you and shoots enemies, upgrades for turrets, upgrades for weapon damage, upgrades for health and movement speed. After selecting one, a Tech Crate will be called in. The crate can be smashed to obtain the upgrade.
- Some perks removed from rank up system to allow for equippable items. Now when ranking up, perks are rolled randomly and two choices are presented to the player to select from
- Flares - Flares can be thrown. A player can have one flare out at a time, and throwing a new flare will remove the old one. Flares will aid in dark places.
- Revival system – In PVE multiplayer Story Mode, allies must now be revived when they go down. They retain all their equipment after revival.
- Zombie type changes: Changed the rock throwing zombie to shoot spikes in multiple directions, the spikes bounce off objects and can cause havoc in a room.
- New zombie types: Added a Glowing Radioactive zombie that flashes and blows up upon taking damage. Added a “Screamer” zombie that screams, runs fast, catches fire when close to a player, and adds fire damage when hitting a player
- Changed poison mechanic: Rather than dealing damage over time, a poison hit deals a small amount of damage once, but player cannot sprint for the duration of the poison.
- Boss levels and some mechanics for boss moves have been revamped
- Added max # of turrets that can be built based on the # of players in a game.
- In solo Story Mode, extra revive shots can be acquired by gaining certain score thresholds
- Removed metal spiked barrier and added barbed wire as a craftable item. Players now by default have barbed wire and wooden barriers as craftable, and the Ruby Rebels perk will allow them to build the metal barrier
- Light poles in the levels can have the light portion blown up
- Green barrel can be shot, causing green ooze to leak out. The ooze can be set on fire, causing a temporary fire wall
- Giant zombies – Added a chance for giant zombies to occasionally spawn.
- Zombies will sometimes lunge at the player when zombies are inside buildings – be careful approaching entrances!
Changes to existing mechanics:
- Added predictive aiming for the bullet turret. It was being somewhat faked before, but now it accounts for target distance and trajectory, and doesn’t miss so often.
- Crates only need one hit to destroy
- Toned down merc enemies on Easy and Normal modes. They have to be a bit closer before they shoot, they aren't quite as accurate, and spawn amounts have been adjusted
- Zombies are generally slower and have less health, but there are more of them.
- Sprinting is revamped. The slowed-down fatigue phase is removed completely. After sprinting, the player will return to their normal movement speed, and will not be able to sprint again until the cooldown phase has completed. The cooldown phase is shown by sweat beads on the player.
- Shooting causes a delay of 0.2 seconds where the player is slowed down. This change along with the sprint revamp gives a much more flexible movement economy and allows the player to get out of danger more readily, and for them to have a much more tactical approach to shooting instead of just constantly backing up and shooting when being pursued.
- Changed player out-of-bounds warning to not reduce visibility, but instead to play a heartbeat that increases as the out of bounds timer counts down. Out-of-bounds is now marked in the game world in addition to being on the minimap.
- Crafting radial wheel removed. Instead, backpack radial wheel has been dual-purposed to allow for selection and crafting of items.
- Red X icons have been added to minimap to warn of direction of incoming danger from events.
- Moved a lot of the information that was displayed at the end and beginning of levels into character dialogue/radio chatter that will play out between more characters as the player progresses through the game.
- Easy mode is now much easier. There are less enemies, the players take less damage, zombies have less health. Solo mode begins with 2 revives instead of 1.
- Scrap is now brighter and has an outline around it for more visibility.
- Bosses now have a health bar
- Shotguns alt fire now uses a very wide spread shot instead of a stun shot
- Removed alternate ammo types in favor of using the new equipment system
- Explosion damage from self and allies reduced
- Bot mercs now have generated names that are usually pretty goofy
Controller Changes:
- Updates for controllers have been added to make controller play more functional. Controller can now navigate the Menus and use the new inventory system
Main Menu changes:
- Sound levels on initial music greatly lowered
- Selection of region for network play is much more informative, providing the full name of the server region and the ping to the player
- Selections between beginning a PVE match and a PVP match are now split. The Lobby is used to connect to an existing game.
Performance improvements:
- Fire and blood splatter has a set limit for performance
- Lights offscreen are turned off to improve performance
Bug fixes:
- Fixed sound clipping issues
- Female player model has a pain sound now
- Fixed bots on easy mode having damage reduction
- Changed flamethrower flame to stop at enemies rather than going through them
- Resolution and full screen selection now work properly