Greetings, fellow mercs!
I'm excited to announce that I've been hard at work the past few months on the next content update to Dead Grid. The main focus of the update is adding controller and Steam Deck support as well new game play features and the usual bug fixes. Let's get to it.
STEAM DECK SUPPORT
A big part of my development time of this patch was spent on adding Steam Deck support. This includes running the game at the native Deck resolution 1280x800. Due to Steam Deck’s smaller screen size, a number of UI features had to be added to to support bigger fonts and of course playing the game with a controller. While the game is playable using the Steam Deck's controller, you can also use the touch pad or screen to hover over various UI elements for tool tips, just as you would with a mouse.
Launching the game on Steam Deck should automatically detect and configure recommended settings which you could manually adjust later.
SUPPORT FOR MORE RESOLUTIONS
- Support for more screen resolutions, specifically focusing on 16:10 aspect ratios.
- Support for ultra-wide resolutions, this may require a bit more tuning.
CONTROLLER SUPPORT
Launching the game with an XBOX style controller plugged in allows the game to be played entirely with a controller or mouse at the same time.
New controller related options are available in Game Settings.
Some UI features are adjusted while using a controller, such as selecting region missions from a list rather than an icon. Please keep in mind, there are still many improvements to be made when playing the game with a controller and I will be monitoring your feedback closely.
ADDITIONAL SAVE SLOTS
The manual save slot limit has been increased from 10 to 50 slots, now displayed on 5 pages.
ACCESSIBILITY AND LARGER UI
A new Large UI option to increase the size of many tooltips, skill details and various game dialogs. This is useful when playing on a small screen or when simply increasing the size of important text.
This also covers skill details which were reported as hard to read by some players.
An option to view a larger version of card details in Gear Management, toggled by a key.
Card details shown in combat can now be configured to display on the side of the screen or floating next to a card, as it was originally. In addition, the details panel can be resized to display much bigger fonts useful on smaller screens. Since the card details can now go out of bounded vertically, you're able to use the mouse wheel or gamepad to scroll the panel up or down. The placement and size of in-combat card details can be toggled in Game Settings - Combat.
NEW FEATURE: CHALLENGE MODES
A new game feature has been added to the main menu of the game, called Challenges. Challenge modes are a way to replay the existing content in the regular game with modified rules and a much greater difficulty. All challenge modes can be finished by completing a specified mission.
Complete a challenge to unlock a higher rank of the same challenge with an increased bonus to your next score and more difficult rules.
Score is earned while playing any challenge which is submitted to a leaderboard on Steam. Your leaderboard ranking can be viewed directly from the game. Each challenge has its own associated leaderboard.
You can opt out from submitting your score in Game Settings.
NEW FEATURE: KILLING SPREE
- Performing consecutive kills from a single or multiple attacks in a row starts a Killing Spree.
- Active Killing Spree is shown at the bottom left corner of the play board.
- Further consecutive kills add more stacks to the Killing Spree for a maximum of 5 stacks (skulls).
- Failing to land a killing blow decreases the current stack of Killing Spree by 1.
- The maximum number of stacks can be increased through newly added events or region modifiers.
- Each kill from a melee or ranged attack grants an additional +1 XP per stack.
- The bonus stack XP can also be increased from newly added events or region modifiers.
- For example, 8 stacks of Killing Spree with an increased XP bonus of 2XP per stack would
grant each merc a +16 XP bonus to all their consecutive kills.
- Unlock new achievements from landing killing blows while on a Killing Spree.
NEW TACTICIAN
- A new Tactician merc, voiced by our regular contributor Immortal George.
- This merc is selected on the bonus character selection screen.
- There are now 3 playable Tactician mercs in the game.
- Immortal George's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ImmortalGeorgeGaming
NEW WEAPONS
New unique weapons for you to find.
NEW REVENANT ACCESSORY TYPE
Road sign shields can now be converted to an new Revenant accessory through the regular card upgrade interface.
The new accessories are visible while equipped on Revenant mercs. A total of 25 new road sign shield accessories were added.
SYSTEM INDEPENDENT SETTINGS
Game settings are now tied to individual computers and should no longer overwrite from Steam Cloud.
This does not affect your saved games which are still backed up to Steam Cloud.
OTHER
- 20 new achievements tied to new and existing features.
- Added new Gear sorting options, by Item Level, by Damage (based on your feedback).
- Bug fixes and tuning of game performance.
ETA
This update is now going through QA which usually takes a couple of weeks depending on the severity of bugs and balance issues. Preview builds are usually posted on Discord as they become available for public testing.
Please stay tuned for more news and thanks for playing Dead Grid!
--Paul