A New Demo Is Coming...
In case you missed the announcement at Realms Deep this year, the brand new demo for Age of Hell is coming out in 2 weeks. The scheduled release date is November 24th, but we might need that weekend to do final polish so there's a chance it gets pushed back to the following Monday 27th. Definitely out before the end of November though! Testing is going well and we're well into the fine tuning stage. And because it has been a hot damn minute since a proper dev blog here's a bit of a list of what we've been working on ...
New features
- New menu UI
We're in the process of completely replacing the default GZDoom menu with our own bespoke system. This is one of the things we might be doing last minute fixes on that'll hold up release (hard to play a game with a broken menu) but it's looking good. Not only does this help AoH feel unique, it also means we can tailor the menu options to our player's needs. Feature requests will be much easier to add in and a much cleaner UI allows better access to said features. This will go public with a lot of place holder assets, but the core functionality is the important part. You can get a taste of it HERE
- Weapon augments system
What started as a proof of concept with Dawnbreaker mode (still in the game) is now a full game feature and that is the weapon augment system. As part of the weapon progression we now have semi randomised weapon upgrades that you get to choose from. Not only do these increase player power in fun ways, they add a lot of extra flavour to the combat. Change your shotgun dragon breath to an iceblast to freeze enemies, add poison DOT damage to your minigun and turn your rocket launcher into a homing projectile a revenant would be jealous of. This area will be one we're particularly interested in getting feedback on, both for balance and "is this cool" elements.
- New sounds
Sound design is hard yo and it's one of the areas we were never fully happy with the old the demo. So we've hired REVEL (one half of the SPRAWL dev team) to give the sound suite a complete makeover. We've started with the weapon and enemies first and everything in the demo has been redone. There will still be small things to add/tweak but the bulk of the new sounds will be in place. REVEL will continue to work with us for the full game as well.
- The demo map and other stuff
The demo itself has had an almost 100% rebuild. The final and secret arenas are largely the same, but everything else is brand new. I used the old layout as a based for progression but other than that, this is Fresh Content. On top of a new map, every texture has been replaced, remade and reimagined courtesy of Insane Gazebo and Velvetic, with some additional guest contributions.
The map proper is ... a lot bigger. But it's also less of a slog to get through. More space for the player during combat and more reasons to explore, the overall pacing of the experience is more drawn out allowing a better lead into the play style that Age of Hell brings. In order to help reduce the feeling of cabin fever it is split into 4 main map chunks.
Other new elements include some reworked enemies, a full running tutorial built into the map and the Holy Hand Grenade.
- Opitimisation
One of the big issues raised with the original demo was performance (and fairly so). Part of the goal with the new map was to find ways to improve on this. Not only is the new map bigger, better looking, more elaborate and more grandiose, it also runs markedly better. On average the frame rate has roughly doubled. This is down to a few learned tricks but the big one is heavy usage of models for decoration and while not free, they are much more performance friendly than sector geometry.
That's enough rambling! Thank you all for your patience on this one. It's taken quite a bit longer than expected but it's worth the wait, promise. If you want to see more of the work that's been done the best place to find it is on the Age of Hell Twitter
Cheers,
BB