Hello there! Been a long time since the last update, because this one is packing a lot. Some of it boring but necessary, some of it unnecessary but pretty exciting!
Before continuing, a big thank you to all of you who have been on the experimental branch and giving feedback at the discord server. As always, a small reminder that you can join not just for feedback, but also to find other people to play with over Remote Play:
Also, the game is almost at 100 reviews! (and that's just counting users who bought it here) A year ago I would have never thought this hyper-niche, PCVR only, local only monkey game would get nearly as many, so another big thank you to all of you who left one, positive or negative. It really helps and means a lot!
Now, back to the update. The most notable thing coming up is the fully-reworked Mandrillian bots, but there's also some other juicy stuff...
IMPROVED MANDRILLIAN BOTS
Last year I added something I wasn't sure I could pull off: fully automated Mandrillian enemies. While... acceptable, they didn't feel at all like playing against a human player. For this reason, they had some extra features (like armor and damage-reduction shiny weakpoints) as a way to compensate. However, their behavior was almost zombie-like; they just rushed at the player and wailed until one of the two died. I didn't really like it so two months ago I started this rework.
BOT-HUMAN STANDARIZATION
My goal with the rework was to make bots feel like moderately skilled humans as closely as I could. For this to be possible, I started by standarizing most of the systems between bots and human Mandrillians, and adjusted the bot behavior accordingly.
Most Mandrillian-related match modifiers now affect them, they operate under the same 6-stamina-point system as human players, have to charge up their attacks, can heal with vent powerups, need to unlock a vent exit to respawn there...
The first thing you will notice is bots behave less like zombies (just charging towards the player and repeatedly bashing your head in). They will try different approaches when attacking the VR player: sometimes they will try to circle around you, feint attacks, and dodge your shots.
New behavior example: after dodging, each of the bots go to opposite sides of the room, then attack from two different directions
When running out of stamina or getting too damaged, they will run for the vents and try to heal up or recharge their energy by using the vent powerups (which have also been tweaked, more on this later). Their roaming logic has a less random approach, so they will tend to scout in places that make sense for the VR player to be in (for example, they won't search on the closed up Observation Chambers right after starting a match; and if all checkpoint gates have been opened they will start guarding the exit area).
And finally (and I'm kinda proud of this one) they now "communicate" with each other, which means not only they update each other about the VR player whereabouts, but also they will coordinate their attacks, try flanking the player and do some pretty neat looking coop strats to get the jump on you. Way better than just blocking each other trying to get an attack in!
All in all, I hope these new bots bring a decent single player experience to users that want to play some Escape from Mandrillia without hassling any friends... or a proper challenge for brave souls that feel like "just" 2 Mandrillians aren't enough (because yes, you can still combine human players and bots to get up to a 1 vs 4 match). And if you think even that is too easy for you, the "Armored" and "Juiced" versions of them are still available, if you dare!
THE SUPER SHOTGUN
Yes, there is now a beefier version of the sawn off, using its own massive shells. Said shells are so big they take an entire inventory slot (just like the grenade launcher and quad launcher ammo) but they absolutely annihilate Mandrillians. You can select it as a starter longarm, and it will also randomly appear in corpses and in longarm crates (spawner entry coming soon)
I added this weapon as a way to make the Super Soldier preset more fun and similar to its original inspiration, which brings us to the next point:
SUPER SOLDIER IMPROVEMENTS
The Super Soldier preset, while an interesting concept, was lacking in the fun department. Even with infinite ammunition, its loadout (starting with two sawn-off shotguns and a chainsaw) was a hassle to operate, and players spent more time reloading their sidearms than doing the actual run-and-gun the mode was intended for. For this reason, the preset has been reworked on top of also featuring the new Super Shotgun.
The new Super Soldier loadout gives the player a pistol, a pump shotgun, and a self-charging multitool with just the shock enabled, but keycard location display at all times (to mimimize time wasted looking for those).
The weapon unlock progression on the checkpoints has also changed; before it was Pump Shotgun > Minigun > Plasma Rifle. Now it's Super Shotgun > Minigun > Plasma Rifle.
Finally, the "self heal" match setting (that was mainly used in the Super Soldier preset) has also been modified. Instead of adding a little amount of health with every Mandrillian death, it now triggers when a monkey gets gibbed AND you are close enough to the explosion to get covered in their blood (totally original concept pls donut steal).
The self heal also triggers when gibbing a Mandrillian corpse so... yeah
MANDRILLIAN BUTTON-PUSHING
This started as a wild experiment but ended up adding some needed depth to Mandrillian gameplay (and countering some common but annoying VR Player strats)
By using either your face or your knuckles, you can interact with pushable buttons all over the map.
VR Players will need to think twice if they want to do the good ol "leave keycards at doors" thing. If you do, Mandrillians are now able to just... push the button and open them.
This also adds surprise strats like sneaking behind a deployed sentry turret to turn it off.
And, of course, mess up the gate-opening minigame to assert dominance.
SPECTATOR CAMERA: TOP DOWN AND IMPROVED THIRD PERSON
You can now cycle between the third-person view and an orthographic top-down perspective, both as a LIV output and for the ingame spectator view (when playing solo against the computer). The third person camera has also been improved to offer a cooler framing of the action, including visible ceilings.
MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
NOISY STEPS AND NOISY STEP VISUALIZATION
Sometimes it felt a bit awkward to gauge the running speed threshold before appearing on the Mandrillians' minimap. Now, there's a (very faint) footstep noise every time you are causing a potentially alerting footstep, but more importantly your Multitool will display a tiny circle around your location to let you know you're being a noisy fella.
VENT POWERUP BALANCE
Running around the vents desperately hoping for a 1up or health to spawn was frustrating and boring. To fix it, I've buffed the vent powerup spawn rates; there will be at least 1 powerup available at any given moment in the vents. To compensate for this, I've reduced the spawn rates for 1ups (which now also have the health item effect), and reduced the health powerup values from 20-45 HP to 20-25 HP.
MONKEY POINT SYSTEM
This is an important thing that will come in handy later. Won't go into many details, but very soon Mandrillians will be able to use these points to buy little perks before respawning. Stay tuned!
TIP CYCLE
Just a tiny thing I added while preparing these screens for the upcoming point stuff; now you can cycle between the Mandrillian tips on spawn selection by pressing RB/LB or Q/E
FULL CHANGELOG
- Fully reworked Mandrillian bot's AI
- Standarized most of the mechanics between human and bot Mandrillians
- Added new weapon: Super Shotgun
- Tweaked Super Soldier preset parameters to be more fun and include the Super Shotgun
- Mandrillians can now interact with most buttons in the scenery
- Doors can now crush the VR player
- Improved overall gate-crushing logic
- On-kill health regeneration is now applied by being close to Mandrillians being gibbed (as in being showered by their blood)
- Added a new option for spectator camera: Top-Down View
- Improved Third Person spectator camera
- Added -very- faint step noises when the robot is moving fast enough to cause minimap sound pings
- Added a small circle flashing at the center of the Multitool that flashes along "noisy" footsteps
- Thickened all the walls of the map, making most gate frames less likely to get players stuck on them
- Buffed vent powerup spawn rates (at any given moment there will always be at least 1 active powerup in the vents)
- Nerfed vent health powerup from 20-45 HP gained to 20-25
- Slightly nerfed vent 1up powerup spawn rates to balance the increased overall spawn rate
- 1up powerups now also act as health powerups (both HP and stamina recovery)
- Very slightly increased monkey vent jump landing area damage
- Virtual crouch is now a toggle
- Slightly nerfed crouch walking speed
- The "this is a local multiplayer game" warning that pops on first launch is now a physical screen that also mentions the Mandrillian bots
- CEO keycard now acts as a cyan keycard outside of its main use
- Physics timestep now tied to your headset refresh rate
- Added a Mandrillian "point system" that will come in handy very soon...