As some of you may already be aware (information is passed through the community discord, join if you want to receive more real-time updates or if you have any questions for me: https://discord.gg/rYXRxN2ESu), as I was about half way through developing the new game mode (know as "Mini-Campaign Mode", I had a change of heart.
Originally, the idea was to extend the infestation mode (now known as "Wave Mode") of defending friendly positions from invading zombies, to now allow players to collect points from kills and utilize them to purchase new weapons, munitions, fuel, etc.
However, I decided to change not only the gameplay loop, but to implement something different from zombies. Although this is still a work in progress and anything is subject to change, the new concept takes it a bit further. The player will now need to "secure" areas for resources to be gathered, to help further the campaign against the "bugs" (Cue the Starship Troopers theme).
The goal of the mode is to clear infested areas of bugs and their eggs, in order to allow friendly units to capture resources in those areas. The AC-130 will be limited to only a specific amount of time on target, depending upon the amount of fuel you are able to "build." Capturing supplies allows the building of new weapons, munitions, and fuel in order to continue to fly sorties and survive new rounds. On occasion as well, you will be required to defend your friendly base from invading bugs. The game will continue until you can no longer build enough fuel to fly the next mission, which with the lack of air support leads to the demise of your friendly units (game over).
I am still working on this mode and hopefully will have it completed early next week. This will be released as soon as it is done.
Now, I wanted to quickly give a shout out to all the "hardcore" players out there who have been patiently waiting for the realistic scenarios. These scenarios are next on the list and I will release those as they are completed, rather than waiting until the next big update day (December 24th). At least for this next update, I've decided the goal should be to just have everything released by that date, rather than that date being the day to release. So stay tuned on this.
To finally conclude, this update today is simply to push some improvements that have been held back by the longer development time of the new game mode. Much of these have been requests from players (thanks for the feedback!) so glad that we together can work together to make the game better!
Changelog
- Increased projectile shrapnel ranges for Mk238 30mm, PGU9B 40mm, and PGU9C 40mm
- Increased shrapnel count for several munitions (25mm, 30mm, and 40mm)
- Fixed GAU-23 30mm autocannon to fire immediately, rather than beginning to fire after a small delay
- Removed the breathing sound effect
- Improved the projectile tracer to be more visible through flight
- Added blood bursts when enemies are dismembered
- Made improvements to the landscape material
- Waves Mode (previously known as "Infestation") - changed zombies to dismember upon round completion
- Added additional radio transmissions for changing weapons and added a slight delay (this follows roughly, the normal process of weapon activation in a real AC-130 - will have more on this later)
- Added a small "injured" procedural animation for characters when they take damage (may be pretty subtle at this point)
- Made some adjustments to the ragdoll physics
- Updated the audio for firing the GAU-23 30mm autocannon and added a camera shake when firing