Woah! An Announcement?
That's right baby. A Steam announcement. How cool? Like, I'm asking you how cool it is. I know right? It is pretty cool. I bare gifts with this announcement, lot's of sneak peaks into what I've been working on. Can't wait to read all about it? Are you sure? You can't possibly wait? I won't stop you then. It's just... I had this whole speech planned and... No, it's ok, go ahead, I only spent hours prepping. No really it's fine. Read about all the cool stuff I've been working on, see If I care!
What's New?
Leveling And Equipment Progression
One of the key elements of this module is the level mechanic that's been introduced. You can now gain experience by completing main and optional objectives. The amount of experience you earn from a game is tied to how much money you earn, as in it's the same amount. As you level up, they unlock new equipments and upgrades for equipment they have already unlocked.
I've designed the equipment progression to be pretty tight. There is 47 equipment unlocks spread across 50 levels. Now, that's pretty tight. The prices for the equipment upgrades are set so that you should be able to unlock and upgrade all equipment to tier 3, while making player choice important during the earlier parts of the progression path.
Secondary Equipment
Another large part of this module are the secondary equipment. Secondary equipment act like passive equipment that are attached to your character like an accessory. These secondaries grant passive or unique abilities, some more useful than others.
Unlike normal equipment, the tier 1 variant of secondary equipment are not unlocked for free. Instead, they have to be purchased for pretty large fee. But, after purchasing secondary equipment, you never have to spend a dime. Purchasing a secondary equipment grants you an unlimited supply of that secondary equipment. Pretty good deal? Maybe.
I will level with you, as of typing this, secondary equipment is pretty fresh out of the oven, you know? So right now, the only secondary evidence working at the moment is the head cam and the night vision goggles. Don't fret, there will be more.
New Equipment Variants
A lot of new variants of your beloved equipment have been willed into existence. I don't have to much to say about them because I don't want to spoil some of their "gimmicks". Some are useful, some are "interesting". I will say though, currently my favourite piece of equipment would have to be the tier 1 EMF reader. It is very noisy.
Some buffs and nerfs have also been applied to the classic equipment you've grown to love in the demo. Things like, the tier 2 writing book is a little bit more active, and the glow stick just isn't as bright as it use to be. I'm sure people will be heavily impacted by the loss of glow stick light.
Truck Surveillance
A feature I've been putting off for a while, the truck surveillance. You can now place video camera around the investigation location, and access them from the truck. Video cameras tier 2 and above can also be rotated from the truck using their remote swivel technology. Yeah.
It's not so much a useful mechanic at the moment, but I'm sure it might be more appreciated when I start working on the Photon module.
With this new truck UI, I almost moved the Sanity and Activity UI over to their own TV screens in the truck. These screens are now also disabled in Nightmare and Insanity difficulty. Sincere apologies to those who heavily relied on these to play the game. I have no idea how you will continue to live after this drastic change.
New Ghost Behaviours
A whole lot of changes were made to how the ghost behaves. These changes and additions were really just things I forgot to add in the Reconstruction module. But they're here now!
The ghost no longer throws items around. This used to cause items can tossed outside of the map or in really weird spots. The ghost now simply makes stuff hover. You'll know it when you see it. These items the ghost interacts with will have EMF evidence on them as long as they are hovering.
The ghost can now also pick items up. They can't pick up equipment, just normal stuff. This was just a fun little idea I had, that I thought might also make tracking the ghost a little easier, as they can now just give themselves away. Items the ghost pick up will have EMF evidence as long as the ghost is holding them.
The ghost will now leave EMF evidence after completing a ghost event. Ghost events along with making items hover or picking them up, can all leave EMF 5 evidence. So with these specific ghost behaviour changes, EMF evidence should be a bit easier to get.
The probability of each ghost event happening is now mixed. The chance of each of ghost event happening in the current demo version is all the same, whereas now some events are rarer than others. Some ghost types also have their own unique odds for ghost events happening.
- Spirits have higher ghost ball odds
- Mares have higher light break odds
- Onis have higher stare odds
- And more...
Other than these major changes, some other additions have been made to some ghost types, to give players more secondary evidence to look out for on harder difficulties.
- Poltergeists can make multiple items hover at once
- Banshees can be heard from much farther during hunts
- Mylings can't be heard from as far as normal during hunts
- And more secrets...
Player Customisation
Other than the secondary equipment which apply a visual accessory to your character, you can now change your character from your new crazy cool profiles! There's not really a lot to say about the new profiles. At the moment you can only customise your skin from you profile, but I plan on allowing you to be able to change your background banner for your profile and the badges attached to your profile. Badges are basically just an in-game reward for completing achievements that you can show off.
From you profile you can also see your crazy cool steam username. I put in the 5 minutes of effort of importing Steamworks into the game, which at the moment is only used for grabbing your username. Your welcome.
You can also check the amount of experience you have and need until you level up again. Other than that, profiles are just a cool little thing.
Some Balance Improvements
If you manage to guess the ghost correctly, complete all 3 optional objectives, take 10 3 star photos including a ghost photo, you are now rewarded with a perfect game bonus. Now this bonus is chunky, currently worth $240. Getting a perfect game in an Insanity difficulty game will get you around $2200 and 2200 experience. Now that's a lot, and it makes progression a fair bit faster, but honestly without this bonus, you'll find progression in the latter half of the progression path will take you a fair bit of time. At the moment, it takes about 70 perfect insanity games to get to max level, which is a lot. But don't worry, I have some even grander money makers planned before release.
You can now only get optional objectives based off the equipment you bring with you. Making progression early on a little more fair. Optional objectives now have different values; they're not all worth the same anymore. And the optional objectives that require you to purchase equipment to complete offer a higher reward.
Ummm... And if the difficulty has you starting at 50% sanity or below, you can't get the sanity optional objective. Yeah.
Closing Words
That's all I have to show you for now. All the words and stuff above represent a huge chunk of the Progression module. But, there is still more work to do. I thought I would do an announcement now rather than when the modules finished because I thought this would be a good opportunity to test out the Steam announcements.
Anyway, get well soon, or whatever they say. I'll have more to share sooner or later. Just wait around I guess till then.