Hey! First off, if you saw my last update, you may have seen I've been going through some medical issues.. after like...7 hospital visits, and about a month and a half of being stuck in my room, I've finally fully recovered (For now, at least, lol) and progress on the game has been going pretty well!
I've been working on one of the new maps, The Cave. It's another Large Map, Has 3 Ghost Rooms, and unlocks at Level 7.
And... I'm happy to announce, 4 out of 10 of the steps to release are complete.
But before I get into that, There has been a pretty big increase in scope, Here's what has changed.
9 Planned Equipment Items > 21 Planned Equipment Items.
10 - 12 planned maps > 15 Planned Maps. You might've noticed, I removed the 'Campaign' stuff from the game page, just for clarification, It is not removed from the game, and will still be available at the V1.0 launch. Anything that isn't in the game was removed from the page to help prevent any confusion.
Play Time: Currently, if you take 10 minutes on average to play through a round, I estimate it'll take you around 6 - 8 Hours (35 Rounds) to get absolutely everything that's currently in the game, Probably closer to 12 - 16 (70 Rounds) after all the unlockable equipment is added in.
With the amount, and quality of the content in the game, I am considering raising the price a bit, But I will let y'all know closer to release.
And... Finally, onto the new stuff!
THE CAVE
3 Ghost Rooms: The Visitors Center, Cave Side A, Cave Side B.
Inspired from actual cave tours I've taken over the last few months.
Here's some W.I.P Images!
PLAYER CONTROLLER
The player controller remake is complete!
Player model rework, new textures, new mesh, and a better rig.
All new animations, items no longer just flash into existence, and the player's Hand will move out of frame before switching items. (I'm thinking about adding a Toggle to disable the animations if you prefer it to be Instant)
Better equipment Models, Textures, Size, and Placement, For example, the parabolic cone is smaller, the Spirit Box is more accurately sized, and textures have more... well... Texture to them now as well, The EMF now looks slightly dirty, and the Parabolic textures are no longer stretched out & misplaced.
New Sounds. Footsteps, EMF, Thermometer, and the Flashlight now have new and/or improved sounds.
The Parabolic Microphone now realistically lowers audio outside of it's radius.
The camera is now 5X it's previous resolution, and performs better as well. FPS settings for the camera have been added.
Code Optimization, Stutters when switching equipment have been fixed, and all unnecessary code was removed. A lot of the code was re-done for better performance as well.
THE GHOST BOOK
The Ghost Book has been revamped, new navigation, improved UI, and a Help Menu!
Here's a look at the new UI!
(Also...There is a visual bug on the Investigation menu, this'll be fixed before release)
You may have noticed, The tablet, and all other screens have texturing now, Fingerprints, Smudges, etc. They have a proper Reflective, and glare look to them now as well. (As you probably noticed, there are a few spelling issues in the Help menu, these will be fixed soon.)
THE MAIN SCREEN
The Main Screen is now a lot more useful than it was in the Alpha,
it's now where you'll Unlock, and upgrade equipment, as well as start investigations.
Here's a look at it.
(You might notice something new as an Unlockable Item... LVP Cost needs to be increased, however... lol)
PAUSE MENU
The pause menu has also gotten a Facelift, And a few new Options! I've added in V-Sync, FPS Limit, Field of View, and Mouse Smoothing settings. And... you guessed it, Here's a look!
EVIDENCE CHANGES
I've reworked how the EMF Evidence works, Instead of EMF 2 or 5, ghosts will now give EMF 4 or 5.
And... This also gives me the excuse to not make all obtained EMF Evidence. It's planned for EMF 2 & 3 to be obtainable as Non-Evidence when I get time to!
This is the 'EMF Rework' listed on the 10 steps before release.
And... no, I don't have any images to show off
WHAT ELSE?
The book remakes are done as well (the books you can find in the House map) Here's one of 6
STRESS SYSTEM REWORK
Previously, each time you went in or out of a room, the game would check if the Light was on or off every few seconds. If it was off, it would increase the stress level.
The main issue, if you just went sprinting through a map, you'd trigger a ton of checks at the same time, leading to lag / stutters.
Now, at the start of a round, it adds all the Lights in the map into an array, and checks if the closest one within range is on, if so, it lowers stress, if not, it increases stress.
The new system is much less intensive, and can much more accurately increase/decrease stress...and it also works on the Ghost. so the game can now detect if the Player, and the ghost are in the dark
And the UV Rework is nearly there too, The hard part is done at least, but now it's the very...very tedious part...This'll probably be one of the last things I fully complete lol
The tutorial got some changes too, mostly just rewrote some parts to fit with the current direction of the game. The Tutorial was also renamed to Training.
I'm trying to phase out immersion breaking terms & text to make the game a bit more immersive.
Finally, here's the updated Task List
Player Controller rework [ DONE ]
Book Rework [ DONE ]
EMF Rework [ DONE ]
UV Rework [ 70% ]
Stress System rework [ DONE ]
Photo System [ IN CONCEPT ]
Hunt System [ IN CONCEPT ] & (Custom) Ghost Models [ Model 1 of 4 Complete ]
2 New Maps: The School, The Cave [ 30% ]
Steam Page overhaul
Arcade Games (Maybe post-launch, depending on time)
CLOSING
Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it's progressing, It's going quite a bit faster than expected,
And I'm pretty happy with the Quality of everything.
I want to add I'm actually going back to work for a bit to help out, Mostly just weekends, But progress may slow for the next couple weeks while I'm getting settled back in.
And... That's all for this dev log! Thanks for reading.