[ver.0.2.1-demo] - NextFest patch, Day/Night cycle and more!
[ver.0.2.1-demo]– 21/02/2025
Comment:
Hello everyone!
To celebrate the game’s participation on the NextFest: February 2025 edition, I’ve been working on putting together a new update that brings to the demo many of the improvements that I’m working on for the game’s next major update.
Below are the patch notes! :D
New Features:
Dynamic day/night cycle:
Added moon and stars.
The starting time of day will vary based on the combat difficulty the player chooses, the higher the difficulty the closer to night time.
The time cycle stops once night time arrives, the sun will never rise (this is a horror game after all.)
New sky atmosphere and volumetric clouds system added to the game, the sky clouds are no longer just a texture on a sphere that surrounds the scene, they now exist physically in the 3d space.
The sky atmosphere now changes its color based on the current position of the sun and the moon.
The clouds don’t add too much to the scene so I currently have them implemented using the bare minimum of system resources possible.
New tutorial notification system:
Tutorial hints will be displayed as players go through the game, some are triggered by simply progressing but most are triggered based on the most ideal context possible for players to learn the involved mechanics.
Example: the tutorial hint for reloading a handgun will only appear when a player depletes a magazine and also has ammo in inventory for a reload.
Tutorials always show the inputs based on what is currently mapped for the specific action and the corresponding glyph for the active input being used (keyboard or controller.)
Weapons can now also be carried over from one play-through to the next.
Added enemy AI mechanics:
Rather than sliding on the ground, “Flere” (the demo’s enemy AI) will now turn in place before moving to a new destination.
Depending on the combat difficulty:
Flere will now accelerate whenever he is damaged.
Flere will attempt to dodge gunfire by strafing to the player’s sides whenever he is the primary target of the player.
The enemy “Flere” has 6 new extra animations.
Added icons to display the possible damage types of certain weapons to the inventory ui (this will play a role when greater enemy variety is introduced with the next level.)
Adjustments:
Lowered the default introduction cinematic vgm volume and the general interface sound effects (they can always be adjusted back through the sound settings if players prefer the old sound config.)
Improvements to camera placement and various other properties.
Improved the character’s flashlight so it can be more useful in darker environments, extended forward range, slightly decreased cone radius.
Improved door physics simulation.
~15% cpu performance uplift and ~6% max graphics (~11% high or below graphics) gpu performance improvement by implementing tons of engine and asset optimizations for the game.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue where the main menu background video would loop after it ended but the sound track would not.
Fixed a rare bug that could cause the inventory chest to not properly initialize when the player was carrying over items from a previous play-through.
Reworked the sub level loading system for the entire project, this fixed a very rare bug where serialization data would not load when a sub level load was triggered, it also improved general game performance and stability.
When examining items, items that had liquid simulations in them (healing items) would have to be rendered at a lower frame rate to stop the shader from producing visual glitches, this has now been fixed.