[ver.0.1-demo] - New puzzle difficulty, melee combat & more!

[ver.0.1-demo] –01/05/2023

Comment:

• Hello everyone! This is the largest update so far since the game has been made public and it also converts the demo into what can be considered a feature complete build of the first level of the game. It took a while but I can now start mainly focusing on the development of the second level and the likely commercial release upon it’s completion. Alongside the new gameplay features, this update also includes tons of code-refactoring improvements to ensure the production of future content moving forward becomes more efficient, since this is a solo-project, workflow enhancements will always take top priority. Below are the list of changes this patch brings!

New Features:

• The entire saving and loading of data has been overhauled:
  • The loading of sub-areas inside the main level is now multi-threaded which highly reduces the chance of stuttering issues occurring when new areas are required to load.
  • Saving is now also multi-threaded.
  • Upon dying, the level is no longer required to be reloaded from scratch to ensure gameplay stability: The game screen will now fade out; the player will respawn and gameplay will resume seamlessly, this improvement also means that the changes in the world like enemy wounds, corpses and blood stains will remain during the entire play session.

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  The “Nightmare” puzzle difficulty has now been added to the demo, completing the set of all possible 12 combat and puzzle difficulty variations intended to be in the game.

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  The close combat system has been added to the game with two new weapons you can find in the main level.
  • It’s a very rudimentary system that consists of light and heavy attacks, and blocking with the weapon equipped.
  • All three actions consume large amounts of stamina in varying degrees, and deplete the durability of the weapon per interaction (meaning you won’t lose durability if you hit the air)
  • The durability of an item can be viewed on the inventory screen.

• 
  The enemy poise system has been reworked:
  • Staggering an enemy before was only possible through headshots (chance based critical attacks), it now works using a threshold value that once depleted will trigger the stagger animation, you can deplete it with all manner of attacks but the bias is in favor of critical and heavy attacks.

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  Added the ability to consume regenerative items in real-time without accessing the inventory screen; an icon on the bottom-right of the hud will appear when selecting different consumables
  (make sure to hold the consumable button to activate the healing action.)

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  Added a post-process visual effect to better indicate when the player gains new lives or loses them upon death.

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  The game now pauses properly when the Steam overlay is called.

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  The game will now pause if it detects a controller has been disconnected.

Adjustments:

• AI improvements:
  • An AI director that coordinates all the active AI in the game has been implemented.
  • Enemies are now able to perceive each other and react in different ways depending on the context:
    • Enemies will now better spread out across the map since they always take into account the position and movement goals of other enemies that they are aware of.
    • The AI is now able to react to the awareness level of other perceived AI, meaning that they will enter a hostile state if they see another hostile AI, or enter search mode if they see or hear another AI in search state.
    • Enemies will now coordinate to better surround the player instead of blindly all moving on the shortest path towards the player.

  • 
    The AI is no longer allowed to roam too close to choke points like doors that the player must to go through to exit certain areas, in most cases they also represent blind spots where the player is made unfairly vulnerable because of the design of the camera system.

  • 
    The vision and hearing ranges of enemies have been reduced to compensate for their improved AI.

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  The player no longer has to wait for UI menus to finish fading in or out to receive back control, this was mainly an issue with the inventory UI, but other interfaces were affected by this as well.

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  Replaced the handgun model with another one of higher fidelity.

• 
  Added new scene assets.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a rare bug where enemies attacking you with both arms would trigger an unintended double hit.

Crash Fixes:

Known Issues:

• The entire input system of the game has been migrated to an improved Unreal Engine 5 implementation, keybinding customization will be temporarily disabled until the transition is fully implemented.