Hello!ːsteamhappyː
To better include everyone who's been following or trying out the game, I’ll be sharing occasional summaries highlighting notable changes, improvements, and what’s currently in the works. These updates are meant to keep you in the loop and give some insight into the development process as it evolves.
In hindsight, the initial version of the game had some serious issues in terms of optimization, explanation of game mechanics or presentation in general.
I've never published a game before and the initial build clearly lacked the quality I truly believed I would have time to sort out before the game inevitably came out.
Among a plethora of bug fixes and QOL-Improvements in all regards, these are the...
Standout Improvements / Changes:
While strong systems didn't experience GPU/CPU spikes to the same extent, if you were hovering around the minimum requirements to run the game - It was awful for no good reason.
Obviously, there was a reason and it has been massively improved since. I will still keep looking for ways to improve the performance of the game and passively send out updates in this regard in coming patches but the improvements made can be clearly felt in-game and seen when monitoring your cpu/gpu which is great.
It is safe to say that the initial tutorial was horrible. Pretty much every player I saw play the game during the first week struggled with understanding the fundamentals of the game. Being dropped into the game right away with several different interactables and a wall of text covering half your screen was not the way - So I completely deleted it and reworked the new player-experience from scratch. There will still be patches made to the new and improved tutorial, even though its much better than before it still contains some elements that can be simplified further. The mission to not overwhelm new players continues, but its much more digestable now.
Another thing i saw players struggle with heavily, has been the maze/labyrinth puzzle when disarming mines. So I reworked the labyrinth puzzle into a new maze-like mechanic that is more fair, visually satisfying, varying and most importantly self-explanatory.
Upcoming:
The ATV was a heavily experimental feature added to the game a bit too close to the release which is why its limited to one zone only but it's very clear to me at this point that the ATV is a fun addition for players and its here to stay.
The ATV will see improvements in terms of smoothness for clients(those who aren't hosting a session), more dynamic/realistic steering, a much larger fuel pool and also being able to access more areas with it.
Another goal that I aim to implement is the ability to store items in the ATV, so you can stash treasures in it for an example, allowing you drive around and plunder as many ruins as you want without having to return to camp.
While they work fine mostly, I want all enemies to have much more distinctive/noticeable behaviors.
For an example: all enemies currently have wildly different behaviors depending on if they are encountered in the Overworld or inside of a Ruin and also if they spawn as a reaction to a siren going off or what time it is.
I'm quite certain this goes completely unnoticed, especially for new players or players that doesn't spend some time within the game so the presentation there is definitely lacking.
So to summarize, there will be improvements in terms of visual feedback, sounds, and in some cases changes to the enemy models depending on the conditions mentioned above to clarify exactly what you're dealing with.
The Market UI will be reworked to be less confusing, with the buying of items and selling of materials being completely separated into different tabs. General facelift incoming.
That's all I got for now *tips fedora*
Thanks for reading!ːsteamhappyː