Background
Hi everyone! I wanted to start by saying thank you for all the support and love that so many of you have given to Sketchy’s Contract. I am truly grateful to have such an amazing community and can’t wait to get so many more amazing updates out that I have planned!
With that said, I must sadly announce that Controller Support has been delayed as I have run into issues with Steam’s APIs and I will be working with Steam to see what options there are to address it. This does not necessarily mean that Controller Support will never happen, but that it simply requires more time, and I will not be able to say how long that time will be. I know this news will sadden many who prefer/need controller and I am very sorry to have to bring you this news.
As for the rest of the update, let’s get right into it!
NEW
- Port Coral Map Design Overhaul – Pirate Bay Theme
- Solo Revive - If the med gen is installed in solo play, a UI prompt will appear on death asking the player if they would like to revive or return to orbit.
- New Harvesting System - 15 new herbs to gather (up from 2 previously) with each planet having 3 unique herbs, each with different quota values. The higher the value the rarer the chance to spawn (This excludes Sector Zero currently).
- A new “Computer Terminal” has been added to the Med Bay that allows players to call the ship down during night shifts to end the night shift early. The Terminal is only active between 2AM and 6AM.
- Sketchy’s Belt has an updated look with a new NPC to help new players get started. Go say hi!
- Scanning a creature now displays a health bar. This will help with strategizing combat encounters and allowing players to crunch numbers more effectively rather than relying on the number of weapons smacks it takes to kill this creature which gets inconsistent due to the scaling of creature health anyway.
- New Purchasable Item - Echo Lens: A small holographic monitor will deploy that allows players to see outlines of access crates and dead player bodies from any distance and through walls.
- Purchased weapons now have a quota value worth 10% of their purchase price, which can prove useful when you are just shy of completing the contract.
- New materialization effects have been added to player resurrection, spawning, and changing suits.
- New Emotional Support - Sphynx cat!
- The Main Menu now displays the current game version with a small list of highlights.
AUDIO
- Melee Weapons now have “swing” sound effects associated with them to give melee combat more weight.
- Added new Night Shift ambience to add more suspense and eeriness to the immersive experience.
- Added new ambience to Port Coral such as ocean wave sounds, seagulls, and more.
- Added UI sound effects.
- The Rubber Duck toy now makes a squeaky sound when placed.
- The Toilet can now be FLUSHED!.
General
UPDATES
- Optimization of shadows on lower end GPUs (low and medium settings) significantly improving FPS.
- Players should see a massive performance increase with dead bodies in the ship with the following improvements which should significancy help with performance especially when players have lots of dead bodies on the ship:
- Dead bodies that are placed consume up to 10 times less the amount of resource to render them.
- Dead bodies that are not placed (jiggle physics), consume roughly 3 times less the amount of resource to render them.
General
- The Suit Level Cap has been increased to from Level 30 to Level 50!
- Suit Modification UI has been updated and now displays additional information about your character such as a progress bar, Max Level, and Max Rank title.
- Credits rewarded from the Happy Meal have been adjusted to scaled for group sizes 1-4 with 5-8 players remaining unaffected. 50% increase for solo, 30% for 2 players, 15% for 3 players, and 10% for 4 players respectively. I have made this change to help solo players and small groups that are naturally at a disadvantage compared to large groups (5 or more players).
- Players can now place multiple placable items such as plush and furniture back-to-back without needing to go to the Ship Bed for each instance of that same item.
- Life Form hologram models in Sketchy’s Data will no longer be displayed until the life form is scanned and discovered. This will keep each creature a complete mystery until encountered.
- Egg Drop Off has been visually updated to make it more clear to players where they should place pet eggs that they found at the pet vender.
- Crouching now smoothly transitions the camera perspective rather than snapping.
- Port Lumin Water is more Transparent now which was making seeing actors such as mines, player dead bodies, and loot hard to spot.
- You can now place dead teammates in the Meat Freezer to shrink them!
- Items now attach to surfaces they are placed onto. For example: if an item is placed rather than dropped onto the elevator, that item will move with the elevator rather than be left behind.
- The compass ship icon has been updated.
- Server name and password length is now limited to 40 characters.
- Elevators/Transporters that lead to Higher Level areas are now locked behind security level access. i.e. You’ll need to unlock level 1 access to take the level 1 transport to the level 1 area.
- Held Items are now invisible while using the Ragdoll Emote.
- Held items are now invisible when experimented on by a Shrink Ray.
- Mines are now scannable from a short distance.
- The Suit Modification Skin in your ship now reflects the skin you actively have set (client side only).
- UI Keybind text such as the Ship Nav, Claw Machine, etc., has been updated to reflect the current bind for the Keyboard set by the player.
- When completing a contract, the audio will be heard on all clients.
Enemies
- Jelloti has a new weakness. The poor guy just can't contain himself around music.
- Dopplegangers now copy a random player’s name and current cosmetic color to further confuse their prey.
- Doppelgangers now carry 3 different weapons (Flamingo, Pickaxe, and Shovel). However, Doppelgangers carrying stronger weapons are much more dangerous, i.e. the pickaxe is much more deadly than the flamingo. But dangerous Dopplegangers come with an additional reward! When killed, they will drop the weapon they were carrying! Yes, killing a doppelganger with a pickaxe will spawn a pickaxe for you to loot.
- Pew Pew now has a short grace period after shooting its missiles to prevent RNG of back-to-back missiles chaining.
- Pew Pew is now attracted to Boomboxes that players are holding and actively playing. During this time, Pew Pew cannot initiate “System Error” and will follow its target contently. HOWEVER, attacking Pew Pew or turning off the music while it is content will greatly anger it.
- Night Walkers and Subject 6’s no longer scales health based on “Security Level”. Night Shift is considered a “New Level” that players opt into trying to survive. Night Shift creatures should inherently be set to a higher difficulty than generic creatures during the daytime.
- Certain enemies such as Night Walkers and Subject 6 will now have a player detection grace period of 3 seconds depicted by a hologram fade in effect and associated sound. This provides ample time to react.
- Tectoniss mechanic has been changed. When the ground begins rumbling nearby, players can now stand still for the duration of the rumble and avoid being eaten. However, if 1 or more players moves while the tremor is active, Tectoniss will emerge. Additional, sense Tectonics can be completely avoided or maneuvered, it is now an instant kill if you make a mistake.
- Small crabs and small fish are now 1-handed carries. AI in other planets will also receive a 1-handed conversion in future updates. This will make it more profitable to kill outdoor creatures while herbing, digging, and mining.
- Swimming/Flying AI logic for following players has been redesigned for more accurate replication of movement between clients.
- Swimming/Flying AI now detect players swimming close to them.
Map Design
- Map Looting Design is moving to be more Non-Linear. This means that there is no such thing as a "Main Building" anymore. Access Crates can be found anywhere on the map. I wanted Sketchy's to be about exploration and adventure, not sending players down a singular linear path. Security levels are still a thing, but even those areas have access crates outside as well.
- For clarification, Access Crates have a chance to spawn codes. Codes are not predetermined to spawn into a random crate (this is the Non-Linear aspect of looting). The chance to spawn is increased the less players there are in the group. Sense a large group can split up and open crates at a faster rate, small groups such as solo can expect to have a higher chance of getting a code to balance that out.
- Level 3 building in Port Coral now have Unqiue Pirate Loot that is very valuable, making them worth opening even if you don't need an egg. This change will apply to the other maps through the coming updates.
- Level 3 will now always spawn loot if there is no Pet Egg inside.
- Pet Egg spawn chance has increased and now scales with Quota starting at 10% on first quota going up to 40% spawn chance at the 10th quota. Only 1 egg can spawn per NEW day (landing directly from orbit).
- Sector Zero has new ambience pipe sounds to create a more lively experience.
- Gaia has received some updates to its terrain and layout making it easier and more intuitive to traverse.
Gathering
- The Gathering camera perspective now blends exactly to where the player’s camera is rather than to a predefined camera angle. The predefined camera angle was awkward and sometimes disorienting when performing actions such as digging back-to-back in areas of dense buried loot.
- Gathering underwater now simulates camera movement for better immersion. The old build had a static perspective which was confusing to the player as to whether gathering was working or not.
- Gatherable Procedural generation spawn chance has been updated to scale with the quota i.e. the higher the quota the higher the chance for gatherables to spawn.
- Gatherable Procedural spawn density has been increased allowing for large clusters of gatherables based on how high the spawn chance is. This will help reduce the chance of running around with very little gatherables to find in the open world.
- Editable Herbs have been renamed to “Oxygenated Herb” and no longer provide healing.
- Oxygenated Herbs now have 2 variations: Strong and Weak. Strong herbs provide 30% O2 with 25 Quota while Weak Herbs provide 10% O2 with 10 Quota.
- Non-Edible herbs now spawn in 3 different variations each unique to the specific site the player landed on with the highest valued variation being the lowest spawn chance and common variations having high spawn chance.
LIGHTING
- Night Vision lighting has been reworked. Players should notice a significant difference in visibility when using Night Vision.
- Night Shift lighting has been updated to create a spooky atmosphere making flashlight / night vision very fitting to the horror aesthetic and gameplay.
- Overall Lighting has been adjusted in various scenes for Low and Medium settings to help lighten up dark areas.
Performance
FIXES
- Fixed an issue where access codes would sometimes not spawn on the very last found crate resulting in the player(s) being unable to progress deeper into the level and needing to return to orbit.
- Fixed an issue where weapon charms were not unequipped.
- Fixed an issue where AI audio would sometimes continue to play even after death for certain AI.
- Fixed an issue where the small lizard type Neutral AI was not able to be scanned.
- Fixed an issue where scanned info would not disappear if the object it belonged to despawned too quickly.
- Fixed an issue where dead player bodies could be picked up while being revived at the med bay.
- Fixed an issue where jetpack would not cancel when flying into a building.
- Fixed an issue where some graphic settings were not loading properly when starting up the game.
- Fixed an issue where the ship progress report displayed collected quota as the total amount on the ship rather than what was collected by the player.
- Fixed an issue where closing the session as host on a multiplayer session was not saving the weapons /items dropped by the connected clients as a result ending the session.
- Fixed an issue where Elizabeth was reading as “Venosaur” when scanned and displaying Claustropede as the discovered life form.
- Fixed an issue where AI were not resetting their health properly when leaving combat.
- Fixed an issue allowing items dropped into the drop off box to stack too high and break out of the intended threshold.
- Fixed an issue where the “SCN” command on the ship computer was counting loot that it shouldn’t.
- Fixed an issue where players would not get teleported if they stepped onto the teleporter after it initiated.
- Fixed an issue where credits shown when purchasing an item were not updated until the UI was closed and reopened.
- Fixed various areas in Sector Zero where players could fall through gaps on level 1.
- Fixed an issue where poisonous frogs were not replicating the poison particle effect to clients.
- Fixed an issue where the Medical Generator was registering as a quota in the Ship Total.
- Fixed an issue where the pulse rifle could not deal damage through the water at Port Lumin.
- Fixed an issue where scanning eggs showed the wrong name.
- Fixed an issue where searching session by ID was not working (Public Lobbies only).
- Fixed an issue where underwater audio was not turned on/off when entering/exiting with a jetpack active.
- Fixed an issue where the Jetpack FOV did not return to player specified FOV if cancelled while sprinting.