Color Fear needs more time before release.
Before i go on and on let me give you the TLDR: Game needed to be optimized and more buildings needed to be made, and shots and other things are still missing. Although a lot has been done, the game is at about 85% completion but the last 15% when done still needs shot, tested and tweaked so i know by release the game is enjoyable!
Final Release Date Feb 19th!
A Bit More Detailed Plan of What Remains
What remains to be done is mostly filming and production. There are a lot more scenes that need to be shot, voiced, SFX'ed, and edited: around 18 more scenes for Act 3 and about 2-4 for Act 2.
Also:
Fingy needs its calamity (being worked on currently).
Five more youth levels need to be made. Each is simple but requires animations and design work.
The youth kids need to be voice acted by real people and not me, so I need to find some VA's and have those lines recorded.
Translation for the rest of the game needs to be done afterward, followed by testing those translations.
Achievements need to be implemented and tested.
Most of what needs to be done will likely be finished around the end of December to early Jan. When it's done, I'll come back here and tell you the game is "gold" and in its final testing for release!
For anyone that would like to playtest color fear before release, please follow my Twitter or IG and ill post more details on the playtest before release! (Probably mid January).
Wishlist to Support Color Fear also the Demo is still available!
Here is a bit of an update of what I've been working on recently for Color Fear!
During the new demo update, I got a lot of feedback on issues with Color Fear. There were a lot fewer issues than when the first demo version launched, but that's not saying much, lol.
Anyway, anytime there was a big issue, like enemy or item spawning, it would bug the shit out of me. Not in the sense of getting mad at the player, but in the sense of, "How the hell do I fix this complex issue if I've gone through every iteration of a fix or idea?"
Color Fear spawns items and intruders in kind of the same, but different, way. The items and enemies spawn similarly only initially; then, after the first point, the way they are placed in the map is different since one is a character and the other is an actor. I keep it as randomized as possible so I won't know which room or what part of a room an enemy can spawn in, so it can scare me, too. But with this complex ask comes complex problems.
I just found a major fix on enemy spawning. So, if an enemy spawns somewhere they were not supposed to, they will be sent to respawn back into the navmesh of the building the player is in. Besides that, I also implemented a couple of tools to check and see if the intruder and items are spawning in beatable positions.
Now that we have that problem fixed (hopefully!), then comes the other issue that was mentioned a bit more after, which was optimization. Color Fear has small maps that felt good with my current optimization, but anytime a map gets bigger, the optimization issues become more apparent. The source of some of the issues were textures, lights, and TVs.
So, I went in for a week and a half on optimization (two weeks? I don't remember). I started by converting most of the textures to be more efficient, but more can also be done here. This will be done before release so I know there aren't any remaining asset changes that I also need to optimize.
Next: Lights! Lights are the biggest problem for optimization. Even though I had them all optimized, they needed even more. So, I created a segmenting optimization system that can be used to segment the building into floors or sides. That system can then just "Disable all lights from rendering" when you are not near their floor or side of the building. Currently, it's more general and big, but I would like to make it a bit more specific so I can have it be even more optimized. Well, this system basically allows for buildings to be bigger and have more lights while running optimized. This also allows me to even more optimize all current buildings to run better! I also implemented a quick idea that any side of the building or floor a fire is on, the light of the fire can be optimized to that part of the building during gameplay!
Lastly, in optimization, and probably something that I shouldn't have let go to the wayside but didn't know could be more optimized, was how the TVs render their videos and UI. I just had to change some options on the way it renders itself, and I also had to implement a distance system that can change the tick of something and its render rate depending on distance. This allowed for a huge FPS jump that I didn't know could be possible, which I also then started to use in other parts of the game to optimize them!
After writing this shit on just optimization, you can tell sometimes you just don't know how far you have to take it; for a game to feel better to play. (time just seems to fly by)
Ill go a bit faster on these other topics (This would be like a 13 page doc if i didn't)
Door animations got fixed to be smoother!
Fires are now more optimized and have actual lights with more realistic light function materials
Balloons and water calamities have also been more optimized (A bit more work is still required on the water calamity to work well (It works at the moment but could use improvements) since the system is a bit complicated)
Screams and all audio that loops is now seamless looping instead of having harsh pauses then looping
I implemented a system to have multiple room spawn points for not only the player but items and intruders can now use these initial new points for their spawning process.
I also implemented a system for building size that will scale intruder abilities, spawn rates and other things depending on the current buildings size.
A lot of other small bugs and texture issues around the maps were fixed
Added in features like disabling head bob, bigger In game UI and Thicker sliders for UI elements
Fixed audio issues for the audio settings and sliders
Multi door system that allows for multiple door looks and designs while retaining its functionality
Improved Item and Intruder Spawning
Updated steam page to more reflect Color Fear's vibe
Improved movement for photo to stop him from killing you after moving behind you
New trailer for halloween "Soon"
During the process of working on all the stories of each show, I felt they had a bit more to tell. Rather than leaving these parts of their stories to feel vague, I want the player to really know what is going on.
So, I added two new maps besides the other two that were already made. One is called Mansion, and the other is Spoiler (so I can't name it!).
As you can imagine, the Mansion is not a small building. I believe it has around 15 rooms that items and players can spawn in. These new buildings were needed to tell the story of what is going on in this place. However, each one took some real time to make since they are a significant departure from the current buildings' look and size.
No other game buildings will be made besides these so you don't have to worry about map feature creep i feel satisfied with these maps!
I think a great quote goes something like a shitty released game will be remembered as shit forever but a delayed good game is always thought as good
"If a flower blooms in the wrong season is it a failure or a miracle"
Final Release Date Feb 19th!
Anyways here are some updated screenshots for color fear and the new areas and calamities. (some stuff might change but probably not by much)
Warning new maps, calamity and Intruder spoilers!
Wishlist to Support Color Fear also Demo is still available!
Also some songs I've been listening to (Venturing - Play my guitar) (UFO - Phoenix) (True Lust - WonderBag) (Time Today - Kero Kero Bonito) (Infinite Source - Deftones) (Wing Chime - Christopher Emond) (Breakthespell - Mk.gee). My music taste is like that jelly bean game where you might get some random ass flavor but i do really like these songs!