Happy New Year 2025!
Patch 9 brings a host of improvements and removes the Christmas update.
Development update
Development on Difficulties and the Demo is ahead of schedule, so expect to see Difficulties around the end of January and a Demo in February! Chapter 2 is heavy in development too, and on track for an end of year release. I also want to upgrade the engine to UE5.5 and introduce 'megalights' - a big boost in aesthetics and performance in lighting, BUT it's too unstable at the moment. Hopefully I can release this upgrade before Chapter 2's release though, but it depends on Epic's patches to the engine.
General
- A door once locked is now open... Due to popular demand.
- Difficulty balance improvement: Slightly reduced total wood resources in Chapter 1 for a tenser experience.
- Some wood resources and hideout locations have been moved for an optimised player experience.
- Optimised the way Portcullis gates update the nav mesh.
- Reduced required wood to achieve the second pickup achievement, in preparation for the upcoming Difficulties. This will allow hard/permadeath mode players to achieve it, even with reduced wood in those difficulties.
UI and Art
- When viewing cutscenes, pressing any button now briefly shows the 'BUTTON to SKIP'.
- The skipping progress bar in cutscenes has improved presentation.
- An autosave icon will animate in the top corner of the screen when autosaving occurs.
- Areas with rain now appear wetter.
- Some subtle art mesh changes.
- Lighting updates.
- Saving now also includes what difficulty you're saving with, in preparation for the upcoming Difficulties. It will appear as 'Normal' now.
Performance
- Lightning flashes are now less FPS intensive.
- Water in the crypts has less tesselation for a minor performance boost.