Welcome to the Blessings & Burdens update!
TL;DR ? Watch the v0.5 Trailer here
The City of Brass is filled with danger and death, but not everyone who comes to the City arrives for the same reasons. While treasure is an attraction, there are those who would prefer to explore, others who live for thrill of battle.
Blessings & Burdens allow players to tailor the game to the experience and level of challenge that they desire. We hope that the combination of Blessings & Burdens make the game fun & accessible for players of all skill levels.
Blessings
Blessings make the game overall easier, and can be enabled from the outset.
- Proficient - Increase Player Damage
- Hardy - Increase Player Health
- Intimidating - Fewer Enemies
- Fortunate - Decrease Number of Traps
- Discerning - Increase Drop of Rarer Items
- Helpful - Reduce all Genie Costs
- Leisurely - Remove the Time Limit
- Confounding - Decrease Enemy Attack Rate
Burdens
Burdens make the game harder, and must be unlocked.
- Breakneck - Increase Enemy Movement Speed
- Deadline - Halve the Time Limit
- Deadly - Double Enemy Damage
- Eclipse - Always Night
- Excessive - Double Number of Traps
- Rebirth - Enemies Respawn
- Stout - Double Enemy Health
- Unhelpful - Halve Number of Genies Spawned
While Burdens have been in previous builds of City of Brass, Blessings are a new addition, inspired and informed by player feedback.
More New Stuff!
Of course, it's not just about the Blessings! We've also been working hard , adding new features, fixes and addressing more community feedback!
Headline Features:
- 8 new Divine Blessings allow players to create an game experience tuned to their skill level and style of play.
- Blessings Leaderboards - Turning on any of the Divine Blessings means your scores are logged to separate leaderboards.
- New Flying Mini Boss
New Features:
- Added a local high score system, leaderboards now shows an in game interface which shows both steam based leaderboards and your top 10 local scores.
- Improved Controller Support; Sticky Targeting & Soft Lock and Rumble
- Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.18.2
- Genie Character Model - he looks so much better and has a cool mustache!
- Gardens Fountains and Waterfalls - Part of the original design for the Gardens, the waterfalls and fountains add to the lush
- Sliding now breaks destructible objects and causes the player to stand up
- Our interfaces now show your current username and level
- VFX and SFX for enemy bodies disintegrating
- Added a safe zone adjustment screen
Community Feedback and Tuning:
- Divine Burden requirements reduced in some cases to make them easier to achieve
- Climbing System improvements, its is now even more reliable. In particular the cases where if you faced into the wall and it failed are now fixed. Also polished the climb animation to follow the camera view better.
- Exit arrow design changed to help be more clear which way it was pointing.
- Journal entries in each category are now sorted alphabetically based on unlocked entries only. When going back from an entry to its category, the menu will stay highlighted over that entry.
- Vessel of Vigor gear icon now shows visual indication of progress
- Charmed enemies and companions now will earn you experience and count as kills towards the Vessel of Vigor
- Knocking or pulling enemies into traps will also now award you experience and count as kills toward the Vessel of Vigor.
- Sympathetic sword damage rate reduced slightly
- Breath of Disintegration no longer will hurt you through walls
- Improved 'Eclipse' Divine Burden lighting theme
- Reduced controller deadzone and reconfigured turn speed increments to make it easier to make slight targeting changes.
- Shove animation timing changed to have a longer draw back and hold before firing.
- Animation Glitches when player is crouching, jumping and throwing fixed.
- All Swing Actors under Archways moved to a consistent 650 units above the ground.
- Mercenary and Charmed AI improvements. They better respond to threats and will no longer accidently target each other.
- General AI v AI improvements. AI can now hear each other and will more easily engage each other. They will also change targets more often based on what they sense last if they are not in combat.
Performance Optimizations:
- Scene Capture of Direction Arrow used approx 20% of GPU Time, moved to 2D HUD element.
- Optimize Sand Trap Effects
- AI Distance culling system
- AI Animation Update optimization
- Trap activation distance optimization
- AI Sensing system optimised to be 50% faster
- Shader Model 4 optimized shaders for low end systems
- Optimization of Depth Collision on Particle systems (creating unnecessary load on lower end CPUs)
- Removed performance hitch when opening doors, especially into large areas.
Fixes:
- Divine Burdens for Unhelpful and Excessive now work correctly
- Audio will no longer go silent or click loudly when you lower the the in game volume
- In game audio settings now all function
- Fixed audio being wrong when returning back to the main menu
- Tutorial now supports gamepad key icons and shows the currently bound key, even if it is different from default.
- Fixed the Column of Shredding blocking the players path when traps are disabled. They now lower. This stops the cases where they would block exit or entry into doors and block progression.
- Fixed the Pool of Searing blocking the path for the exit arrow.
- Fixed the game looking like it was in a lower resolution on ultra graphics
- Fixed journal entries not unlocking if they were given as part of a level up reward
- Fixed lightning sword effects auto starting even if the extra powers of the sword were not active.
- Fixed the exit arrow in the tutorial not working
- Fixed impeding whip being able to kill an enemy if you constantly hit it
- Fixed loot not being able to be instantly picked up when falling out of destructibles
- Fixed Zombie Chicken audio to play more in sequence and not use the other enemy sounds in some cases
- Fixed AIs who were close to the Zombie Chicken when taunted, not turning to face them.
- Fix many cases of the player death animation sequence not playing or going through the ground
- Stopped some mini bosses, companions, genie spawned enemies and zombie chickens from respawning via the divine burden.
- Fixed poison damage making the shield effects from the ?? from flickering on and off constantly
- Fixed the gear bar not showing up after respawning via the Hourglass Necklace
- Fixed being able to pause and other inputs during loading
- Fixed Brass Knuckles damaging the same enemy multiple times in one shove
- Fixed passive AIs running into the Jaws of Impediment
- Fix cases where the game would not update achievements correctly and it will now do so on every launch and after every game.
- Fixed cases where AIs were not playing their patrol sounds.
- Fixed cases where some AIs would still patrol even if they were very far away.
- Fixed being able to dodge or do some other movement actions whilst hooked by enemies
- Fixed AIs no correctly targeting allies of the player, if the player is no longer a valid target
- Fixed some boss ais being charmed
- Fix allied AIs not changing targets when their target changes sides. This meant allied AIs would sometimes kill each other.
- Fix genies spawning directly across from secret entrances in one width corridors causing a blockage.
- Fixed broken navigation on two height stairs in room platforms.
- Stopped genies spawning next to low walls (the UI was clipping them sometimes).
Phew!
We hope you enjoy this new update!
Cheers,
The Uppercut Team