Things are getting steamy with March's official Content Update! This is our first big content update and although most of our time this past month has been utilized to fix bugs and push some big patches, we think you guys will be happy with just how much we managed to stuff into this hot plate. Take a look!
Content
The Volcanic Depths Biome! - The hot, dangerous, and jungle-like Volcanic Depths are now here for your crew to explore! A variety of new dangers await in this new dark third layer - from Gigantic Armored Tortoises to Nefarious Sea Monkeys, to Gaseous Vents that litter the walls and the very water itself which will boil you alive if you let too much of it in your vessel. This new biome will show your crew the meaning of pain.
New Universal Enemies! - These are enemies that will catch you off guard no matter what biome you may be in, in order to keep some of the more experienced crews on their toes. From Ensaring Bubbles to Sneaky Hermit Crabs, players navigating any area should be at the ready.
The Rivet Gun! - An all-new tool has been added to the roster in the form of this state-of-the-art Rivet Gun: An Engineer's Best Friend! This bulky fella can repair leaks and dents from a distance, and a good one at that - though it's not advised for use in combat - the rivets it fires are known to mostly annoy enemies more than it harms them.
A Loop-Exclusive Enemy! - For those skilled enough to make it to the Time Portal, a nasty surprise awaits you and your crew in the form of a monstrous new enemy type...
New Customization Items! - A variety of new hats and costumes have been added to the game; many of which have been fan requests! Including a new hat type: Masks! From Tiki masks to Dramatic Theatre masks to technological marvels like the Gas Mask, now you can finally hide your shameful face from the world!
Bubbles! - Last but not least, our underwater game now finally features bubbles! Bubbles everywhere! We've got bubbles to liven up the outside world, bubbles for boiling, bubbles for propellers, bubbles for DAYS.
Fixes
- Fixed a bug which was causing gore to be continuously activated and deactivated over and over offscreen, causing increasing performance slowdowns over time. This fix has caused big framerate increases, especially late in the game!
- Added more redundancy to reduce the chance of hazards spawning on top of one another.
- Freed up hazard spawn points whose hazard has been destroyed for reuse (very useful for giant bubbles).
- Fixed one source of unfixable leaks caused by scaling problems.
- Fixed those dumb little graphical artifact dots on the submarine's lights.
- Fixed bug which could cause massive packet buffering if traffic was preventing the music manager from sending over the next music change command.
- Fixed a problem where floating enemies which had spawned from inside chests were unable to be un-spawned over the network after leaving a cave.
- Fixed a similar graphical glitch to the "blue overlay" glitch found by some users in the catalog scene.
- Fixed that annoying bug which allowed torpedoes to explode when hitting teeny tiny rock particles.
- Fixed several costume pivots to stop underwear from showing around edges of an outfit.
Balance
- The submarine is now 20% heavier (we didn't call it hot and HEAVY for nothin'!) and has 50% less linear drag. Driving is a much more engaged job and crashing is easier!
- The submarine's max speed before upgrades is now 2.8 times base speed rather than 3.
- The effects of adding power to the cannon are much more pronounced.
Each power added above 1 increases the cannon rotation speed by 25% (a 3-powered cannon spins at 150% of base speed).
- The submarine's shields recharge faster when more power is added, 12.5% per power unit above 1.
- The submarine's base shield recharge rate has been decreased to accommodate the previous balance.
- The Barnacle Harvester is now a "Stopper" type hazard. Rather than punching the sub over and over, it now grabs the sub and hangs onto it until being killed with torpedoes.
- Water effects now take into account player number. The time between spawning ghost fish, placing ice on doors, etc. is now significantly more influenced by players, as is the total number of water effects spawnable.
-The rate at which enemy spawning decisions is calculated is now better tied to player number.
- The total number of spawnable enemies is better tied to player number.
- Hull upgrade adds 5 hull integrity rather than 10.
- Engine upgrade increases speed 5% rather than 7.5%
- Shield upgrades increase shield recharge rate 5% rather than 7.5%
- Cannon rotation upgrades increase cannon rotation speed 5% rather than 7.5%
- Many enemies' sight distances and speeds have been changed in response to the new driving.
Player Of The Month
This was a particularly tough choice for us, as so many of you have been so helpful and contributed to the forum discussions in many ways over the course of our first month of release! Seriously, the community has been astounding and we couldn't be happier to have you guys. It eventually came down to those of you who have been helping us in even more tangible ways - aka helping us answer repeated bug reports, helping direct people to places where they can find help, and even creating a thread for said help! And with that, our Player of the Month for March is none other than Ketrai!
Ketrai has contributed in bulk in this short first month we've been released - having set up a very helpful FAQ Thread on the Steam Forums, Constantly adding content and managing edits to the Official Wiki for the game, having become an admin over at the Wiki recently! He is also ever-present on the forums, answering the questions of other users or clarifying misunderstandings whenever he can. He's also contributed a ton of feedback in the feedback section, a lot of which led us to many of the balance changes in this very update! Ketrai will be recieving 4 copies of We Need to Go Deeper for his efforts; Thanks for helping us out!
With that said, we want to throw out an additional Special Mention to Steam user THEE_PIANO_MAN - who has served as our first ever Forum Moderator, and has similarly helped us out a TON with repeat bug reports and issues, and has helped spread his friendly and helpful attitude among the forums as a whole! THEE_PIANO_MAN will be recieving 2 extra copies of the game as well to celebrate his contributions!
Thanks again to all of you, and we hope you like the update! Let us know in the comments and forums as usual, and help us keep improving We Need to Go Deeper!