This was a tough one to deliver, but April's official content update is finally here, and it's FULLY LOADED. "The Requin" Vessel has arrived, along with a complete overhaul for one of our biomes and a small helping of new cosmetics and bug-fixes! See for yourself on the full changelog below:
Content
A Brand New Vessel: The Requin!
The bigger, bulkier, and well-armed Requin is now available for you to crew for your future expeditions! The Requin is a militaristic submarine meant for those with larger 3-4-man crews; armed with TWO cannons from the start, but without the shielding capabilities of The Crevette. Being bigger comes with its advantages of course, since The Requin also comes with two beds and more breathing space for when things get hectic.
Cursed Waters Biome Overhaul!
The Cursed Water Biome has, for a while, been considered by many of our playerbase to be the ugliest and most tedious biome to start out with. After seeing how the biome was being recieved, we decided to take it upon ourselves to overhaul the whole biome from scratch! The Cursed Waters is no longer the colorless, empty-looking, ghost-filled biome you knew before, but has now taken on a whole new vibrantly spooky look, complete with several new enemy types and mechanic changes!
Here is a summary of some of the new changes to the Cursed Waters Biome:
- No longer does every enemy leave behind a ghost upon death, but only "Cursed" enemies distinguished by their decayed look. We recommend if you see a Cursed enemy to leave it be, because...
- Ghosts are no longer killable! That's right, your weapons cannot harm things that are not from the physical realm. When a ghost spawns, it will seek vengeance by heading towards its' former killer and exploding itself into a ghostly ether of rage.
- Mysterious and wicked Bone Shrines now litter the caves and walls of the Cursed Waters; we advise you leave them alone, for disturbing these shrines will cause dangerous Skeletal Abominations to form from the bones of their resting place!
- Cursed Shipwrecks of pirate voyages long passed still sail these seas, seeking victims to board and plunder with their crews of mold-encrusted pirates.
- A strange Mold will now grow inside your vessel when taking on water, and it has a mind of its own..
New Submarine Tilesets!
Up until now, the submarine floors, backgrounds, and interior decoration has all been done via a single large hand-drawn file that made up the entirety of all decor in the sub. In other words, it's all been hard baked in until now.
I'll be the first to say this was a stupid idea, and since we plan to have many new submarines in the future, a more modular tileset strategy was required, but it also gave opportunity to design a new cooler look for everything! Now all floors are made up of these cutaway view tiles with all the innerworkings and pipework on display, and all decor, pictures, etc. can be hand placed by designers! This will allow for easier creation of subs by our team and may even open up possibilities for sub "skins" in the future!
New Cosmetics!
Four new potential looks for your adventurers have been added to the Catalog, half of which were fan suggestions! Whether you want to showcase your childish side with the Spin Cap, your wicked side with the Voodoo Stovepipe, your sailor side with the Rain Gear, or your pigeon side with the Pigeon Suit, we've gotcha covered!
Fixes
-Our networking system now tries to choose the best possible network adapter to host on when hosting online games by ignoring network adapters designed for VPNs or virtual machines
-Player names can no longer get covered by hair
-Doors no longer produce gore when hit
-Long games and multiple time devourer appearances no longer stops enemies from spawning
-Updated connection tool *should* prevent 5-player games (let us know if it doesn't)
-Minibosses should now show their names and effects properly between host and clients
-Curtains no longer pop open for a moment before closing again when reaching the loadout menu
Balance
-The pump now bails 50% more water per pump
-Siren has been toughened up quite a bit (faster, stronger, attacks more often, hits a lot harder) to make her a more serious threat to be avoided
-Every aformentioned change to the Cursed Waters biome
-Time devourer moves 10% faster to engage the submarine
Regressions
-The "Loading Aventure..." message stops showing for a moment during loading, then comes back
Inside Look: What Goes Into An Update?
Since this update took nearly a whole extra week to get a stable version out to you guys, we thought it might be pertinent to share a little peek into what goes into a content update for We Need To Go Deeper. The following images are of every one of our Source Control pushes (Source Control being a system that allows us to share files,scripts, etc. with one-another as we work remotely), from when we began working on the update to when we finished it. This is not even counting the work that happens outside of these pushes, such as the creation of new sounds, assets, etc. (Though I blacked out spoilers for pushes which involved work for an upcoming update):
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Thanks again to everyone for all of your continous feedback and support! Let us know what you'd like to see next as always, and of course keep us updated in the forums regarding any new bugs that may prop up. We're gonna need y'all testing this particular update extra thoroughly, as adding a new submarine has proven to be one of the biggest undertakings, and many, MANY systems had to be reworked to support it, so we fully expect there to be a few things out of place. Let us know what those things are as soon as possible, so we can patch 'em up quick!
Stay alert, comrades.