Beta 10 - Massive story mode overhauls
Developer commentary:
This is the biggest update ever to story mode so far. For the first time ever, I actually enjoy playing story mode more than arcade mode. Ever since Alpha 1.10, story mode felt like I was slapping half-baked roguelike elements on to the combat system instead of them complementing each other, for the sake of having roguelike elements. This may be the very first update where I'm excited for someone to try playing story mode, like it's something I actually want to show off.
The magnitude of programming, playtesting, iterating, and caffeine consumption over the past weeks has been some of the most I've ever done in my life. Even though I'm no longer the person creating most of the actual content in this team anymore, it's still up to me to create, maintain, and upgrade all the tools and systems for these new and upcoming features, so my work hasn't really gotten much lighter; it's just changed direction.
This is also the first major update released after P4 Studios has officially been formed as an LLC, and we're still just finding our footing as a team. Acting as both project manager and lead developer is a tough task, since I need to put most of my focus on programming, but I've also need to split it into every aspect of running a small studio and trying to get it off the ground. However, having team members, each with their own specialization and focus, has been a massive help since I no longer need to dedicate as much attention to those areas that they now lead. Christian has nearly singlehandedly created all the new enemy archetypes and spawns, as well as helping spearhead this story mode overhaul. Kelvin's been writing a majority of the new content that is yet to be implemented in-game, I'm excited to show that off when it's ready. Daniella's been working on finalizing Clairvoyance's artistic identity and revamping old art assets. Most of our work so far has been setup, but I can't wait for us to really start operating at full force.
-Dan
More so than the other weeks I've worked here, this has been the most rewarding and thrilling period of development. Having an idea and actually seeing it to fruition is among the richest joys I've ever felt and that feeling is multiplied tenfold knowing that any number of people playing this game could experience the work that the team and I crafted for them. I wouldn't trade these memories for anything, and to think that I'm going to do even more in the future... what a time to be me! I sincerely hope that the designing, number tweaking, and organization I've done for all of the enemies, bosses, gene mods, items, characters, and areas come together to make story mode the most fun it's ever been. My goal going forward is to stand on the foundation of the work we've done here in order to improve the experience even more.
-Christian (Voduke)
Story Mode
-Difficulty clarity multipliers increased from 25/50/75/100% to 50/75/90/100% for easy/medium/hard/insane modes
-Added new virtue "temperance", which rewards you with clarity for refusing to take any items or gene mods
-All dead end rooms are now guaranteed to have a loot token on it
-After 15 turns in one sector, elite hunters start spawning at the start of the sector
-Beating a sector's checkpoint will destroy the path to the previous sector
-Guard tokens no longer are visible outside of your spatial sense range
-Added an indicator to map nodes warning if guards will move there next turn (also only visible in spatial sense)
-Reduced map sectors from 4 to 3
-Created handcrafted enemy spawns for story mode
-Rotated map to go from bottom to up instead of left to right
-Hovering over your character portrait in-game now shows clarity gains per instance
-Secure containment monster is now on an independent team, and will fight regular enemies in addition to the player
Gameplay Additions
-Added "mutant" enemy, a boss enemy with a soulslike attack pattern
-Added "leaper" enemy, a disruptor miniboss
-Added shotgun weapon and shotgunner enemy type
-Added automatic shotgun weapon and automatic shotgunner boss enemy type
New gene mods:
-Laminar Dermal Plating (epic): completely nullify the first few hits you take every level
-Limb Expanders (uncommon): increase your attack hitbox sizes
-Reflex Amplifier (rare): increase parry window by a flat duration
-Aggression Reflex (epic): when parrying, reflect health damage instead of balance damage
-Added "defender" enemy AI, who will keep distance, and trigger its attack mode when another enemy is low HP.
Balancing/adjustments
Attacks
-Buffed high roundhouse kick base speed from 0.35s to 0.30s
-Buffed punch finisher base speed from 0.40s to 0.30s
-Snap kick damage nerfed from 50 to 40
-Ground slam now lands at the target's horizontal position
Gene mods
-Synaptic Overclock rework: slomo activates when you are inside an enemy attack warning circle
-Nanomachine regeneration shield regen speed scales with difficulty so that it has the same effective regeneration for each difficulty
-Rebalanced most gene mods in accordance with their rarity and intended power level
-Bleeding is now lethal
-Parrying across the board now deals more damage to your opponent's balance meter
-Adjusted knockback on attacks so that attacks that are less horizontally angled have less horizontal knockback
-Buffed tank foresight
-Updated animations for roundhouse, high kick, and low kick
-Pistol enemy now has a longer delay between whips
-Head movement on controller now scales with the analog stick
-Dashing speed while moving past enemies reduced by half so it costs more total energy
-Cybernetic enemies nerfed to only have 1 charge of morphine instead of 2
-Lowered default chances of enemies dropping items
-Gave special enemies larger chances of dropping items
Arcade Mode
-Made rarer gene mods significantly less rare
Progression
-Added metacurrency that persists in your save file
-Can be used to buy files from the "secrets" page
-Some secret files upon unlocking are no longer immediately accessible, but rather they become available to buy
-Reorganized martial style progression system to use this metacurrency (character unlock progression will be reworked later)
Visuals and UI
-Energy bar is now displayed above HP bar, and has been made more prominent
-Map panning is no longer locked while map tokens are moving. It now only locks if the player gets forced into a fight.
-Player clarity is now represented as a bar instead of a slider
-Added eyes on character model
-Some enemies will spawn with cosmetics
-Updated trial selection page visuals
-Adjusted a handful of gene mod names
-Made most minor warnings show up as temporary red mouse tooltips instead of a huge distracting banner notification
-Nonclairvoyant base color changed to white
-Your displayed HP value rounds up (eg: 0.4HP displays as 1HP instead of 0HP)
-Berserker effect red screen tint removed, replaced with red eye color
-Darkness trial now has a dark grey background
-Map token animations have a lower maximum speed so it's easier to tell what's moving where
-Replaced in-game font with a new one that is easier to read
-Adjusted the descriptions of a few trials
Bugfixes
-Knife bleed damage now scales with difficulty
-Fixed attack hitbox not always hitting the lowest HP enemy it overlaps (the code was complete but had a typo at the return statement lol)
-Present enemies are now invisible and intangible for a split second after the enemy spawns
-Mostly reduced or eliminated enemy present visual jittering
-Removed test enemy spawns accidentally left in story mode
-Fixed losing clarivoyance strength at double the intended amount when you lost any clarity
-Fixed notification not being centered in non-1920x1080 resolutions
-Fixed issue where enemy outlines were still visible in the "Darkness" trial
-Fixed bug in style select page where the parry stats would not hide themselves when displaying a locked page
-Fixed sandbox mode spawning the player with incorrect camera offset and size
-Fixed resuming game from pause menu in sandbox mode removing all the sandbox mode buttons
-Fixed controller right stick not moving the map view
-Fixed weapon durability being drained when using punch/stomp finisher moves
-Mouse now hides when controller is connected
-Fixed map UI not displaying the gamepad map controls when a gamepad is connected
-Fixed issue in cosmetics selection where an old outline would not go away if you swap to a cosmetic that does not use an outline
-Fixed overworld map room connection graphics not always being in the correct positions
-Fixed overworld map panning controls sometimes becoming stuck after finishing a room
-Fixed hidden guard tokens affecting the positioning of the visible ones, inadvertantly letting you know they are there
-Fixed outdated keybind for unlocking mouse
-Fixed keybind for parrying displaying as block + dash (default: move + spacebar). Parry is simply block + spacebar by default.
-Fixed forceFromCenter attack areas always applying knockback in only one direction
-Kevlar renamed to Aramid because Kevlar is trademarked