Hello everyone,
Phase 4 is now live!
A full dev interview and Phase 4 preview is available on YouTube, and full details are available both below and on our website.
Steam will automatically start 467MB download and install this update.
You'll find the central feedback thread HERE
Enjoy,
The DTG Team
PS: do take screenshots if you catch a leather carp. They're very rare!
Updated Physics Engine
Phase 4 introduces our new physics engine. This means that every aspect of our casting, reeling, fish behaviour and line behaviour has had to be tweaked and rebalanced. The change was required to give us the granularity in behaviour that we needed for our line and reeling. Reeling is now force based so, just as in real life, it will be impossible to reel against a fish that is pulling very strongly against you. Hopefully, you’ll also notice that our line behaves more realistically when in casting mode. There’s still some work to do with the tension of the line in certain situations but that will be completed in a later phase.
Peg Interaction
In Phase 4 players can now interact in multiple way with pegs in Freedom Fishing.
Leaving a Peg: Players still have the option to the leave their peg and walk around the lake, however in Phase 4 there are additional features implemented for this step.
Warning Message: Players will now put their rod down on the bank stick and enter walking mode if they choose to leave the peg. The player will be allowed to walk a short distance from their peg before they are presented with a warning message, to inform them that they are leaving their peg and it will be automatically closed if they continue to walk away from their peg.
Closing the Peg: Players will have the option to close their peg. This is done by being in walking mode near the peg and holding down R on the keyboard or B button on the Xbox controller. A button prompt should appear on the bottom right of the screen to show to the player when they can close the peg. Closing the peg removes all their gear from the peg and means you can now freely walk around the lake. To open a new peg simply press F to fish.
Picking Up & Putting Down the Rod
In Phase 4, Players now have the option to Pick Up and Put Down their Rod.
Put Down Rod: To put down the rod simply press the Space Bar after casting.
Pick-Up Prompt: Players can pick up a rod by walking up to their already claimed peg and pressing the F button on the Keyboard or A on Xbox Controller.
Bite Alarms
The player now has the opportunity to use bite alarms to alert the player when a fish is on the line. To use a bite alarm, players need to perform a cast and then press Space Bar on their keyboard or ‘B’ on their controller to put their rod down and set the bite alarm. The bail arm must currently be closed to make the bite alarm work.
When a fish is on the line, the bite alarm will emit a noise and flash depending on how quickly the line is being taken by a fish. Players can pick up the rod by pressing ‘F’ on their keyboard or ‘A’ on their controller when they are standing near the rod.
Note: Currently you need the drag to be set very low for the bite alarm to work. We will be fixing this in future releases.
Lake Depth & Bed Types
An icon on the left-hand side of the screen now tells the player how deep their bait is.
An icon on the left-hand side of the screen now tells the player what the lake bed consists of where they are. There are four bed types: silt, gravel, weed and undefined.
Drag Wheel
Phase 4 introduces the new Drag Wheel widget in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen. The new drag widget will show the line tension as a progress bar. It will have indicators for when the tension is too high and too low, an audio cue will play when the high or low indicator is reached.
The line clip information is now moved to the drag wheel and is shown as a text prompt.
Another change to the drag wheel is the Drag Adjustment, it should now be set as a percentage where 0 is no drag tension and 100 is maximum drag tension.
Rig Selection
The player now has the opportunity to use different rigs which are specialised for certain scenarios. Players can change the type of rig they are using by opening the Inventory menu in Freedom Fishing. To open the Inventory players can press ‘I’ on their keyboard or ‘Back’ on their controller.
The Inventory contains key information about the rod the player currently has equipped. In Phase 4 players can change what rig option they have equipped by moving their cursor over the rig option and selecting it by pressing the ‘Left Mouse Button’ or by pressing ‘A’ on their controller.
The equipped rig option will be shown at the top of the inventory and will also be highlighted in the Rig section of the user interface. To close the Inventory menu, simply press ‘I’ on the keyboard or ‘Back’ on the controller.
When to Use Different Rigs: The rigs in Phase 4 are designed to be used over specific bed types. Here’s a brief explanation for when you should use different rigs:
- DF Rig or KD Rig for silt.
- IQ-D Rig for gravel.
- Chod Rig for weed.
Fish Movement
Players will now be able to see the fish moving on the line in Phase 4. This will be the very first implementation of it and will not be representative of the final implementation. In this version the fish will just use a simple move animation. It will not turn, rotate or have any complex movement in this phase.
Fish Types
In Phase 4, we are making a couple of changes to the fish spawned in the lake.
Mirror Carp
We have introduced a new system for our mirror carp which means they should have different scale patterns as well as different colour differences.
Leather Carp
We have introduced a new type of fish into the game, the Leather Carp. This will be a very rare type of fish. They are exceptionally elusive so please send us your images of them should you catch one!
Misc. Improvements
Leader boards: pressing the UP arrow on the leader board takes you to the top 5 places. Pressing the DOWN arrow takes you back to your score. There is no user interface in place for this yet but it does work.
User Interface: switched our entire user interface system to the new UE4 UMG system.
Freedom Fishing added a teleport user interface element to the start of freedom fishing
Xbox 360 Controllers:
- Increased the speed of the control stick to make it easier for players to cast
- Reset has been moved to RB
- Full Xbox 360 controller support
- Force feedback has been added to ‘reeling’ and ‘finger on line’
Tutorial USER INTERFACE
- Presentation for the tutorial has been redesigned with new user interface and audio elements
- All tutorials have been revised for accommodate new user interface and audio elements
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the fish float above the water
- Fixed a bug where the player cannot use the mouse to navigate the main menu
- Fix a bug where the distance text widget isn’t set to hidden correctly
- Fix a bug where the character is receiving decals from the environment
- Tweak down the frequency of catching a maximum weight fish. Too many people are catching the 25lbs fish and very high 24lbs fish.
- The rod appears in frame after trying to move on from the catch screen in Freedom Fishing