Greetings fellow Downers,
We are very proud to announce that we have reached our goal on Kickstarter, with the help of the great community of Wellington Wells! Thank you for helping spread the word, in all the ways, forms, and sizes that you did.
In the background, we’ve been working on this Pre-Alpha Update #6, which adds stealth mechanics, a vastly improved Garden District, and a number of new random encounters (and maybe even a cheeky scenario or two). It also adds something many of you have been asking for: a glorious, mostly functioning, map!
However, bear in mind that generating the world takes a fair amount of time right now - we’ll be addressing this over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, we suggest you make a cup of tea while the world generates.
Without further ado, here is a more detailed changelist:
UI
- New map! You now know where you are in Wellington Wells. Of course, you just can’t remember where anything is. Left click to scroll, mousewheel to zoom.
- Your health has moved. It’s in the top left corner now.
- New Wellie awareness icons. No longer must you suffer basic yellow/red/white icons.
- New suspicion indicator. Now you’ll get better feedback on what’s suspicious and what isn’t in the various parts of Wellington Wells. This is the picture to the left of your health bar.
- New stealth icon. Now you’ll know if you’re spotted or not. Crouch to activate.
- You can now see controls in the main menu by pressing escaping and clicking on “Show Controls”. Rebindable controls coming soon, but are not in yet.
- Items now contain information on how effective (or ineffective) they are at certain things.
- Item descriptions have been rewritten.
World Generation
- Male Wastrel model is added! (Previous one was just a temporarily retextured Welly.)
- Garden District: New street textures, and footpaths! No longer will you have to stick your fancy shoes in the mud.
- Garden District: House variety increased by a factor of 5.
- Garden District: Appropriate art/content added to existing house.
- New random encounters may now be found throughout the world. For example, the “Broken TV”. In this, you will find a bunch of Wastrels who like Uncle Jack a bit more than is healthy.
- Flowers, flowers everywhere.
- Several new shelters have been added, so you no longer start in the same place.
- New newspaper, with terribly unfunny anecdotes to read.
- Healthy plants spawn less frequently.
- New chemical crafting station.
- New scenarios! In the Garden District, you can now find a couple of new scenarios, that tell you more about the world of Wellington Wells.
Gameplay
- Wellies now spawn a bit more frequently.
- Stealth now properly in-game. Crouch to stealth.
- Different terrain gives more/less visibility.
- Stealth takedowns are implemented! Sneak up behind a Wellie to give them a not-so-pleasant hug.
- You can now hide in certain cunning locations.
- New items implemented! You now have something to wear for all occasions. For example, you start with a “Simple Suit”, which does a little bit of everything, but nothing very well.
- New bridge encounters.
- NPCs can now fall and land hard.
- Throwing a corpse onto an AI knocks the AI back. Because, you know.
Under the Hood
- Vastly increased the amount of time it takes to generate the world, as we’re now generating a more complicated world. Sorry about this! We’ll be working on streamlining this in the next couple of weeks.
- Various crash fixes (including a tentative fix for the media streaming crash) and many bug fixes.
As always, there are a heap of other changes that went on behind the scenes. Feel free to come and discuss these on our forums!
Love, Team Compulsion