Since last month, we've been doing a lot of polish and bugfixing. We've been taking early Playtest feedback and focusing on that. This includes things like UI additions, animation improvements, zombie networking and lag fixes, enemy tweaks, and a list of things we notice in our own testing. Lots down, lots more to go.
Gameplay Footage: Colony Location Revamp
Most of the polish this month has been programmer heavy, so this gives us extra bandwidth to do things like improve on and add new locations. A big one is taking the Colony location type and revamping it. This was one of our earliest tests, and now we're getting to go back and add things like randomization, new rooms, and updated mechanics.
Here's a video of a few of us running around the current version of the Colony Planet location:
Some notes on the above footage:
This would be a pretty easy/early game version of the location. Not too big, and enemies aren't too numerous/aggressive yet
You can now pick up and throw cans and coffee cups, like you can furniture, to do damage to enemies or knock them down. Currently they slow you down a bit too much when carrying them, you can really see me struggle to sprint while carrying a crushed can
Flashlights are a bit buggy right now, visually. Especially when swinging melee weapons, they can get stuck in a weird position. This has cropped up before, too
Shuttles will eventually fly up when you exit and enter, I think. Right now it's just a quick fade-to-black back to your spaceship
The fences can be broken! You can barely see this get done, I was moving away too fast
Thrown furniture seems too weak to me right now. Needs to pierce through enemies better, and then probably break faster when thrown
There's a funny visual-only warping bug you can see really clearly at 2:21. The person doing the weird warp doesn't see it happen to them. Still trying to track this one down, though it's harmless, at least
We're going to mostly leave this location as it is for now, and get more feedback on it. I also want to wait later on for some new mechanics for our level generator. There's plans we haven't gotten to yet to make locations handle randomization better, with more complex architecture and room generation. Once we have that, we're going to do another pass on locations like this one.
August Highlights
Weapon crates have been added to different locations. There just weren't enough melee and common weapons lying around, so we're adding containers that pop them out. We plan on making a bunch of different appearances for these, so you can get a rough idea of what you're going to get before you even open them. This will also let you skip having to sort through weapons that you really don't need, if you already have superloot.
I tweaked the current zombies to be a bit weaker in terms of their attacks. In the above gif, one gets out a lightning fast hit. You really couldn't run past them reliably before for long, and I still want you to be able to have a chance to avoid them by weaving through crowds. Until the crowds get too big, or you make a mistake.
I ended up adding about 0.1 seconds to their pre-swipe time (from 0.6 to 0.7, a little number change makes a big difference), and they lunge forward about half as much as they used to during their attack animation. You can see their current behavior in the gameplay video posted about the Colony location. I plan on saving their old behavior for something, but I'm not sure yet. Maybe they get more aggressive over time, so they really lunge far in the late game? Maybe there's variants that are more dangerous? Maybe there's a completely different type that is known for being very dangerous in melee? I'm not sure yet.
More work done on the "Alien Ruins" location type. We're messing with a concept where the map starts out really dark, but you can restore power bit by bit. I like this idea a lot, so we'll probably have more location types that use the design of "you can restore the power and light".
This would be a great thing for Mechanical skill heavy characters to have a special bonus in. Maybe they can access panels no one else can, or they restore larger chunks of the power grid than other characters.
We've been putting more randomization elements to missions in the code side, as opposed to the level design side. This means much better mixing and matching. Part of this includes things like lighting and color maps, shown above. The other big part is easier control over what enemies can spawn in each mission and where, instead of having to do things more manually.
Some of the really big maps and floor generation types have gotten reductions in their size. In some cases, scale has been cut in half. Some missions were just way too big, before. The above is an AFTER picture of one of the Bunker final floor types. Still pretty big!
Storage Box moved to a much better location, and made way more obvious! To the top left (shortly past the green tiles) is the computer that lets you pick your next mission/location. Then just to the right of the Storage Box is the Shuttle to the mission. So now it's really easy to do any inventory and equipment changes.
The exits to the Desert Planet location's caves are a bit easier to see now. Also, we made it so your crosshair is much more visible on this planet. Before it blended in with the red way too much.
Current Work and September Plans
Right now we're just working on a big list of little things, with a focus soon on gameplay tweaks. Some bigger things coming up include:
Exploring the "Time Pressure" system more. You have a timer, and as it ticks down, enemy spawning becomes worse. When it hits 0, it becomes MUCH worse. You are rewarded for getting in and getting out, but you may miss out on loot. But full looting means more fighting, which could waste resources. It's a big part of the game, and needs to be fleshed out more and balanced carefully
Tweaks and balancing for Stamina. Right now, stamina is still pretty much infinite. We expect to have to tweak some things when this is no longer the case. However, the plan is to eventually have melee stamina be near infinite late-game anyway when you have good enough stats and equipment
A better way for playtesters to submit feedback. Not everyone joins the Discord. Some kind of in-game way to do it? We need to look up our options here
Music! We need more
Next Developer Log
Next Dev Log will be on September 25th. I'm likely going to focus on gameplay and combat for the next one, both work we've done that month and more in-the-future plans we hope to do.
Thanks for reading! You can discuss news as we post it in the #future-preview channel of our Official Discord, and on the site formerly known as Twitter.