Early Access Update Fyrtioett (41)
build id: 5B3FC1BA
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
Beast Spawn Animations
As has been discussed over the years, I've felt that the fact that Space Beasts have always spawned instantly from Breaches has been a bit unfair, especially when Random Breaches are enabled. Trying to interact with anything right next to a Breach has for this reason always been extremely risky. Also it hasn't been the best thing aesthetically, as Beasts are just suddenly there on the floor or ceiling.
For these reasons I have now implement as very short (0.75 seconds) spawn animation where the Beast climbs out of the Breach onto the ceiling or onto the floor. During this animation the Beast is not dangerous and can neither interact with players nor civilians. This practically means that there is a chance to escape even if you are standing directly under a Breach when a spawn occurs, not least because that kind of proximity to a Beast will almost certainly max out your adrenaline level and thus give you the highest possible movement speed.
Also interesting is the fact that Sentries near Breaches are that much more effective as they have additional time to kill the Beast before it is completely out of the Breach and moving at normal speed.
Note that Astro-Creeps still spawn instantly.
New Space Beast Paint Jobs
I was always a bit irked by the rather colorful collection of textures that the Space Beasts were using, so I spent some time doing lots of re-texturing and color correction, resulting in a new set of 13 different Beast textures that I feel are more in line with the way the Beasts are supposed to feel. And no, they no longer have eyes, something that I think H.R. Giger really got right... :)
Better Door Damage Feedback
Another pet peeve of mine has been the limited amount of feedback available for the current integrity of any given door. There is an indicator on the side of every door interaction panel, but it's small and hard to see from a distance. While doors that get hit by a Space Beast have always made a noise, vibrated and briefly shown the current integrity, I wanted something more obvious. I have implemented mesh warping / displacement functionality in my toolset, so now the doors cycle through 16 distinct deformations to reflect their current integrity, getting more and more deformed before breaking as before. I expect to work on this aesthetics of this some more, but already it's been good to come upon a door that you hadn't earlier observed to find it quite obviously damaged, giving good hints about Beast activity in the proximity.
Updated Sentry Safety Protocols and Bullet Behaviour
After the last update which included updated Sentry behaviour (aiming speed and lasers among other things) it became obvious that while the new code had more accurate checks for friendly fire it actually resulted in far more frequent "accidents". I can only speculate, but I think this had quite a bit to do with the fact that more accurate hit test code when checking for humans (from the actual barrel to the enemy position) caused Sentries to fire bullets just slightly over the top of or to the side of a player bounding volume. This meant that they would tend towards extremely near misses in the interest of firing as often as possible, but that kind of logic simply doesn't play well with humans moving through the field of fire.
As a result I have switched back to the previous much more conservative "safety check" code, while keeping the new aiming behaviour in place. This definitely results in far fewer cases of the game feeling like the Sentries are deliberately firing on you.
After some testing I finally decided that my very long lived opinion of "ridiculous sentry ricochets being funny" is not appropriate for the game, so now all bullets use the same ricochet code (as the player bullets have for a long time) in that ricochets will happen if the bullet has energy left AND wins a 50% roll AND has a reasonable angle of incidence to the collided surface. The bottom line is that Sentry bullets will no longer reflect straight back from perpendicular walls as has been the case for the longest time. I'm thinking that there are enough things in the game that can kill you, so I think this change is the right thing to do.
Note however that Fences will still reflect all bullets, so watch your background when firing down long corridors with active Fences, not to mention shotgun fire near Fences... :P
Icy Space Windows
I initially felt that the addition of space windows really made the game feel more friendly instead of less so. This probably had a lot to do with it not constantly being a cramped indoor space, but feeling like there was something beyond, as well perhaps as the fact that the windows let in a little bit of light that can be used for navigation even during a power failure with a broken flashlight.
I happened to be watching a lot of Star Wars Clone Wars (the animated series) lately, and I noticed that they always used the indication of ice around the edges of all "space windows" on that show, so I tried it out and found that it really sells the fantasy pretty well.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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