Early Access Update Tjugo (20)
build id: 568832C0
Hello all! We are happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
New Astro-Creeps Behaviour
We have changed Astro-Creeps to be both aggressive and dangerous; they will now attack the closest player in line of sight, and once attached they will cause electronics systems damage at random rates.
You definitely still have the chance to shoot them off, but you must be quick as to not be damaged. An attached Creep will eventually cause total systems damage and ultimately death to a player who does not react in time.
In addition to this Creeps also travel faster and are harder to shoot; there was a bug in the collision code where the Creeps used the same radius as Beasts. This has now been corrected. Interestingly enough it may be perceived that Creeps actually try to dodge your bullets, but this is not actually the case; this is an artifact of the way that Creeps try to stay close to surfaces and will jump between them if necessary.
Due to the increased aggression, each spawn event will now create 1 Beast and randomly between 0 -> 2 Creeps, whereas previously each spawn event would create 1 Beast and 4 Creeps.
There is also a new audio cue to indicate that a Creep has you in line of sight, and it occupies a generally higher frequency range than the procedural music. Keep in mind that intense music means that Beasts are near but not necessarily in line of sight (unless you are playing on Mazes), while the new "horror / scrabbling" cue indicates that a Creep is moving to attack you with direct line of sight.
We feel that this clear differentiation of audio cues are a critical part of further informing the player what is going on in the mission. In future the new Creep cue is a strong candidate for panning / better spatialization, so as to further allow the player to make correct judgments about where the threats are.
All in all these changes make for a FAR more intense experience than when Creeps were semi-passive. It is indeed still possible to complete a mission, but it is definitely harder than before. We anticipate that new gameplay systems will probably have to be developed in order to balance difficulty overall as a result of this (and other) changes, but as we very much like the general chaos that these new dangerous Creeps bring we will take things one step at a time.
For those who do not like Astro-Creeps and / or are even further put off by these new changes, it is still possible to turn them off in the advanced mission settings. Astro-Creeps are still on by default.
New Beast Blood
As a result of discussions in the community about red blood vs other colors, iterations led to the change of Beast / Creep blood from red to green / yellow (modeled much after the classic Giger's Alien blood from films and games). While not actually "acid for blood", we found the look to be much more suitable in conveying the "alienness" of the Beasts and Creeps, and in general it also seems to work much better color-wise when applied to level textures. Player blood is however still red in those cases it occurs.
Blood Drips
A new effect that is used in conjunction with both Beast and player blood is blood / gore dripping from the ceiling. This occurs for a time after a Beast or player has been killed in a certain grid square, and falls off with time. Any new deaths in this space will "refresh" the drips. The sum effect is that the cramped corridors feel much more messy and disgusting, and we feel this complements the general violence of what is going on in the game in a good way.
It is true that the blood drips tend to obscure vision even more than before. These are on by default but may be disabled as doing so may increase rendering performance.
PLEASE NOTE that as these options did not exist before, you will have to turn them on manually and / or reset your options to defaults.
Smoking Gibs
Another new effect is the addition of smoke particles to all Beast and player "gibs". These continuously spawn from the time a death occurs (and the gibs are created) to some time after the gibs have come to rest. Additionally smoking gibs will "sizzle" audibly. We feel this also conveys a better sense of the energy being expended.
It is true that the smoking gibs tend to obscure vision even more than before. These are on by default but may be disabled as doing so may increase rendering performance.
PLEASE NOTE that as these options did not exist before, you will have to turn them on manually and / or reset your options to defaults.
Options Update
All Video options in the Options menu have been reorganized into Options and Video sections. In general all of these settings may directly affect rendering performance, but those that are under Options are more in the vein of player preference, while those under Video are more purely technical. Or something like that.
There are new options for Gibs Smoke as well as Blood Drips. PLEASE NOTE that as these options did not exist before, you will have to turn them on manually and / or reset your options to defaults.
In general we would like to limit the number of options as much as possible in order to keep the experience as close to our vision as possible, but that is somewhat of a slippery slope when it comes to some of the more extreme things we are doing (like the FOV effects). In general we will probably always include options for things that may significantly affect rendering performance. Again, note that resetting options to defaults reflects our design intentions.
Less Noise In Infravision
Infravision noise has been reduced in the "bad" case, meaning when the battery is completely drained. We find this makes the Infravision a bit more usable.
As always, thank you for your support and patience,
/nornware AB c/o johno
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