Heeey there! First off I'd just like to say thank you to everyone for all the feedback and positivity. We are getting there! But things aren't quite wrapped up yet so I'm stopping by to tell you what's on my plate for this week, and probably the following week as well. And also to try to explain what might be in the future and what might not.
So first off 6 and 9 minutes were not the original "Survive Times" I had in mind for episode 02, due to the sheer amount of content.. which is steadily being fleshed out these days with the updates. I don't know how many people actually read my word heavy work week layouts so I'll just summarize by saying with all the environment kills and weapons in the finished version of episode 02 the player should be able to last longer than in episode 01. That was always the plan. I wanted to come back and hit Steam hard with a bigger level, new enemies and more content. So the first thing I'll be trying to tackle is understanding what a realistic and challenging timescale would be for Episode 02.
I'll be working to re-balance the zombie spawn times and make it fun and well paced for the users, with a secondary Hardcore mode for the skilled players to unlock and really be challenged.
The true times for Episode 02
You may have noticed the Remote bomb is not in the tower any more and has gone missing. Don't fret too much as it will be back and dealing more damage than ever. I just felt now that we are in the "endgame" stage of development for Episode 02 the Remote mine would be better off in another place. It will be back. On top of that, there is just one last environment killer object I need to add, which I will probably try to tackle in the following week. I explain the way it works once it's out in an Update.
A lot of this week was supposed to be set aside to get Item assets done. These are the things I've shown you like the giant pill bottle, or the key illustration, I've been dreaming about making quality images for players to look at in game and I'm finally getting around to it. But there's many so it's taking time.
A dynamic closet.
As previously mentioned this was on a list I'd written down to have done a long time ago, I just haven't been able to get around to it. I had the idea that the closet where the player originally finds the Shotgun Weapon, could actually be explored multiple times in the same playthrough, say the player wanders off after finding the gun for the first time, they might come back and find some ammo in there a little later. It will be randomized to a degree , so it'd be an exciting mystery every time you search it.
Some Priest maintenance The Priest is still a bit quirky, I'll be the first to admit I rushed to get him out, I was up almost 2 days without rest programming his moves and the Sailfish discovery setup. I wanted to get it out on Saturday and I still barely did. The Priest still needs his voice effects. Which I'm going to try to at least record tomorrow. On top of that the fire he drops on himself when preemptively shot by Amber doesn't really hurt zombies too much, I plan to fix that so it catches them all on fire. That will be done soon. There is also something buggy about the way the Priest reacts when stunned by a rock. I'm gonna have to track that down and fix that too, soon.
Reflected Fire hurts zombie allies.
And then there's this guy.
Back when I was brainstorming up all these crazy ideas for episode 02 I had an idea for a unique final Cultist, this guy was supposed to be special, and hard to get to appear, where the other Cultists attack Amber mostly with spells, this guy was going to use a sword and kill through Melee combat. He was going to a yield a reward after his defeat. Sadly I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to add him. This is due to the sheer amount of data Episode 02 is already trying to process all at once. If you notice the game bogging down or running slower or even acting weird please let me know. I'm going to do some tests soon to see if the stage can handle this guy before I go through the trouble of programming and animating all of his stuff. But the very last thing I want to do is cause the entire game to bug out from all the information running at once, this actually happened often in episode 01, it was a heartbreaking nightmare and something I don't care to ever repeat.
I think that's about it, I'll be working and checking in and out when I can. Please feel free to ask any questions or leave feedback. I'll be happy to read and reply.
You guys take care, I'll see you soon.
-Pyro