Hello everyone!
Please zoom in ;-) to see The "woods" before and after
Finally the long-awaited update 0.7 has arrived!
We apologize for the long delay but you'll soon realize why it took so long!
As mentioned in the last announcement, this update doesn't bring any new playable zones since it focuses mainly on improving performance, calibrating the parkour module, and graphics.
However, we are convinced that, even for those who have already started/completed Die Young, restarting a new game with this update will be a completely new and very stimulating experience.
We are very satisfied with the work done so far. We're convinced that with this update, the gaming experience is finally very close to what we always wanted to transmit from the beginning.
But here is what we've done in the last month and a half!
Massive Graphic overhaul
Few additional examples ( play to see more! ) :
- The Watchtower
before and after
- Manor Farm Path
before and after
- The Coastal Tower
before and after
Those are just a few examples of the immense amount of work we've put into making this massive graphics overhaul.
As I said before... I was NOT not satisfied with the previous global artistic result, but now I feel that the game world truly resembles an island not far from a Greek or Turkish coast.
Not only were the graphics scaled up, but everything was finally done in the proper way, instead of being hummed (more details in a blog article coming this week). This gave us a massive gain in performances too. And this lends to our second topic of this update...
Performance!
Remember that horrendous sputtering and the game unexpectedly stopping for two seconds? Well if you still experience that, I offer you a beer from "gino lo zozzone"! ;-)))
Seriously, the team worked away the "young" in them to optimize the game code. Even many incorrectly used assets and graphic effects have been deleted or corrected.
So now I feel confident to say that the game runs very smoothly on cards and high-end processors at highest graphics settings. But also mid-end hardware can run the game pretty well on mid and high settings. As always, please report any feedback in the community hub.
Parkour system improvements
This is the second most important topic of this update.
During these 11 months of EA, we've seen lots of complaints because the parkour system apparently "doesn't always work". There was the feeling that in some seemingly harmless occasions -- even on a perfectly landed jump -- your character could just die.
We knew the reasons for this bad feeling and understood that it was not due to bugs but due to incorrect calibrations.
Most of the problems were caused by a damage curve that was too light on minor falls and too punitive on falls from high elevation. We studied many ways to improve this and compared our system with other games using a similar approach. After intense testing and trial and error, we believe we've found a good blend. Now it's no longer possible to die from just a few meters and the overall parkour experience is much more forgiving.
New Mobs
Finally, we introduce a few new junkie friends (good luck finding them all!) and a new species of cute puppets, the boars!
Good luck hanging out with them!
...& ... tons of minor improvements & fixes...
- New Music tracks by Simon.
- Optimized AI sight
- New Ancent Idol added (Easter Egg in Apricot Valley zone ;-) )
- Bats colliders optimized
- New Collector voice ( and slightly dialogue variations )
- New enemy balance.
- dozens of bugfixes and minor gameplay fixes.
In the meantime the work on the new zones and the new features proceed as established. Our goal is to release new content from 0.8 ( next update ),
and proceed from there quickly to 0.9 and 1.0 ( final release.
Our goal continues to be the same: release version 1.0 (which will contain the END of Daphne's adventure) within the year.
We continue as usual to do our work with passion but without compromise.
Best!