...and I just realized I forgot to update the main menu text to reflect that. Bah! Always something. ;)
Well, as you can see from the release notes, we're getting darn close to being ready.
- We have a variety of new enemies (though there are lots more coming -- it was hard to tear myself away from making more right away, because it is super fun to do).
- The voice acting for the robots is now in place, for those robots that are in place thus far. We took note from Bionic Dues and have been sure to have a really huge amount of voice cues for every robot so that they don't get too repetitive. There are also a larger number of less-funny ones in there so that it's not too funny all the time, which gets tiring when that's the case.
- Among the new robots, we have our first flying robots, our first robots that divide, and the first ones that use ballistic trajectory shots.
- The procedural map generation code is now done, thanks to Keith. There are likely still some glitches with it, but this is based around hand-crafted content being procedurally assembled, so that does help. The system is really powerful and lets me design level flows with a really high degree of specifity so that the layout makes sense.
- The occlusion system has had a huge revamp as well, to aid in performance in general, and to prep for the procgen levels. This is the major thing holding back procgen levels at the moment.
- Father Brain and the level flow that surrounds him has also not been implemented yet, and that's another key part of the feel of procgen levels. He's actually one of the easier robots, though, so that's good. And the stealth bits that play into his main mechanic have been done for a while.
So, are we on schedule for our release to EA on Monday?
At the moment I'd have to say... yes! There are some things I still have to get worked out over the weekend, to be sure, mainly to do with the occlusion system. But my hope is to have the procgen levels in the hands of press and testers tomorrow (well, today; it's 3am). Anyhow, Saturday sometime.
Beyond that it will then be a focus on more content, and continual polish in general. It looks like we're getting really well situated for me to be able to focus on content (in the form of enemies and game mechanics) next week; and Blue has been focusing on content in the form of level design for quite some time now (and it really shows). I'm definitely excited about the build you'll have at launch!
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