Thanks to everyone having been watching this game, especially to the players who sent feedbacks and bug reports to me. It's been extremely helpful. While the multiplayer mode provides a solid co-op experience, most of the complaints are about the single player mode: lack of tutorials, obscurity of the special ability, hard to pick up and lack of tools for stealth. This update is focused to solve the latter two issues.
This update mainly tweaks the difficulty of the single player mode, loose the system. It decreases the requirements for cooperation, but it also provides each player more space to explore ways of playing, which also generates more diversity. The rendering system is also changed, which improves the performance. New content players are calling on is added to unlock new ways of stealth.
Changelog
Core Mechaninics
- Mechanics Simplification: Players are hidden in the dark even when running (except for when player is operating on something). Holding SHIFT only hides footsteps.
- New Interaction Clap: Click on the player character or press R3 to clap. It creates noise and attract enemies.
- New Interaction Kick: Press V to kick the guard off when grabbing him. The guard will be stunned for a short time.
- Changes on Guard Radio Mechanics:
* When a guard sees a player after his radio is turned on, an "investigate event" appears at his interest point.
* Nearby guards patrol to the "investigate event" and search afterwards.
* When guards finish searching, they will dismiss the "investigate event". Killing a guard won't dismiss the event.
* Killing a guard with radio on won't result in alert level rise.
- When a guard has radio on, he will report corpses in his sight immediate and raise the alert level.
- A guard can see a corpse from far away.
- Decrease the running speed of a guard investigating a gun shot.
- A player will show up when getting hit.
Designer Notes:
Considering most players' little fingers are not that flexible, I decided to reduce the required time and frequency of holding shift. It is hard to distinguish different states of the player with the character displayed in small visual form. So the decision is to simplify the light/stealth system, which makes it easier to understand the mechanics.
Changes in the radio mechanics are made for the issues in the narrative sense. From the feedbacks it seems stealth game players care about narrative meanings of mechanics a lot. Now the alert level has a significant rise only when a corpse is found. The players only need to stop the message from transmitting at any phase. Although the introduction of "investigate event"s amplifies the snowball effects, it also brings more emergence. It is also a nerf on long-cool-down weapons in an indirect way.
New Content
- New Weapon Bow: Finally a silent ranged weapon. Charge to shoot. The point where the arrow disappears also creates noise that can be utilized to lure guards.
- New Weapon Heat Rifle: Charge to shoot a heat laser. A heat wave will appear at the hit point which deals damage in the area through everything.
- New Gadget Suppressor: Consumable. Use to install on the current gun. The next 6 shots will be silent.
- New Gadget Radio Jammer: Consumable. Use to set up a radio jammer at the position. Blocks all the guard radio communication in an area.
- New High Vol Producer - Espionage Tech: Produces Suppressors and Radio Jammers.
- Tech Launcher Changes:
- "Barefoot": 2 suppressors added.
- "Raider": Pistol is replaced by Bow.
- "Intruder": Rifle is replaced by Heat Rifle.
- Guards can be stunned on bottle hits.
Designer Notes:
On feedbacks about lack of stealth methods, this update provides new weapons and gadgets that reduce negative effects. A counter weapon is designed against shield guards: Heat Rifle. Bow and Heat Rifle are both charged weapons. The charge process can be interrupted by hits, so they are countered by high-frequency weapons.
Feedbacks Improvements
- Improved the SFX of radio.
- improved the SFX and visuals of operating on everything.
- Improved the SFX of pistols, rifles, sniper rifles. Added charge SFX of sniper rifle.
- When player successfully kills a guard from behind, it will be visually emphasized with a mask effect.
- Improved the appearance of noise indicator.
- Improved the appearance of the enemy gaze.
Designer Notes:
Emphasis of killing from behind makes the action more rewarding, and it is clearer that tactical shots are encouraged.
Technical Optimizations:
- Rendering system is replaced by deferred pipeline. The overall lighting effect is improved and glitches no longer exist.
- Improved the rendering vision cones. Performance is much improved and the style of graphics is slightly changed.
- Optimize loading process of the procedural map using an asynchronous method.
Mechanics Tweaks
- There is noise when a dead guard falls down.
- A guard turns to face the location for a while on hearing a gun shot or receiving an "investigate event" and walk after the time.
- Doors can be pass through a short time after open.
- Gadget Stabilizer prevents charging attack process from being interrupted.
- Shield guard will not remove tase state when shield blocks any damage.
- Some adjustments on guard AI.
Bugfixes
- A guard can always hear noise when chasing and suspecting.
- Fix some rendering issues.
- Bugfix: some mouse cursors can't be displayed with hardware cursor setting on.
- Bugfix: opening windows on the mothership makes the player unable to shoot.
- Bugfix: display issues of mission report screen and operation report screen.
- Bugfix: Enforcer keeps attacking dead players.
- Bugfix: In networked game the loadout window is misplaced on mission brief screen.
- Bugfix: Friend activity list doesn't show current friends playing the game on entering the game, and display friends in different versions of the game.
- Bugfix: Occasional bug that clients can't get in mission brief screen in networked game.
- Bugfix: Acquiring medkits don't have SFX on clients in networked game.
Future Plans
To mitigate the issue that the single-player special ability is too obscure, the future work will be focused on experimenting different special abilities. The next major update will bring new single-player special abilities, and there will be new enemy types and level features as well, to make the experience more diverse.
Stay tuned!
If you have any questions, or look for teammates to play together, join our official Discord: https://discord.gg/signaldecay