It’s been a while since we had updated last time and it’s time to fix that. So…
We’re happy to announce that the money we raised was enough for us to buy a new software. Now we have completely moved our game from Game Maker 8 to Game Maker Studio 2. As the result, the game has started to work muck faster, and we were able to correct some important things unavailable to us earlier, such as volume settings and screen resolution (not tested yet). Also, we can now adapt our game for the Operating Systems like Linux Ubuntu or Mac OS, and also add achievements! But it’s a bit too early to talk about that.
And all of those things and possibilities have become available to us only thanks to all of you! We thank you for helping us take another step to making our game the way we planned it to be.
Now, we want to tell you about what to expect of the next update. As you can see from the title, the game is going to be an “Early Beta”, because all of the key mechanics that we wanted to add will be included and we’ll just need to polish them and adding new ones. That being said, let us present you the list of what we have planned for the next update:
- Wounds on monsters – that will help the player to understand how much HP the monster has left.
- Reworked icons – the dialogs should be animated. Perhaps, that feature will not appear right away, but will be added for sure.
- Adding new scheme and customization for the controls – many players were asking for the chance to customize the controls the way they like. That’s what we’re going to give them, ‘cause why not?
- Freezing the timer during the cutscenes [DONE] – speedrunners would definitely not like it if the time spent during the cutscene would count as a time spent on playing the game.
- General playthrough statistics – that surely will have meaning.
- The sound of character’s steps – we’re not sure about that one yet and if we should do it. What do you think?
- Volume control [DONE] – now there’s an option for changing the in-game volume without using the mixer in Windows.
- Optimized game code – moving to the new engine involves reworking a lot of game code, but using those new features will allow the game to really increase it’s performance.
- Improved deathcameras – that means the cutscenes after death. The current ones are boring, so they‘ll be improved in more ways than one.
- Chinese language [DONE] – yes. The game has been translated to traditional and simplified Chinese. Already. Thanks, *Twisunshine*!
- Reworked backgrounds – as in, the background of the main menu, pause, game over and a lot of other things, improving their detalization.
- Added waypoints – currently, the character calculates the way to their destination to the closest wall, if we try to go beyond the level borders. That’s wrong. That’s why we’ll be adding the waypoints.
- Added “Shaft” – a new spell for slaughtering the monsters. Fans of Quake are going to love it. However, we’d like to hear your comments regarding it before actually adding it to the game.
Некоторые из этих нововведений могут появиться не сразу, но мы стараемся принести как можно больше вкусностей к новому обновлению. Однако пока нам стоит поговорить о том, что надо исправить перед какими-либо нововведениями – возникшие багги после переноса игры на новый движок. О них ниже:
Some of those features might not be added right away, though we do try to bring as many of those delicious things to the next update as we can. However, we should also talk about the things that we must fix before adding anything – the new bugs after moving the game to the new engine. So, about them…
- Particles are not drawn after loading a save file – we’ve written a completely new particle system and keep developing it, but it’s not looking good yet.
- Non-working system of pathfinder due to non-working tile checking. [DONE]
- Clipping of the character’s sprite if the vertical synchronization is off. [DONE]
- Flashing gibs at the fireball hit on the enemy [DONE] – if someone is unaware, gibs are those meat pieces left from the enemies.
- Flashing of the player [DONE] and the monsters on the tiles’ borders.
- Flashing of the objects with static depth at the fireball hit on the enemy – the same as with the gibs.
- Mixing of the tiles located on the same layer – the levels will require a full reworks due to the new system of level rendering in GMS2.
As soon as we make it work smoothly, we’ll get to the most important thing – the story. What is there to be expected from it? The game shall be split to 2 parts – the peaceful prequel and what we have now. There’ll be more of the plot, more details, more endings. And also… more levels. But do not expect any “good endings”. They’ll be different, depending on your play style and one important decision, but they all will lead to the same result. That is needed for every ending to be considered canon for the sequel that will come later (the current game was originally planned as a demo-prologue).
So, yeah… we have told you a lot today. And we’re eager to read your comments, interested in your opinion about all of that! If you have any ideas about the new mechanics, monsters and other things – don’t be shy, join the discussion and create new topic, because why not? And thanks to all of you!