CLOSED BETA UPDATE NUMERO UNO
Our focii this week were thrifold:
Getting in some new content in the down time before we would start getting Closed Beta feedback and bugs.
Bunches of bugfixes once we started getting testers giving feedback!
Occasionally sleepin.
So, with that in mind, updates over this 5-day window:
Content:
-- Added new Armor Blood Armor - can only be repaired by picking up hearts
-- Added new Carnage Item Fan Favorite - requests an extra Fan Event from your fans (will stack - so if you already have one pending you'll now have 2 in the next room)
-- Added new Fan Event - Sticky Mess. Black, sticky goop rains down during the next combat. Ew.
-- Added new Fan Event - Gadget Play -- Gadgets rain from the sky during your next combat, disappearing about as quickly as they fall
-- Added rare mutation Dangerous - raises your POW by 1.0, multiplies all damage you do by 150%, raises Threat (all creature/trap damage) by 1/2 heart.
-- Added new NPC LevelUp buff - Trap Proof* - enemies now resist traps, are vulnerable to weapons and projectiles
-- Added new level achievement Explorer -- 12 fans (base) for visiting every (non-corridor, non-meta) room on the level
-- Added a new circular arena room
-- Added a new X-shaped arena room
-- Added a new bomb focused arena
-- Cleaned up the existing arena rooms
-- Added lit bombs to common consumable pools
UI:
-- Darkened the LevelEndSummary screen because it was like staring into the blazing nuclear furnace of the sun while playing at night (thanks @Seebo @Goat of Departure)
Polish:
-- Flak Jacket (or any armor that didn't adjust stats) wouldn't adjust character sheet properly until something else made the sheet update. Fixed. Nice find, @Wraiths
-- Audio is now played relative to your avatar’s position instead of the camera's position. (This was making the game oddly quiet when the camera was zoomed out, etc.)
-- Fixed an issue where blocked span cages would blink in and out of your view quickly
-- Enabled ability for twitch whispers to be received by game
-- Tweaked twitch logging
-- Updated many animations
-- Added new audio files
-- Fixed an issue where if the oompa camera was hit by a big enough Nuke, could throw a warning
-- Added counterclockwise spinning blade trap
-- Made Carnage room in tutorial use blade trap directions that naturally help shove baddies into pits
-- Removed a ton of unnecessary collision on the various gladiators and the Champ (fixes an issue where they would path erratically as their worn items could block their own pathing)
-- Fixed issue where flying NPCs/your Telekinetic Weapon could occasionally get confused inside of tire stacks (thanks @Hammy)
-- Fixed a bug with resurrection where if a resurrectable creature was walloped to death exactly 5 seconds after resurrecting it would destroy itself rather than forming a corpse (@blobdole how the hell did you find that?)
-- Possible fix for spurious semi-hidden UE4 spline crash that is creating extra crash logs (and may fix @Snorlaxxo's initial game launch issue)
-- Fixed an issue where unplanned pits could cause the room to stay stuck in lockdown if they blocked a spawn cage (Thanks @Wraiths)
-- Activating Dev Mode should now be much harder to do accidentally (thanks @Snorlaxxo7!)
-- Updated lit bombs to work when spawned directly by a room
-- Updated lit bomb art and sfx
-- Added a very small random delay to bomb rocks exploding to prevent cases where they all explode in the same frame hurting performance
-- Updated a bunch of sounds that were commonly or semi-commonly used that had bad stacking rules (hopefully now protecting @Snorlaxxo's ears)
-- Added redirector to prevent lit bombs from spawning in certain containers (Shops, for instance)
-- Added lit bombs to be more common in blood, unlocked chests
Dev Notes
-- Added dungeon room spotlights to many of our test levels so that their lighting is more similar to the lighting in the main game
-- Added Twitch dev integration
-- Added new C++ function for updating health containers to CPP_BaseCharacter
-- [DEV] Some backend work to allow future permanent grafting of armor via machine
Checkin:
-- [DEV] Animation redirector cleanup
-- [DEV] Threat handling moved into C++ for use by non-levelbuffs
-- [DEV] Updated Synergy testing range with new mutations/carnage items
-- [DEV] Moved elements of death into C++
-- Minor changes to make Google Analytics more analytical
-- [DEV] Enabled logging of Audience opinions on polls
-- [DEV] Adjusted Fan trait opinions around Explorer achievement/Achievement.Level.Visited.*
-- [DEV] Rooms now register themselves with Levelmanager at initialization time
* Beta note: Keep an eye out for the new level up buff (Trap Proof) and let us know how it feels.
Some thoughts: Our goals with the NPC buffs are to change the playstyle / make the game more challenging on a per run basis in different ways and to avoid doing so in tedious ways. (and extra HP/armor/etc. can often do that historically when making NPC buffs where fights can be longer more so than harder)
So with that in mind, this level up buff makes the NPCs take 1/4 the normal damage from traps, but double normal melee and projectile damage. This means positioning matters a bit less, whacking things matters more - which should be a change of pace, since positioning is normally really really key. But… we'll have to see if resistances / vulnerabilities are the right way to handle this, because that is a fairly extreme difference. And maybe less positioning is just a less interesting of a playstyle in any case, though the hope would be that it works as a rare-ish change in playstyle.
Anyways, yadda yadda, but keep an eye out for the feel of this one with that in mind and the thought “Do we have too many defensive vs. offensive level buffs for NPCs”.
Thanks!
- Gaff
(Side note, I'll probably be making the various NPC buffs more impactful as a rule so that you really feel the effects. They were originally balanced around a 9-level deep run, not the current 4 levels that we've polished for beta testing - but it's nice if you really feel the difference between "the NPCs got +ZIP 3 times" vs. "The NPCs got +Longshot 3 times". Even if this impact level works though, they might get balanced back down as we open up new levels in the future so as to not be too insane in that context)