Polish, cleanup, and engine upgrade!
We’ve updated to UE4 4.21.0 - this comes with some performance improvements and new features for us to play with, but the conversion did take some time. We’d way rather be churning in some new content for y’all to play!
We’ve seen one issue based on the engine upgrade we HAVEN’T been able to track down yet - there’s an AI issue where they can get locked to certain areas of a room… so if you see odd pathing occasionally, that’s what it is. It’s most noticeable on guys in a big room (like the gladiator boss, for instance). FYI and we’ll get a patch out to cure that as soon as we get a fix from Epic.
We’ve also started overhauling many of the more generic sounds we used in early development. This is mid process - you’ll note many things in combat are actually probably LESS impactful this build as we tweak them, but we like the direction we’re starting to head in. Keep an ear out going forward.
On the content front, we’ve added a number of new rooms showcasing some new creatures and traps, fixed a number of outstanding issues from the last patch, and have laid the groundwork for our upcoming content focus over the next few months. More to come!
NPCs:
-- Switched the Oompa Grenadier over to using the proper full action table functions
-- Oompa Grenadiers no longer shoot once at you from a million miles away
-- The Oompa Grenadier uses a new AI package that allows it to both shoot at you over rocks, and retreat while still firing if you get too close
-- Updated Oompa Grenadier behavior to a new experimental setup where it won't chase you very far at all
-- Added new blend space, animations, AMs, reparenting, tags, stats, etc. flor Claw Gladiator
-- A ton more groundwork for making gladiator enemies work well with our existing systems
-- Did some general cleanup to the gladiators
-- NPC's can now use dash moves
-- Updated the NPC dash effects to the more modern dash effects
-- Oompa Diggers now destroy rocks with a small explosion as they burrow out from under the ground
-- Oompa Diggers now have a significantly reduced max turn speed while trying to hit you with their drill attack
-- Oompa Diggers no longer collide with above ground enemies when traveling underground
-- Adjusted some values for the Oompa Digger to let it behave a bit more "correctly"
-- Fixed some issues with the particle effects for the Oompa Diggers
-- Added Mortar, Spikeball, and Laserball V1 Grenadiers
-- Fixed an issue where the first movement provided by the rook spot ai task could travel in a non-rook manner
-- Fixed an issue where hitting an enemy that was too close to path to you would get them stuck unable to walk forever
-- A bit of cleanup for the bomb spider
-- Acid Simple Bots no longer spread acid trails when they are walloped
-- Significant clean-up for the wormbot scripts
-- Switched the wormbot over to the new art assets and updated their follow distance to work correctly with the new assets
-- Implemented the tail of the wormbot
Content:
-- Added new Spiky rooms
-- Added new combat rooms
-- Added encyclopedia support for achievements
-- Added flavor text for bosses and other IDs
Dev
-- Converted project over to using Unreal 4.21.0
-- Build settings changes to fix some issues with cooking in UE 4.21.0
-- Fix for 4.21.0 requiring precompiled headers explicitly
-- Prevent possible race condition in Progression Widget under 4.21.0
-- Added logging galore to hunt down 4.21.0 race condition on startup
-- Bomb projectiles now respect DamageMX
-- Added new tag "Resists.Harpoons" which causes harpoon pulls to be less effective
-- Room Editor cleanup for placing synchronized traps
-- Added more logging to 4.21.0 null data case
-- Made a path for getting current run data that avoids IRunManager interface to avoid UE4 4.21.0 cooking error
-- Removed a malfunctioning interface that has been preventing building under 4.21.0
-- Possible fix for the CDO-based crash in Projectile in an uncooked 4.21.0 build
-- Significant increase to the pathing chunk size in an effort to minimize the damage some 4.21.0 bugs do to the play experience
-- Room Editor now cleans up old tags on EdObjects properly
-- Cleaned out various references to old "Sync.Second" tags
-- Room editor now handles the start room for the test levels more cleanly
-- Control-F9 in dev mode now brings you to a level where unpolished rooms can be tested
Polish:
-- Fixed rooms with wallbouncers prematurely showing 'em off (thanks @loginerror!)
-- Fixed spamming of invisible multishot copies of non-characters (thanks @loginerror!)
-- Fixed healthbar visibility issue
-- Mutations list now wraps properly in Character Sheet
-- Healthbars now are grey while opponents have any layers of armor left
-- No longer play "Room Complete" audio in arena rooms so that Arena Pods can say "Winner takes all" instead
-- Lots of polish/cleanup of spikewalls (they adjust better to interior short walls, sounds have attenuation, etc.)
-- Fix to spikeballs/other moveables not having destructible meshes appear
-- Mortar projectiles now do 0.25 the damage that bombs do
-- Fixed typos in item descriptions
-- Spikeballs are no longer so whizzy when harpooned based on F&F feedback
-- New set of combat sounds added to the project
-- Updated all the new combat audio uassets to be set up correctly
-- Updated all old sounds that had modified concurrency settings to use the new concurrency class
-- Build all of the random sound cues for the new combat sounds
-- Fixed some additional missing data in the new sound cues
-- Hooked up the new sound fx when you take acid or electricity damage
-- Re-worked how getting hit sounds are handled
-- Added a variable for setting the getting hit sounds to the character data table
-- Removed a few places where we were doing double sound calls like breaking armor and wallop hits
-- Moved the acid and electric hit sound calls to a better spot
-- Switched basic combat hit sounds over to the new sounds
-- Build all of the random sound cues for the new combat sounds
-- Fixed some additional missing data in the new sound cues
-- Hooked up the new sound fx when you take acid or electricity damage
-- Re-worked how getting hit sounds are handled
-- Added a variable for setting the getting hit sounds to the character data table
-- Removed a few places where we were doing double sound calls like breaking armor and wallop hits
-- Moved the acid and electric hit sound calls to a better spot
-- Switched basic combat hit sounds over to the new sound fx
-- Implemented interval spike system - traps can now “sync up” in patterns in rooms
-- Added new spike timing puzzle room
-- Spikeball projectiles no longer interpenetrate each other
-- Mutation/other unlocking screens now resemble the other new UIs
-- Removed the duplicate sword from the editor test level starting room
-- Removed speech arrow from dialogue text bubble
-- TutorialMC now opens the arena door after his monologue is completed
-- Removed old arena door tutorial-specific code
-- Wall child actors (bouncers and spikers) more robustly set hidden states appropriately
-- Moved the barbed wire wall topper decor's detection area to the correct location which will fix some issues with them being unexpectedly deleted
-- Shop cages now properly clean up their shopkeepers when they go away
-- Removed a number of test rooms
-- Improved a number of boring rooms
-- Fixed potential crash when acidbot corpse was cleaned up before their splatter expired
-- PC is now immune (as if dashing) during the Arena Pod celebration
-- Fixed potential stacking issue with Adaptive and Iron Skin
-- Polished starting room
-- Starting room now saves state with game
-- Occluder Spotlights can be set to track player or not
-- StartRoomMC created