Hello fellow players!
I hope everyone is doing well, counting the days left until 2020 is behind us!
I know this update comes a bit late, but I had to face many challenges, not only game development, but it was a busy time for me! Anyway, let's get started:
Most of my time has been focused on defining and making the levels of the peak world, as you can see, they are quite different from the other worlds!
I really hope you like the look of these levels! A lot of time went into it.
Let's carry on with a major update for the game, I moved the project from Unreal 4.22 to 4.25. sounds like an easy step? Nope, Unreal has a completely new lighting code and many things were broken after the transition, and once I've fixed everything, I ran into many performances issues, mainly bad frame rate... But now it's done, if you see any major performances issues, please let me know in the forums and I can have a look.
One graphic feature you'll notice is the new depth of field, it's much nicer! But the lasers do not cast lighting anymore, this was taking a lot of GPU ressources, so I removed the lights and put decals instead. It's not as nice, but it's nicer for your GPU.
I have also optimized the UI animation, allowing me to iterate faster without breaking everything. You can already see some tiny changes here and there, and I'll carry on working on the UI. Something I did finally update is the UI for the timer and death count, it's... nicer I think.
Moving on!
The new levels come with a new game mechanic, as usual, it's not here to help you!
The bridges are holes in the level, that you need to fill by hitting the activator! Some bridges are already filled and will be destroyed after you pass them, some bridges will collapse after a few seconds, some bridges will remain activated. I hope you like it, it forces you to be a bit more precise and add some tension! oulala!
So that's it for the content update, you can now reach the top (there is nothing special about this, for now). This concludes the main ascension, 28 levels, 84 golden balls! Plenty of deaths!
The next step is adding the B-Roll mode, which is the Hard Mode! You can see I have added a mode switcher from the world selection (Press X/Square/Alt) !
There will be 28 levels for the B-Roll mode, and new things to unlock (no more balls, but cubes, very original I know), but this is all work in progress so I won't talk too much about it! I still need to think about what these cubes will allow you to customize.
As always, feel free to reach out, for support, questions or issues, keep fighting for the leaderboard and most importantly, have an amazing Christmas time and stay safe!
Michael.