An update for XENOGROVE has been released.
VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS:
There have been extensive shader reworks for performance and visuals all around.
Rocks and Mushrooms now have better subsurface scattering effects.
Foliage no longer shows black squares when far away, and the black outline effect outlines them as a group instead of as a whole.
Two new post process visual effects have been written, one that adds interesting color tinting based on the angle of the surface, and another that mimicks indirect lighting (right now this only works close to the ground).
The shader for the shield dome has been rewritten to not have as much of a performance hit.
The shader for water surfaces has been rewritten for performance.
DUNGEON THEME:
The ice dungeon theme that has been in testing is now the default theme for dungeons. This should look more organic and varied compared to the prior theme.
BUG FIXES:
Player should no longer die immediately when entering certain dungeon rooms.
Portals in certain dungeon entrance rooms should no longer take forever to open, and as a dungeon choice the portal in the first room now always opens immediately.
DEPLOYMENT:
Game content is now packed into compressed .pak files, which cut the disk usage in half (!) down to about 4gb from about 8gb. This has also shown faster load times for the game.
BALANCE:
Town vendors no longer have as many parts in their loot pool, to incentivise opening more chests in dungeons rather than saving up pearls to simply buy whatever part you want.
As a result, certain weapon parts can only be had by opening dungeon chests. This ultimately gives the player more interesting choices for what weapon parts to use because they don't have every choice available to them.
NEW PARTS:
Two new Burst-Firing handles have been added to the loot pool.
As always, let us know how you're feeling in the comments below.
We are growing ever closer to the finish line - thank you for all the excellent feedback you have given! Feedback is always important to us, and we'd love to hear any more you might have.
See you out there!
-Jon Sayer,
Systems Developer