Hello Friends,
It’s time for another GrowRillious Update, just in time for the spookiest season of the year. We've added tons of new scary content to the game, so grab your silver arrows and garlic cloves and let’s jump into it.
Scary Content
New, supernatural inhabitants have invaded the GrowRilla islands and are hunting for fresh gorilla snacks. All new Halloween content and special areas will appear with high frequency during the next week or so and then less regularly afterwards.
We are not going to reveal too much, just leave you with a few teaser images and we'll let you explore all the little surprises.
A haunted mansion, guarded by the undead.
A graveyard, full of potential food and enemies.
Witches conducting their secret rituals.
Gameplay Balancing and Improvements
As per usual, this update is packed with new improvements and fixes for the game. We've tackled some previously requested bugs, such as being able to clip into the ground after getting too close to the water.
We've improved the map layout algorithm to prevent the oh too common problem where areas would spawn too close to the water. This has been an on-going effort but now you definitely shouldn't encounter any more floating tanks.
Another highly requested feature was a spawning area. Enemies would frequently attack you as soon as you spawned into the world, which was pretty unfair. We've added 3 different spawning areas for you to spawn in, which will prevent enemies from spotting you right away.
We've also generally improved the AI behaviors. NPCs can now become so scared that they run away. This is indicated by a small shield icon above their head (we're working on a better represenation of "fright" but it's a bit challenging). Usually NPCs will run away if you approach them when at a big size, or if they sustain enough damage. You can try it out with the general too.
What’s Next?
In our previous update, we teased a screenshot of our improved water edge and cliff visuals. We're continuing work on building more diverse environments and adding more verticalities to the game. These are still in the prototype stage, but we're now starting to build plateaus and mountains. Let's see how these work out.
Our aim is to add more uses of the vertical dimension of the game. You're a gorilla after all! You should be able to climb everywhere (and have a reason to). We hope that this will create new opportunities for exploration and content.
We're also continuing to work on a more coherent campaign mode for the game. This one will take a while to put together properly but we hope to share some progress with our next major update.
As always, please keep an eye on our public roadmap for more details. And let us know what you want to see!
Cheers,
Salmi Games
Changelist - Build 210
Improvements
- Halloween locations are now in the game. They can spawn any time of the year but have an exceptionally high chance during Halloween
- There is now a moderate chance to find bananas on top of military towers
- Re-designed start areas in a way that you are shielded from enemies seeing you to avoid being killed right on start
- There's now a new, smaller variation of the military plane landing strip
- New bazooka soldiers have been added to the game
- NPCs will now run away from you if they are scared
- Improved item grab order to make it easier to pick up small objects while big (generally when getting larger or to be precise, we noticed that most people point with their palm at the things. Therefore we order all objects of this raycast before objects of the raycast using the hand down direction)
- You are now able to deflect tank shots with your hands if you are a giant gorilla
- Added season system (to switch between seasonal events)
- Added object switcher for seasons
- Added Halloween event and costumes
- Added Halloween decorations (Pumpkins, Black Cats) to various points of interest
- Added custom moon, fog, ColorGrading
- Added haunted house and witch cauldron point of interests
- Added more decorations to objects (e.g. benches / tables etc.)
- Added cliffs and water flowers and reed at the beach
- Added option to create plateaus (not live yet)
- Added test scene + menu to try out new objects in-game (internal only)
- Create debug visualizations for hands (internal only)
- Add Debug Scene switcher ("M" + 1, 2, 3) (internal only)
- Initial support of Oculus SDK (not live yet)
- Added Oculus SDK tutorial support, add controller model, add glow to button and add text info
- Created improved hand positioning test scene
- Deleted some unused assets to keep project clean, improve build performance
- Improved fall down icon (fixed pixel errors, moved it a bit further down so it doesn't appear right in the middle of the screen and made it a bit smaller)
Fixes
- Fixed the "falling down" check, so it's harder to fall through small cracks (Do sphere cast instead of raycast to check if you fall down. This prevents you from falling through small cracks like in between the planks of the table. Also saw a youtuber fall into a tree because of this)
- Fixed a bug where soldiers were unable to walk onto the landing strip at the hangar
- Fixed a bug where the same seed was generated for every playthrough
- Fixed hover bug on objects with food
- Fixed collider issues
- Fixed "Out-Of-Range" bug in random generation script
- Fixed issue on map generation that only one side could be 45 degrees
- Fixed Oculus SDK hand position and other minor issues with Oculus SDK
- Fixed a bug where objects were floating above the ground in the city