Hello Astronauts!
Zag here. Today we're coming at you with a new update -- 0.2.31 "PARABOLA" -- featuring an awesome new Heads-Up Display (HUD), buffs to the shotgun, and loads of quality-of-life improvements! Check out the biggest stuff -- right here, right now! As always, the full patch notes contain a lot more than you'll read here. Those will be linked at the end.
Brand New HUD
We scrapped the old "3D" HUD for a 2D HUD that is much crisper, and actually appears more 3-dimensional than the previous iteration. The main issue we saw was that the in-world HUD was being negatively affected by the camera's post-processing effects and other lighting-related things.
OLD HUD
The new HUD is completely de-coupled from the in-world perspective, giving us far greater control over it and bringing a crisper, more readable experience.
NEW HUD
I actually wrote up a blog post on how to achieve this effect with a 2D HUD, for any of those aspiring UE4 developers out there! And yes, it still moves around with the first-person helmet!
Enjoy your new, sleeker HUD in Unfortunate Spacemen.
Scary Music
When you are being attacked by the Monster, we now dynamically change the music to something a little more horrifying, and in general, the soundtrack system is a bit smarter than its initial implementation in the last update.
Shotgun Buffs
Both the Shotgun and the Auto-Shotty were feeling a little puny next to the might of the new Flamethrower, and some other weaponry, so we increased their base-level damage to the Monster by just a hair, and reduced the falloff damage over distance, which should result in a lot more devestation.
Dedicated Server Player Count
While dedicated servers have always allowed up to 16 players, the Server Browser was showing the max players as 8. This has been corrected! The server browser is also a little bit prettier now as well. We are however still looking at why Steam is reading out the wrong player count in game, but that's coming up on The List and will be corrected soon.
Resolution Scaling Improvements
Along with no longer affecting your HUD readability, Resolution Scaling now allows you to go as low as 30%, if you're really hurting on performance, or as high as 200%, if you really want to push your GPU to the limits for a super sharp and high-res experience.
Loads of Other Fixes & Improvements
A bunch of notorious and long-standing bugs have been squashed! Stretchy "long-boi" HUD bug? Destroyed. Blank Spacemen spawning in? Neutralized. Monster sometimes not taking explosive damage? Nuked. There are also some small tweaks to various maps, and a whole lot more as well, which you can view in the FULL PATCH NOTES.
What's Next?
As we continue to push towards the 1.0 release and start locking the final features into place, we've got a few cool things in the works aside from continuing to push the gameplay towards further polish and refinement.
Story Mission Co-op 3 -- also known as "Boneworld" -- is currently in development and it's turning out to be quite the wild ride. It features your first real encounter with The Company's Spokesman, in person, and a lot more lore to boot! However, Co-op 3 is still undergoing a lot of the initial design to get it right. The mission should enter playtesting before the end of the year, and will conclude at least one arc of the main story we'd like to share in Unfortunate Spacemen.
There are 2 new Shapeshifter maps in development. One map - Snowswept - returning from the grave as a holiday treat (and a will stay permanently in the map pool once it arrives.)
It's quite a lot different than what you might have experienced waaaaaay back in the early Alpha days, including a teleporter system in lieu of far-too-long hallways, and far more detail in the envrionments -- as well as some kind of other-worldy contamination...
But we'll talk about that more when it hits - probably in a vlog!
The second map -- which we're calling H2O -- is planned for a bit later on, probably after 1.0, alongside some other similar content. Some very... Watery content.
Thanks for reading, thanks for playing, and we'll see you in space!