0.5 - Adding 2 Perspectives and Making a Better Monster

Hey everyone.

Today I released the 0.5 Update for SOS: Forgotten Planet. The first major update is that the game’s perspective has now changed from 1st person to 3rd person. This change was made because I felt that first, the gameplay suited 3rd person more but also because with the story revolving around Clara, it made a lot of sense to have the player see her in game more than just in dialogues.

A lot of time was spent making this look and feel as best as I could but there are still some animations that are placeholder and will be updated in future versions.
With this change I’ve also added crouching, which makes you a bit less detectable which is important given our other main change.

The 0.5 Update also comes with a complete overhaul of the monster. He now acts more like a predator, always staying in the vicinity of the player. Also the way he detects you has now evolved quite a bit.

The old version simply checked if you were in his line of sight within a distance and if so he would chase you. This new version now can both see you and hear you but also doesn’t just go from patrolling to chasing. His senses work based on a couple of different factors such as distance, if the player is crouching or running, or if the player has the flashlight on.

Each will make it either easier or harder for him to detect you. Within his senses though exists a range of certainty. If you are very close, for example, he can see you exactly and will very quickly start to chase you. If you are far away or crouching from a medium distance he may still think he sees something and will investigate but will not instantly give chase. In addition things like the flash light can now grab his attention so shining your flash light directly on him is not advised.

His hearing works similarly but for specific sounds, for example now failing a chest with its loud siren can attract his attention. There are also now randomly placed cans laying around the world and kicking them have a nasty habit of making him come look for you. There’s also a bunch of smaller tweaks to the AI I made so he should hopefully bug out less and be quite threatening while chasing you.

Some other more minor changes in this patch are

• The game is now fully voice acted so every line now has an accompanying audio line.
• Made a bunch of visual changes so while the game has dark parts, anywhere lit should by the flashlight should be fully lit.
• Changed the intro, removed the slide intro and now just have a redone dialogue at the start. Will likely add a small cutscene before the start of gameplay at some point but it will be short with just a couple more dialogue lines.
• The Permission System now unlocks after reaching the safe zone. Too many people were missing out on this vital upgrade early so just giving it to you.
• Added a bunch of loading screen tooltips to better explain some often missed mechanics
• Made the starter levels a bit smaller so the player now has a better chance to ease into navigating the maze-like hallways of the lab and gear up before confronting larger levels.

That’s all for now. The amount of text describing the changes actually betrays a bit how much the game feels different now so I hope you jump in and give it a try and let me know what you think.