Hello gamers!
We're getting very close to the update now, it's been a bit of a ride, but we've nearly finished recreating the entire game.
So what's left to be done?
- Finalizing and hookup up the interface. Final Rush has a brand new and spectacular user interface, HUD, and ingame menus. The graphics for this are nearly done, and once they're complete we'll hook them up to code, so it actually works. This is the largest remaining task, and getting this finished up is going to be the deciding factor of when the 2.0 update is released.
- Serial and Mercury Switch maps. Cargo is already complete, and took by far the largest amount of time. Serial should be done by the end of the week, and I'm hoping to get Mercury Switch complete by the 2.0 update. No new maps yet, but that's mostly because we're focusing on reconstructing the old maps first. (And making improvements to the visuals, environment interaction, etc.)
- Enemy balancing. The enemies behave substantially different now; the basic robots sprint to get to the players, and the heavy bots have a bull charge style attack. Because the behavior is different, and the code is more efficient, we need to spend a short amount of time rebalancing how many enemies are being created at once.
- Secondary Polish and Final Testing. There's a handful of small details that we want to make sure are in the game. These are mostly visual or sound related, but in some cases are very small gameplay tweaks.
Technically speaking, the game is already effectively fully functional, with the exception of a few small features.
These features are not going to be making it back into the 2.0 update, as we don't feel that they add enough to the game to warrant delaying the update by several weeks just to add them. We're going to give those features a bit more love, and then add them back into the game in the post 2.0 updates. At the moment, this is mostly just Effect Ammunition, Effect Grenades, and Tertiary weapons; which didn't have very good implementation in the first place.
I can't give you an exact date, as that would just be asking for trouble; and technically speaking it's not up to us. If all goes as planned, sometime in June. Early or late has yet to be determined, but unless something really unexpected happens, definitely in June.
- Luke, Strike Games