So it's been a while. It's been a while since we last posted anything, but we're back and it's time to start sharing our progress on the game! Lots of things have happened, and we are going to go through all of them over the coming months and show off all the shiny new things added and improvements in the game.
First of all, the core game idea has not changed. It's still set in a simulated reality, and you are tasked with just reading the instructions and trying to figure out what exactly you are supposed to do. Every time you start a level, it's procedurally generated with a unique layout, making it always fresh and interesting! Finally, there are still a ton of enemies that will attack you at the same time, and your weapons are still very overpowered. Oh, and everything is still a bit surreal.
But let's talk about the new stuff! The biggest change yet is that the dust that is left when enemies die is not what hurts the player anymore. We changed this for a couple of reasons, but the main thing was that it was really hard to keep track of where the dust was, and that made it just not satisfying to handle, just annoying. So now the things that hurt you are enemies exploding in your proximity or enemies flying into you and exploding. Which is sort of the same thing really, it's just that some enemies are more aggressive than others.
And what about the enemy types? When we left, there were two different: crawlers and pillar beasts. There are now three more (and probably more than that eventually). We're not going to spoil them here right now, more details will come in later dev blogs, but just naming them will give some idea of what they do:
- Crawler
- Pillar Beast
- Jumper
- Boomerang
- Shifter (boss)
All these behave radically differently, and we can't wait to share more about how they work!
Let's look at another thing: the graphics. That's where the biggest upgrade has been, we think. Here is a short clip of how it looked when we left you:
And here is how it looks now:
Watch on YouTube
There are three major upgrades that make the difference. The actual graphical assets are completely remade. There are now real-time reflections of the enemies and effects. Finally, we've added better lighting to all levels, baked indirect lighting to be more specific. Remember, every map is fully procedural, so we cannot bake the light on a static level to improve the light quality; there is no static level. Instead, we've built our own baker that does this baking in the loading screen every time you start a level. It's not as accurate and detailed as if we could have baked it for a long time on a static level, but it certainly improves the look over no baking.
Take a look at the difference:
The feeling of the alleyways between the houses is quite different, a much more appropriate amount of light.
That's it for now. In the next episode of "What the Heck Were You Guys Doing for Almost Two Years?" we're going to take a closer look at one of the new enemies!
Stay tuned, and don't forget to sign up for our beta!
www.Knackelibang.com
/ The Knackelibang Team