Shalom one and all! It has been about a month since Realms Deep and thus as promised
we are back with yet another Development Update! First things first though, we dropped
a new trailer at Realms Deep! Which you've probably already seen, but in the case you've
been living under a rock you can check it out right here!
Watch on YouTube
In addition to the new trailer we also showcased the updated opening cutscene we mentioned
in our "Birthday Cruisin" Devlog. That of course you can check out right here!
Watch on YouTube
And as if that were not enough I've also started doing a series of YouTube shorts in which I'll be breaking down some of the game's mechanics, enemies, weapons, etc... and you can find those in this playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJg0WI2Gczzm-UAa_AhETu7BVErHGkT0l
But let's not waste any more time, and jump right into what we have been working on these last few months!!!
Gameplay Updates
The Warhound
A few updates ago we made mention of a whole suite of changes and tweaks being made to Viscerafest's arsenal and the accompanying reasons as to why said weapons were getting a facelift. But there was one more weapon I wanted to make changes/adjustments to, and that would of course be the game's grenade launcher, The Warhound.
The Warhound was a weapon that originally took a great deal of inspiration from one of my favorite weapons of all time, the Grenade Launcher from 1997's original Shadow Warrior. It was an absolute beast of an explosive weapon, with splash damage so stupid you were just as likely to kill yourself with it as you were your foes. And our little spin on it with The Warhound was... underwhelming.
Admittedly... I personally feel that in both function and presentation, our rendition of the beast was rather forgettable and often fell to the wayside in the wake of more immediately useful weapons. Because of this, I knew the gun needed an update, but what that update would be was something I hadn't solidified yet.
During the process of Chapter 3's development, I also stumbled across another little problem that I had
with our arsenal. Viscerafest has 9 weapons, and whilst functionally they all contribute and play an important role within the game's combat suite, juggling 8 different ammo types in the game's last 3rd honestly felt like slightly too much, I really felt as if we needed to cull one of our ammo types in the name of streamlining the resource management a bit.
Thus the first major change I decided The Warhound would need is that it would share ammo with The Pung Cannon, and accompanying that would be a design change to both reflect the new ammo type and to hopefully make for something more visually memorable.
But accompanying this change, I had a truly wonderful and stupid idea... What if I made the Warhound's Clusterbombs functionally behave more closely to sequenced explosions of Rise of the Triads Firebomb?
So functionally the Warhound is now one of Viscerafest's most powerful weapons, firing a bundle of 3 pung canisters that detonate into a massive cross-shaped sequence of explosions. It's also been bumped up from the 7th to the 8th weapon slot, meaning you'll be getting it after the BBQ Belter in the main campaign now.
Player Movement
Movement is something that I kind of obsess over when it comes to Viscerafest. It's something I'm always trying to improve and fine-tune. This is because, in First Person Shooters, the one thing you do more than shoot is move. Thus if your movement is bad/mediocre, I would personally consider that to be a really big problem.
Lots of little tweaks and refinements have been made to things like player speed, the ease-in/ease-out of the player's motion, the player's friction against the ground, and basically just... all of the important stuff to take note of when finessing your player's movement. But in making these changes there was one major complaint I was also taking aim to address, and that my friends, is the platforming. Personally, I've always considered platforming in Viscerafest to be rather easy, but a lot of folks do not share this sentiment, and there are a number of factors that I think contribute to this.
- - The Jump Arch -
The Arch of a jump is effectively the curve the action follows as you leave and eventually head back toward the ground. It's dictated by a number of factors, the force with which you leave the ground, movement speed, the force of gravity, player mass, air friction, etc... Viscerafest's jump arch didn't quite get the level of attention that I think it necessarily needed in order to be fine-tuned for platforming. Thus more time has been spent trying to find the right balance of all the above. - - Bunnyhopping -
In Viscerafest repetitive jumps made in sequence whilst moving in a given direction cause you to build up speed very quickly, a little too quickly in some cases. As a consequence of this, if you were a little too trigger-happy with your bunnyhopping you could very easily see yourself gaining enough speed to grossly overshoot a given jump. And whilst you have the air control necessary to correct a mistake like this, most players aren't particularly movement literate when it comes to fps games, thus they lack the muscle memory to do so consistently. This is an issue somewhat exasperated by how the platforming sections in Viscerafest are designed.
Platforms are often small surfaces tightly bunched together in clusters, and because of this, it's very easy to jump straight from one to another in an effortless chain. This effectively causes players to inadvertently bunnyhop and subsequently gain enough speed that a single jump overshoots the platform they were aiming for. - - No Forgiveness -
Many games that prominently feature platforming as a core part of their loop typically have mechanics set in place that act as buffers should the player make a mistake. Air control is a great example of this, being able to make minor adjustments to, if not completely change your trajectory mid-jump greatly relieves the burden of faulty decision-making beforehand, and it's one of the reasons why Viscerafest has always had it. But there's one mechanic most games with platforming have that I've only recently been made aware of, and I think it may have helped ease the platforming burden a bit had I both known about and seen it implemented sooner. That mechanic, of course, is coyote time. Coyote time effectively gives a brief window of forgiveness. If say you fall or slip off an edge whether
because of negligence or attempting to jump too late, rather than being doomed to your fall you can still jump if you attempt to do so soon enough.
All of the above are factors we've put under consideration when attempting to address and refine the game's movement. Thus all of the above have been tweaked in order to find that sweet je ne sais quoi between movement for combat and movement for platforming. And with all these changes I think it's an issue we can confidently say has been addressed.
Art Stuff
Hud Faces
Throughout the course of Viscerafest's second and third chapters, various narrative events take place
that somewhat alter Caroline's demeanor, as a result, though Caroline's signature grin is always a welcome sight, new expressions have been drawn up to allow Caroline to more adequately express what she's feeling when these moments roll around.
Blood Updates
So for starters, I recently discovered that the sprites we were using for our blood effects were scaled incorrectly. They were way too small, and thus I had to go in across the board and tweak the arts scaling. This realization and its accompanying tweaks also allowed me to cut back on the amount of effects needed to adequately convey a big bloodsplosion when gibbing enemies without having to cut back on the overall feeling of its volume, so that's cool.
But more importantly, there were a few enemies in chapter 3 whose blood effects created visibility problems and this called for the creation of a new smaller blood sprite set along with adjustments to the blood visuals in general.
There are also new sounds for blood, little sploshing sounds as the blood trails and puddles hit the ground, along with some improved effects and visuals for when that happens.
Sprite Updates
As with literally every development update, I have to inform you that more improvements have been made to old sprites, textures, and assets to further improve and refine the look of the game.
The Rest
I don't know how to categorize the rest of this stuff so... :P
Voice Acting
With the Script finalized I've been making the rounds with our voice actors, directing and recording
the bulk of the remaining dialogue we'll need to round out the game's story. We're not quite finished as of yet, there are a few remaining things we have yet to record, but the end is very much nigh...
Cinematic 6 - Relent
In the wake of us rounding up the VA stuff Viscerafest's 6th Cinematic has finally been fully animated, it still needs a big sound pass (something we are not able to accomplish at the moment) but progress is progress dagnabit, and seeing what in my opinion is both one of the most important and exciting cutscenes of the game finally come to life is a real treat.
C1l4 - Remake
Currently, I spend the bulk of my weekdays working on the game's ending and Finale, but I've decided to allocate my weekends to more unimportant side tasks. Because of this, I've been able to pick up progress on the remake of Viscerafest's first chapter once again. Thus I thought I might share some screenshots of the old version of C1L4 compared to its WIP update. The newer shots are not in engine yet, so they do not feature any fun colorful lighting, but I do feel the improvement to the geometry and texture work speak for themselves.
Old - 1
New -1
Old -2
New - 2
The Finale
Well, this has been a pain...
As with prior updates very little I can actually say about this one.
But the bulk of my time on this front has been consumed by mapping.
Currently, as of writing this, I'm working on the final boss arena, and as with the rest of the map it's been a bit of a time sink. Whilst the game's ending level is not particularly elaborate in layout it definitely has some of the largest setpiece areas in the game, and as a consequence yeah... It's been a bit of work...
But in other news, progress has also been made on the game's final boss, again not something
I can say too much about... other than I think you all will like it. :>
In Closing
That however is all from me for now!!!
There have been other things I've been working on as well but it's either stuff I can't talk about or stuff not worth bringing up here. For example, I don't think you guys need to read 30 paragraphs of me explaining why I lowered the Blitzer's health pool from 800 to 750, or buffed the shredders' damage from 20 to 22. I'm sure just mentioning those changes makes you feel as if you are being robbed of some truly riveting reading, but trust me it's not worth your time.
Once again though if you read all the way through, or just stopped by to check out the funny pictures I appreciate it! And as always we thank God and you for the wonderful support and encouragement ya'll have lent us throughout the course of the game's development. As much as we enjoy it, development has been a real grind at times, but seeing all the fanart, playthroughs, streams, and kind comments you all have lent us throughout the game's life cycle never ceases to make us smile.
As always we hope you have a wonderful day, and as of writing this, I hope you have had a very spooky Halloween!!!