Hi all,
today we are bringing the first significant patch that resulted from us releasing to consoles.
As you might have noticed, console release brought in our first press reviews. While we are happy with the overall reception (we are a very small game and accept our limitations) there were a couple points that almost every reviewer raised, even those who really liked the game.
Moreover, now we have a larger playerbase to receive feedback from, and some of the players' complaints overlap with those of the reviewers.
Thus, we've been rushing through some sorely needed fixes to those issues, in the hope of bringing up a new patch that addresses some of them.
Perhaps the biggest, most commonly raised issue, was the camera. Here there's little we can say except that we really thought it wasn't as bothersome as it turns out it was. We grew used to the way it worked and didn't see it clearly or objectively. It's taken us giving extra visibility to the game to realize what we had done.
Namely, we tried to be too clever. Cameras in third person action games are tricky, specially at the speed Heart&Slash moves. We though we had a couple of interesting behaviors that improved the camera, but in the end those attempts at automatic compensation took too much control away from the player.
Now, the camera is simpler, and easier to use.
Also, we added the ability for the camera to allow certain smallish objects to obscure the player, thus keeping the camera much more stable overall in combat, without losing much awareness, we think.
We also discovered, thanks to the recent console launch, that we still had a couple of critical bugs that would glitch the game to the extent of losing the whole run. We have addressed the most prevalent of these (one related to the Thunder Hammer and another related to the Clockwork Lens).
We've also made it less likely for you to fall through the second level world, and made it so the game respawns you if you do indeed fall through.
We've also added a couple minor surprises to the third level, making it harder and less predictable. Look carefully at the elite enemies, for they are not the same.
Finally, we have fixed as many issues as we could during this time. The full changelog since the update last week is:
- Added options to disable camera shake.
- Vertical camera movement is more directly linked to camera sensitivity.
- Reduced default camera speed.
- Very fast taps of Camera Action now properly centre the camera.
- Camera does no longer close up when a small or transparent element is between it and the player.
- Added random weakness/resistance for elite soldiers in the third level. Changed their graphical representation to indicate that.
- Made it so that if you fall through the world in the second level you respawn.
- Made it more unlikely to fall out of the world in the second level. Fixed subway collisions.
- Fixed Clockwork Lens conflicting with level 3 camera.
- Fixed Morningstar recycling.
- Fixed weapon recycling while in alternate weapon selection mode.
- When first entering the weapon room, the doctor dialog doesn't dissapear until the player hits the computer.
- Fixes animations sliding when switching weapons.
- Changed how hearts recovered from recycling are displayed when picking up a weapon.
- Camera should not go through the floor on Franky’s intro.
Finally, one request to all of you. One of the reasons we released with so many technical issues on consoles was lack of testing. Being a two/person studio, we are really struggling with having enough QA, and mistakes slip through unnoticed too often.
Please, test this patch and let us know if everything is working correctly. Don't be afraid to report a bug if you see something that looks like one...
We think the patch is solid, but it's a big one and something not trivial might have broken in some of the code changes. Also, we are very interested to hear what you think of the new camera behavior.
We really hope you enjoy the changes.
Juan