Shalom Ladies and Gents!
We hope you've had a wonderful opening to the new year, it's certainly been a productive one on our end. Thus, in the wake of February now being in full swing, Valentines day being right around the corner, and the birthday of yours truly being the 12th, (which by the time this update was released may have already passed...) I thought it was high time we gifted you with another Viscerafest Developer update!
So without any further ado...
The Finale
The rough draft version of Viscerafest's final level is complete! A lot of the loose ends have been addressed, and the level is now playable (though in a very rough state) from start to finish. There's still a lot of work to do on the Finale to get it ready for release, but as was mentioned last time, I'd begun the work of finishing and polishing up the rough draft version of chapter 3. Now that the Finale's first pass is done, we're full steam ahead on the cleanup work.
C3L2 - Blighted Babylon
Speaking of cleanup... there's a pinch more work I need to do in wrapping up Chapter 3's second map, but with that said, it is very much on the verge of completion. So let's talk about it!
C3L2 - Blighted Babylon is the player's first venture into the world of Rhanak Zethir, and with that, there's a host of new foes awaiting you therein. There are roughly 4-5 new enemies introduced with your foray into this new world, and a few of them bring some nasty new tricks to the table.
The level itself is very free-form in its overall structure, and with the exception of a few bottlenecks that act as funnels between the major sections, you have a fair amount of freedom to roam around and putts about.
But hey what about those enemies I mentioned? Surely there must be something interesting to talk about there...
A fair few of the new faces introduced in C3L2 are enemies that I've given you all a peak at in prior updates. However, there are 2 introduced in the map that I've not revealed to you as of yet. One of which I'll be leaving for the game's full release, but the other... We can talk about him...
The Adopted Mage
You may have spotted this little blight in the promotional art for Viscerafest's final chapter. There's a couple of them floating yonder in the background being silly little goobers. But make no mistake these lads are mean.
The Adopted Mage is a flying enemy that fires a full auto barrage of slow-moving projectiles which they lead their aim with, but the fun does not stop there! Adopted Mages have yellow shields!
Yellow shields, as opposed to red ones, can deflect projectile attacks, but only moderately reduce melee damage. And on that note! These little stinkers are weak to melee attacks.
Similar to the drones these lads drop their shields when going to attack you, but unlike the drones, they don't have any defense mechanisms against melee attacks. So if they get low enough to the ground for you to throw hands with them, it's worth doing!
Art Updates
As always we're constantly refining the game's art, updating refining, and polishing up old stuff to make it look as nice and purty as all the new stuff.
Audio Stuff
With Markie back on the team the first big thing we've been cracking down on is getting a fair chunk of the game's story content ready for implementation. Whilst we've had the dialogue recorded for months, a lot of that voice work needed to be cleaned up and given its fair share of sound design before it could be added to the game proper.
Most of the VA work is done with but a few exceptions, and because of that both C3L1 and 2 have most of their story dialogue and narrative events implemented already.
There's only one more character whose content we're working on dealing with right now, and... Well... Speaking of which...
Cinematic 6 - Relent
Cinematic 6 is finally getting its sound pass! Wew!!!
Not much more to say about it other than that, don't want to spoil anything...
But you know what I do want to spoil?
SO WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO WITH ALL THOSE SKULLIES???
Well my dear sweet summer child I am so glad you've asked...
This last month we have been finalizing our plans for the purchaseables present within the hub's shop. Whilst we've known the *kinds* of things Viscerafest's shop would contain for you to purchase, what *specifically* has been slightly more up in the air, as we've been throwing ideas back and forth for quite some time.
The short answer as to what exactly the shop will contain is...
Cheat codes.
Well... Cheat Codes and Gameplay Modifiers. Basically... Lots of ways to spice up repeat playthroughs of Viscerafest's campaign. Now if that doesn't sound appetizing to you... Just wait... With the 30+ we've got planned there's bound to be something you'll like. Heck let's talk about a few shall we!!!
- The Basics -
As I said, Cheat codes are on the docket of purchaseables, and with that comes the fairly vanilla stuff you'd expect. There's Invincibility, infinite ammo, Regenerating Health and or Armor, Berzerker mode, all your fairly standard fair to mess around with.
- Viscerahot -
Oh, but this... This is the premium stuff right here...
Ya'll know what superhot is? Time slows down when you're not moving? It's fun stuff! But with Viscerahot time slows down the faster you move! So as you enjoy bunnyhopping through the air blasting foes left and right you get to enjoy the sweet songs of slow motion along the way!
- Blitzkrieg -
Is Viscerafest just not fast enough for you? Why... Just try Blitzkrieg! And increases the overall game speed of Viscerafest!
- Instagib -
Your arsenal gets replaced with a railgun that one-shots enemies...
Also, all the ammo pickups are replaced with ammo pickups for said railgun.
- NC-17 -
So in older versions of Viscerafest, the names for the game's difficulty settings were effectively based on the Motion Picture Association's film rating system, easy was "G" medium "PG" and "NC-17" was the hardest difficulty. On NC-17 every enemy in the game could one-shot you. So you could probably guess what this modifier does.
- Oops, All cultists -
All the enemies in the given level you're playing? They're cultists now.
- The Minus Touch -
If an enemy touches you, it dies.
- Dope Mode -
Ok, but kids we've had our fun...
There are genuinely many more I've not mentioned here but we just...
We just can't leave today until we've talked about Dope Mode...
In Dope Mode... You get to play as Dopefish... Instead of punching enemies, you slap them with your big tongue...And you're Dopefish... And you make farting sounds when you dash because Markie is pissed I wouldn't give Caroline Dash boots so he could make an interesting dash sound and threatened to blackmail me by sneaking fart sounds into the full release with a 1/1000 chance that a fart sound would play instead of the generic dash woosh sounds so I offered to let him add the fart dash sounds to dope mode instead... And you're dopefish...
- And Many More -
As I said we currently have more than 30 planned for the game's full release. Some of them may or may not make the cut depending on where we're at, but there'll a lot of fun stuff tucked away in the shop for you to experiment with. And hey who knows! We may even add more after launch...
More Technical Odds and Ends
Some of the tasks that I have been far less intimately involved with, but nonetheless have very much been getting done is some more technical cleanup work. My lead programmer Elijah has been applying some hefty elbow grease to optimize our backend in the name of improving performance, collision detection, culling some tech debt, fixing minor bugs, etc...
Basically, he's been tackling a lot of the less flatteringly interesting stuff that often gets taken for granted but should amount to the game running better and smoother for you all in the end.
And That's All Folks
As I said it's been a rather productive month give or take, and as I write these final sentences I'm about halfway done with the cleanup work on C3L3. I don't have anything quite ready for public display on that front, but I most definitely will come March, and heck... I may even have some C3L4 stuff to show come that time.
But as with all our updates, they must eventually come to an end... That way I can get back to work.
For all those who bothered to read through my goofy ramblings, I appreciate it! And I hope you enjoyed it. We hope and pray you have a wonderful day, and that God might bless you!
Adios!