Sorry the new release took so long but it's a pretty hefty one. Firstly, the "engine" I used to draw the ingame entities has been removed in favor of low-level draw calls which made my life much, much easier (the usual scene with entities approach is amazingly ineffective and cumbersome for a procedurally generated open world tile-based game) and removed a whole class of bugs related to dynamically managing entities but it also exposed the ingame art in PNG format. You can find it now in the "resources/app/img/" folder along with the rest of UI images. Also this opens up the possibility of working on mod support in the future. I will create a sticky thread in the Steam forum where both potential mod authors and players can tell me their ideas so I can have a better understanding of the work needed to support that.
Not only that, the "engine" change now allows me to do simple animations and particles. Now all ranged weapon shots will draw particles and blood splots. I will likely improve and increase their amount in the future but that is not the game's focus so don't expect anything elaborate.
Secondly, the final mission of scenario A has been improved and reworked. There is now a new area type - corporate office floor. You start in the elevator and have to go through some hoops to go to your target. I won't spoil anything. Moreover, there are now two more variations of the final mission, so at the start of the game it will pick randomly what mission do you have to do to complete the game.
NOTE: I'm not entirely sure whether the old savegames will be completable (or loadable even) due to the scenario changes so I advise you to start a new game if you encounter a game-breaking bug after loading an old savegame. It wasn't possible to make the savegames 100% compatible this time.
Thirdly, some more QOL improvements to the game were implemented, read the full changes list below.
Now let me share a few thoughts. The first scenario is now in a good shape so the game is pretty close to public release (though I fully expect some bugs from the engine change and new additions). There are two large gameplay expansions that I feel like have the highest priority. One is all about the combat and another is base building. The combat was always bare-bones and simplistic due to the survival focus of the game. However, many people expect it to be much more viable. Because of that, I've been thinking about not only enhancing the combat experience but adding a viable combat-heavy path through the game. OTOH, the base building feels a bit lackluster and would go very well with the "cult experience" which is a natural extension of the chat gameplay. Both of these expansions would also work best in separate scenarios that would have this new gameplay as a theme and focus instead of the basic survival of scenario A.
So, I have three options to ponder upon: leave the expansions to be done after the game's release, implement one before the release or implement both of them. Tell me what you think.
NOTE: The game is now much closer to the public release so in a week's time I will increase the base price by 1 USD again (or your regional equivalent).
Changes:
- Replaced the "engine" used to draw the game graphics (in-game images are now in resources/app/img/ folder)
- New graphics, AI, generator, gameplay and music track (thanks MaxStack!) for corporate office area type
- Updates to scenario A for the final mission to take place in new corpo area
- Two more variations of the final mission of scenario A
- Custom difficulty presets: creating new ones, editing, saving and deletion
- Animated particles for ranged weapons shots
- Blood splashes
- Bullets hitting glass will produce a sound (no breakable glass, sorry)
- Ingame minimap (accessed through mutation that is not that hard to find)
- Team members will not be spawned in the very first area of the game (to make life easier for the new players)
- Weapon can be marked as active in the inventory (it will be used for attacks instead of the first one in the list when no active weapon is set)
- Dog host can bark to attract humans
- Corporation area cannot be entered without a host
Fixes:
- Uncommon AI now spawns as correct law type for the area
- Fix for maximum alert and cannot leave logic (alertness will not go down once raised to max in corp)
- Ambush will also finish after the last AI is under player's control
- Nurturing ovum is disallowed once it reaches max level
- Installing <REDACTED> on <REDACTED> is now an agreeable action (energy cost reduced to 1 when the host is agreeable)