FIRST THING'S FIRST
Hello everyone, how's it goin'?
So, we are now two months out from the Past And Present Update. If you were following along, you know it was a kind of oddly received update. New players seem to like it, old players (from like 2020-ish through to bout 2022-ish) seem to not. There's some super valid criticism of the game, directionally. There's also a lot of confusion due to lack of tutorialization and proper explanations for mechanics. There's also more things than that, too, that led to the Past and Present Update - but one way or another, the NEXT update is going to be the last.
That means I have to address all of that...in one update....and it's going really really great thus far.
If you want to see the general direction that the community and I have decided to go in with this final update, you can see the bones of that plan being discussed and created live on this live stream from a few days ago.
LINK TO LIVE STREAM RECORDING
I had this live stream, took a few more days to really sit there and consider the magnitude of the situation, and then I got to work.
The first place I started? With this little guy right here:
If you are familiar with the game, you'll immediately notice a few things different about this. I bet a lot of you have never even seen what a Drudge's back looks like, and that's because enemies, the second they spawn in, know exactly where you are and charge straight for you. Instead, I'm writing a new AI that populates the level, has goals, preferences, and different sets of behaviors and abilities. Beacons are becoming side objectives for more Shards and ammo, Bunkers are becoming less common, more filled with goodies, and moved towards the END of the level (in most cases) so that the actual majority of the level can focus on moving fast and kicking ass.
Speaking of moving fast...
I, low_hanging_nuts, hereby declare that I am done rewriting my movement code over and over again. It's not gonna get much better than this right here. Two nights ago, froth foaming out of my mouth until 2AM, I rewrote GTTOD's movement code from scratch. This is what I ended up with. It is clean, it is smooth, it works every single time, it feels good, it is consistent, it's everything it needs to be. It is a GREAT foundation to rework some of GTTOD's base philosophy around, and I hope that this is the start of a final update for GTTOD that makes everyone happy.
I'll be doing more of these little posts here and there to keep everyone on Steam up to date on what's going on. In the meantime, I'll see you around! You can always find me talking in my:
DISCORD SERVER
See ya later!