Heartless & Dreadful : Return By 72 Hours · published · build 22458535
1.25? Wasn't it 1.131? It was. There's just too many changes since then with all of them beta updates. So I bumped the version number higher, to indicate progress.
Anyway... Wow, it's an update to an Indie game that's imitating a AAA title from decades ago.
I've tried to mess around a bit more with local co-op integration and I found out that doing a traditional split screen is not easily doable in Unity, because a certain game engine only wants one audio listener. Sad.
But I've tried to make it work for one screen as well as it could possibly be. Although maybe split-screen would be a possibility if I force it to mono... Hmmm. Well regardless, feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think.
You can now play together online through Steam Remote Play as well, this is now enabled on the main build. So what's new on the main build?
Updated visuals. (Damn, is this some sort of mini remaster or something?)
Although there's not that many changes, the changes that are there give the game a nicer looks. It's mostly moving effects, to make the areas of the game feel a bit more alive, instead of static. In addition, new shader modifications make it so the textures shimmer less in the distance. So if that was annoying your eyes in the past, it shouldn't do so any longer.
Some updated animations and Gameplay.
Some characters got an additional layer of polish, improving the way they feel to play. Mainly Enerith. He was the first extra character, so he got some polish to keep him up with the rest of the extra playable. In addition, minor balancing tweaks were added to make the game less frustrating. You can even revive yourself! If you have enough money. No, not real money, this is not a game like that.
Huntress Rework.
Finally ready, her original appearance here as a playable character was just me being curious if I could turn this game into something that plays entirely different from what I had thus far, and it was a fun concept, I mean it just turned the game into a third person shooter, but even then... It was a neat experiment. Anyway, since then, I wanted to see if I can make a fully gun based character that plays like everyone else, and thus, this rework was born.
New skins.
For Enerith and the new Huntress Rework.
Many bug fixes.
So many. Remember that terrible inconsistent rotation when you pressed the attack button without locking on? Yeah, that's gone.
Local Co-op mode.
Oh no, there's two of them? Yeah, now you can brick the game with your buddy, pal or your loved one. Have some banter as you get to enjoy the power of Friendslop.
To toggle co-op, simply load your save file and check the Local Co-op toggle. And boom, you can play any* mission and Gamemode together, even the workshop maps. You can even do it online with the power of Steam Remote Play Together.
*Huntress's Mission is not included.
Character Switcher.
At last, now you too can experience the peak of this game's combat. Haha...ha... No, but really. This was actually inspired by a few mods for a few other action games, if you know, you know.
It even has a character switching wheel if you're playing on the Gamepad... Fancy!
Slightly Reworked Camera System.
Less relying on the stick, more relying on your skills. The camera has been reworked to be a bit more dynamic and much more consistent when automatic rotation is enabled, so you can focus less on fighting the camera and more on fighting your enemies.
Many other optimizations.
Many issues related to multi hit attacks were resolved and are now much easier on the CPU, causing less chances of stuttering or major performance drops when you hit many targets at once.
There are also many other changes that made into this final build, however mentioning them here would bloat the announcement.
So if you're curious, feel free to through all of them via the links below. - Beta1
- Beta2
- Beta3
- Beta4
- Beta5
And here's the changelog for this patch from Patch v1.131 (Beta5) to -> 1.25
Added a failsafe for unlocks that are unlocked after beating the game once.
Added co-op related achievement.
Added the ability to self revive in exchange for currency. (Singleplayer only). So if you're tired and just want to beat the game and you are fine with a ranking penalty, you can use it.
Co-op - A dead Player 1 shouldn't be able to revive a dead Player 2 now.
Co-op - Added invincible frames for revival.
Co-op - Characters can now be visible through walls via a cutout if they are obstructed.
Co-op - Fixed Enerith's projectiles not picking his current target if he is Player 2.
Co-op - Fixed Player 2's music end timer overriding Player 1's, that caused long silence at the end of the fight before normal music kicked in.
Co-op - Fixed encounters bricking if there's no failsafe position in the combat arena script.
Co-op - Fixed movelist not loading correctly on the first opening of it from the menu.
Co-op - Fixed pulleys not respecting player controls.
Co-op - Improved camera control.
Co-op - Now prevents players from getting too far away from each other.
Co-op - Shamir, Kair, Dominika are unlocked in Co-op by default, but to get Enerith/Huntress you'll need to beat the game. To make it more obvious to newcomers (if there'll be any.) Shamir is now marked as main story character with text on the character selection screen.
Co-op - When revive is sucessful, the enemies will now be pushed away to prevent from getting immidiately damaged right after revival's completion.
Character Switcher can no longer swap characters when in all other menus, not just pause.
Enerith - Buffed dodge range.
Enerith - Fixed doppelganger issues after character switcher was implemented.
Enerith - Force Push circle not showing up has been fixed.
Finishing TOB as Huntress (CAG) now unlocks her relevant achievement.
Fixed an issue that allowed people to press start right as the level finished. That prevented the gamepad cursor from working and forced you to use the mouse.
Fixed an issue where auto sprint would drain the Chaos Energy on a fresh save file, when switched to/or playing as a different character other than Shamir.
Fixed Camera's rotation not locking right on one of the rotation axises when using character switcher.
Fixed Kair being able to launch bosses into the orbit by spamming Teleport and Jump Cancel.
Fixed Checkpoint related teleportation issues.
Fixed Divergence menu text being enabled by default even when the game was not beaten.
Fixed Enerith's Bullet Hell move not working right.
Fixed Kair's teleport not applying zero gravity for a few frames.
Fixed Kair related shading issues on some of the missions.
Fixed Shamir's Sinner Jump hitbox after implementation of the character switcher.
Fixed Shamir's shield not being visible after switching to him from another character via Character Switcher.
Fixed Huntress (CAG)'s Hud not showing up correctly on the classic HUD mode.
Fixed a few issues related to loading screens, like player being able to jump while the loading screen was active.
Fixed an issue in Mission 01 where the telportation position of "Skip intro" would not count as a checkpoint, thus causing the Player to teleport to the start position of the Mission 01.
Fixed an issue where you could have a fake jump while dodging/guarding.
Fixed footsteps not working right with Character Switcher.
Fixed music change not working right in Mission 1.
Fixed other character's weapons remaining visible when they are dead.
Fixed performance issues related to enemy suicide failsafe.
Fixed textures in Huntress's mission.
Fixed the first time stutter when switching to Enerith via Character Switcher.
Fixed UI health not scaling right.
Huntress (CAG) - A few extra moves for the Rifle.
Huntress (CAG) - Fixed an issue where her dodge wouldn't hide the hitboxes for the duration of the dodge if the hitbox was active at the time.
Huntress (CAG) - Improved dodge behavior.
Huntress (CAG) - Some moves were locked to be unlockable, as I mentioned before, I would do that.
Improved behavior of bouncing projectiles.
Improved behavior of jumping out of damage/dodging out of damage, so it's less likely to prevent your character from only resetting the animation and not moving away from combat.
Reduced the chance of melee enemies attacking at the same time.
Replaced the first training room with the one I use to showcase stuff. Looks better is all.
Updated many video previews.
Updated the input method for Enerith's Bullet Hell move so its easier to pull off.
Smoothed out enemy rotation in attacks so they don't look like they immediately turn to you in 1 frame during their basic attack combinations.
Wow, that took a really long time.
That's the perk of having a thing called JOB. (I hate it.)
On a more positive note. I've updated the soundtrack on Steam with the missing tracks and improved audio volume. Now you can listen to a barrage of samples mixed with a few virtual instruments at normal and acceptable volume.
Almost 3 hours eh? Probably would be well over 3 hours if I were to include all the cut tracks, but...
That's for the dataminers to check, I suppose. Those tracks were cut for a reason.
The soundtrack's still free you know, go grab it and shove it into your MP3 player, or a phone or a car...
Now let us talk a little bit about the future.
This codebase has been exhausted. There are quite a few reasons why I can't change a few things, or improve a few things, because a lot of things were coded quite terribly and require duplication. This is bad, fellas, this is bad.
I think that if you liked HnD, you'll likely like whatever next I'll be working on regardless of the genre.
I've got a few ideas.
A turn based game - I had a prototype already a while ago, before I started to neglect it because I decided to do a Huntress rework. It had a cute style and it is something that my heart wants to work on, but I fear that I might be wasting my time. We don't live forever after all and games take way too much time to make. (In the meantime, if you're in the mood for a surprisingly great turn based game, check out YIIK I.V and SMT IV. I personally love them, funny how they both have an I and V in their names...)
Another action game - Although this time, I intend to make it much... smarter and easier to work with, much more modular. Maybe even more moddable, too. Who knows. I've learned a lot on what to do and what to not do.
Something smaller, but fun is also on the table... to raise the budget for future projects. (Gotta get that streamer-bait slop cash, ain't that right my fellow gamers?)
HND's codebase, or as I internally call it Heart framework, is still relatively well modifiable, but when I say the codebase is exhausted, I meant the action part of it in particular.
There's... A ton of things that could do better.
I mean it. Just look at the issues right now for example:
1) Physics ARE actually tied to the framerate, although with very minor differences in gravity. That is why I often reccomend people to just lock it to a specific number, works better this way.
2) The enemy physics and the player physics are separated, meaning that if i need to make adjustments to one, it wont be universal, gotta do it for them all separately.
3) There's no universal concepts of health of character/enemy/object, it's all assigned to their own scripts, causing more and more work.
4) And a ton of things are hard coded/have spaghetti dependencies on other parts of the framework. If one object is missing, the whole thing can and will brick.
5) Enemy behavior is mostly relied on timers and hardcoded actions. For example, when you see a boss do a combo attack, it's actually one pre-baked animation, while the player has them all separated. This is absolutely terrible design decision, and if you're a game dev, don't do it.
6) Network support is impossible. Which is something I really want to mess with in the future, especially with an action game.
7) Root motion support doesn't exist, and all of the attacks are handled via animation events. Yes, that's right. Never used it. Now I know that was a mistake, would've made my life so much easier.
8) No way at all to synchronize two actors doing an animation together (grabs, and so on.) That is why Dominika's kit ain't exactly what I envisioned at first. Rip.
So, to make things better, I'll likely need to adjust a ton of stuff. Well what can I say, it was my first truly big project, and we're all expected to make mistakes.
I got a design doc for the next action game and the turn based one, but I don't know what I'll be working on first.
Guess whatever feels more fun. But before then, I'm going to unscrew my codebase in a separate fork and make stuff "just workTM".
If you'd like to see stuff behind the scenes, you can find me on twitter/x or whatever it's called, granted I rarely post, and I hate advertising. No one wants to be advertised to. (Neither do I.)
So I don't do the hashtag shite anymore. So if you just want to see stuff behind the scenes or get your "For You" page messed up by the algorithm with pictures of lizards, feel free to follow me there.
The giant blogpost aside, that doesn't mean that I'll stop fixing bugs or make adjustments based on feedback here. If you report an issue, I'll take care of it, if I have free time that is.
Just no more new new stuff.
I'd still happily make corrections to improve the game feel based on the feedback, just y'know...
Make sure to provide me some. And hey. The level editor is still around, you can also make some new content too. If you want to. I'd be happy to support or make new features for the SDK if requested.
Oh, and one last thing. The previous update IS still available, via the Betas channel. So like, if I completely messed it up somehow, you can always revert it until I fix things.
So... If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail ([email protected]), or on the stinky Discord server.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone (me) having to sleep.