The Neighborhood Expansion Update (Part 2 / BETA BRANCH ONLY)

Welcome Back!

It's been almost a year since my last update, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of it and trying to bring Cul-De-Sac up to speed with some new ideas I've been collecting for a while.

This update is a continuation of the Neighborhood Expansion Update. I've made some drastic changes (and some potentially controversial removal of features), but I do have a plan, and there will be more major changes before this major update is complete. Unfortunately, in my honest opinion, this part of the update might have made the game a bit worse in terms of fun factor, but I've gone too long without having people test newer features which is why this part of the neighborhood update will be beta branch exclusive and will move over to main once the Neighborhood Expansion update is complete.

Thanks for your understanding!

Additions:

• Added a new side mission: Murder Weapon

  • Somewhere on the map, there will be a confession note which will help you find where the murder weapon is buried. You'll need to find a shovel to dig it up, and once you do you need to bring it back to her final resting place at the new Graveyard location.

  • Reward for this objective is more XP, as well as making the ghost item marked and bringing down the aggression level of the ghost temporarily.

• New Hiding Place

  • You can now hide in bathtubs. Interacting with the tub while outside of it will place you into the tub, interacting again will put you back outside.

• New Ghost Behaviors

  • Picking up a key has a chance for the ghost to whisper to you.

  • Unlocking a door has a chance to spawn a jump scare on the other side.

  • Picking up a burn material has a chance to teleport the ghost to you.

Changes:

• Improved some multiplayer net code.

• Made changes to rendering and post processing in attempt to improve performance.

  • With these changes, lighting may seem to be significantly different. Whether that is a good or bad thing will be up to player feedback.

• Starting making changes to logic/code to improve performance, as well as starting to make some foundational changes for potential performance improvements in the future.

• Player model is no longer visible to self.

  • This was disabled to improve visual field of view, as seeing your own player model had no real value and just go tin the way, especially running with your flashlight held up in front of your face.

• Player camera movement has been modified, no more head bobbing and snappier, more consistent crouching movement.

• Made UI Changes

  • The graphics settings menu is organized slightly differently and is more user friendly.

• Keys and Locked Doors Overhaul

  • Every door on the map now has a unique key, and the key is randomly spawned on the property in such a way that the key cannot be locked behind its own door or unobtainable. There will always be a logical path to getting into a locked room.

  • Because of this change, the chance of any given door being locked is slightly lower to prevent the player from running into too many locked doors.

• Removed Gear, Backpack, and Map

  • Based on feedback and watching some people play, it seems as if gear and having the traditional style ghost hunting tools does not really suite the objective of the game, at least in any meaningful or fun way. I've decided to remove gear in favor of a new approach to the gameplay loop, emphasizing environmental exploration and puzzle solving instead of "ghost hunting" because after all, the objective is not to hunt the ghost, but to figure out what item is the correct item.

  • The flashlight still remains, but is a permanently held item. It's also brighter now.

  • This means that the progression system has been stripped back quite a bit, although perks are still available and can be unlocked and equipped. Money will eventually be repurposed or removed.

• Started House Redesigns

  • Over the course of the next few updates, I'll be trying to add more density and detail to each of the houses on the map, trying to flesh out more lore and story to discover. Some additions and layout changes have been made to a few of the houses.

• Ghost Item Changes

  • There are far fewer items in the map, reducing it down to roughly 20 (with potentially more being added later). The hope is that with the removal of gear and the emphasis on environmental puzzle solving, bringing down the item count will make the flow more interesting. Currently, the items are still pulled from the original pool of generic items from before, but the intent is to make more unique items that have some lore attached to them, adding a new avenue to figuring out which item is the ghost item.

• In Game Visual Changes

  • Nexus points now have a beam going up to the sky for easier locating in lieu of having no map.

  • Burn materials now have a large red energy field once the Nexus has been activated for easier locating during the final stretch of the round.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where you only needed to submit 5 burn materials instead of 10.

Engine:

• Updated to Unreal Engine 5.7

• Added NVIDIA DLSS/Upscaling/Frame Generation support.