Howdy, ladies and gentlemen! It's been a minute, and I apologize for that.
This has been a patch we'd intended to come out a lot sooner than it actually has, and that is primarily just due to little problems constantly rearing their ugly heads. Every time around the point we were getting ready to ship this patch off to our publisher, something would come up and we'd have to hit the grindstone again.
This patch is more of a middleman update; we've got some bigger stuff in the works, which will be coming soon-ish, and this update introduces some systems and changes that will account for the coming "Bigger Stuff" as well as address some feedback and bugs we've had submitted over the recent months. One of those bigger things we'll be dropping a new trailer for soon, so I don't want to say too much about it ahead of the drop. But the other is our NG+ mode.
After beating the Viscerafest campaign, you'll unlock the ability to toggle NG+ in a given level's selection screen. In essence, the NG+ mode will be a completely rebalanced campaign featuring enemies that were formerly exclusive to the enemy randomizer, as well as late-game content and enemy types appearing in early-game levels. Some levels will also have changes to their layouts and progression, with key doors and secrets in different places, which can radically alter the paths you take through certain levels.
As of writing, I'm currently about halfway through chapter 2's rebalanced campaign, and I suspect it will probably be another month or two before the reworked campaign is ready for the big time.
With that said, I have some more rambling to do, but I figure I will do that at the end because most people are probably just interested in the patch notes at this point, so!!!
Patch Notes
General Tweaks:
Updated Engine Versions
Completely revised and updated Chapter 2's Sub-hub to reflect the updates made to Chapter 2 in the game's full release.
Added new Death Messages.
Restructured the difficulty selection menu to categorize certain difficulty types better visually.
Color-coded difficulty settings in the difficulty selection menu.
Tweaked the menu description of Brutal Difficulty.
Enemies damaging each other in C1L2 will no longer invalidate your ability to get the Stifled Strike achievement.
Tweaked Lock-On so that you can no longer lock onto enemies whilst they are invisible.
Tweaked the Lock-On camera's movement to make it visually smoother.
Tweaked Lock-On so that locking onto an enemy now disables the crosshair, making it clearer where you'll be shooting.
Added a new HUD icon for when "Toggled Bunny-Hopping" is enabled and the feature is toggled on in-game.
"Toggled Bunny-Hopping" is now engaged by holding the jump button for 1/3rd of a second. This is indicated on your HUD by a circular meter surrounding the toggle icon. Otherwise, you can tap the jump button as if the option were set to Regular. This change was made so you don't have to double-tap to perform a single jump while "Toggled Bunny-Hopping" is enabled. When you have "Toggled Bunny-Hopping" enabled, you'll use the regular option's max bunnyhop speed unless the jump is actually toggled.
Climbing on a ladder will now automatically make your bunnyhop toggle turn off, and you can no longer toggle it on/off while climbing.
Unified pickup bobbing speed and height.
Buffed the duration of the Eldritch Walker Powerup from 30 to 40 seconds.
Level Tweaks:
Added a new tutorial in "Prelude - Intruder Inbound" explaining the Lock-On mechanic
Tweaked floor textures in the switch room of "C1L1 - Containment Carnage."
Moved door switch slightly in the switch room of "C1L1 - Containment Carnage."
Added a new tutorial in C1L3 explaining the Weapon Wheel mechanic.
Widened colliders on some secret windows in "C1L3 - Fragmented Folly."
Fixed the exit door in "C2L2 - Cthonic Crypt" using chapter 1 door sounds.
Crushers in "C3L1 - Theopathic Thoroughfare" now kill enemies.
Tweaked positioning of enemies on the first floor encounter of "C3L5 - Damnable Descent."
Tweaked enemy placement in "C3L6 - Compulsory Contrition" on difficulties below Brutal.
Adjusted the placement of "C3L7 - Alter Alvus's" boss autosave to cut filler time so the player can jump right back into the fight.
Changed slipgates in the level "Finale - In the Maw of Madness" to use lore-correct colored textures.
Enemy Tweaks:
Moderately nerfed the U.S.C Thunderbirds' movement speed across all difficulties.
Moderately nerfed the U.S.C Hellbird's movement speed across all difficulties.
Added a wait time for U.S.C Hellbirds before they are allowed to attack the player upon spotting them.
U.S.C Assault Troopers Hitscan Attack Windup duration increased.
Tweaked the particle flame radius for Mecha Scientists.
Burrowed Nomads now have a shorter transition time from their animated rising prop to the enemy spawning.
The Adopted Night Gaunt's homing projectile tracking is now more forgiving on difficulty settings below Nightmare.
The Adopted Night Gaunt now has a windup before it starts damaging the player after teleporting.
Boss Tweaks:
Tweaked the "C1L4 - Disposable Danger's" Bosses' preferred distance from the player.
Adjusted timing on the "C1L4 - Disposable Danger's" Bosses' callouts.
Buffed the damage of several of the "Finale - In the Maw of Madness" boss fight's attacks across all difficulties.
Added speed to secondary variants of the "Finale - In the Maw of Madness" boss fight across all difficulties.
Tweaked several of the visuals for some of the attacks of the "Finale - In the Maw of Madness" boss fight across all difficulties.
General Fixes:
Fixed the pause menu's difficulty menu not displaying your current difficulty.
Fixed leg visibility not applying correctly when loading a save.
Fixed several typos in the Lorebrary and Bestiary.
Fixed Eldritch Walker preventing the players projectiles from being shot correctly in some levels.
Fixed the all skullies collected stinger playing after showing a mid-level cutscene if you had collected all skullies in a level on a previous playthrough.
Fixed the out of ammo message staying on the screen under certain conditions, like interacting with the shop while the message was active.
Fixed jumping while you're in the modifier shop inciting the camera to clip below the ground.
Fixed some issues with the pickup randomizer not transferring over the proper pickup traits on ammo pickups.
Fixed various switches throughout the game that were not loading their switched state textures upon loading a save.
Fixed the teleport effect not playing when entering the Chapter 1 Sub-hub.
Fixed the game's log files having false positives relating to Unity nav mesh agents. This will significantly lower the file size of log files.
Level Fixes:
Fixed a broken elevator switch in "Prelude - Intruder Inbound" that was missing its broken switch material and spark effects.
Fixed several enemies having inconsistent stay-still behaviors across all difficulties in "C1L1 - Containment Carnage."
Fixed the player not being killed by the crusher if stuck in "C1L4 - Disposable Danger's" trash compactor.
Fixed several event triggers in "C1l5 - Slipgate Central."
Fixed backface culling on bars in the outdoor area of "C2L1 - Eastern Evisceration."
Fixed enemies walking through doors in "C2L1 - Eastern Evisceration" and "C3L7 - Alter Alvus."
Fixed texture alignment on trees in the opening area of "C2L2 - Cthonic Crypt."
Fixed the interact collider for the secret pink key door in "C2L4 - Ethereal Egress" not disappearing on use.
Fixed the player being able to save and dash during "C2L7 - Arche Ascension's" intro.
Fixed the second elevator in "C2L7 - Arche Ascension" noclipping through level geometry.
Fixed the Chapter 3 Puzzle Switch texture not animating correctly.
Fixed several pickups sharing the same space on Narcolepsy mode in "C3L1 - Theopathic Thoroughfare."
Fixed floating skully barrels in "C3L2 - Blighted Babylon."
Fixed a Jump pad in the church, throwing the player at an offset angle in "C3L2 - Blighted Babylon."
Fixed some story dialogue of secondary importance overwriting dialogue of primary importance depending on the player's sequence of actions in "C3L3 - Virile Vanity."
Fixed the interact colliders for both of the monster closet doors in the boss arena of "C3L4 - Nihilistic Necromancy" not disappearing on use.
Enemy Fixes:
Fixed the attack order on enemies with multiple attacks shuffling after being stunned.
Fixed the Parasite sometimes being able to be revived in an unkillable state if you killed the U.S.C. Grenadier and the Parasite in quick succession.
Fixed the damage radius on the Adopted Night Gaunt being deceptively low.
Fixed the Shambler's line of sight attack sticking around if the player collected an Eldritch Walker powerup whilst the player was being targeted.
Boss Fixes:
Fixed the Lock-On location for the Boss of "C2L7 - Arche Ascension."
Some Closing Thoughts
So! About the OST...
The situation with the OST is a bit complicated as of now. I wanted to provide everyone with a fuller understanding of its status and why there has been little movement on that front up until this point.
So, for reasons I am not fully privy to, unfortunately, John S. Weekley has not been available to work on the game's OST. At most, I'm aware he is in the midst of some situation that prevents him from having access to his workstation. In general, he's pretty MIA, though I do hear from him from time to time.
I am personally very hesitant to bring someone else on board to round out the OST, and there are a few reasons for this. To start, it has always been a significant challenge to onboard a new composer for Viscerafest. We've had to do it twice now, and each time has presented its own challenges and difficulties. This time would probably be the hardest.
You see, each chapter of Viscerafest was always meant to have something of a shift in the music's style, even when Markie was our only composer. So the fact that each time one of our composers became unavailable, it coincided with us working on the music for a new chapter was actually... kind of convenient. It allowed us to mostly mask the shift between composers in a way that wouldn't be possible if the music shifts were happening mid-chapter. Which is of course... the situation we find ourselves in now.
Every time we bring on a new composer, we have to try to make sure they can match aspects of the musical styles of the prior composers as closely as possible, and not only that, but we have to make sure they're familiar with the musical motifs and ideas each composer has worked with/introduced. None of this is seamless, and so were it to happen mid-chapter, I'm pretty worried it would be distracting.
It doesn't really stop at that though. Bringing on a new composer would also complicate the already painful headache of releasing the third chapter's OST. Each composer for Viscerafest has released their portions of the OST separately, and the same was going to be the case with John S. Weekley. Though this has complicated things and, unfortunately, meant we've not been able to do a sort of all-in-one release for the OST, we have been able to bundle the music together by chapter. If we bring on a new composer, that would not be the case for the final batch of music.
Finally, the music for Chapter 3, currently in-game, may be unfinished in places, and some final cleanup may be/have been necessary.
All of this just leaves me feeling very uncertain and unhappy with how I am to potentially progress with the OST going forward. I don't want to leave people waiting longer than we have to, but I also really, really don't want to have a different composer round off the OST. We were hoping John would be back by now, John was expecting to be, but obviously... that's not happened. So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I don't really know what to do.
But That Is All for Now
On that... somewhat dour note, we hope you enjoy the new update! We hope you have a wonderful day! And we pray that the Lord God keep you, bless you, and make his face to shine upon you! Peace be with you! Noah Dickinson,