Summer Progress
Hello everyone, we wanted to thank everybody who gave our demo a try so far. After its release we've been slowly making progress in finishing up core mechanics of the game. This article's purpose is to share the progress we've made, as there possibly won't be much of it during following months.
We also don't want to update the current demo version, because we don't want to make it like some kind of live-service model with delivering contents bit by bit. We might make a single final major update to the demo version, but nothing more.
www.youtube.com/embed/YjEk_saevVw
New Weapons
LWRC SMG-45
The one that everyone call UMP-45 is now back. It didn't get changed much besides different sounds. SMG-45 will eventually replace current CS:S M4A1 during first parts of the game.
Tomahawk
Finally another melee weapon. Model and textures by slayer2704. Unlike metal pipe, tomahawk comes with a 3-hit combo.
M16A2 with M203
Chosen by our community in a poll after we argued whether to add this or the HL1's MP5. It took a while but we got a working grenade launcher for it which uses 40mm grenades.
Grenades
Frag grenades were reimplemented into the mod. They take a single slot in the inventory, but don't stack. For easy use, all player's grenades of same type will always share same weapon slot, so that you don't need to select a new grenade every time.
In addition to their mostly-vanilla behavior, you can now prime or "cook" grenades by holding them before throwing.
Flashbangs
Flashbangs are a new weapon which expectedly stuns all enemies within its radius. It can stun player as well if they happen to look at flashbang during its detonation.
The stun mechanic is a part of a newly added Status Effects system.
Status Effects
Status Effects are buffs/debuffs. Currently implemented ones include Bleeding, Regeneration, Stun and Poison.
Poison headcrabs now inflict the poison effect which rapidly depleted player health up to 1. Getting hit by metrocop's stunstick also inflicts a short stun effect.
All healing items now have a short regeneration effect too. Unlike in current version, any status effects including regeneration actually persist between map travels.
Armor Changes
Previously, armor decreased all incoming damage by certain percentage. Now armor items give different resists towards following damage types: Melee, Bullet, Blast and Energy.
Terminal
Terminal got finished as well, there are more tabs now.
Stats show generic player statistics, Files have discoverable documents or apps, Messages work as emails screen in which players can receive and read messages throughout the storyline.
Missions Concept
A completely new tab on the terminal will be dedicated to playable maps with objectives that progress the story. Those will not feature any procedural generation and be handcrafted. Since procedural maps have heavy limitations, we have to resort to old school mapping.
Other changes
- Unloading weapons is now easier. Players can press U to unload their currently held weapon and all unloaded ammo will now appear inside player's inventory instead of being dropped on the ground(unless there's no free space).
- Enemies now drop their weapons based on randomness and damage type that killed them. Killing enemies with a melee weapon will always have guaranteed weapon drops, while explosive kills will always destroy any weapons that enemy carry. Gun kills will have 25% chance of having enemy drop their weapon or 50% if there was a headshot.
We had to put an end to the endless debate on enemy weapon drops and settled on making it partially determined by which weapons players use. Excessive hoarding of dropped weapons is a problem of balancing and we had to do something about players getting rich fast by collecting weapons without simply reducing their selling value.
- Players now can instantly use items off ground when picking up while holding ALT.
We've made a decent progress regarding the localization support. It's still unfinished, but we already took care of the visual bug when non-latin letters were incorrectly animated.
In summary, the progress is still slowly going, however the development might slow down even more during following months due to life reasons. Thanks for your attention and see you in the next devlog.