NextFest was great, and the Discord saw a good amount of bugs that have mostly been addressed. Report more bugs! https://discord.gg/QWuMEYM6Ah
Also, Unreal 5.8 came out, and I experimented with the "performance improvements" of Lumen Lite, potentially a huge upgrade for lower-spec computers? A 5.8 build actually went live for a few minutes, until I did a side-by-side comparison and learned the 5.8 version was performing WORSE than 5.7. Curious. It probably means the irradiance probes save me a trivial amount of GPU, but cost a significant amount of CPU.
In the process of testing 5.8, I also tested the new Medium setting on a gen 1 Steam Deck, and was pleased to see acceptable framerates with software raytracing enabled. The game should now default to lowest settings when running on SteamDeck. I'll look into the full SteamDeck certification after a little more testing.
Feature Add: There are finally Audio Logs in the facility, telling the beginnings of the story of what happened here. Reading from computer terminals is fine, but audio feels so much more immersive. More coming soon, though at some point I need to stop adding to the demo and branch the full game. Silly Feature Add: Throwing the mysterious dark crystals into a Compactor now has interesting results. This will be a method for opening stubborn doors in the full game.
Lots of small visual improvements: Too many to count, but most involve lighting. Ceilings should look way less dark on Medium settings.
Accessibility:
The Gamepad implementation was pretty weak, so I tuned all the menus to hopefully make it a better experience using a controller. Added "Invert Y" check box in Control Settings
Re-ordered many of the Settings options, to allow more predictable navigation with gamepad.
Looked into using Steam Input API for robust control remapping. It's a lot of work. Still looking for a solution that will satisfy all control schemes, but not take months to implement.
Known Issues:
There is an issue with environment state saves, where Burnouts who have been removed will see their held items return to the initial state. Only relevant if you don't pick up what they drop. The Cleaners in the Hazmat suits are behaving erratically. I am in the middle of revamping their AI to function as intended. When complete, this should make them 2x more dangerous. Aggro radii are definitely going up soon. This will make it more difficult to sneak past enemies, though that will also make it take much longer each time I playtest. Honestly, this should be the last patch before I pencils down on the demo, and dedicate all efforts to the full game. But I want the Cleaner AI to be much better, and that will benefit both.