Blackout · published
Nine new places
The warehouse has more kinds of place in it now. Runs started after this update can take you through nine places the building never had, the stairs and lights have been rebuilt, and you can change your keys.
THE NEW PLACES
Only in runs started after this update. A saved run keeps its building and never gets them (see below).
- The high bay: rows of tall pallet racking, dead straight, as far as a clap reaches. Easy to walk along. Crossing means a wall every ten metres, with a cross-aisle every 60 m.
- The unfitted hall: an extension that was never fitted out. Columns, bare new concrete and the longest echo in the building.
- The conveyor hall: waist-high belts on legs. You can see over them but not walk across them; the way through is where a section stands hinged up as a gate.
- The plant room: tanks, boilers and pipe everywhere. Valves hiss and joints drip all through it.
- The old outer wall: where the building once ended. Blockwork from floor to ceiling, with a way through every 60 m on every floor.
- The cold store: insulated chambers behind strip curtains, and the deadest echo in the building. On the ground floor, meltwater drips in every doorway.
- The forecourt: a lorry park that was roofed over and never cleared. Tarmac, painted bays and ranks of trailers. Many gaps between trailers are dead ends; the sure way across is the marked walkway beside the columns every 60 m.
- The flooded sump: a whole floor under water. Wading drowns out the part of the switch's hum that tells you its direction (not how far away it is), so stop and listen, creep, or go round.
- The grating gantry: upper floors of open steel mesh. A clap goes down through your feet and shows the storey below. Only in buildings with more than one floor.
About four parts in ten of a new building are one of the eight halls, and old outer walls run between some of them. None of them is ever near where you start or near the switch: the first is usually a few hundred metres away, and can be as much as a kilometre. Each hall has its own echo and footsteps, and many things in them sound like what they are made of when you walk into them.
The win screen of a new run now counts how many kinds of place you passed through.
YOUR SAVED RUN
- A run saved before this update keeps its own building: the same seed and the same switch, with the fixes below, and none of the new places. CONTINUE RUN and BRING IT BACK now carry a small tag: old layout or new layout.
- The switch has not moved. It is exactly where it was on every seed.
- If you saved standing on a staircase, you will probably start on the floor below, because that staircase has moved or gone. Elsewhere, rarely, you will be nudged a step or two out of something that now stands where you saved. In our tests nobody was left stuck.
- To see the new places without losing your run, press ENTER THE DARK. It will say PRESS AGAIN — THIS DISCARDS: press again, and your old run goes to BRING IT BACK, which swaps it back. Go back to it before you throw away a new run: after that, BRING IT BACK offers the new-layout run first, and your old run waits behind it, not deleted.
- A typed seed now gives the new layout: the same columns and the same switch, with new places in about four parts in ten. SAME SEED after a win keeps the layout you won in, so to see the new places on your old seed, type it into Seed.
- If your claps seem shorter than before, Reduce flashes is on: see Controls and settings.
THE FIRST TIME YOU OPEN THE GAME AFTER THIS UPDATE
The graphics have to be prepared again, which takes a few seconds. If you press CONTINUE RUN, ENTER THE DARK or BRING IT BACK before they are ready, the button pulses (or dims, if your system reduces motion) and the run starts by itself once they are. On some graphics drivers the game may instead pause for a few seconds as the run starts. Later launches start at once.
In a new run, conveyor belts and gantry floors may look solid for a few seconds, with one short stutter when they change. The cold store is the heaviest of the new places to draw, so if your graphics card is already working hard, that is where you may feel it.
FIXES TO THE BUILDING
These apply to every run, saved ones included.
- Staircases are solid concrete like the columns, and none has a column through it any more. Staircases that could drop you a whole storey have been removed.
- In collapsed zones, the way between floors is the slab of floor that fell, not steps floating over loose blocks.
- Ceiling lights hang between the columns instead of inside them, and pipes hang from the ceiling on rods instead of floating.
- Racks, crates and drums no longer pass through columns, and nothing floats over a stairwell.
- Fallen columns have broken ends.
- Anything set at an angle was drawn as a mirror image of what actually blocks you, so you could walk through a fallen column you could see and be stopped by nothing visible. It is now drawn where it is. What blocks you has not changed.
CONTROLS AND SETTINGS
- Change keys: a new panel, opened from "change keys" beside the Controls heading on the main menu or in the pause screen's options. Up to three keys for each action, and every on-screen prompt shows the keys you chose. Esc always pauses, the mouse buttons stay on clap and use, and gamepad controls are unchanged.
- Esc now pauses even when the mouse is not captured, for example when you play on a gamepad.
- L / R on the headphones line of the main menu plays a note in the left ear and then the right, so you can check your headphones are not on backwards.
- Reduce flashes now softens your clap as well, saved runs included: a clap is dimmer and lights things brightly to about two thirds of the distance it did. Charges and recharge are unchanged. If your system was set to reduce motion when you first played, this was turned on for you and may still be on. Turn it off under Game, in Setup on the main menu or in the pause screen's options, for full claps.
- Bumps now work at every frame rate as they do at 60 fps. At 30 fps you will be pulled up a little more often than before, and at 144 fps or more a little less. Nothing changes at 60 fps.
- On an upper floor, bumping into something now flashes and sounds at your own height, not from the floor below.
- Building sounds fade out when you walk out of range instead of stopping dead.