CULTIC - Home for Cultmas Update

The "Home for Cultmas" update is now available!

EDIT: Oh fine I guess you can have the Lever Action Rifle back

(Just pushed a small hotfix to fix the Lever Action Rifle spawns)

This update adds a brand new non-canon map, "I'll Be Home for Cultmas"! I really got to have some fun with this map and do some stuff that's a bit goofier than CULTIC's usual tone, and pay homage to some of CULTIC's inspirations! This map features it's own unique arsenal with some new toys to play with, as well as a new enemy type! You can access the map from New Game > Bonus Content, and the Chapter Two DLC is not required to play the new content.

This update also brings all of the beta branch changes to the main branch, including the Automap, the updated burn damage model, and a huge amount of miscellaneous fixes and tweaks. Most of these changes were previously cataloged in the beta branch patch notes but I'll summarize them below!

Merry Cultmas!

Additions

• "I'll Be Home For Cultmas" bonus map has been added! It can be accessed from New Game > Bonus Maps

• Added a full AutoMap that fills out as you explore, marks locked doors and secrets, and allows you to place a custom marker

  • There are 3 settings for the AutoMap under Options > Accessibility:

    • Map + Markers - Full AutoMap + objective markers

    • Map Only - AutoMap only, no objective markers

    • Disabled - Disables the AutoMap, for those that prefer the original experience

• A few new text logs were added throughout the game that provide map markers for certain objectives, or to help guide players in the right direction in some areas that players were commonly getting turned around

• Additional resources were added to the beginning of The Fairgrounds to help resupply players after the Old Town fight

• Magnum ammo was added to the Bunker boss arena, as there was previously none available

Changes

• The version of CULTIC used for Unity has been updated from 2021.x to 6.x to address the security exploit discovered earlier this year.

  • As a result of this engine upgrade, Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 are no longer supported. While these OS versions aren't supported by Steam either, I suspect there are a handful of players still using these OS', so I have added a new branch called "v201archive" that will roll players back to the previous public version of the game so it will remain playable.

• The "Burn Damage" model has been completely reworked:

  • Rather than burn damage applying to an unseen "burn threshold" that would ignite enemies when depleted, burn damage now applies directly to the enemy's health pool, and they'll ignite if the fatal damage dealt is burn damage. This should allow fire to feel more straightforward and rewarding, as even a molotov that fails to completely ignite an enemy will still deal significant damage to them, and you can hose enemies with damage while burning to melt them even faster.

  • Burning enemies can no longer put themselves out by going into water, as they have to be at 0HP to begin with to ignite at all

  • Enemies that are immune to burn damage will immediately extinguish any flame particles stuck to them, making it a bit more clear when enemies aren't susceptible to burn damage.

• System/pickup messages have been overhauled, with icons, color-coding, and a priority system so that important messages (Cannot Save, Found Secret, etc.) do not get immediately overwritten by less important ones

• A significant amount of voxel meshes were optimized to dramatically reduce their triangle count, which should result in some performance gains on some maps

• The "Old Town" Survival Map has received an optimization pass to significantly improve it's performance

• The system message for "saving is not allowed" is now more prominent, with a unique sound

• The C96's capacity has been buffed so it always has multiples of 3 to better utilize the burst fire

  • Base: 10 > 12

  • Upgraded: 15 > 18

• The C96's burst fire has been buffed to fire much faster

• The LP42 flare pistol has been modified to now have 3 uses before it is depleted

• The spawn aggression in E2M6 Old Town has been lowered slightly, so the spawn rate should be lower overall allowing more breathing room to deal with enemies before they pile up

• The finale segment of E2M2 Newbrook Shopping Center was rewritten to support saving mid-fight

• A few shotgun shells were added to The Haunted Dungeon in the Fairgrounds

• One of the demolition charges in The Farm has been removed, with it now requiring only 3.

• The flooding chamber in The Bunker has been reworked, removing the Devourers and moving the valve to the following room, as players were commonly missing the valve entirely due to how busy that fight was

• The valves in The Bunker have been changed to squeakily rotate back to their starting position if player's don't turn them fully, as players were commonly mistakenly thinking they had fully rotated them and then moving on

• The first teddy bear in Train Station has been removed, as it's set up to stay with the first zone and got a bit glitchy if you carried it onto the train.

• The Harvester's hook attack now aims near the top of your collider rather than center mass, meaning it can be pretty reliably ducked under. However, the hook's aim is still set when the hook is thrown, so crouching too early will result in the Harvester targeting your new lower head height.

• The Harvester's hook travel speed has been slightly lowered

• Peacekeepers "stun threshold" was lowered from 80 > 45 to alllow their attacks to be broken easier

• Peacekeeper's delay between aiming and firing has been slightly increased

• Peacekeeper's walking shotgun attack has had the total shots reduced from 6 to 4

• Selecting "Map Loadout" from Scene Select and starting E2M10 The Manor will now cram the starting loadout into the player's gear, so that the player actually recovers some items later in the map.

• Chapter Start Maps (E1M1, E2M0 Interlude, E2M1, etc.) will no longer forcibly wipe the player's loadout, so you can opt to use Custom Loadouts to start fresh runs.

• The "Double Tap Dodge" option now has an accompanying slider allowing you to tweak the acceptable gap between movement taps that will trigger a dodge

• Tower Shields were adjusted to block all melee damage

• Tower Shields can now block and cancel a Harvester's chainsaw attack, but it will instantly destroy the shield

• "Prop Sniping" achievement should now properly account for any thrown prop, not just chairs.

• Some existing text logs now provide map markers for the player to follow

• The cooldown before thrown hatchets can be retrieved has been reduced

• Chosen Afflicted have had their speed slightly reduced

Fixes

• Chapter Two survival maps should now properly save your results to the correct map entry

• The teddy icon on the Results screen should now properly display even if you skip the results

• The BB gun should properly use it's own damage value rather than that of the last equipped weapon

• A crate in E2M1 has been removed that was consistently falling below the map, eventually causing issues with the physics engine.

• Unlit TNT bundles that are retrieved now give the actual TNT weapon, rather than just TNT "ammo"

• Some difficulty-dependent spawns that were not triggering have been fixed

• A bug related to the above spawns causing enemies to become immortal has also been fixed

• The "Betrayal" achievement should now properly count all of the related boss' attacks, other than those that do not normally deal infighting damage.

• Included a potential fix for The Bunker's boss being able to cancel his death animation

• A couple of decorative, unhinged doors in the Castle were fixed to no longer be openable, despite being very humorous

• The setting for "Lock Ladder Climb Direction" should now save and apply properly

• Certain enemies that were supposed to be able to force open doors, but weren't, should now be able to properly barrel through doors again

• A minor collision issue in E1M5 that was preventing access to an item has been fixed

• A few erroneous displayed ammo pickup values were fixed

• Dropped unlit TNT/molotovs should no longer be able to be picked up if you are at capacity

• "The Gungineer" achievement should now properly trigger - if you've already fully upgraded a weapon, the achievement should trigger the next time you apply a weapon upgrade of any kind.

• The total enemy count for Interlude was fixed

• Fixed an off-hand edge case where reloading one-handed weapons on a ladder with a shield equipped could lead to a potential softlock

• "Heh heh heh ... Thank You" achievement should now trigger properly

• The final boss' weakpoint should now emit blood particles properly rather than dust puffs

• Snow should no longer penetrate through the walls of the Haunted Dungeon in The Fairgrounds

• The Fairgrounds' occlusion data was rebaked to fix a few glaring occlusion issues

• Fixed some instances where camera shake/tilt wasn't being properly adjusted based on the Accessibility settings and still shaking/tilting

• Using the "Load Saved Loadout" feature in Custom Loadout should now properly also apply any weapon upgrades from the chosen save file

• The player's bullet tracer origin was fixed for a few weapons where it was spawning offset

• Infested Armor/Arbalist enemies should now properly take impact damage from Incinerator projectiles, instead of being fully immune to them

• Enemies that were in a burning state when the game was saved should now properly load in dead.

• Decorative corpses should now once again play a splatter sound when destroyed

• Global volume overrides should now properly reset when starting a new game, so intro cutscenes won't be at zero volume if a new chapter is started after sitting through the credits of another

• A fix was added to prevent being able to close the "Game Over" menu using a gamepad, which could softlock the game

• A few instances of gamepad glyphs failing to load have been fixed

• A discrepancy in the sawed-off reload speed has been fixed, so the alt-fire and primary fire should reload at the same speed consistently (not counting the extra recoil time for the alt-fire)

• An erroneous "Check" message in E1M3 has been fixed

• All options in the Accessibility menu should now reset to default when prompted

• The FPS counter has been arranged lower on the HUD canvas so it doesn't overlap with the map stats on the weapon wheel / map

• A few missing textures were fixed throughout the game. The "Missing Texture" texture was also swapped out with a very noticeable hot pink texture to aid in finding unassigned textures, so if you see any hot pink textures, let me know!