Vertical Slice Update Patch

Hey Outlanders!

Today I am releasing a patch to FADE to help with some of the smaller issues and gripes that have been expressed in regards to the games current build. Additionally I have made some quality of life changes that should make things easier to track and always increased the difficulty of enemies slightly.

First I'll tackle the main gripes and bugs that have been taking place.

Level Transitions and the Loading Screen

After the Update to Unreal Engine 5.1 there's been a lot of small changes that have left a few small things in shambles. I was able to tackle most of these problems through rigorous testing, but this one alluded me in the last update. The game wasn't playing the level transition movie and was forcing the game to load far too quickly. This would be fine on some builds, but taxing on others. Happy to say I was able to get it resolved and now it plays properly each time a new level is being loaded.

UI Readability and Combat Guides

Some have addressed a new for more information on the players hud on how some things function, such as: Toggling equipment types, toggling between weapons, toggling between potions, etc.

In order to remedy these issues I made the equipment display hud on the bottom left have input prompts based on your controller input to make it easier to look and see what controls are tied to those actions. This should make it easier for players to start off running instead of having to fly straight toward the controls menu.

Companion Strength and Survival

In RPGs its important to have a fair bit of difficulty early on and to make sure players earn their way to just surviving on their own. Companions are a feature that is normally earned later on in the game. This is the case of FADE, but in this vertical slice demo you get access to your first companions very early for the sake of showing off the mechanic. In order to make the demo more challenging I have increased their HP, but greatly lowered their damage. Companion FAUST is still a powerhouse in terms of attack speed and frequency, so I shall have to head back to the drawing board to fine tune his behavior so he's more methodical and patient with his attacks.

Demo Save and Replay-ability

For the first rendition of the new update it was planned that the demo would be a one shot. Players would be prompted to create a new character each time they returned to the main menu and your overall progress would not be saved for testing purposes. Now that we are through the testing phase, I have reimplemented loading your save and now you can continue your progress from where you left off.

Lastly, some minor fixes to the game to finish off what's changed in this patch.

• Modified Item drops and pickups to combine with other nearby pickups on drop.

• Modified combat area of Ruins space to make it more open.

• Fixed issue where some playable classes had Stamina Cost Free Rolls.

• Fixed issue where Companions stats would sometimes copy the players health bar.

• Adjusted AI Behaviors to move to the target in more combat instances to avoid stagnation(Some instances may still occur due to still adapting to Unreal Engine 5's navigation changes)

• Updated some UI elements to make them more visible at higher resolutions.

• Added DLSS functionality which