Content Update: Themed Floors (Part 1), Walking Locomotion, Elite Enemies + more

What's up Climbers :3

These are patch notes from Monday morning's Content Update!

Sorry it shipped a little late - ready for some cool stuff though?

Here's What's New

Walking Locomotion

Much requested feature - you can now use Walking Locomotion to control your movement more precisely while on the ground. Works with all controllers that have analog sticks.

As part of this update I also added some additional flavor to movement via skid sound effects that play when you skid to a halt and speed line visual effects that activate whenever you are moving fast in some direction.

The only controller I'm not yet able to support Walking for is the Vive Wands. It's just pretty tricky due to the limited controller real estate (they just have the touchpads and not much in terms of utility buttons unfortunately).

Overall pretty happy with this feature, hope you like it.

Themed Floor System (Part 1)

So Themed Floors were actually planned for much later in The EA Roadmap, but for a number of reasons I found myself in a position where it made sense to take a first stab at things.

With this update, you'll find that you now encounter different Floor Themes as you climb the tower. There are just two Floor Themes to start:

The Waterworks

and The Plaza

I ended up needing to add quite a few new rooms to flesh out The Waterworks, so incidentally this update also contains quite a few new Room Types (probably like 8 I think? I haven't counted :)

I'm glad I got this first stab implemented because now it will make it much easier to add additional themes in subsequent updates (The Clockworks, The Foundry, etc. if you have any ideas let me know on Discord!)

Elite Enemies

There are now visually distinct and significantly stronger Elite versions of every enemy in the game. They are bigger, have more health, hit harder, and glow red.

Elite enemies have a chance to spawn in normal rooms and all enemies spawned during Elite Combat Tests are now Elite.

Feedback and Bug Fixes

In addition to the new content above, I also fixed some bugs and addressed some player feedback:

Feedback

• Loading Screen between floors is now dark so it's easier on the eyes during evening play sessions.

• Added colliders to some things that were missing them for more solid feel.

Bugs

• Chef Bot boss battle is much less buggy.

  • Chef Bot's Cleaver actually deals explosive damage now.

  • Chef Bot's weapons actually stick in the walls.

• Flamethrower/Freezethrower now damage all destructible objects (crates, grates, crystals, etc.)

• Mortar Bots now require line of sight to attack you.

• Fixed some z-fighting on doors throughout.

• Other stuff. It was a big update and I kind of lost track of what all I fixed to be honest lol.

What's Next?

The next Content Update is scheduled for 11/18. It may be a little on the lighter side since this one shipped later.

It will probably focus more on bug fixes and polish with some light content updates. Specifically:

• Patching any issues with new content (walking locomotion, new levels, etc.)

• Combat bug bashing (enemies shooting through wall, turrets not working reliably, etc.)

• If I do add new content, it will probably be new ranged enemies with more varied projectile patterns and speeds (I think the game needs a dash more bullet hell, and would like some ranged enemies that give you more to think about than "oh this is another enemy that points and shoots fast/straight at me").

Reminder that if you want early access to this content as it rolls in and are okay with the risk of some bugs, you can opt into the beta branch. I push new stuff to the beta branch as soon as it's basically done but it has a slightly higher risk of bugs. Otherwise you can stay on the default branch and get the less frequent but more stable bi-weekly updates.

You can opt into the beta branch by following these instructions in the Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/680320013831241731/694426975862915164/711485596614524928

Thanks and hope you are having fun.

As always, if you have any thoughts, questions, or issues, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me via the Discussion Forums or Discord.

Thanks, Tadatoto