New AI / New Map / Basic Progression / New Tutorial

New Ghost AI

As many of you could probably agree, the hunts in Obsideo were pretty bland, you had no fear of being caught, and I think a lot of that was down to how tame all the entities felt to play against, they only patrolled hallways and you were always safe as long as you closed the door of the room you were hiding in, they never ventured into rooms.

This has now been completely re-worked, some of the environments have been changed to allow you to hide behind doors, furniture, walls, etc as all entities will now explore the entire house, you're no longer safe just going into a room and closing a door, find a cabinet or sofa to hide behind. You can see more of how this works, and what you should be looking for, in the new tutorial.

They're also now considerably faster meaning you have significantly less time to run and hide, to counter this I've added a praying mechanic this is a one-shot protection, that lasts 7 seconds on easy mode, and 5 seconds on hard mode, the default key for this is currently 'P'. This can be changed in the settings menu.

This new AI also fixes a few issues the old one had:

• Fixed a bug where ghosts would see you through closed doors.

• Fixed a bug where ghosts would still kill you through closed doors/walls.

• Fixed a bug where ghosts would see you while you were outside, and stand there running into the front door, or into a random window.

• Fixed a bug where ghosts would see a dead player, and think they've seen the alive player, making them go straight to the alive player and kill them.

• Fixed a bug where ghosts would only see 1 person in co-op, meaning the ghost was blind to everyone else except the player they chose to see.

This is still being worked on and improved as time goes on, but I feel this addresses one of the main issues I had with the current hunts, and certainly engages you a lot more, as you have to actually use your environment against the entities, I'd love to hear what suggestions you have, on my Discord: https://discord.gg/obsideo

Hogan Street

Hogan Street is the latest haunted house in Obsideo, and will, unfortunately, probably be the last until we see procedural generation. This house was actually created by an amazing community member of mine, Switchy, so if you like the house, be sure to let him know on the Discord! Here's a few photos of what he's made for us:

Basic Progression

Everyone has been asking for "at least a basic level counter", so I've added one to the main menu, this is an extremely basic example of what I want to be adding in the near future, I've explained more at the bottom of this post my plans for what I'll be adding soon.

Currently, if you're on the main menu, and look in the bottom right, you'll see a trophy icon, clicking on that will take you to your basic stats page, where you can see your win ratio, previous games, what maps you've played, etc. Clicking on one of the tabs gives you more information about that game, such as what evidence the ghost gave off, if you exorcised it, etc.

Here's a few examples:

New Tutorial

Honestly, I hated the current tutorial, it wasn't very interactive apart from being able to pick up equipment, and didn't exactly let you get a "feel" for the game, so I've created a new one. In this new tutorial you can still get hunted, it just takes a lot longer, and is a significantly lower chance than in the normal houses.

The new tutorial explains hiding spots, hunts, and equipment, as well as giving you a safer environment to practice exorcisms. Holding equipment will also tell you how it's used, or what it's for at the bottom of your screen.

Smaller Changes

Hard Mode:

• Removed the ghost eliminator for hard mode.

• Increased starting heart rate, your heart rate will never go below the starting heart rate.

• Heart rate goes up faster, and comes down slower

• Significantly increased the rate at which entities hunt

• Reduced starting cool-down

• Reduced cool-down between hunts

I've also finally gotten round to adding hands and visualizing for other players that they're holding equipment, this meant removing player models from yourself, so now you're just floating arms! :O

Planned Skill System

Like I said in the basic progression system, I have a plan for how I want to take on leveling and progression, as I never want to make you work to unlock equipment, nor do I want to explore skins just yet.

So, this is my idea for progression as I never want to take equipment away from players as I feel it would be extremely boring playing a game for 30 minutes, just to not be able to exorcise the ghost because you're not a "high enough level", so the path I want to take is with 2 different skill trees.

The first would be per life, so you get to build up a priest to be the best in the business, but if you die, you lose the perks they had, and you had to start again. I feel like this would make players more engaged in hunts, and actually "fear" dying (although I know this is a pretty cheap way to go about it), it also will allow you to have multiple different play styles, as I plan on having 3 different skill tree branches, and once you pick one, the others become locked, they'd all offer different abilities based on what you want to do, or how you play.

The other would be a permanent one, where regardless of how many times you die, you get to keep them, this could offer basic things such as "10%, 20%, 40% less XP required to unlock per life perks" and then higher up move into more interesting things, such as "permanently double the amount of bibles you start with" or "permanently have the ability to sprint".

I'm not entirely certain how I actually want to go about fleshing them out, so take all the screenshots, names, and examples to be placeholders. I want to see if this is something everyone actually wants, before I take the time to go through it and make it work.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments, this is just an idea and isn't something set in stone to be happening.

Thank you!

There are probably lots that I've missed or just haven't listed so this doesn't become any longer. Sorry it took so so long to get this patch out, I really didn't intend to make everyone wait 3 weeks, but I'm currently in the middle of finals at uni, so I've been all over the place, and haven't been able to put as much effort into this as I would've liked to.

The good news with that though, is once these are behind me, I'll be going full-time on Obsideo for at least the next 6 months, so I look forward to where we can take this in that time!

Thank you everyone for sticking by me, and being patient during all this, it truly means the world to me just how amazing this little community is. I can't wait to keep improving this for you, and give you guys an amazing, albeit terrifying, experience!

• Kyle.

P.S. I'm now in the position to look at hiring people, so if anyone would want to come work on this with me, let me know, there's a section for it in my Discord, or just feel free to DM me!