Dev Blog #89: Progress Update

Happy Tuesday! We've been a bit quiet lately, and wanted to share a quick update as to what we've been working on. First the bad news... unfortunately we are still being blocked by a Unity engine bug that is preventing us from pushing an update. We understand that it is frustrating to keep hearing this, trust us that we're also frustrated at the delay and we're doing everything in our power to work with Unity and get this resolved. Due to the extensive nature of PAMELA's environment and the underlying lighting systems being used, we're stuck on a custom build of the Unity Engine, and require this version to be updated before we can get this next update live. That being said, we wanted to share a sneak peak of what you can look forward to once this issue is resolved! In no particular order:

New Buildable Item: Solar Accumulator

This item will recharge nearby Power Transmitters during daytime, allowing you to power your outdoor base much more easily!

New VISRs

We've added 4 more VISR types, with different types of information displayed depending on the type.

New NPC Abilities

The Reaper and Widow have received some new abilities, such as the Reaper's roar shown below, which depletes your Stamina if you're caught in the blast!

Missions & Challenges

As part of the Story update, we've been adding various challenges and sidequests with xp rewards.

Environmental Traps

Explosive barrels, electrical conduits, and flammable oil slicks have been added throughout the world! Use these to your advantage during combat when using the correct elemental weapons.

EXP System & Genome Points Update

The exp curve has been rebalanced to be less grindy at higher levels, and when starting a new game, you now have the option to re-spec Genome Points.

Lot of Optimizations

Aside from the new Texture Streaming in the version of Unity we are porting to, we've made a bunch of other optimizations in Camera rendering, particle systems, text, containers, and item spawning. Combined with the Unity engine updates, these should all result in a nice performance improvement across the board.

After the Next Update - Story Missions

We've been putting a ton of time into fleshing out the main Story missions. New areas have been designed and built out, new dialogue has been written as is being recorded, triggers are being placed... things are coming together! We're super excited to be finally bringing this to the game after some unfortunate delays. Stay tuned for further updates - the latest we've heard from Unity is that they are aiming to have this issue resolved over the next week. Thanks for the patience and understanding, we truly appreciate it and can't wait to get this huge update live for you as soon as the blocker is resolved.