RE-DEVELOPMENT LOG: PART 2

Howdy, Whitaker Meta-fam.

Still hard at work at rebuilding the game here and there are some things to celebrate. While there is still a ways to go, here's what has been updated:

• IMPROVED HUD AND IN-GAME MENU: Let's face it. The old in-game menu sucked and the HUD didn't say much. Here is what we changed.

  • There are now system alerts on the top left that will tell you if you are exhausted, have escaped, are safe, and more. This can also be disabled in Options now.

  • The in-game Menu now doesn't conflict with player input: a frequent problem in the original build.

  • You can now Exit to Desktop from the in-game menu.

  • You will also see messages notifying that the game saves are successful.

  • Item pickup messages are now a larger font and will also display stat changes with the top-left alerts. This should make information clearer for players.

• NEW AND IMPROVED OPTIONS: The Options menu is cleaner now and has a ton on new features, including:

  • The ability to choose visual filters for both exploration and chase scenes (or to disable them completely)

  • Set brightness, contrast, darkness and saturation levels separately

  • Screen noise alpha can now be set separately from the other filters

  • Set text size both in lore and bottom screen dialogue

  • Set sound mode to mono

  • Ambient sounds, voiceovers and system alert noises have separate volume levels now

  • Exhaustion alerts can now be visual, audio, both or just the plain stamina bar if you want.

  • Hazards (something that kills you that is not Patches) have a separate HUD alert so you can tell you are dying (besides the red alpha from before.) There is an audio and visual alert or you can disable it.

  • You can now adjust the speed of the flashing prompt that appears when you find accessible events.

  • You can adjust how often the game executes an auto-save. Manual saving is still available!

  • Tutorials can be turned off if you don't want them.

  • There is a Quickload option now that will allow you to jump straight into the game and skip the title screen if you have a saved game.

  • The Options Screen is larger and scrollable now and has better readability overall and is now broken into sections for better navigation.

  • There is now a Help Box that can explain what each option is that can be toggled on if needed.

• BETTER DATA MANAGEMENT:

  • Saves were previously done in JSON format. However, this was cumbersome and required a lot of re-coding every time a new feature was added. It now uses a custom Resource that will allow less bugginess.

  • One downside: longtime players will likely lose old saves. I am trying to find a way around this or a reward for players who have lost an old save file from the previous version.

  • Shaders (visual filters) are now handled by a separate, dedicated node.

  • Room Loading is now handled by a global node.

  • Player and enemy stats are now handled differently, leading to better impact and difficulty scaling overall.

• OTHER IMPROVEMENTS:

  • The Claustro Hazard (the guy who came out of walls) has been retooled. It is less predictable now but also less of a hassle to escape, as we moved away from the button mash to a randomized input sequence. I literally watched two streamers get murdered by this, which was meant to be a minor threat. In addition, the sprite has had a complete overhaul.

  • The Last Chance scene now just looks better. We made the text bigger and Lydia's sprite also has been touched up in accordance with the recent changes.

Cheers. Thanks for being here. More to come.

XOXOXO,

negDev / drTentacles