UNKNIGHTLY - "Major Update" #4

Major Features :

• In Game Menu !

  We're finally introducing a proper menu system into the game - and dare I say we're quite proud of it. From day one we knew we did not want the standard menu screens and laser pointers you can find in so many VR games. We generally try to put a lot of though and effort behind designing game elements which will blend naturally into the game play experience and keep our players immersed and engaged at all times. So our answer to this problem was to let the players carry a small journal that attaches to their belt. The player can then pickup this journal, open it, use their free hand to turn pages and use the attached quill pen to change their settings. You need to experience it to see what it's all about - we feel it's pretty awesome, hopefully you guys do so as well :) Also inside the menu inside the menu we've included some new features. Here's some of the more significant ones:

  • Rotation Settings Snap & Smooth turn, both with their respective sensitivity settings.

  • Level Management Restart from Checkpoint, Reset Level, Exit to Main Menu and alike.

  • Graphics & Audio Settings Super sampling, brightness, background music & ambient sounds volume are now all configurable though the menu - so feel free to can customize them to your liking.

  • More...

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• Difficulty Settings !

  The game now supports two difficulty settings

  Normal & Hard ! Hard is what was available so far, while Normal is a new and more "casual" difficulty setting meant to be played by the average VR player. Make no mistake - Normal is not going to be a walk in the park at all and most players will definitely find it quite challenging and fun. We put in a lot of though and effort into making the Normal difficulty strike a good balance of being both challenging and casual at the same time. This was done mostly by making the AI more forgiving to minor mistakes made by the player - but go too far and you' probably won't get away with it. It's worth pointing out that we did not go down the easy route with a simple x0.5 factor or anything like that but instead we choose to more manually craft and intervene where we felt was appropriate.

  PS

  Normal is the default setting, so experience players should remember to turn it up to Hard if they feel like they want the classic hard core experience.

• Dramatically improved 3D Audio Precision! *

  Sound is a critical component of any game. This is especially through for a VR stealth game where proper sound spatialization and directivity supply the player with a lot of information just from hearing, on top of the huge benefit in terms of immersion. It's for these reasons we've decided to invested significant effort in taking a major step forward in terms of the game's audio quality. Anyone launching the game will undoubtedly notice a significant and very welcome improvement from previous versions. Having said that, there's so much more benefit left to extract from the audio technology we've implemented - we've only just scratched the surface and will continue to iterate on this front in upcoming updates. Here's a link to the technology behind what we've been using to implement realistic 3D audio into the game: https://developers.google.com/resonance-audio/

Note: Achievement were not added to this update even though they were initially planned to, due to the simple fact that we were unsatisfied with how they turned out at this stage of the game. Simply put - we've decided to post-pone this feature a little longer and revisit it once we've added loot and perhaps also stealth score as metrics of a player's performance.

Minor Features

Many minor features have made it into this update. We'll try to name a few important ones:

• Player's Movement Speed Now Affects Visibility Previously the player's movement speed was not accounted for while calculating his visibility (yellow indicator). Now that visibility accounts for this factor, a player's movement speed can both work with or against him! By standing still or moving very slowly the player is reducing how visible he is to guards, so if he happen to find yourself in a pickle with no dark corners to hide in, he should try to crouch and remain as still a you can to hopefully escape detection. Remember it also works the other way around - sprinting though a dimly lit area is now very likely to get you detected.

• AI Suspicion from Touch Builds Up Instead of Instant Detection Anyone who got instantly detected by a guard while trying to pick-pocket their keys knows what I'm talking about :) Thankfully this now no longer happens As the player you have much more slack when bumping into guards or picking their pockets. When you frisk a guard he slowly builds up suspicion. Though if you are not quick and careful enough you will still get detected.

• Significantly Increased Stamina Stamina was added as a resource a while ago and we're received a lot of request to increase the amount of stamina the player had to work with. That's exactly what we did by giving the player more than double that of the existing stamina amount.

• Item Noise Predictability Picking up and throwing items to distract guards is an important mechanic in game. Unfortunately item noise sometimes behaved quite unpredictably. We've finally managed to fix it so that items are now much more functional and pleasant to use.

• Save Player's Last Checkpoint On Game Restart Previously restarting the game or level would wipe the player's checkpoint data forcing them to start that level all over again. We now save the player's last checkpoint so that once you restart the game and reenter that last level you are respawned on that last checkpoint. Going forward it is our intention to replace the checkpoint system with a manual save / load system that would allow player's to freely save and reload multiple saved games at any time.

• ~100 New Guard Voice Lines Evolving guard dialog is always on our radar and has great implications in game. We've added close to a hundred new guard voice lines which help communicate to the player what the AI's currently thinking. We've also included voice lines where one AI reacts to what another AI has said which creates some very entertaining and sometimes funny moments.

• Bug Fixes Many bug fixes have gone into this patch especially related to the tutorial. Special thanks to our beloved community member Jaknet for having brought many of these to our attention. Just to name a quick few: - Fixed: Tutorial instruction text would sometimes get inverted on one of the controllers. - Fixed: Player always start the Tutorial level facing the cell's wall. - Fixed: Player could not complete tutorial if he skipped tasks even if he managed to reach the end of the tutorial level. - Fixed: Issues with the guards "Look At" functionality which is a significant queue to the player that he's being watched by the AI. - More...

As always withing a few days we will be posting a thread where we can discuss together the plans for the upcoming major update ! Looking forward to engaging with you guys <3