The Steam Summer Sale is here and Abducted is updated with the latest Unreal code and improved controls and graphics. Tons of updates in Beta 1.22, too many to mention!
Here's a quick rundown:
Updated to the latest Unreal 4 code, 4.19.2. Taking advantage of the newest rendering features like Temporal Upsampling.
Improved controls and movement. She can turn in place and make small movements much more reliably.
Old school drop shadow added. This is to help you visually confirm your position if you make a jump, you'll get a shadow directly beneath her where you can stick the landing.
Tons of optimizations and graphics refinements. Better for lower end systems especially, but there's plenty here for high and low end systems.
Further additions and refinements to the story elements of Chapter 2 and Chapter 4.
Mac rendering code optimizations, and taking advantage of the latest Shader Model 5 and Metal renderer.
The story is still being filled in, but the gameplay is in a refinement phase now. In other words most everything is present and is being polished. If that interests you, check out the game and have some fun with it! All of the levels continue to be accessible from the main menu and you can see how every corner of the game is progressing.
Thanks and as always have fun!
Beta 1.21, Happy Memorial Day!
Happy Memorial Weekend all! Beta 1.21 of Abducted is up today, and the major new system is a completely revised conversation system and brand new conversation gameplay on the chapter 'Drowning' (selectable from the main menu Chapter list).
There are also a ton of graphical refinements and bug fixes, almost too many to mention.
Drowning is the 4th chapter of the game, and this update makes it much further along in its story elements and structure than before. It's not quite there just yet, but it is now similarly complete to the first 3 chapters. If you want to see the game as it develops, there's quite a bit there to play right now.
In addition there will be a 50% off sale for both Abducted and Crow for the next week, if you haven't picked them up before now's a perfect time. So enjoy, take some time off, eat some great food and enjoy some gaming. There are many more updates coming, and most of the near future additions will be focused on gameplay and story.
Beta 1.20 is out!
Tons of updates in this build, almost too many and it became too big. Some of the highlights:
Rendering performance improvements. This is game wide and should result in a noticeably better framerate on GPU bottlenecked systems.
Improved Flashlight graphics. Flashlight looks better, is more useful, casts some interesting faux-penumbra soft shadows.
Addition of the Dreamscape levels. These levels are in place, the gameplay will come online soon. These are accessible in the main menu from the Chapters button.
Addition of The Playground testing level. This is a test map that contains all characters, all creatures, some interactive objects, and a good space to move around in and test all the ability upgrades. Just like the Dreamscape levels this test map is at the bottom of the Chapters list.
Strong warning: This has spoilers! Basically if you load this up, you'll see things you aren't supposed to see yet. But if you want to see how the development sausage gets made, this is part of the testing and development process.
Targeting reticle. A targeting reticle will appear whenever you aim with Pulse. It gets more accurate the longer you hold the button down. Note: this is very WIP, first implementation.
Movement improvements. Movement is vastly improved and more responsive. Falling, Jumping, Running and turning should all feel better.
New monsters and characters getting implemented. Some of these can be seen on the Playground map, some are already in their appropriate Chapter locations.
Fixes to UI and Camera bugs/issues. There were a number of longstanding bugs in UI and Camera that are fixed in this build.
New Ability upgrade for Manipulate. Manipulate is expanding, and some of that new ability is included in the chapter Falling. More coming on this soon.
Steam API and Achievement code integrated. The latest Steam code is in and working, Achievements are basically implemented and functional.
In the coming days I'll post more info about all this as well as the plans for Beta 1.21. For now enjoy and have fun!
Achievements in Beta 1.20
Steam Achievements are coming online for the game and you'll start to see them listed here:
As of this posting what's currently there is not the full list. About 50 are designed, but I'd like to do more. And these icons are just placeholders, final icons will come online as the game continues through the EA process.
Of course they will get tweaked a bit here and there as the design of the game finalizes. A handful of them may need to get replaced with something else if unforseen tech issues happen. But basically its happening and the first playable with Achievements in them will be the next beta release, v1.20.
Expect more of this sort of Steam specific integration and features in the coming months. The game already has partial controller support, making sure it runs with the Steam Controller specifically is a priority, as well as providing full controller support generally. Trading cards are a priority. Other languages are in the works. I'll definitely take requests on all this stuff, I'd like to understand what's important to you.
Beta 1.19 is up and has a number of gameplay and feature additions. In no particular order:
Major revision to the Frozen chapter. Much more complete as a level, approaching true beta status.
The Laurentian ship art has been brought back and updated for Unreal 4, this art is featured at the end of Frozen. This is at a beta complete level.
Centipedes are in and combat functional. They can be found on Frozen and The Great Unknown.
Fast Travel system added to The Great Unknown. This makes the map less unknown.
Art additions, refinements and LOD improvements on The Great Unknown. The map now has a proper skybox and boundaries, among other details.
Major detail refinements for the Dreamscape. The Dreamscape Barrier now does a soft fade-in/fade-out based on distance, allowing you to see distant details.
Some critical path bugs fixed. Issues on Hunted, Frozen and Drowning are resolved.
More checkpointing and story notifications to the player on several levels.
As with previous updates, delete your save file if you have any problems. Since Frozen and The Great Unknown have received the most changes in this update, they're the most likely to have problems with old save files. This can be done from the "Save Files" button on the Main Menu.
Beta 1.20 will continue to have more gameplay and story additions, as well as bug fixes, like this release. I can say for certain that one of the new features coming up will be Achievements, and a first pass implementation will be part of Beta 1.20.
As per usual, that update will be out about 2 weeks from today. Thanks and have fun! ːsteamhappyː
Next update, fresh video, new features
Beta 1.19 is almost ready and it will have some new key features. I'll tick through those details when its posted, here's some video so you can see what's coming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQX6Pg89DKc
The open world map "The Great Unknown" now has a realtime mapping and fast travel system. It shows you a live view of the world, maps out newly discovered locations and allows you to fast travel to them once discovered.
This ties in with the day/night cycle and dynamic weather in this level, whenever you pick a new location via the map time advances by 1 to 2 hours (randomly). You can still run wherever you like of course, the map is right now completely open. All of these temp locations are available for now, in the future they'll need to be discovered and will tie into the gameplay and story.
This map will serve as something of an "open world bestiary" for now. You can zip to different locations and do combat with a few aliens/monsters in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hNyUDPL-C8
The level "Frozen" is going to be a complete map in this upcoming release. There are giant centipedes to do battle with, puzzles to solve, temp cutscenes in place, and a final boss fight. I don't want to spoil anything, but the map is just a lot more complete. It's probably at a true Beta stage right now in the sense that everything is there to some extent. It will just need all that polish to make it a truly final level.
Beta 1.19 is almost ready, assuming a few problems can be squashed should be ready tomorrow. That could slip to Thursday. Thanks for reading and watching, more to come real soon!
Steam Early Access Trailer and other new video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyFrEPugRMQ
Hey all! I present to you the official Steam Early Access Trailer. A few notes on this: It's all footage from the current EA beta as of 1.18. There will be a release trailer when the game transitions out of EA to final, but this will suffice until that day. I don't want to spend too much time just yet refining the marketing of the game, there will be time to really polish it all later (the final logo, overall look and style, trailer, etc). I'd rather focus as much as possible making Abducted a complete game and getting it done, and I'm sure that's what you want too. So all that said, enjoy the EA Trailer.
Along with that, here are some other recent development videos of WIP content. The new tentacles seen here are in the latest build. The new art was implemented along with refinements to their AI, so it should be a better overall experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgUZtkzm6_Q
This realtime metaballs footage is some fairly experimental stuff. Basically I'm trying to make it so the art of the alien skin behaves more like a goopy substance, and this in-engine test was done using metaballs and the unreal 4 vertex animation system. There are still some kinks to work out but it has potential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0V7sG-lcxU
Thanks! Many more updates to come!
Beta 1.18 is up! Sale and a ton of updates
Beta 1.18 is up running on the latest 4.18.3 Unreal code. This update includes brand new art, major art/animation revisions and improved gameplay in the first 2 levels. It also includes new AI for the Beast and Tentacles and a major set of revisions to that interaction/gameplay. It should all feel better than the last build, and like everything else this is being constantly improved.
Completely unrelated to this is work being done on the marketing art and logo. As you can see from above the logo has undergone a major revision and this is going to be closer to the final look for the game as it approaches release.
Many more updates to come, just wanted to get this announcement up. And of course there's a sale going on now for both Abducted and Crow. Tell your friends! And as always have fun!
Beta 1.17 for PC and Mac is up
Beta 1.17 is up and has a ton of additions to the first chapter of the game. There are little changes and fixes throughout, but the real big changes are to Hunted, the first chapter.
Complete overhaul of the first Chapter, Hunted. There are some branching paths present, some nonlinearity and more final level art. There will be more of this coming.
Cinematics and voiceover: A whole bunch of this is in Hunted now. It's all WIP but more of this to come. Its a good sample of where its going.
Tweaks to movement and responsiveness, should be more organic and natural in many cases.
Manipulatables shimmer green if you can Manipulate them, red if you can't.
First Dreamscape level added, this is a very very short sample of what's to come. It loads immediately following Hunted and leads into Falling.
First real pass at training for controls and gameplay in Hunted. This will get better and more targeted in future builds.
Fixed a number of bugs related to controls, prefs and abilities. Some issues are still present and unresolved, but they are known.
Changed crouch default from X to C.
Note that if you run into any issues loading old save files, best thing to do is delete them for that level. This can be done from the main menu. The layout changes and revisions to Hunted will mean that any old save files may not work right. If you see anything weird, this is the thing to do.
Thanks guys and as always have fun! Feedback on Hunted is welcome and appreciated. While its not shipping-quality final yet, its getting closer, and if you have any suggestions or feedback for the game now is the time. ːsteamhappyː
A new layout and PCGamesN interview
A couple of quick updates before the release of Beta 1.17 just to talk about what's coming. A major change as seen above is the layout revision to the end of the first level Hunted. This part of the map was built out using temporary and low-poly BSP, all of that is now removed. More final geo is in place as well as a completely new design.
This goes along with a number of gameplay tweaks, art improvements and optimizations. It's sortof the usual round of work to make it more final. Bit by bit it's getting there.
