I've gathered the four of you here today to talk about the new v013d patch, which includes some QoL changes and fixes for Survival mode.
Optimizations
An optimization pass was made for the voxel models in game, which should greatly reduce the amount of verts rendered. A map-specific pass on E1M1 was made that reduced total verts by ~45%, which should dramatically reduce the amount of rendering power needed. Further map-specific optimizations will be worked on moving forward.
Changes
Adjusted Survival starting cash to 750, so a secondary weapon can always be bought on Wave 2 if the player saves their cash
Mowed the lawn at the Asylum to remove some grass that was unfairly obstructing the player's view
Infested Armors can no longer spawn on Wave 2 - they've been moved to Wave 3
Shield Phalanx group (4 shielded enemies) can no longer spawn on Wave 2
Fixes
Enemies will now properly have a -chance- to be Chosen (red aura) variants, rather than being 100% Chosen after Wave 5. This chance becomes greater with each wave
The line of sight check for Survival spawns now properly checks head instead of floor height, and the minimum distance check was fixed. This should greatly reduce the chances of enemies spawning within line of sight and immediately attacking the player
CULTIC: Chapter One - v013c BETA Update
Hello everyone!
I'm back from Thanksgiving break with another small patch for the Custom Difficulty beta!
Fixes
Enemy Bullet Speed is now properly tracked in Presets. IMPORTANT NOTE: Any already existing user-created presets will have Bullet Speed defaulting to 10% now, since the stat wasn't being properly tracked at the time that preset was made. You'll want to adjust this to the proper value and overwrite your presets to adjust this.
A rare (but reproducible) issue where Brutes would try to trigger a non-existent X-Death state has been fixed
A soft-lock that could be triggered by trying to create a new preset while in-game has been fixed
Disarmed TNT traps now properly grant the TNT weapon in addition to the TNT ammo
A potential fix was implemented to catch the "immortal enemy" issue when it happens and reverse the effects of it. This is a "reactive" fix to hopefully alleviate the issue until the actual cause is found and a "proactive" fix can be put in place
"Disable Health Regen" will also now disable the OHKO Protection that leaves the player with 1HP after receiving devastating damage
CULTIC: Chapter One - Custom Difficulty BETA v103b
Small patch ahoy!
Changes
The below-deck area in E1M2 is now much darker, making use of the lighter more necessary
Fixes
Shotgun alt-fire now properly penetrates enemies as intended - test it out on your nearest crowd of cultists or cultist shield!
Shotgun alt-fire now properly fires 2x the pellets of the primary, rather than missing 2 pellets
You should now be able to properly overwrite presets without the names getting reset
A rounding error was fixed that was causing slider values to adjust themselves slightly
In case you didn't see, CULTIC's in the running for Best Soundtrack! If you don't have any other nominations queued up, I'd appreciate your vote!
The 2022 Steam Awards are upon us, and much to my dismay, there's no category for "Meatiest Headshots"! In lieu of that, I'd like to humbly request your nomination for CULTIC for Best Soundtrack!
I'm immensely proud of all aspects of CULTIC, but none more so than the soundtrack that I worked so hard on! Featuring a custom, hand-made soundfont, crunchy instruments, and retro synths, it's a unique and energetic soundtrack fitting of CULTIC's unique visual style and gameplay.
Don't forget you can also grab CULTIC's soundtrack on Steam for a whopping $1.99!
It's been a month since I pushed the big green button to release CULTIC to the world - and what a month it has been!
Thank you all for 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews and a truckload of kind words! Who ever thought I'd be making an accolades trailer?
CULTIC - An Overwhelmingly Thankful Post-Launch Update
What a crazy last week and change it has been!
First things first: An absolutely massive shoutout to the community for helping CULTIC reach Overwhelmingly Positive in just two days! I was absolutely floored to see the reviews pour in, and the incredibly kind words and support coming in from the community. CULTIC is currently sitting at 99% positive scores - something I never thought I'd see. So thank you all for that!
Additionally, I want to thank those that were so patient and cooperative with providing crash/player logs to me to help diagnose and crush some nasty bugs that were affecting a small amount of users.
Now that Chapter One is out, the big question is - what's next for CULTIC?
A Break
Full disclosure - the first thing on my list is to rest and take a step away from CULTIC for a little bit. The weeks leading up to launch were incredibly stressful, and launch doubly so! As exciting as the launch was, and as thrilled as I am with how positively it was received, I am fully burnt out at the moment, and need a bit of a break to get back on my feet. I'm planning to catch up on my backlog of games I missed during development, and also catch up on some housework I've been putting off!
I hope to be back at it after Halloween! Speaking of...
Steam Scream Fest
CULTIC is a bit of a spooky game, so I am participating in Steam Scream Fest! You might see CULTIC pop up here and there during the event.
Localization
The next big task I plan to jump on is localization. I'm getting things ready to get translations for CULTIC underway. While I greatly appreciate all of the generous offers from the community to help translate CULTIC, I have already secured those services. There are some significant changes to the UI that need to happen to support additional languages, so I'm going to get working on that and hope to have updates on it soon.
GOG Release
I had been intending to hold off on a GOG Release until much closer to Chapter Two's launch, because I really don't want to manage updates/patches on two separate platforms. As a one-man team, it's much easier to just maintain a single platform. However, interest from the community in a GOG version has been pretty significant, so I'm looking into options for maybe making that happen sooner.
Chapter Two
I don't have any concrete info to share on Chapter Two at this time. I'm a bit tapped out on creativity at the moment to be honest, so I'm going to take some time to focus on some tasks that are more code-oriented (such as localization) before diving in to Chapter Two.
In closing, thanks again for everyone who has supported CULTIC, and more importantly, supported me through this game dev journey! Until next time!
CULTIC: Chapter One - Update v102
Hello everyone!
v102 of CULTIC is finally out on the main branch. This build included some pretty major changes that needed to be tested a bit more extensively than my smaller patches. Full details below!
This is a fairly lofty patch, so as always, if there are any issues or feedback, drop me a thread in the forums!
System Changes
Unity version updated to address a crash happening with the particle engine
XML culture invariance introduced to help prevent issues with save files
E1M6 Balancing
E1M6's encounter was a major pain point to the community, While this encounter is intended to be difficult, I do understand that replaying the entire mission was tedious, and not the kind of challenge I wanted for the players. Due to this, the following changes have been made:
Checkpoint introduced between third wave of cultists and the boss entrance
An additional supply cache is made available when the boss appears
The boss now has an additional attack
Smaller amount of cultists in wave 1
Cultist spawns after the boss' arrival are now limited to low-rank cultists
Bug Fixes
Various audio sources properly hooked up to audio mixer
Textures with unintended shininess were toned down
A fence in E1M9 that was solid can now be shot through
Burning enemies now properly drop loot pickups
Confirm action (left mouse) now properly opens the main menu on the title screen
Player can no longer grow a third arm while throwing hatchets and using the lighter
Intro cutscene music should now properly adhere to music volume preferences
Fixed a bug where player controls would get reset to defaults if they opened the controls menu from the main menu and then cancelled out of it without making changes
Other Changes
Progress menu reworked into a Scene Select menu. Allows any map that has been previously completed to be replayed, with choice of two loadouts
Brightness in E1M1/M2 caves was lowered
Small pistol ammo drops now give 10 rounds (down from 20). A deeper audit into ammo availability is planned to look into ammo surpluses and deficits
Debug console key is now bindable
A sequence break in E1M3 was made inaccessible as it was a bit too easy to access casually
CULTIC: Chapter One - Potential Save File Fix
Hello all!
A new experimental build of CULTIC has dropped on the beta branch, which -should- address the issue users were having with busted save files, where items just wouldn't spawn into the map properly.
Basically, the issue boiled down to a number parsing issue. Some systems use commas instead of decimals to represent float values, so the positions of items and enemies in save files was being loaded in incorrectly, resulting in wildly incorrect position and rotation values.
This was a major oversight on my part, and explains why it was impossible to replicate on my system.
Regardless, it should be fixed in this build.
IMPORTANT:
If you have a Map Start save file for the affected session, you may be able to load this map and play normally. HOWEVER - unfortunately, due to the nature of this issue, if you have created a quicksave or manual save in the map, that save file is most likely still going to have items missing. Items that fall egregiously outside of map bounds are destroyed, so if you have loaded a save (which would break item positions), and then saved again (after the items had gone out of bounds and been destroyed), that save file would still reflect the items having been destroyed.
I will be working some more bug fixes into this patch and releasing on the main branch later today, after I've had a chance to test more thoroughly.
CULTIC: Chapter One - Experimental Branch
Hello!
I just pushed a VERY EXPERIMENTAL build out to the "beta" branch. Unity made it sound like there's a chance the crashes could be related to the version of the engine I was using, so I've built a separate branch out using the latest LTS release to see if it happens to fix the issue.
Now, my version of Unity was from back when I started on CULTIC, so the engine update might have broken stuff as well. I didn't see anything too major, but I haven't done a full playthrough on this branch yet, so it's mainly just intended to see if it addresses the crashes. Check it out when you have the time, and let me know if it helps at all!
To access this branch:
Locate CULTIC in your Library
Right-click on the game in your list, and select Properties
Go to the Betas tab
Select "beta" from the dropdown list
If you are NOT experiencing crashes, I'd still appreciate the help sniffing for issues in this new branch, but otherwise, I'd recommend staying on the default branch.
Changes:
Updated Unity engine version
CULTIC: Chapter One Patch v101c
Another minor patch with some additional QoL stuff and fixes!
Issue with system audio causing loud menu sounds, log spam, and crashing should be fixed
"Pick Up that Can" achievement reworked - no longer requires the barrel to be thrown, just that it kills 5 enemies
"Rescue Mission" achievement should now work properly and not trigger if the teddy bear was the last prop you interacted with
Overwriting save files should now properly work, rather than creating new files each time
Survival: Purchasing ammo should now immediately update your current ammo count
Your Quick Swap "previous weapon" should no longer get overridden when you pick up a physics prop
A potential fix for a game-breaking bug occurring during lengthy Survival runs
Using the pistol's alt-fire should no longer stow the lighter
An Out-of-Bounds exploit in E1M3 has been fixed
A collision mesh issue in E1M5 has been fixed
The shotgun should now still fire if you attempt an alt-fire with only one shell
