Darkest Depths
Controller Support, Visual and UI Changes
Added controller support. Right now this is just controls in game. I'll work on adding menu support and then things like aim assist/haptic feedback(rumble) in the near future.
Updated the UI to be more clean and easier to read. I'll try to make it more stylish later but for now I just want to see my energy at a glance.
Changed a pillar model.
Adjusted base lighting.
Adjusted light sources to be more resource friendly.
The flashlight now has some sway.
Updated most level art.
Increased starting health by 5.
Further adjusted enemy spawning for hallways to be more consistent.
Fixed an issue with a missing texture.
Enemies can no longer shoot through walls. I thought I'd fixed that but I didn't.
Enemy Spawning Changes and More
Made changes to the room spawning system to make traversing the dungeon easier and more straight forward. I removed dead end paths from the system because I still am not feeling minimaps. This basically means that you have two ways to go, forwards or backwards. Paths still vary and rooms lead in different directions. You just won't run into a dead end path anymore.
Randomized whether some traps will be in a room or not. They are still in set positions so as not to be too chaotic but now they won't always be there.
Completely remodeled some enemies. They aren't all finished as of now but they look better in my opinion. Essentially I took the enemy models from 20k-50k polys to about 5k at the most. This also gave me a chance to fix some graphical glitches involving the old enemy models.
Completely retextured some enemy models to go more towards a hand painted style. I'll be doing the rest over time now that most of the new models are finished.
There's an issue with a few small textures missing and using engine default textures. It will be fixed later.
Reduced hitching in some cases.
Changed enemy projectile models to take less resources.
Changed pickups to take less resources.
Improved the Seeker Rocket explosion.
Decreased lens flare.
Removed a messed up nests in one room.
Reduced a lot of texture sizes.
These are the most recent updates. I have a lot more changes in this patch but to be completely honest I forgot to keep track.
Lighting Environment Overhaul, Gun Buffs, Boss Fixes
Lighting and post processing overhaul.
Adjusted Lighting Elements to be brighter.
Magma Rifle primary and alt fire damage increased greatly.
More progress in reducing between room hitching.
Reduced FPS issues later in the dungeon. This fix involves unloading previous rooms completely which means enemies respawn in rooms that were previously cleared.
Improved lighting effects.
Post Processing polish.
Added enemy color variations.
Changed enemy ranged attacks to the enemy green color for better recognization.
Cleaned up the door locking system. Doors no longer have those horrible looking lights above them. There is a green crystal at the top when a door is unlocked and a red when it is locked. This happens automatically now. You no longer need to get close to them to find out if it's locked.
Removed nest spawners from some smaller rooms. They are replaced a few different spawning systems. Both of which let you leave the room before it is finished. They also don't require you to do anything to end them.
Magma Rifle alt fire can no longer kill you.
Improved visuals for the primary gun's alt fire.
Added support for OpenGL and Vulcan.
Unified enemy projectile colors.
Re-added glowing eyes to Gravemind Rushers. No clue how or when they vanished but they're back.
Fixed the bounce gun's damage multiplier on bounces. I don't know when I broke this but it's fixed and ridiculous again.
Slightly increased bounce bullet base damage.
Increased bounce bullet visibilty.
Enemy animation optimizations.
Improved enemy death sound effects.
New rooms.
Fixed Grenade Launcher alt fire killing players.
Increased bounce gun alt fire base damage by 400%.
Fixed boss rotation variation.
Flashlight and Perfect Dark Mode
Added a new visual style to play with the flashlight called Perfect Dark. It only uses the lighting available around you so most things are pitch black. I was testing and realized that I liked it so much I should just patch it in now.
Doors now have lights based on their current status. If a door is locked it will be a visible red while unlocked has a green light. Later a door that you have gone through will have a different color making backtracking much easier.
Level Art Overhaul, Atomizer Rework, New Boss, Bug Fixes and More
This update marks the first major pass for the game's art since release. When I was prototyping I built all of the levels appearance first but that meant that one room took me upwards of a week. I decided to use a more agile approach in the release version and then go back and touch up once I had enough content. I'm really happy with how it's coming together but it's not there yet. I made some new models just for the outer portions of the rooms.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to add more detail without messing up the flow of the movement. This is the first of many detail passes for every room. I made a point to touch every room at least a little bit while some rooms got major overhauls. I spent a lot of time putting together new textures so that I can diversify the rooms. The new textures are a strong start and just changing the floor and walls makes a huge difference but those textures still need more tweaking and polish/possible color tweaks.
Added a new boss, the Aether Golem to the random boss rotation.
Added blue orbs as enemy drops that give weapon energy.
Some upgrades are now color coded. I'll go back and clean this up later. Essentially Health related pickups have a red center glow while energy up or downgrades have a blue center glow. Damage based upgrades, difficulty scaling and power upgrades such as explosive momentum are still yellow for now.
Nest HP scaling has been adjusted to scale slightly less.
Increased the time before some harder enemies are brought into a run.
More backend code work. Improved level loading times.
Fixed a graphical bug that caused strange glitchy shadows.
Improved Seeker Missile tracking, reliability and visuals.
Improved lighting in the main menu. I will redo it all later.
Fixed Gravemind Exploding Mothers and Babies. Both now explode near players and when they die.
Added Style #7: Natural Dark to the Visual Style selection in the HUB room. It removes all cel shading and modified post processing. I really like the simple look personally and lighting effects really pop with it.
Complete Atomizer rework:
Atomizer no longer takes energy to fire.
The base Atomizer bullet is now an energy generator on penetration but does not gain energy on explosion hits.
Increased the penetration damage for Atomizer rounds.
Added Alt Fire functionality to the Atomizer. The secondary fire launches high damage Atomizer rounds that bounce around for five seconds after impact with static objects like the ground or walls. It also causes an explosion on every bounce.
Re-applied height fog with much less intensity.
Added duplicate gun protection. If you have a Magma Rifle and your loot roll is another Magma Rifle it will be converted into another loot roll.
Fixed enemies shooting through walls or ceilings while stuck out of bounds. There could still be instances of this happening but I've only seen it once since the latest fix.
Made some new rooms based on maps from the game's prototype stages. These maps use the original spawning system which is not forgiving and cannot be stopped until it decides to. Just to keep things fresh.
Level Loading Improvements, Infinite Loading Fix, General Polish
The last patch was smaller on content because it was setting the game up for this release. Which is also light on content but definitely important work. It's funny to me that the stuff that you will never see takes the most time to do. I've been working on improvements to the level loading system. The goal is to spend the majority of my time working to fix the core backend issues. Last month was all about performance optimization which I feel is now in a good place. (If it isn't for you please let me know.) Now I want to get the game to where you never have to restart due to a failed level load. Because that's ridiculous.
Fixed infinite level loading. This is more of a fail safe playing off of the previously mentioned loading work. So, if a level doesn't build in fifteen seconds the game will change the build seed and then build a new dungeon. This is a work in progress and ironically enough I was unable to get a failed build state while testing this. I set it to so long because if people with slower harddrives play it would never actually load. If you have issues with loading please let me know and I will adjust the timing.
Fixed a gap or four in the + shaped stair room. (Thanks GrowWings)
Added more detail to some rooms.
Fixed a gap at the top of doors for some room combinations.
Added Eye Turret spawners to some rooms.
I fixed the issues with exploding enemy types. They will be back to their explosive behavior in the next update.
New Game Changes to Level Building and the HUB
I resized the Graveheart Necromancers and Dervishes so they should no longer clip through the ceiling of small rooms. If they still do in some rooms give me a heads up please.
I started adding more details to rooms in the game.
Seething Heart Hotfix
Magma Rifle Rework and New Model, Grenade Launcher Alt Fire Rework
It's primary fire does damage on hit followed by a large AoE explosion which is followed by an even larger explosion. It's been updated with way better effects and sound effects have been added.
It's alt fire is now akin to a high damage fireworks display. It looks awesome but also does stupid amounts of damage to match the high cost. The attack does 2x player damage around the effect every one tenth of a second before it releases a large explosion for 5x player damage.
I'm not finished with the texturing but I definitely wanted to get this in the game asap.
The sound effects will improve when I get to the point where that's my focus. For now I'm just trying to get the guns where they should be.
I reworked the Arcane Grenade Launcher's alt fire as well. When it hits something there's a damage dealing explosion that releases five more Grenades. These will all hit the same target if you direct hit them dealing a lot of damage. In my testing it one shots nests. It's pretty nasty.
As always I added more rooms to the random room rotation.
I'm still not entirely sure what is causing the random issue of the dungeon failing to load. It will not affect a run in progress and if you get the issue just reload to the main menu. I'm really sorry that this is still a thing.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've had a lot going on and almost lost the game files completely due to a combination of incompetence on my end, a Windows install to a new SSD and Cloud Drive. All is well and hopefully I'll get the Atomizer rework/remodel added and sent to you guys very soon.
Boss Health Nerf, More Rooms in Rotation, Seething Heart Visual Polish
Added four more rooms to room rotation.
Added visual polish to the Seething Heart boss room.
There is currently an issue which can prevent a level from building. (This only happens at the start of a run so it won't affect or ruin a run.) Leaving you in a black area at the start of a run. It seems rare but if you run into it just return from main menu and try again. I'm currently looking into what is causing it now.
If you have ideas for what you would like to see in the game please let me know over in the discussion page or in the development discord channel. https://discord.gg/vWbUZef