Build 51 is here and is focused around bug fixes and small improvements. I had planned a few major changes to the game but ultimately decided there wasn't time to test and balance them so I decided to de-scope them for now.
There were just too many bug fixes that needed to get in for me to want to take more time to finish a more significant update before releasing this one. There was some progress made on those improvements, so they may still be added in the future.
Please let me know about bugs you run into while playing as I plan to push out 1-2 more bug fix builds this week to resolve any lingering problems.
Build 51 release notes
Performance boost to battle scenes
Can open menu and pause during cinematics
One button "defer to next character" shortcut and UI element
Saving icon when data is saved
Small improvements to menus
Mini Map on HUD opens larger
Redid loading screen and added missing difficulty
Added current music name/artist to menu
Controller Updates
Added Rumble
Shoulder buttons immediately defer to next character (if possible)
Changed the DPAD left/right to moving through the in game interactions
Changed the DPAD up to mini map
Changed the DPAD down to follow mode toggle
On Objective loadout, "next character" auto selected
When something is "selected" holding the left stick for a short time will deselect and start the path drawing again
Bug fixes
Enemy and loot spotted getting cut off
Out of fuel encounters would sometimes want you to buy fuel when you didn't have enough credits
Crashes when fighting mechs
Can now replace a character in the sub on the Objective Loadout
When using the medical sub, you didn't get items found on mission
Numerous small fixes
Update! Build 51.4.4 is now live with the following changes
Play time not being calculated correctly
Percent complete and percent of equipment found was incorrect
Database button also closes database
HUD was at wrong resolution (fixed to 720)
Invisible turrets won't keep a mission from auto ending
Updated description for class unlock achievements to clarify that these are earned when you assign to a character (not just complete the Swashbuckler objective for instance)
Balancing changes
Nightmare has less health
Each faction has a different status grenade
Added Poison Grenades for Cultists
Shadowfury moved to tier 4 (from 3)
Lowered item drop rate from enemies
I've still got a few more fixes to make so will plan for one more update on Friday!
Build 50 Bug fixes
Thanks to all of you that have played Build 50 and I really appreciate all the bug reports and feedback I have received about this update. This was a really big "behind the scenes" change and so there were a number of bugs that had to be fixed. I thought I might list everything out here so if you had an issue, you can see if it has been resolved. Please let me know if you see anything I missed. If i didn't fix something you reported already, then i might not have been able to reproduce it yet or will get to it this week,
EDIT: Added Build 50.9.6 (current)
- FEATURE: Enemy Database on Main Menu. Can click on an enemy card to open to their entry.
- New achievements added for objective completion and unlocking and leveling up the enemy classes
- No longer forced to level up on mission loadout when selecting character
- Heal and Revive items weren't switching back and forth properly
- Follow Mode pauses if a character dies in combat (also have tooltip)
- Defend percentage added to tooltip
- If aborting the final mission in an objective, you could not complete the mission on a retry
- Added more details to in game bug report tool to help me fix level generation issues
- Saving your game to another slot was breaking the map
- Loading your game in mission was marking the mission as complete
- Polished the out of fuel modal and tooltip appearance
- reload was showing when hit and run skill triggered even though you could not reload
- Playtime would sometimes be set negative
- Enemies no longer can overwatch when stunned
- Equipment slots show preview of items when using controller
- Total mayhem sometimes triggered when fewer than 3 cover destroyed
Build 50.8.1
- Fixed bug where using healing or revive item and canceling would cause a soft lock (Thanks for the bug report!)
- WASD not moving camera
- weapon type icon obscuring tier number on mission loadout current item
- "new game" on save showing up in wrong place and obscuring text
- stat mouse overs on in game HUD not working
- objective loadout screen breaking if you added characters and then went back and chose objective again
- revive and heal on HUD didn't work with controller properly
- follow mode shortcut will only open the UI the first time you use it (or if the leader dies) and then after that just toggles follow mode on and off
- out of fuel encounter giving characters XP
- Can't close the map in the tutorial by clicking the X button
Build 50.7.3
- fix to tutorial soft lock
- fix to enemy intros disappearing too quickly
- possible fix to enemy intros sometimes focusing on wrong enemy
- fix to controller bugs on out of fuel encounters
- fix to unable to delete first save file on title scene
- soft lock during enemy turn vs feral androids due to a missing weapon on one enemy (thanks for the user reports!)
- increased the size of the controller button icons on the in game HUD
Build 50.6.1
- Soft lock happening on turn
- Enemy sightings not showing correctly
- unable to aim grenades
- New airlock walls didn't display minimaps
- Team tab in main menu shows character when selection changes
- possible fix to tutorial box modal issue
Controller Support, Enemies and Effects
Build 50 took me longer than I expected, but that was mainly because in addition to the controller support, I wanted to get in as much content and address as much feedback as possible.
As usual, I'll post the entire DevLog over on itch.io with a summarized version here. If you want to read the entire thing, please visit this link.
This is the big one for Build 50. It’s a huge change and affected every menu in the game to some degree. If you have played DOE, then you know it has a lot of menus so that was no small task. The other goal was to not lose any functionality for mouse and keyboard PC players. I’d love to hear if you think I missed something!
Enemies Updated
The next big thing was addressing the feedback that the enemies were too similar. I went through almost every enemy in the game and made major changes to their sprites and armor to try to make them more distinctive.
Effects Updated
Another big effort went into adding more in game effects. I touched four main areas: enemy death animations, weapon impact animations, new weapons (and a few updates to existing weapons) and new weapon effects.
Map Updates
I was only able to get one small update into the maps. On the later “open” maps, the sub docking area is now always enclosed. Having this open lead to some scenarios where enemies spawned close enough to the player characters to immediately trigger. In later missions, this could result in starting with half your characters already significantly damaged. Now you will always have a chance to get ready before opening doors and potentially revealing enemies.
What’s Next?
Subs - remove health and add a different damage penalty
Character Injuries
Map Updates
Sounds effects - more, more, more
Music - improve the loops
Read the entire DevLog
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/84471/update-controller-support-enemies-and-effects
Color Blind Mode and Bug Fixes
A small update has just been released with a few changes:
Added an accessibility option to the settings for Color Blind Mode which changes the color schemes for the tactical UI elements
Fixed some error conditions that could result in the game stalling and the player unable to make a move
Fixed an issue with the bug reporting form being used when a save file had nt yet been generated
Added some extra time after a shot to make it easier to visually process the results
Please let me know if you see other problems and of course suggestions are also welcome.
Build 49: Optimizations, Bug fixes and Feedback
I didn’t expect to be making another build so soon, but I wanted to do a small update based on the Build 48 feedback and then it gradually morphed into a pretty big update.
Here are the highlights:
Optimization to reduce lag
Encounter outcomes that don’t result in a tactical battle but do have a positive outcome result in experience gained for each character on the team.
“Team Editor” screen will allow you to choose the team member to return to base rather than always sending back the hostage.
“expected damage” will now appear on a character or cover UI flag by turning the health dots red that would be damaged in a successful attack of max damage (in the case of multi shot weapons)
Dodge chance added to the enemy UI flag
Abort, evac and exit mission buttons larger
Sniper range penalty is now fixed to 4 squares rather than 50% of the weapon range
Incompatible items now labeled as such in the equipment UI.
Bug reporting can be done in game so you don't have to track down saves and logs
The Full Post with many more details is on itch.io
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/66516/build-49-is-now-live-with-major-optimizations-and-a-few-other-changes
What’s Next?
Controller support is the next highest priority. Beyond that, I do have plans to add more content to DOE in the future. I have a few classes that were cut at the end and I plan to finish them. I’d also like to add more mission variations and more maps.
Many other requests have been made and I will definitely take a look at those as well. You may also notice that we reduced the price recently. Hopefully the new price will help ensure that the game continues to sell in the long term and allow me to keep going with (at least) quarterly updates.
Winter Update is Live!
The long awaited Build 48 is finally ready! I’ve put some thought into how I think people might react to this update but am looking forward to hearing more detailed feedback on the changes and if you think they have improved on the game’s shortcomings without compromising what you liked about it.
If you didn’t like the game at all when it launched or you were turned off on it for some other reason, then this update is probably not changing your mind.
If you were on the fence about the game and just thought thought it was repetitive or imbalanced or too easy, then maybe you could give it another try. I’ve worked on addressing this feedback and even though I don’t think the game is perfect, i do think it has improved from launch.
If you are one of those people who would prefer to get the high level summary of the update or see the visuals, then this video is for you. For more details, please read on!
https://youtu.be/Qy-8fVMVZSo
The first thing to mention are the New Maps we have added to the game. There are three new ones that each add slightly different dimensions and are introduced as you progress through the game.
I’ve also added some new level tilesets that you’ll see in later areas. They are the Cultist “Temple” and the Android “Citadel” and they definitely have a different look that the current tilesets. I don’t have a significant amount of new cover or environment items added to the game yet though. Look for that in a future update.
I’ve also completely removed the “Zone Chooser” from the game in favor of just listing the currently available objectives for you to choose from across zones. Only one objective of a type will be available at a time from now on, so you won’t see more than one “Find Sub” at a time, for instance. The concept of choosing the objective based on difficulty is also gone from the game. This has been replaced by difficulty that scales with the current team. Objectives will have a difficulty floor however, so it is possible to undertake an objective that is too hard but not one that is too easy. Enemies will scale up to roughly match your level.
To make the game more accessible to new players, we have added a “casual” mode. The first time you play the new version of DOE, you will be asked which difficulty mode you want: Casual or Classic. Classic will be basically the current version of the game (with the other changes in Build 48) while Casual will have a few differences:
You will have the option to retry any mission where you failed (team wiped out), aborted or even lost a character.
Characters will have a higher “base” health value than the enemies, allowing you to take a few more hits.
The difficulty will ramp up just a little more slowly
Casual mode is primarily aimed at players who want to experience a slightly easier version of the game and not have to deal with permadeath (unless they want to).
The speed of the game has also been greatly increased. I have gone through each aspect of the tactical component of the game to remove any extra delays and reduce the time things take to execute (like changing the turn and firing). I also have completely revamped the character movement system so that the movement speed can be tuned by the player in the settings. The default speed is significantly higher than the previous defaults. The “cinematic” system also had a setting added to let players control how long the camera delays over items of interest last. Hopefully this solves a lot of the battle pacing issues. These changes are complete rewrites to the character movement system, so I won’t be surprised to hear about a few bugs. I’ll be posting a patch soon with bug fixes, so please let me know if you see anything weird. Videos appreciated.
Another big change: enemy pods are now triggered based on their visible range from player characters. This means that instead of enemy pods activating as soon as you see them, they will only activate when you either attack them, move into their visible range or fire at another enemy within their visible range. Enemies in rooms are also activated by overwatching or reloading at a door.
Since you can “see” enemies before their pod gets activated and attacks you, I have also added a new HUD element to represent the enemy’s visual range. As long as you stay outside that area you won’t activate the pod. I feel like this is pretty experimental so I am definitely interested in feedback.
In addition to activating by “seeing” one of your characters, enemies can also activate if they “hear” you open a door, reload or fire your weapon, or if an enemy in a different pod is activated close by. Enemies can activate if one of these things happens within their audible range, even from another room, so be careful! Later enemies, like androids, have more advanced hearing and so have a larger audible range.
We’ve also beefed up the story with additional cutscenes and banter between characters. There are three more standalone cutscenes and several banter situations during the final mission of each story objective. This should flesh out the story a bit more.
The encounter system has been significantly upgraded, with the main change being new “task” encounters that charge the player with disarming bombs, hacking terminals or disabling a failing reactor as you travel across the maps. These mission types were available previously only as final missions on some side quests. A lot of players found them fun so we wanted to make them happen a bit more often! I also worked with the writers on reducing the number of repeating encounters and outcomes that made it look like things were duplicating.
Some smaller changes to encounters:
“Class” options have a color coding
Fewer “sub” battles
“Go in loud” generally sets the alert level to high
One thing that did NOT change is the skill cool downs. I talked in the previous post about changing the cooldowns to “Uses” to give you a fixed number of skill uses per mission. This was actually implemented in a test branch and I did some playtesting with it but ultimately it seemed to negatively impact the initial difficulty and seemed kind of arbitrary. I settled for increasing some of the skill cooldowns and many of the new maps that are introduced later in the game don’t have the “rooms” breaking up the action any more so you can’t just spam end turn to reset them in many cases.
Other changes
Status effects (fire, poison, regen, etc) damage and healing are triggered at the end of the turn rather than the beginning so you can’t spam end turn to fill health with regen, for instance.
Constitution skill at 5 points is Mend rather than Regen
Flip the Field multiplies movement by 1.5x rather than 2x
Assault skill Close Combat only gives you 1 free shot per turn
Boost Aim damage is split up amongst shots for multi shot weapons
Higher tier items cost more and resell for less
Max Dodge chance greatly reduced overall
“Trap” missions (starting the mission in Evacuate Facility) and “High Alert” missions happen more often
Hostages no longer have to be led back to the exit when the level is empty
Reduce the frequency of voice barks
Inventory filters by tier on equip screen and tier and type on merchant
Evac notification no longer pops up but appears permanently on the side of the HUD
Mechs can’t use cover
What’s next?
My goal is to try to deliver quarterly updates to the game throughout 2019. I am thinking some new objective types, classes, content and possibly even a new main quest? I am honestly not sure yet but all of this is being considered and when or if these things are available will probably depend on a variety of factors.
All I can say for sure is that the next update will include controller support. Let me know what else you want and I can definitely consider it.
Balancing Update and Addressing Feedback in Build 48
Thanks so much for all the feedback we have received through reviews, forum posts and on our Discord (https://discord.gg/ThN65yS) over the last few days since DOE launched on Steam/GOG/Humble/itch.io. We went (pre-release) from having about 100 people play the launch build and about 15 give us detailed feedback to having thousands play it and hundreds giving feedback. Of course, that means a lot of stuff we just missed prior to launch. This includes major balancing problems and lots of bugs (big and small). With a super small team (only 1 full time developer and a few part timers) we probably can’t get everything fixed as quickly as you would like, but we are committed to making the game a fun and enjoyable experience. Clearly we don’t have this right yet, since many reviewers are not happy with the game, but we are going to keep working on it.
For Build 48, the goal is to address as many of these problems as we can. Luckily, I don’t think the game is that far off from being a more balanced experience and there is now a plan.
Active Skill Adjustments
This is one of the main imbalanced parts of the game. Many people have found some over powered skill combos and while these are kind of cool to find, they make the game less of a fun experience for many late game players. So, starting in Build 48, Active Skills (that you enable) will now have a “uses” stat, meaning they can only be used a finite number of times during a mission. So your skills will be another resource to manage and you’ll have to be careful about how you employ them.
We’ll also make some other adjustments to specific skills:
- Boost Aim damage will be split up amongst the shots fired. So for a Wildcat that means getting only +1 per hit for instance.
- Close Combat (Assault skill) will only grant a free shot within two tiles once per turn.
- Flip the field will multiply movement by 1.5 times rather than 2.
Additional Map Types
Another feedback I have seen quite a lot is a lack of variety to the battle maps. I understand that this is a problem and I had two more map types hat were almost ready at launch but just ran out of time to polish them and get them ready to ship. One of them will be added in Build 48 that is a hybrid between “interior rooms” and the more open “platform” maps. These will have some small rooms but also larger more open areas.
Here's an example of one, and though this is not a finished product yet I think you can get an idea about how this might add a lot of combat scenarios.
Additional Story Cutscenes
DOE has a nice cutscene system in place (used in the prologue) and a writer who already put together some great scenes to use throughout the game. I just ran out of time to get them all implemented prior to launch, and of course the story totally suffers as a result. I’ll try to get these all in the game as soon as we can in Build 48.
Other Changes
A “turn start” marker will be established to ensure that status effects (like burning and regen) don’t trigger continuously when using Defer.
A new panel will be added to the character modal in battle to show all current effects the characters (including enemies) have so you can better plan your attacks.
Hostages won’t need to be led back to the evac zone when the level is empty anymore.
Expected damage will be displayed in the action area to make it clear how much damage will be done if you fire. This is mostly to address the issues with the shotgun damage falloff not being clear but i think this will help players in general.
Adjust the voice overs. I’m not sure exactly what will be done yet as I am getting a bit of mixed feedback here. Yes, some of the voices are poor quality but it seems like the voice feedback is very helpful for knowing when a character is low on health or ammo for instance. Most likely, the number of voice clips will be reduced and disabled completely during follow mode. The critical ones will stay in and trigger each time as the goal will be to keep the usefulness of the voices but lower the annoyance factor. I will look into getting some additional voices recorded but probably there will not be time to get that organized for Build 48.
A few more smaller items
- Filters in the merchant inventory (type/tier)
- Set Swashbuckler weapons to not be drop only (so the merchants will stock them)
And some Quality of Life settings
- Enable/Disable the moving lines on the map screens
- Enable/Disable the text barks
- Cinematic time (enemy spotted, loot spotted, etc)
I know there are a lot of other requests that many of you have mentioned, and I am sorry if the thing you want is not on the list. With the size of our team (only 1 full time developer), choices had to be made for Build 48 that would impact the most players. Rest assured that all requests have been heard and logged and I will try to make all reasonable adjustments eventually. The plan (at the moment) is to do at least 2 more builds (49 and 50) to add in even more content and address more concerns. I will share more details on them after we completely deliver Build 48.
Implementation Plan
I will be pushing builds to the beta branch on Steam and GOG very soon (possibly this weekend) with fixes as we make them. How those builds will be integrated into the "default" Steam/GOG/itch versions is to be determined. I will need to make the sure the changes are ready by having players try them out and give feedback, and I will try to get some of my internal testers to spend time on them at some point.
The goal would be to completely deliver Build 48 by early November. I'll have more updates on this as we get closer.
Build 47.8 now in Beta: Bug Fixes
So we have been monitoring the bug report form, the Steam forum and our Discord server, and have fixes for a number of issues in the Beta branch now. Once we see that everything is looking good, we'll promote it to the main branch. If you are having any of these issues then feel free to use the beta.
Here's what we fixed:
Tutorial:
- Close button on tutorial dialog not working
- Character with minigun going first breaks the tutorial
- Scroll wheel wasn't zooming in and out on tutorial
- Loot collected box could not be closed in the tutorial
Skills and Items
- Any "passive" skill buffs were not being applied (item Master being the most visible one early in the game)
- Character select buttons for med kit, trauma kit, blood transfusion were hard to see so we added a background and outline to make them stand out
Other stuff:
- The mouse sometimes had to be wiggled a little bit in order to get the movement line drawing or make it clickable
- Enemies walking through doors without opening them
- Made the evacuation prompt that will kill everyone outside the evac zone have a double confirm with RED text
- Made current area node on map screen white
- Made current mission node on map screen white
- Soundtrack was missing some songs and meta data meaning it did not show up together. Now appears in music player as "Depth of Extinction OST"
Feel free to join our Discord
https://discord.gg/Y6taVrh
or submit a bug report
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0_s559TRWC7ADgDSiWComBVwSzVB7WXMP1zTY9ITpNAOB0w/viewform?usp=sf_link
Depth of Extinction Launched!
We’re excited to announce that Depth of Extinction is now available on Steam, GOG and itch.io! It’s been a long road to get to this point and we are excited to see what everyone thinks of the “final” version of the game. Of course, many of you on itch have played the game previously, but at various stages of development.
We've introduced a few new things in the last 2 builds before launch in addition to the slew of bug fixes. One of the coolest is the new Equipment Database! Track all the remaining items to find in DOE!
Full DevLog covering Build 46/47
https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/49951/launch-day-and-build-4647-details
Launch Date and Price Announcement!
Depth of Extinction – HOF Studios’ sharp turn-based strategy game with roguelike elements – is launching Thursday, September 27 on Steam, GOG, itch.io, and the Humble Store. Inspired by genre stalwarts XCOM: Enemy Unknown and FTL: Faster Than Light, the game allows you to handpick fighters from a roster of hardened operatives to join your squad – then battle vicious factions and killer machines in defense of mankind. Venture into a terrifying underwater world rife with violence in this complex, addictive strategy game with real permadeath and superb pixel art.
Pricing & Availability
Depth of Extinction will be available on Steam (PC, Mac, and Linux) Thursday, September 27 for $17.99 – a 10% discount. The game will return to its original price of $19.99 on October 4. Depth of Extinction will also be available on itch.io, GOG, and the Humble Store.
