Over the past year we've learned a lot, both from mistakes and successes, and now that we are a year into development of Disinfection we've started to realize something important: Though the current engine has been great for us to start game-development in, being easy to use and very comfortable for us personally, it has slowly but surely become a major crutch for us. This has become a major cause in us either not implementing features/content or implementing them in a simplified format. The current engine simply either doesn't support or doesn't have features we need for Disinfection. There have been attempts on implementing these things ourselves but this has proven to be a major challenge. Too major. So we knew for sure that we needed to tackle this sooner or later.
Jeroen had set out to find an alternative and had found a great one in the form of Godot. This engine has all the features we need, plus it is fully open-source so it is much easier to implement anything we are missing. It is also a much more modern and well-maintained engine, which supports many of the latest features you can find in modern games. Jeroen already has been working on a side-project (called 'Keep it Running') in Godot for over a month now and the results have been very pleasing.
How will this transition play out and can I still play the game?
The current version of the game will be temporarily feature-locked, meaning that no new features will be added to it until the transition is done. However the current version will remain playable until the new version of the game is ready to replace it. The 'Testing Beta' version of the game will first be replaced with the new version so we can do public testing. You can choose yourself if you want to opt into this new Testing Beta or not via Steam. Feedback will help us a lot, so feel free to opt-in and let us know what you think of the changes once the new version is live and during its development.
How long will this take and will there be regular updates?
Initially it will take a longer time before the new Testing Beta goes public, as we need to port over all assets and code over to the new engine. This will probably take about a month. After that we'll be returning to the regular updating schedule we've had so far, so every week or every 2 weeks. During development of the new version we'll make sure to make regular News posts with progress, you can also join the Discord for regular updates with screenshots and videos.
What will be the biggest changes?
Naturally with changing engine there will be many aspects of the game that will change/evolve as well. Since we need to take a new look at everything, we will polish many (small) things along the way such as code and assets. There will be no new features though, until the transition is done. Here's a rundown of the biggest overall changes that are currently planned:
New graphics: Disinfection will get a huge overhaul graphics-wise, as Godot uses a modern renderer with full support for things like dynamic Global Illumination, volumetric lighting and fog, etc. We're going to overhaul some of the assets too to fit the new graphics, making everything look much prettier and atmospheric.
New sounds system: Godot has a fully realtime and fully dynamic sound system, which is something we really wanted for Disinfection as the game uses sound a lot to build atmosphere a lot and to give ques where things are. We always wanted sounds like footsteps to realistically echo through the spaceship, or sounds to get muffled behind objects. We also needed special sound effects for the ingame voice-chat, such as radio/distortion and pitch effects, which is all possible now. Jeroen has already done some initial testing in 'Keep It Running' with very good results.
New animation system and updated animations: The animation system in the old engine was rather limited and clunky, and didn't allow for some of the animation and interaction features we wanted. The current animations are also not that great, mainly due to our own inexperience. With the new engine we should be able to more fully realize our vision of dynamic animations (and Inverse Kinematics) with better animation transitions. We are also going to tackle the player animations primarily, as those affect gameplay the most. The headbobbing and swaying is a bit much right now and the transitions are very jarring, so this can be improved a lot still. There are also still some animations missing for monster attacks.
New Lobby: The current Lobby is a bit too big, forcing players to walk and being a little confusing for new players. Some of our (planned) ideas also didn't work out for the Lobby, such as the Store and Leaderboard, so we need to change things a little. Most of the design will stay the same but some parts will be removed and overall the Lobby will be much more compact. Visually the Lobby will also get an upgrade, with more decorations and polish on existing decorations.
Our thanks go out to everyone who has played the game and everyone that has provided feedback so far and we are looking forward to hearing what you think of the new and upgraded Disinfection once it becomes public.
Patch 0.06c
Happy Halloween :)
Bugfixes:
Fixed the infection growth blocking the airlock having an high temperature.
Fixed the infection growth blocking the airlock playing the wrong animation, thus showing when the monster isn’t hunting.
Fixed the monster hunting with no players in the mission ship.
Fixed Eye Event causing a crash in multiplayer when continuously calling the monster due to multiple players being in its sight.
Fixed being unable to move after having the PDA open during mission finish.
Fixed moving very slowly after being attacked by the monster whilst crouched.
Fixed being unable to place down a Tool or Weapon when inside the ship but close to the lobby.
Fixed players getting stuck in the Small Cryo room.
Fixed the Chiller decreasing suit integrity immediately after having been placed down. Now it only happens after it has fully charged up.
Fixed the Chiller scanning for and affecting players & infection before having charged up fully.
Polish:
Chiller sound effect now rises in pitch while the Chiller is charging up to give better indication of when it is ready.
Reprogrammer can no longer be used to call the infection as a cheat.
Evidences noted down in the PDA will no longer count after player death on Hard missions.
The Eye Event will stay dormant way longer after having called the hunting monster, so it will no longer constantly cause hunts
Added an hint for the Torso Event, so there’s a subtle warning before coming into its range.
Added a new effect when the Torso Event attacks.
Added a Team Management menu to the host pause menu. Currently it only has the option to select & kick a player.
General cleanup of code and the normal (non-Testing Beta) version of the game now no longer is compiled with debugging code.
Save files are now saved separately for the Testing Beta and the normal version of the game.
The Afterlife World: We're currently working on creating the mind-world for Afterlife, the first shaders have been implemented but this is all still highly experimental and subject to changes.
Hotfix for Patch 0.06b
Bugfixes & Polish:
Fixed crash when a clientside player sets the ship on fire with the flamethrower after the fire was extinguished.
Fixed The Hunter banging on doors sound not playing clientside.
Adjusted the selection of infection types so it is more balanced & varied.
Adjusted the difficulty ranking classification thresholds to be better balanced.
Patch 0.06b - The Hunter and Improvements
Based on your feedback we've added a lot of polish and improvements to some aspects of the game. There's been many improvements to the games mechanics and there's also a new way for the infection to hunt astronauts, an humanoid entity called 'The Hunter'.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a random crash caused by the Events.
Fixed crash caused by tabbing out or pausing the game during death animation or mission finish.
Fixed de-sync caused by tabbing out or pausing the game during death and mission finish.
Fixed the UV mapping on some ship interior sections.
Fixed missing collision for the broken elevator decoration.
Fixed missing collision for airlock.
Fixed floating large cabin decoration.
Fixed some issues in the level generator, now it will allow for ‘Tiny’ sized ships.
Fixed large rooms not being generated by the level generator.
Fixed fire not spreading.
Fixed fire effects spawning at the wrong location client-side.
Fixed various small netcode issues.
Fixed infection monster not roaming during an hunt, when having no target available.
Polish:
Infection monster now starts at zero speed when hunting, speeding up slowly over time to normal speed, to give players more reaction time for hunts.
Things like temperature and power more strongly affect the infection strength and speed now.
Fire in the ship may aggravate the infection monster, causing it to hunt.
The infection monster now only moves at full speed during an hunt when it has a line-of-sight to the target player.
The infection monster now makes different sounds when it is roaming during an hunt (i.e. it lost its target).
Infection types are slightly more diversified in their behavior, abilities and (de)buffs.
Oxygen Scrubber infection can now only use its teleport ability when the oxygen level in the ship is high enough.
Changed the Reprogrammer keys, since some keyboard layouts make using the Reprogrammer very hard with Insert, Home, etc.
Optimized some of the collision meshes.
Fire now grows & heats up the area whilst there is enough oxygen, if the oxygen in the area is low (due to leaks or life support being off) the fire will extinguish.
Adjusted fire effects.
Added fire sound effects.
Adjusted smoke effects to fill up the interior more.
Adjusted the rank calculation from XP, players need exponentially more XP per rank but the values got too big at higher ranks so this has been scaled to be much less grindy. Beware that your rank may change slightly.
Changed the PDA stats screen to be more readable and have more information. New information includes the oxygen pressure in the area you are standing in and how many glowsticks you have left.
Changed the PDA evidence, tool & weapon screens to be more readable. Added navigation hints too.
Revised the PDA tool & weapon instruction texts.
Changed the screen in the airlock to have basic instructions for how to play the game.
Difficulty rank is now Amateur, Easy, Medium, Hard with the rank value after in brackets.
Ship size is now ‘Ship Type’ with the various ship classes with the size after in brackets.
Added a new ship size/type for extra small ships.
Fixed reflection on the Reactor Core screen in the Tutorial, which made it hard to read the text.
Added a Store and Leaderboard teasers to the lobby and removed the old couch.
Made the main menu font slightly bigger to make it more readable.
The Hunter: The infection has taken on a new form, build from its previous victims, to hunt down new prey: The Hunter. A physical manifestation of the infection, humanoid and very deadly. The Hunter behaves very differently from its counterpart. Unlike its brethren it cannot move through the environment and has to find its way through the ships hallways towards its target. It can be stopped by doors, but beware that it can open powered doors. However: it is much more relentless when it finds a target, running at them at inhuman speed so it can attempt to rip apart their victim’s spacesuit to invade their body with the infection. Do not get caught.
Airlock Tools & Weapons redesign: The Tool & Weapon shelves in the airlock needed to be changed, to give (new) players a better overview of their equipment and to discern which Tool/Weapon is which. It also needed to allow for multiple of the same equipment so that bigger teams have more to work with (we noticed a third or fourth player was often the ‘third wheel’, having nothing to do). So the airlock section has been redesigned to solve these issues.
Patch 0.06a - New Level Generator
New Level Generator: The level generator in Disinfection has had problems for a while now, mainly due to it being too random. We were also unhappy with the levels it produced, as there wasn’t much variety and the levels felt more like long-hallway-mazes with too much walking. The sizes were too random too, often a “small” ship was way larger than a “medium” one, though this issue does still persist somewhat. To address this Jeroen has completely re-done the level generator. Now it uses a system that is much more controlled and much less prone to issues. It also allows for things that were previously impossible such as multiple staircases per floor, in different directions. The new ship are much more compact in design too, making things feel more claustrophobic and giving a more realistic spaceship feel. Loading times have been reduced too, due to the more compact nature of the ships and level arrangement. This first implementation is still fairly basic and will be expanded upon in future updates.
Bugfixes & Polish:
Fixed the texture mapping on some of the ship interiors
New Decoration:
Broken elevator
New Interior Textures:
Added two more texture sets to give more variety to the ship interiors.
Hotfix 2 for Release 0.06
Bugfixes:
Removed Hull infection only chasing moving players at full speed, which is a property of the Recycling infection only.
Fixed Medical infection having wrong strength parameter value thus being way too weak.
Polish:
Adjusted infection type speed parameters to better suit the weapons used i.e. flamethrower types tend to be slower.
Adjusted infection monster speed scaling with difficulty, it's much more balanced with player speed now.
Adjusted the monster hunt timer so that the first hunt takes longer to begin at the start of the mission, giving players more time to setup and find evidence.
Hotfix for Release 0.06
Bugfixes:
Fixed some errors in the netcode for updating infection spread in the ship.
Fixed sliders in the settings menus going out of their bounds when dragged.
Fixed setting the mouse sensitivity to maximum breaking the game.
Fixed the infection death animation playing instead of the oxygen death animation when a player dies of oxygen deprivation.
Fixed other player's footsteps constantly playing after they have died.
Fixed the wrong weapon being displayed on the player stats screen for the Hull Infection.
Fixed client-side player suit integrity decay being decreased by a wrong value when attacked by the infection monsters.
Polish:
Improved infection type randomization for missions, should have more variety now.
The suit integrity decay from infection monster attacks is slightly increased and better scaled with difficulty level.
Fire effect size, spawn and spread is improved and optimized.
Optimized the code for the infection spread controller.
Alpha version 0.06 Release - Events & Threats
Alpha version 0.06 is now released. This concludes the 'Random Events & Threats' stage of development as these features of the game are almost entirely complete. There will still be some minor Events & Threats related things in the coming patch(es) but the basis is all there.
The infection can have various effects on the environment, causing all sorts of mishaps and dangers. Devices malfunction and may cause fires, lights flicker, zero gravity, the infection grows dangerous creatures and strange visions may plague you. You may stumble upon voice-logs left behind by the crew too.
This update has the following additions and changes: Bugfixes & Polish:
Fixes for Event related crashes.
Possible fix for mission loading freeze/crash.
Fixed rare random EMP bomb crash.
Limited resolution to 1080p when starting the game for the first time, to prevent incorrect resolutions being set making it impossible to access the options menu.
Fixed inconsistent temperatures in ship system rooms.
Improved how temperatures balance and bleed between areas of the ship.
Fixed suit integrity still going down in infected areas, after killing the infection.
Level generator fixes and polish.
Fixed Flamethrower not raising the environment temperature properly.
Fixed Chiller not lowering the environment temperature properly.
Added more variation and polish to the tertiary decorations.
Updated the Life Support sounds.
Life Support now gives an alert when it is turned off by a player.
Other player’s footsteps are now properly audible.
Other player’s footsteps now have lower volume and dynamic sound.
Polished the player face texture so it doesn’t look like the surface of the moon anymore :)
Damage caused by fire and EMP blasts will now also affect ship health and thus mission scoring.
Events are more frequent on high difficulties.
The infection monster is deadlier when more players are in a team.
Changed “voice volume” to “game voices volume” to prevent confusion with voice chat.
Added ‘refresh’ button to team join menu.
Tutorial Rework: The voice acting in the Tutorial, though immersive, isn’t working for a lot of you. Many of you found it too slow and/or too much of an info-dump. So we have changed the Tutorial to use in-game screens with text instead. This will allow all players to go through the Tutorial at their own pacing and means you will be able to re-read things if you missed something. The new Tutorial will also allow players to practice with all of the Weapons and all of the Tools on a 'Dummy', besides the training mission which has had some polish and minor changes.
New Player Animations:
New animation for dragging open doors.
New animation for ‘Hands’ event.
New Random Events & Threats: New Random Threats:
(minor) Explosions caused by the ship malfunctioning, these can cause oxygen leaks in the ship.
Fire, from the explosions or misuse of the Flamethrower, can spread through the ship. You may get lucky and find a fire extinguisher on the ship to put out the fire.
New Random Events:
Many hands will grow out of the ship, surrounding, grabbing and holding players in place for a short while.
You may witness strange apparitions which haunt you and your teammates.
New Infection Types: 2 new infection types, to diversify the evidence more and to make the evidence less predictable whilst also giving all the Tools more varied usage. These infection types are still basic in behavior and abilities and will be further improved on in future updates.
Medical Infection
Hull Infection
New Decoration:
Medium cabin
Large cabin
New Voice Logs: 12 new crew Voice Logs have been added. Reset your Voice Logs in the settings to hear all of them, as the order has changed as well. Keep an eye out for those green cassette recorders during missions.
We are going to do some community streams and an Q&A this weekend, so hop into the Discord to join in: https://discord.gg/vV7KDVMBZz Check our public Trello for what's going to be in the future updates: https://trello.com/b/Yl5g8Qgo/disinfection-public
Evil Turtle Devlog #3
We're in the last stages of making the Alpha 0.06 release. Only things left are some decoration models, the fire extinguisher and loads of testing, of course. There's also two new infection types, what those will be will become clear in the update post next week.
Expected release date is the end of next week, so we were thinking of doing some Twitch and/or Steam streams together with you astronauts that weekend. Youtuber/streamer 'Rakoona' is also planning to do a Q&A with us as well.
Hop into the Discord if you haven't already and let us know when you want to join: https://discord.gg/vV7KDVMBZz There are also other players eager to find some teammates, so feel free to pop a message in the 'looking-for-group' channel.
Evil Turtle Devlog #2 - 12/8/22
The time has come to works towards the version 0.06 release of Disinfection, which means that 'Random Events & Threats' will be feature complete.
This means that the game will have the following new features: Random Events:
Lights may malfunction, sometimes flickering, sometimes exploding.
Zero Gravity due to power loss, which changes the way you move. Keep an eye on the Reactor Core and don't lose your tools!
Many hands will grow out of the ship, surrounding, grabbing and holding players in place for a short while.
Strange apparitions may plague you.
Random Threats:
Devices in the ship may malfunction, cause small explosions or fire. Beware that this fire consumes the oxygen in the immediate area, can damage your suit and can even spread if it is big enough. Abusing your flamethrower may lead to spreading fire as well.
The infection may grow an eye that watches its surroundings. Once it spots a player and sees them for too long it may call its deadlier friends for help. Stay out of its light!
The original, and missing, crew of the ship seem to still be alive… of sorts. Beware that they have gone quite insane from being absorbed into the infection and now they may lunge at you from the walls to do the same to you. The stress will drain your stamina instantly and you will be unable to run for a short amount of time.
Tutorial Rework: The voice acting in the Tutorial, though immersive, isn’t working for a lot of you. Many of you found it too slow and/or too much of an info-dump. So we are changing the Tutorial to use in-game screens with text instead. This will allow all players to go through the Tutorial at their own pacing and means you will be able to re-read things if you missed something. The new Tutorial will also allow players to practice with all of the Weapons, instead of just the Chiller, and all of the Tools.
New Tool: Because fires may now be a danger you can now find a few fire extinguishers randomly placed within the ship.
New Decorations: We are very busy adding the decoration models for the first ship type (Industrial/Civilian) so there will be no more empty rooms. You will find broken elevators, O2 farms, cabins, cryo pods, lounges, etc. Some rooms may get new functionality in future updates such as partially recharging your oxygen in an O2 farm.
New Player Animations: New animation for dragging doors open/closed and some of the other animations will get some polish.
Dynamic Sounds: A basic implementation to make sounds more dynamic and realistic. Some sounds will change depending on how far the sound source is, where it is compared to the player and depending on if there's environment in the way. This is sure to make the game a lot more immersive and scary.
And many bugfixes & polish, of course: These will be further detailed when the update hits. Some of the fixes/polish include the level generator, the player, temperature mechanics, infection mechanics and sounds.
Make sure to check the public Trello board for our roadmap: https://trello.com/b/Yl5g8Qgo/disinfection-public We are currently very busy implementing all the remaining new features and adding the new content. There's no concrete ETA on this big update but we plan to have it done by the end of this month. After that we'll start working on the first patch for 'Afterlife'. This new development phase will add a whole new chunk of gameplay to Disinfection as it adds a new game mode for when you die during mission. Again, check the Trello board for your roadmap.
