FINALLY fixed an annoying bug that caused one of the two Mandrillian bots to not spawn if you followed a specific sequence of actions
Added some safeguards to prevent Mandrillian bots getting confused
LIV cameras will now render the VR player's camera overlay (damage FX, flashbang blindness, etc) if the game detects the LIV camera is close enough to the actual VR camera
Fixed LIV stuff not respecting the virtual crouch/seated mode camera offsets
Added a little particle FX for when you use the Repair Kit
Tweaked Magneto-hand FX to better represent the cone of grabbing (btw, I've noticed some people still not realizing this game has forcegrab, so pretty soon I'm reworking the tutorial into a tip system that will be on by default until you turn it off)
Crate loot will now spawn right before the box starts opening rather than right when you inserted the keycard (to prevent grabbing the items before you can see them)
Fixed Plasma Rifle spawn not being properly frozen when you open the crate
HOTFIX
Minor fixes and adjustments
Improved Mandrillian Bot behavior when searching for a fast-moving robot that is both far away and has the "always show on minimap" setting (for example in Super Soldier)
Mandrillian Bots now vocalize pain
Fixed bug where Mandrillian Bot colliders wouldn't disable when the body despawn FX started
Mandrillian Bots death indicator on the minimap now always looks like an "X"
Removed some leftover debug stuff
Plasma Rifle no longer an unlockable (it's available from the start)
Plasma Rifle added to "Starting Longarm" setting
Re-added "Random" setting for "Starting Longarm" setting
Excluded Plasma Rifle, Crossbow, and Chainsaw from the starting longarm random pool
HALLOWEEN SALE
Hello everyone! Escape from Mandrillia is 30% OFF during this Steam Scream Fest! Not that you care about that because if you're reading this you've probably bought the game but, yknow
Some minor changes for this build:
Warrior skin punches and overclocked punches now damage armored Mandrillians (this is important for the upcoming Mandrillian powerup system)
The Super Shotgun spawn in Super Soldier now comes with a free Overclock (and no longer with the useless extra shells, as that mode has infinite ammo anyways)
Slightly increased the trickshot coin damage for smaller weapons
0.0.20.2: OVERCLOCK PITCH
When overclocking, sounds will pitch down according to the slower time perception
Super Shotgun (and its shells) have now Item Spawner entries
Super Soldier progression is now Minigun > Super Shotgun > Plasma Rifle
Fixed a bug where Mandrillian player 1 wouldn't make noises when using normal healing powerups in the vents
0.0.20.1: ELEVATOR MINIGAME, SOME FIXES
Small one here. To activate the elevator, instead of the single button push, there's now a little minigame to add some extra tension to the final part of a match.
Also fixed some pesky bugs that would cause Mandrillian bots to become phantoms after spawning (as spooky as it was)
And finally, made automatic sliding doors' animation a bit faster.
FULL MANDRILLIAN BOT OVERHAUL, SUPER SHOTGUN, AND MORE
Hello there! Been a long time since the last update, because this one is packing a lot. Some of it boring but necessary, some of it unnecessary but pretty exciting!
Before continuing, a big thank you to all of you who have been on the experimental branch and giving feedback at the discord server. As always, a small reminder that you can join not just for feedback, but also to find other people to play with over Remote Play:
Also, the game is almost at 100 reviews! (and that's just counting users who bought it here) A year ago I would have never thought this hyper-niche, PCVR only, local only monkey game would get nearly as many, so another big thank you to all of you who left one, positive or negative. It really helps and means a lot!
Now, back to the update. The most notable thing coming up is the fully-reworked Mandrillian bots, but there's also some other juicy stuff...
IMPROVED MANDRILLIAN BOTS
Last year I added something I wasn't sure I could pull off: fully automated Mandrillian enemies. While... acceptable, they didn't feel at all like playing against a human player. For this reason, they had some extra features (like armor and damage-reduction shiny weakpoints) as a way to compensate. However, their behavior was almost zombie-like; they just rushed at the player and wailed until one of the two died. I didn't really like it so two months ago I started this rework.
BOT-HUMAN STANDARIZATION
My goal with the rework was to make bots feel like moderately skilled humans as closely as I could. For this to be possible, I started by standarizing most of the systems between bots and human Mandrillians, and adjusted the bot behavior accordingly.
Most Mandrillian-related match modifiers now affect them, they operate under the same 6-stamina-point system as human players, have to charge up their attacks, can heal with vent powerups, need to unlock a vent exit to respawn there...
The first thing you will notice is bots behave less like zombies (just charging towards the player and repeatedly bashing your head in). They will try different approaches when attacking the VR player: sometimes they will try to circle around you, feint attacks, and dodge your shots.
New behavior example: after dodging, each of the bots go to opposite sides of the room, then attack from two different directions
When running out of stamina or getting too damaged, they will run for the vents and try to heal up or recharge their energy by using the vent powerups (which have also been tweaked, more on this later). Their roaming logic has a less random approach, so they will tend to scout in places that make sense for the VR player to be in (for example, they won't search on the closed up Observation Chambers right after starting a match; and if all checkpoint gates have been opened they will start guarding the exit area).
And finally (and I'm kinda proud of this one) they now "communicate" with each other, which means not only they update each other about the VR player whereabouts, but also they will coordinate their attacks, try flanking the player and do some pretty neat looking coop strats to get the jump on you. Way better than just blocking each other trying to get an attack in!
All in all, I hope these new bots bring a decent single player experience to users that want to play some Escape from Mandrillia without hassling any friends... or a proper challenge for brave souls that feel like "just" 2 Mandrillians aren't enough (because yes, you can still combine human players and bots to get up to a 1 vs 4 match). And if you think even that is too easy for you, the "Armored" and "Juiced" versions of them are still available, if you dare!
THE SUPER SHOTGUN
Yes, there is now a beefier version of the sawn off, using its own massive shells. Said shells are so big they take an entire inventory slot (just like the grenade launcher and quad launcher ammo) but they absolutely annihilate Mandrillians. You can select it as a starter longarm, and it will also randomly appear in corpses and in longarm crates (spawner entry coming soon)
I added this weapon as a way to make the Super Soldier preset more fun and similar to its original inspiration, which brings us to the next point:
SUPER SOLDIER IMPROVEMENTS
The Super Soldier preset, while an interesting concept, was lacking in the fun department. Even with infinite ammunition, its loadout (starting with two sawn-off shotguns and a chainsaw) was a hassle to operate, and players spent more time reloading their sidearms than doing the actual run-and-gun the mode was intended for. For this reason, the preset has been reworked on top of also featuring the new Super Shotgun.
The new Super Soldier loadout gives the player a pistol, a pump shotgun, and a self-charging multitool with just the shock enabled, but keycard location display at all times (to mimimize time wasted looking for those).
The weapon unlock progression on the checkpoints has also changed; before it was Pump Shotgun > Minigun > Plasma Rifle. Now it's Super Shotgun > Minigun > Plasma Rifle.
Finally, the "self heal" match setting (that was mainly used in the Super Soldier preset) has also been modified. Instead of adding a little amount of health with every Mandrillian death, it now triggers when a monkey gets gibbed AND you are close enough to the explosion to get covered in their blood (totally original concept pls donut steal).
The self heal also triggers when gibbing a Mandrillian corpse so... yeah
MANDRILLIAN BUTTON-PUSHING
This started as a wild experiment but ended up adding some needed depth to Mandrillian gameplay (and countering some common but annoying VR Player strats)
By using either your face or your knuckles, you can interact with pushable buttons all over the map.
VR Players will need to think twice if they want to do the good ol "leave keycards at doors" thing. If you do, Mandrillians are now able to just... push the button and open them.
This also adds surprise strats like sneaking behind a deployed sentry turret to turn it off.
And, of course, mess up the gate-opening minigame to assert dominance.
SPECTATOR CAMERA: TOP DOWN AND IMPROVED THIRD PERSON
You can now cycle between the third-person view and an orthographic top-down perspective, both as a LIV output and for the ingame spectator view (when playing solo against the computer). The third person camera has also been improved to offer a cooler framing of the action, including visible ceilings.
MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
NOISY STEPS AND NOISY STEP VISUALIZATION
Sometimes it felt a bit awkward to gauge the running speed threshold before appearing on the Mandrillians' minimap. Now, there's a (very faint) footstep noise every time you are causing a potentially alerting footstep, but more importantly your Multitool will display a tiny circle around your location to let you know you're being a noisy fella.
VENT POWERUP BALANCE
Running around the vents desperately hoping for a 1up or health to spawn was frustrating and boring. To fix it, I've buffed the vent powerup spawn rates; there will be at least 1 powerup available at any given moment in the vents. To compensate for this, I've reduced the spawn rates for 1ups (which now also have the health item effect), and reduced the health powerup values from 20-45 HP to 20-25 HP.
MONKEY POINT SYSTEM
This is an important thing that will come in handy later. Won't go into many details, but very soon Mandrillians will be able to use these points to buy little perks before respawning. Stay tuned!
TIP CYCLE
Just a tiny thing I added while preparing these screens for the upcoming point stuff; now you can cycle between the Mandrillian tips on spawn selection by pressing RB/LB or Q/E
FULL CHANGELOG
Fully reworked Mandrillian bot's AI
Standarized most of the mechanics between human and bot Mandrillians
Added new weapon: Super Shotgun
Tweaked Super Soldier preset parameters to be more fun and include the Super Shotgun
Mandrillians can now interact with most buttons in the scenery
Doors can now crush the VR player
Improved overall gate-crushing logic
On-kill health regeneration is now applied by being close to Mandrillians being gibbed (as in being showered by their blood)
Added a new option for spectator camera: Top-Down View
Improved Third Person spectator camera
Added -very- faint step noises when the robot is moving fast enough to cause minimap sound pings
Added a small circle flashing at the center of the Multitool that flashes along "noisy" footsteps
Thickened all the walls of the map, making most gate frames less likely to get players stuck on them
Buffed vent powerup spawn rates (at any given moment there will always be at least 1 active powerup in the vents)
Nerfed vent health powerup from 20-45 HP gained to 20-25
Slightly nerfed vent 1up powerup spawn rates to balance the increased overall spawn rate
1up powerups now also act as health powerups (both HP and stamina recovery)
Very slightly increased monkey vent jump landing area damage
Virtual crouch is now a toggle
Slightly nerfed crouch walking speed
The "this is a local multiplayer game" warning that pops on first launch is now a physical screen that also mentions the Mandrillian bots
CEO keycard now acts as a cyan keycard outside of its main use
Physics timestep now tied to your headset refresh rate
Added a Mandrillian "point system" that will come in handy very soon...
0.0.20 PREVIEW STARTS TODAY
Hello there! As you may know, September and October are gonna be focused on reworking the Mandrillian Bots to a state that brings them closer to actual human players. Expect many gradual updates both in the main and beta branches, as well as fixes/tweaks for minor things.
Today's update is mostly visual regarding Mandrillian Bots:
Ported the ragdoll system to Mandrillian Bots
Ported the blood/gibbing system to Mandrillian Bots
Made some minor values match their human Mandrillian counterparts
Fixed "Armor" Mandrillian Bot setting having them still spawn with damage-reduction rods
This update also has some fixes and adjustments:
Fixed Mandrillian Players not getting the screen blackout at the ending of the Main Menu cutscene (making for very awkward situations if the VR Player doesn't have the game installed in a fast drive)
Improved Mandrillian feet physics for ragdolls
Fixed the Big Iron not being in the random sidearm pool
Fixed the dart gun being in the random sidearm pool (it's basically a joke weapon that will get reworked very soon anyways)
Fixed Mandrillian outlines staying on for too long while the corpses dissolve
This is it for now. Stay tuned!
0.0.19.4 Update
Final update of the month! After this, I'm 100% focusing on the Mandrillian AI rework and the upcoming 2023 Halloween Event
Added new match modifier: Door HP multiplier. Use it to make keycard-operated doors be able to take more (or less) of a beating
Added preemptive out-of-bounds failsafe for the VR Player, similar to the one Mandrillians have always had
Fixed a leftover of the old keycard door models; when slamming a keycard-operated door on top of a monkey with a HP modifier that is higher than the gibbing threshold, the gate will instantly break and stay open instead of going through the full closing and re-opening animations (as brutal as it looked)
Added a thin green outline to the Mandrillians' minimap that will flash when you get a nearby sprinting VR Player ping, as it could be a bit difficult to notice when that happened
Fixed long-standing embarrassing bug that caused Player 2's corpse to still retain the character collider, blocking the VR player
0.0.19.3: MORE ELEVATOR ADJUSTMENTS
Final elevator now requires an extra console input for the door to open
Elevator now has a timer that tells you how many seconds left for it to arrive
Berserking Mandrillians now do 2x damage to closed doors
0.0.19.3: MORE ELEVATOR BALANCING
Final elevator now requires an extra console input for the door to open
Elevator now has a timer that tells you how many seconds left for it to arrive
Berserking Mandrillians now do 2x damage to closed doors
