Update time! I am hard at work grinding out all the new maps, but none of that is in this update! This is a primarily technical update to fix up a lot of sloppy old work that was underpinning some of the core mechanics, as well as making some important improvements to the game mode in anticipation of the updated level content. The biggest highlights are the choice of 1 of 3 free power-ups in the bus after each stage, and the reduction of the number of bus tokens needed to progress each level: now 3 instead of 5! There was definitely too much running around scouring the map for hands before, so this change greatly improves the pacing and makes the difficulty level less brutal. CHANGELIST:
Fixed the Flame Rifle and Double Barrel Shotgun firing at crooked angles
Fixed lots of materials having incorrect filtering settings, causing them to render oddly and have excessive performance cost
Fixed thin black artifacting around weapon viewmodels
Fixed inconsistent resolutions and wonky scaling on some weapon viewmodels
Lowered bus fare from 5 to 3, reduced handouts per level from 7 to 4
Added a choice of 1 of 3 free power-ups in the bus after each stage
Fixed nitroglycerin explosions having odd scaling sometimes
Fixed various navmesh issues that were causing performance issues
Improved lighting and color correction on Backwash and Neighborhood
Reduced damage from Chucker projectiles
Added new sound effects for various objects and events
UPDATE 18: NEW COAT OF PAINT
At long last: another update! This is a very big one with a ton of polish, visual improvements, technical improvements, and new content! 8 new power-ups! A whole new level! Everything looks better! Wow! Isn't life amazing? Never more so than now! Another big update, this one focusing mainly on new levels, will be coming at you soon...
UPDATE CHANGELIST:
Updated to Unreal 5.3 from 5.2 - should see better performance and fewer bugs
Replaced Smokestacks level with a completely new version!
Added lots of new environment art assets - mainly buildings and storefronts
Made significant improvements to most textures, adding more detailed shading and grime.
Added camera shake when firing
Increased speed of all projectiles by about 50% across the board
Made it so projectiles spawn aligned to the weapon viewmodel instead of in the center of the screen, except for the sniper rifle which is unchanged.
Changed the color coding for the various levels of chests
Added a ton of new items found in powerup chests, including:
Bomb Vest
Defensive Flamethrower
Grenade Belt
Adrenaline Shot
Envy
Nitroglycerin
Fractal Rounds
Sloth
Settings patch
Fixed a very small settings bug
UPDATE 17 PATCH
-Fixed a bug that was causing the bus to get stuck between levels. -Fixed some input handling issues. Hoping this fixes the interact bug, but it may still occur. Please let me know if you encounter issues interacting with NPCs and other things!
UPDATE 17: CALL THE CORONER, RETURNS DEPARTMENT
After a ridiculously long wait, a humongous update! The biggest and most immediately obvious change is a big update to how the game looks: outlines! This game along with improvements to lighting, post processing, and visuals across every map! Also: fully functional ammo economy! Play the game with infinite ammo turned off and you can actually still win! New powerups! Improved weapon animations! New enemies! And more!
There is a small patch coming shortly to fix a few visual issues caused by the new changes (specifically, the thin pixel artifacts around the edges of some of the weapon viewmodels) and then it will probably be a bit before the next major content update. I am currently hard at work on a major level overhaul that will see all of the maps completely replaced with new, built-from-scratch versions, and major changes to the core game mode. Because of how fundamental those changes are, I can't put out that update in pieces until its completely done, so be patient and you will be rewarded :)
FULL CHANGELIST:
Fixed a bug where weapon recoil would sometimes get interrupted or stop working
Added scroll wheel weapon swapping
Replaced baked lighting with dynamic lighting in all levels. This eliminates lots of lighting/shadowing errors that were making some areas look bad, and reduces the download size of the game, but may lead to reduced performance.
Added new outline shading and post processing effects! This makes a huge difference to the overall look of the game and I think it makes everything look way cooler. This came with changes to lighting and some visual improvements across all the levels.
Added some always-spawned ammo vendors to all levels to make playing with infinite ammo turned off more viable. This ensures all ammo types will always be available on every level.
Added manually placed ammo pickups to all levels
Added a new enemy type: the Agency!
Improved spawning system to reduce enemies spawning inside of things. Still happens sometimes but less
Added new powerup: Grenade Belt! Drops grenades behind you when you boost!
Added new powerup: Lead Digestor! Heals you every time you pick up ammo!
Significantly increased yield of all ammo pickups
Fixed sniper rifles not being able to scope properly
Added passive weapon sway (visual only, does not affect firing accuracy)
Made sludge easier to see
Replaced ammo pickup text with a new HUD element
Added destructible crates that have a 50/50 chance of spawning some ammo when smashed
Added explosive barrels and tanks
UPDATE 16: KILL FOR IT
A pretty substantial technical update with lots of new features and improvements! A new stage! Bug fixes aplenty! Its neat! Lots of these changes were necessary to make my upcoming content plans possible, so expect more cool new levels very soon!
CHANGELIST
Added new intro stage!
Added a scoreboard after each stage
Next stage will now only load once the player has pressed E on the score screen
Added lots of new art assets!
Items collected in the intro stage will no longer disappear afterwards
Fixed Uzi viewmodel clipping off the screen when firing
Improved weapon recoil animations
Boosting is now disabled while standing on the ground, unless you have the Ski Boots active
Fixed various bugs regarding save data and settings
Update 15 Patch
Sorry for the delay! This is a small patch focusing on cleaning up issues with the last update, since all the new features came with lots of bugs. Now that all this technical stuff is out of the way, more substantial content updates coming soon!
CHANGELIST:
Fixed various bugs with the new game settings and ammo UI. The new settings Infinite Ammo, Infinite Time, and Skip Intro should now work consistently.
Improved weapon sway and recoil animations
Weapon pickup stats and the UI detail panel now accurately reflects which ammo type each weapon needs
Secret under-the-hood changes for a cool new thing coming soon ;)
UPDATE 15: FINITE UNIVERSE
A huge and long overdue update, finally! This brings the game into a new engine version, as well as bringing in lots of big new options allowing you to customize the parameters of your runs!
Ported the game to Unreal 5.1 from 4.27. This should be a mostly invisible change, since I haven’t actually started implementing any of the cool new features yet, but it may cause some new bugs. Cool new features to come in future updates ;)
Added “Skip tutorial” checkbox to new game menu
Added option to disable the time limit (and the Human Services airdrops) to the new game menu
Added option to disable infinite ammo to the new game menu. When this is disabled, ammo vendors will spawn in the maps, and enemies will have a chance to drop ammo pickups. This is currently missing some useful UI elements, and the ammo economy definitely needs some balancing, but those will be improved in the next update.
Added background music to main menu
Added falling hazards that reset you to your last safe ground location and deal 50% of your health in damage
Replaced boost sound effect
Fixed lightmap issues on many common models that were causing ugly and incorrect shadowing
Fixed rockets sometimes not exploding on direct hits with enemies
UPDATE 14: NEW PAINT JOB
Update time! Lots of polish and balance improvements, as well as level updates! The biggest item today is the new main menu and mode selection UI, fancy! There have also been some under the hood changes to the spawn manager to improve the balance of chests and upgrade stations found throughout the game.
CHANGELIST:
Reworked main menu UI to be much prettier
Replaced weapon and powerup chests with new models
Fixed some new powerups never spawning from powerup chests
Removed $100 weapon chests from the spawn system
Increased spawn rate of weapon upgrade tables
Fixed Uranium pickups not adding to the total
Major level overhaul to Dunes
Removed floating foot shadow
UPDATE 13: Let there be light
A relatively small graphics and bugfix focused update! The biggest change by far is the fancy new lighting! Check it out!
Cleaned up palm tree models to have nicer geometry
Fixed rough polygonal shading on a lot of the rock models found throughout the game
Reduced the emissive glow of all textures, so shadows are much darker now. Improved lighting across all levels.
Rolling meatballs are now spawned in by floating meatballs, and explode after a set life span
Added floating meatballs to several levels
Fixed a bug where the player would get stuck in the bus forever and never move to the next level (I hope! Please report it if you encounter this bug still!)
