Hey everyone, sorry for the delay on this build. I've been pulling 60-70 hour work weeks at the other job, and I took a month off everything to go tour around Europe. In my spare time, I got this patch ready for everyone. Check out the change log below, and happy hunting:
Change Log
Added a bunch of new areas and enemies to Op Freetown, it's even more hectic now!
Added more points of interest and encounters to the main map.
Did more work on the dialogue system back-end.
Added over 7 new journals with more backstory and clues to secrets in the main level.
Added more enemy ambush spawn zone areas and encounters.
Attempted to fix the "low" and "medium" graphics settings not actually improving performance.
Attempted to improved performance further with more LOD's, and further optimizations to materials and other renders.
Build 0.8.3.0 is Live!
Hello everyone! Hope everyone had a great holiday and new year season. I've been working away at E:SL as time allows while I balance two full time jobs. I'm looking for feature requests and to see what the community wants to see fixed next. For what's new in the latest, check out the change log below!
Change Log
NEW FEATURE: You can now sell items at the general store, please test this extensively and report bugs if possible!
Updated the Remington 870 pump action shotgun reloading to be more realistic. No more will reloading affect the cocked status of the shotgun. It also now only has an 8 round tube magazine, with the possibility of one in the chamber.
Tweaked a couple areas on the world map and added more points of interest.
Fixed a bug where if you save with binocs in your hand or on your back, you'd have floating binocs in front of you when you reloaded a save.
The sound for picking up diamonds should now always play.
Fixed a bug with buying a Kbar from the general store, when it should dispense an MRE.
Worked a little more on Op Freetown.
Build 0.8.2.0 is Uploaded!
Sorry for the wait on this one guys, I've been rather busy working away on new features and fixes. I'm hoping to wrap up adding new features and content by the end of the year so I can focus on bug fixing and improving performance, before sliding into a full release. Thank you to everyone who's purchased this far for all your support! Check out the full change log below:
Change Log
NEW METHOD OF ESCAPE: You can now buy your way off the island, I won't give away too many details on how this is done, and it's somewhat placeholder for now, but functional. Let me know how it works for you guys :)
NEW FEATURE: You can now sell items in the gun store. Most weapons will require a certain condition, and ammo count in the magazine to be accepted for sale. I'll need some extensive testing on this, so please buy and sell as much as you can at the gun store to test it. This feature to follow soon for the general store as well. Currently items sell and buy for the same price, how charitable!
Reduced vertical recoil for most firearms by about a third. Horizontal kick is the same.
Reworked the sniper AI, now they take more aimed deliberate shots instead of just dumping off rounds as fast as they can. They also will zero in on you much quicker if you don't keep their heads down with suppressing fire.
Worked a bit more on Operation Freetown.
Added more scenes and points of interest into the world, particularly on the first island, to help with getting people into the action right away.
Added a sound effect for acquiring diamonds.
By request, I inceased the blood splatter sizes caused by bullets by about 20-45%.
Increased the SKS magazine size from 10 + 1 to a flat 20. Like the real SKS with a tapco magazine, you can have 20 rounds, but dropping the mag is impossible with the bolt closed, making an extra round in the chamber impossible.
Made it more obvious that banana trees can be harvested for bananas, as well as put more of them around the first island. I also put a little hint in the form of a note to hopefully point new players to this mechanic.
Fixed various typo's and small issues in UI elements.
Increased the SKS shell ejection force to about 3x it's old strength, and made the ejection straight up and about 20 degrees forward, like the real gun.
Fixed a handful of small programming errors and minor issues.
Patch 0.8.1.5 Is Live!
Hello everyone!
I've uploaded a patch to hotfix some glaring issues users have been having. Least of which is enemy reinforcements spawning on pacifist game modes. I also did backend work on the dialogue and quest system. In other news, I've been looking at applying for the Canadian Media Fund, which could hopefully pan out into getting some good funding to speed up development. Anyhow, I'll keep you all updated on any news there. For now, check out the fixes below:
Change Log
Fixed enemy ambush spawns still triggering in passive mode, they should now only trigger the events if you're playing on a combat mode. I will need people to test this in a custom game and let me know how it works out.
Fixed a bug where the player difficulty setting always was displayed as "Hard" when playing a custom mode, even if the player opted to disable all enemy AI.
Tweaked various collision hulls to be more accurate to their models.
Did backend work regarding dialogue and quest systems
Build 0.8.1.0 Is Uploaded!
Hello everyone,
It's been a crazy last month and a half. I've been working 60 hour weeks at my day job and I also suffered a hard drive failure. Thankfully I keep backups, although admittedly not very neatly. It was not a fun 2 weeks or so to figure that all out and get my computer back up and running. Damn bad sectors. Anyhow, enough complaining, here is your build, just in time for my birthday! Happy birthday to me, and any other August 1st-ers out there. See the change log below!
Change Log:
I've added a basic dialogue system in and it seems to be working now. I have one test wounded civilian character for it near the starting beach.
Removed Simplygon, it was causing more issues than it was worth versus doing LOD's manually. Also it was causing issues with my builds.
Added more points of interest and secret areas.
Did more work on adding more objects and buildings into Operation Freetown.
Added a note to the initial loading screen to let people know it's gonna take a while to load initially, but also to let them know that once the initial load is done, subsequent loads are very quick.
Added over 16 new journals with more backstory and clues to secrets in the world.
Added more enemy ambush spawn zone setups (particularly to simulate attacks on certain safehouses). Hopefully this helps keep people on their toes!
Improved performance further with more aggressive LOD's and billboards.
Doubled grass LOD range, so it diappears in a less jarring manner.
Build 0.8.0.0 Released And 6 Month Post-Mortem
Hey everyone!
So some big news. June 5th marked the 6 month date since Escape: Sierra Leone hit Steam as an Early Access title. So far I'm more or less on target for a Q4 2017 full release later this year. The next update is gonna be a big one, but could easily take over a month. 0.9.0.0 is going to introduce a lot more non-hostile NPC's, more story elements, and another method of escape or two. I may have an interim update in there as well, if serious bugs are encountered, or I have pressing new features I want to push out ASAP. Thanks everyone for all the support so far, I'd like to think I've had good progress for someone working solo with two other jobs, and the feedback I've been getting has been a big part of that. At some point soon I'll be holding a contest where you can win Steam wallet cash and/or free Steam keys to give to friends in return for your feedback on a survey. Thanks again, check out the change log for the new build below.
Change Log
Worked more on Operation Freetown, added new items, buildings, vegetation, etc.
Various performance tweaks and upgrades to hopefully increase the FPS.
Attempted a fix where lockpicking pins wouldn't sit correctly on re-entering the lockpicking minigame.
Changed the weapon sound attenuation curve from Logmarithic to natural. Also reduced the max range from 600M to 500M, this should make distant shots sound more realistic.
Added a loading screen for going from Op Freetown to the main game again. Now it won't just look like your game froze.
Reduced the cull distance on underwater vegetation.
Fixed a few minor grammar issues in the main menu.
Attempted a fix for a large section of cliffs that would LOD out weirdly near the north end of the island.
Added Marcin Mazurski to the credits for his help with optimization work.
Optimization Test Build Live Now
Hey everyone,
There is an optimization test build live now that I want people to test. Let me know if it gives you better performance in any noticeable way. I get about 2-5 FPS better, but I think it looks quite a bit worse. Let me know your opinion. Thanks guys!
Build 0.7.5.0 Is Live!
Hi everyone,
The latest and greatest build is now uploaded! This patch has a couple good new features and bugfixes. Also I've been working towards starting the big task of optimization. There will be a delay of a couple weeks while I work on 0.8.0.0, which will ideally be a lot more optimized. I also hope to get some serious work done on Freetown. Also we're nearly at 6 months since initial release and to commemorate that, I'll be releasing a survey to see what people want to see and where the game should go in the future. There will also be prizes for a few lucky winners who complete the survey. Thanks for the patience and support guys. See the full change log below!
Change Log
NEW FEATURE: There is now a difficulty switch option in Op Freetown.
NEW FEATURE: Op Freetown now has some beds. Unlike the main game, these won't save your progress or take away food/water, but they will pass some time and remove any fatigue.
Added a lot of enemy spawn points into the main map. Enemy forces will now actively try to take certain areas from you.
I put the loot for underwater points of interest on crates so it should be easier to grab. Let me know if it's still too hard.
Added more points of interest to the main map.
Added water physics to Freetown so you can now swim around.
Added a lot of new content to the Operation Freetown map.
Deleted the ladder in the temple and replaced it with an easier, less glitchy ladder.
Heavily reduced the amount of impulse force the mortar rounds have, they shouldn't throw everything around as much as they did before.
Set the plane surface type to metal so shooting it will result in the correct impact effect.
Build 0.7.3.0 Is Uploaded
It's a lovely Monday, and what can make a Monday better than a patch? I spent a good chunk of time refining the Operation Freetown expansion. I tried working on the AI and improving it to suit urban operations more. Also I created a "new" item that will have people excited for sure. There are now scripted AI spawn areas where enemies will spawn and assault your position. These come in handy to keep the action going in Freetown, but also have been placed in a couple locations in the standalone game. Let me know how you like them! The full change log is below.
Change Log
NEW FEATURE: AI Spawn zones. Okay, so it's not the most revolutionary feature. But it does add some more excitement to the game. In both the regular game an Op Freetown, some enemy forces can now respawn and attack the player's position. Right now this is not fully implemented, and more will be added as I see fit while maintaining balance in later patches.
Fixed the physics collision asset for the ECOMOG soldier you play as, so when you get ragdolled/die you don't spaz out and fly around the level.
You can now exit the lockpicking minigame properly, you used to have to use the E key no matter what your use key was bound to.
Added a delay when you die in Op Freetown so the menu doesn't just instantly appear.
Added a loading screen for switching between op freetown and E:SL.
Did a lot of work on the main menu UI Op Freetown.
Added a stats screen to Op Freetown, this can be found in the main menu pause screen when playing.
Halved the time impact smoke/dust lingers, it was a little excessive before.
Version 0.7.1.0 Is Live! Big News!
We've got some exciting updates this time around. The main attraction is I've opened up the "Operation Freetown" map to everyone. It's extremely work in progress, but will eventually be a more shooter FPS-type close quarters level that will let you play with all the fun weapons in E:SL without having to worry about losing all your progress or wasting precious rounds (there are tons of ammo and guns). A great place to experiment with fun things like RPG's, bullet penetration, and grenades, without affecting your progress in the actual game. You play as an ECOMOG soldier and are given a nice array of some fine hardware. including a G3A3 rifle and the M1911. The save file is separate so don't worry about it messing with your main game progress. OpFreetown will be developed in my spare time along the actual game, it may end up being a finale of some sort for the main game, or just might remain a "Free DLC" spinoff that will serve to let people try out the combat risk free. The full changelog for the rest of the patch can be found below!
Change Log
Bullet hole decals are now far more visible and look less transparent.
Fixed a bug where decals such as blood splatters could appear very faint in shadowed areas.
Increased the darkness of blood splatters, before it was very paint-colored red.
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck at the top of the ladder in the temple.
Changed the timing of the death groan, previously it was a bit delayed.
Fixed a bug where the muzzleflash effect could play once on the death on an enemy.
Added a Check for Valid branch to the shrapnel BP.
