- No longer take damage from rocket turrets from your team
- Added tester credits to Credit Screen
Fixes:
- Fixed 'Reviving' message on downed ally from flashing repeatedly or disappearing
Flashlight
Update Notes for September 19, 2023
Fixes:
Update Notes for August 9, 2023
1. Flame thrower buff - If flamethrower plume is held on a single target for a period of time, adds a small amount of extra damage which increases over time. resets that extra damage if plume isn't hitting target for 1 second. Extra damage shown in cyan color
2. Flashlight Wide Mod - When using Flashlight Kill Beam with Wide Mod, increases the Flashlight kill beam width with a unique effect
Fixes:
1. Tech Drop - Tech drop cannot be selected when level is ending to prevent loss of tech drop
2. Fix for not being able to shoot properly after hitting escape from Menu in-game
Update Notes for August 3, 2023
- Added selectable crosshairs to the game, with 3 sizes to choose from. A crosshair can be chosen on the Main Menu or in the game from the Escape Menu.
- Changed the bot raid event on level 6 to arrive at the player(s) more quickly.
Patch Notes for July 11, 2023
1. Fix for Tutorial where ammo was not being given to player when needed
2. Buttons 'Alt' and 'Ctrl' no longer shoot as they were not intended to be mapped
Gameplay changes:
1. Data Modules now give Merc Cred to the team when picking them up. Player picking up the module gets 400 Merc Cred, other team members get 250 Merc Cred. We hope that this will drive players to focus on getting the modules when playing, and perhaps drive some friendly competition to get to them first.
UI Changes:
1. Current and Total Health are both displayed as X / X on the player UI now. Makes it easier to know the diff between your current and max health, especially after getting a max health upgrade
Update Patch Notes for June 14, 2023
Patch Notes for June 12, 2023
2. Fix for players dropping items and item goes through walls or objects
3. Fix for end of Story mode dialogs looping and covering up story text
Flashlight Story Mode 2.0
Rather than leaving it in that state and moving on, we decided to start fresh and rework things into something we'd be hopefully proud of. So we completely reworked almost every aspect of the story mode and it is light years better than when we initially released it. Below is a list of some of the changes and reworks we made. We hope you enjoy the changes!
New mechanics and features:
- Buildings have roofs and cannot be seen into until approaching them. Cone of visibility mechanic before entering, and then a darkened space inside the building.
- Various building events added. Traps and events can appear when picking up a data module. Level events also occur, based on a timer visible to the players. Explore and get supplies, but manage your time wisely!
- Grabbing data modules marked on the minimap is a part of the regular gameplay loop on non-boss levels
- Added more variety between levels, including a creepy forest and a city square. There is still RNG to most buildings, but there are now individual level types that have different aesthetics.
- Flashlight Kill Beam! - Getting skill kills (kill streaks, kills using the secondary fire modes on some weapons, blowing up zombies with red barrels) adds to your score. These skill kills increase your new Flashlight beam charge. Getting the beam charge to the full amount will result in brief invincibility, an AOE damage explosion, then a flashlight kill beam that has a high force on it to make zombie parts go flying.
- The Flashlight Kill Beam charge gets a slow passive update when staying near teammates while getting kills
- A baseball bat has been added as a melee weapon to the game. This will help you crack heads when you’re out of ammo, or just because it’s fun! Baseball bat deals higher damage when sprinting and can knock off zombie heads.
- Equipment System – An equipment system has been added to the game. Many equipment mods currently exist. Damage Increases, Laser Sights, Cryo Rounds, Quick Reloader, Piercing Rounds, Spiked Bat, Auto Mod for pistol and shotgun, Machinegun attachment for Rifle, Wide Flashlight, and more! These can greatly change how you play the game, and can be fun in team comps.
- Inventory menu revamped to support new equipment system. Equipment can be swapped in and out as the player chooses. Can turn inventory items into scrap. Can add mods to weapons and to player. Mods and ammo can be dropped for other players to pick up.
- Tech Drops – In addition to skill perks at certain score thresholds, Tech Drops can also be acquired at certain thresholds. Tech drops are a randomly rolled selection of 3 choices. The choices can be adding a drone that hovers around you and shoots enemies, upgrades for turrets, upgrades for weapon damage, upgrades for health and movement speed. After selecting one, a Tech Crate will be called in. The crate can be smashed to obtain the upgrade.
- Some perks removed from rank up system to allow for equippable items. Now when ranking up, perks are rolled randomly and two choices are presented to the player to select from
- Flares - Flares can be thrown. A player can have one flare out at a time, and throwing a new flare will remove the old one. Flares will aid in dark places.
- Revival system – In PVE multiplayer Story Mode, allies must now be revived when they go down. They retain all their equipment after revival.
- Zombie type changes: Changed the rock throwing zombie to shoot spikes in multiple directions, the spikes bounce off objects and can cause havoc in a room.
- New zombie types: Added a Glowing Radioactive zombie that flashes and blows up upon taking damage. Added a “Screamer” zombie that screams, runs fast, catches fire when close to a player, and adds fire damage when hitting a player
- Changed poison mechanic: Rather than dealing damage over time, a poison hit deals a small amount of damage once, but player cannot sprint for the duration of the poison.
- Boss levels and some mechanics for boss moves have been revamped
- Added max # of turrets that can be built based on the # of players in a game.
- In solo Story Mode, extra revive shots can be acquired by gaining certain score thresholds
- Removed metal spiked barrier and added barbed wire as a craftable item. Players now by default have barbed wire and wooden barriers as craftable, and the Ruby Rebels perk will allow them to build the metal barrier
- Light poles in the levels can have the light portion blown up
- Green barrel can be shot, causing green ooze to leak out. The ooze can be set on fire, causing a temporary fire wall
- Giant zombies – Added a chance for giant zombies to occasionally spawn.
- Zombies will sometimes lunge at the player when zombies are inside buildings – be careful approaching entrances!
Changes to existing mechanics:
- Added predictive aiming for the bullet turret. It was being somewhat faked before, but now it accounts for target distance and trajectory, and doesn’t miss so often.
- Crates only need one hit to destroy
- Toned down merc enemies on Easy and Normal modes. They have to be a bit closer before they shoot, they aren't quite as accurate, and spawn amounts have been adjusted
- Zombies are generally slower and have less health, but there are more of them.
- Sprinting is revamped. The slowed-down fatigue phase is removed completely. After sprinting, the player will return to their normal movement speed, and will not be able to sprint again until the cooldown phase has completed. The cooldown phase is shown by sweat beads on the player.
- Shooting causes a delay of 0.2 seconds where the player is slowed down. This change along with the sprint revamp gives a much more flexible movement economy and allows the player to get out of danger more readily, and for them to have a much more tactical approach to shooting instead of just constantly backing up and shooting when being pursued.
- Changed player out-of-bounds warning to not reduce visibility, but instead to play a heartbeat that increases as the out of bounds timer counts down. Out-of-bounds is now marked in the game world in addition to being on the minimap.
- Crafting radial wheel removed. Instead, backpack radial wheel has been dual-purposed to allow for selection and crafting of items.
- Red X icons have been added to minimap to warn of direction of incoming danger from events.
- Moved a lot of the information that was displayed at the end and beginning of levels into character dialogue/radio chatter that will play out between more characters as the player progresses through the game.
- Easy mode is now much easier. There are less enemies, the players take less damage, zombies have less health. Solo mode begins with 2 revives instead of 1.
- Scrap is now brighter and has an outline around it for more visibility.
- Bosses now have a health bar
- Shotguns alt fire now uses a very wide spread shot instead of a stun shot
- Removed alternate ammo types in favor of using the new equipment system
- Explosion damage from self and allies reduced
- Bot mercs now have generated names that are usually pretty goofy
Controller Changes:
- Updates for controllers have been added to make controller play more functional. Controller can now navigate the Menus and use the new inventory system
Main Menu changes:
- Sound levels on initial music greatly lowered
- Selection of region for network play is much more informative, providing the full name of the server region and the ping to the player
- Selections between beginning a PVE match and a PVP match are now split. The Lobby is used to connect to an existing game.
Performance improvements:
- Fire and blood splatter has a set limit for performance
- Lights offscreen are turned off to improve performance
Bug fixes:
- Fixed sound clipping issues
- Female player model has a pain sound now
- Fixed bots on easy mode having damage reduction
- Changed flamethrower flame to stop at enemies rather than going through them
- Resolution and full screen selection now work properly
The Work Continues
We are alive, well, and working on new Flashlight content!
We're elated to announce that we are back working on Flashlight! We have had time to collect some feedback from players and discuss many changes that we personally would like to implement. On top of that, we are designing and implementing brand new features that we think will make the Story Mode of Flashlight more immediately engaging and accessible!
We are still doing heavy development and testing of new features and fixes, but are ready to give a little preview of some of our work in progress. If you want the quick and dirty bullet list, check it out below. After that is a more thorough explanation of each bullet point.
Changes
- Gameplay loop changed and improved player engagement
- Zombies are changed to be slower and have less health, but to have more of them on-screen
- Score multiplier system revamped
- Buildings in Story Mode now have roofs and need to be entered to see what secrets they hold
- Inventory system revamped
- Enemy mercenary AI toned down on Easy and Normal modes
- Various performance tweaks
We wanted to change the overall gameplay loop and immediate engagement of the player when starting up a fresh Story Mode playthrough. To that end, we are revamping the flow of the first level to get players into the action more quickly without overwhelming them. The subsequent levels will also be changed by giving the players a task to search for items marked on the mini-map. These items will drive players into buildings, giving them more of a reason to explore beyond just grabbing a crate of ammo. Buildings will now have randomized events in them, mixing up the player experience when they enter a building. Our goal is to keep players on their toes while also moving them forward.
We are changing zombies in general to be slower and have less health, but are increasing the number that will be on-screen. We decided we wanted the feeling of fighting a horde of zombies rather than the individual faster zombies that are currently present. That design choice drove the idea to revamp the score multiplier system. As a player moves through the score multiplier tiers, they will be granted faster movement speed, their weapon specials will charge faster, and their bullets and flamethrower (not explosives) will deal slightly more damage. We want to incentivize players to keep decimating zombies as quickly as possible! There may even be a cool surprise when the player maxes out their score multiplier...
Another very big change for the Story Mode is that buildings will have roofs when viewed from the outside of the buildings! We have a cone of visibility mechanic when looking into a building entrance, and after entering, the lighting becomes darkened. The player might need to be careful while moving within the confines of an unknown building.
The inventory system has been changed, and will now allow the player to equip powerups to their weapons and character. Powerups will include damage increases, piercing rounds, and laser sights. These equips can be moved around on your various weapons to allow a player to choose their favorite weapon and beef it up! We are also currently tweaking the ability to turn unwanted ammo and powerups into extra scrap.
A more minor change that we felt was needed is toning down the AI mercenaries on Easy and Normal modes to make them less difficult to fight. Based on feedback, we realized this was a major roadblock for a lot of players.
We noticed that in some situations involving lots of things happening onscreen that performance could decrease. We fixed this issue by limiting the number of blood spots that can appear at one time, and also improved some lighting performance.
Moving Forward
The list above is not complete by any means! We are working on various other changes large and small to how the game plays, such as making the random level generation feel more varied. We at SouthWater Games are ecstatic to be working on Flashlight again and will post updates here as we solidify things and work toward releasing what we think will be a more fun version of Flashlight!
Update Notes for Dec 21, 2021
- Added Partial Controller support for Xbox controllers. Xbox controller can now be used to navigate most pre-game menus and some in-game UI menus. XBox controller works for all in-game movement, shooting, radial menus, etc. We will continue to view feedback and make improvements to the UI navigation and in-game controls for the XBox controller.
- Made the score multiplier more visually interesting.
- Fixed bug where players would take damage from poison spit when having poison heal perk
- Changed how kill streak and multiplier kills look
- Brighter weapon special bar color
- Can join Damnation public game after match has already been started