New Level! Space Station is now available to play on! After much design, redesign, test, redesign, test some more, it's finally here!
Some other notable changes are, the flashlight is more realistic, you can actually see it and it's not just a light appearing from nowhere. You can see your own body, hands, and legs. Some network usage improvements, and a crash fix.
New Level - Space Station
It's been a long time coming and it's finally here! Play Hide and Seek on a Space Station filled with new unique gameplay elements.
The Space Station is the largest level yet, with teleporters, jumping obstacles, flying air, an elaborate ventilation system, and of course plenty of places to hide!
Check out some gameplay here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiEEoDpl1s4
And a level flytrhough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpQ8t_6OMM
Map Overview
The Space Station is made up of 5 main areas:
Green Zone:
The green-tech side of the space station where research on plants is done.
Blue Zone:
The sleeping quarters and command center side.
The Bar:
Where the space station residents come to relax, have a drink, and dance.
Central Hangar:
Where base is.
The Lab Where experiments are run, data is collected, and late nights doing work are spent.
New Features
"First Person View" is live - you can see your body
Flashlight and head rotation now respond with inverse kinematics
Game State is now also reflected by music. The more intense the music, the less time left in the match. Casual music when Counting that gets progressively more intense as the Hide For, and Timeleft states change.
Fixes
Prevent the game from crashing when clicking "Connect" on Server Browser when no server is selected
Greatly lower network traffic consumption due to a bug tied to "grounded" state
Update: 16 December: Improved performance due to screen space reflections by 120%. Removed Reflections on levels where they were unnoticeable in almost every circumstance, but still provided a (pretty high) performance cost. In my testing this boosted performance to, in most cases, the CPU fps at the resolution the GPU could support.
Haunted House
Made the books static since they didn't add much gameplay benefit and had a a not-insignificant network performance impact
Better occlusion for better performance
Update: 16 December:Removed Screen Space Reflections
Hedge Maze
Fixed the Leaf particle systems to fall with gravity
FPS counter no longer covers the minimap
Reduced draw calls by over 1500 - should be a good performance improvement on draw-call limited computers
Better Occlusion for much better performance
Update: 16 December:Removed Screen Space Reflections
Halloween Hedge Maze
FPS counter no longer covers the minimap
Reduced draw calls by over 1000- should be a good performance improvement on draw-call limited computers
Better Occlusion for much better performance
Update: 16 December:Removed Screen Space Reflections
1.0.3.53 Patch Notes OUT NOW
Overview
The UI has been almost completely rewritten from scratch. Every menu, every HUD element, and the logic behind it all. This was the main purpose of this patch. In addition to the new menu eye candy, the total size of Hide and Seek has shrunk by approximately 1.3gb.
This should result in faster loading of levels and less stutter (loading from disk is actually what makes the game appear like it is crashing) especially on computers with slower hard disks.
There are also a lot of visual upgrades in game such as upgraded fog on the levels with fog, Screen Space Multiple Scattering, improved volumetric lighting, and more.
And, very importantly importantly, a bug fix where if you didn't adjust graphic settings, made the game default to max settings resulting in very bad performance on lower end machines.
UI Overhaul
The UI is totally new. You can see an early preview here, or just launch the game. :)
Main Menu, Settings, Server Administration Panel, Hats Gallery, End of Match Score Screen are all new, animated, and will always be consistent across all levels, and I won't have to update it on every level as I did before. :)
New and consistent audio (music, feedback, etc...)
In Game HUD has been reworked to also be consistent across levels, and also animated.
Escape will now work consistently and close any popup, go back to previous page, etc...
There is now more messaging, and more detailed messaging throughout the game explaining more clearly what is happening and what you should be doing.
On the End of Match Score Screen, players can chat while the next level is loading, at least until the server has fully loaded the level.
Controls Menu "Reset Defaults" no longer resets all of your settings, only the controls.
Graphics Menu bug fixed that, if you have not applied any custom graphics settings, made the game run at max settings on your native resolution resulting in very bad performance on low/mid range machines.
Haunted House
Particle System fog removed, replaced with a global fog, SSMS, & volumetric lighting. Enjoy.
Ivy and Moss growing on the house now sway in the wind.
Draw calls reduced resulting in lower CPU overhead - more work still to be done here.
The lake is now less murky and more bloody.
Fixed one of the patrolling spiders not being animated properly.
Fixed grass texture issue introduced in last patch
Halloween Hedge Maze
Improved global fog, SSMS, & volumetric lighting. Enjoy.
The lake is now less murky and more bloody.
Inside the maze there is now more grass, swaying more realistically, and is cheaper to render.
Birds are (again) no longer animated since they were eating a lot of CPU time (like up to 10fps) on older/slower processors.
Hedge Maze
Removed fake volumetric lighting and replaced with global realtime volumetric lighting, sun was moved too so it's brighter inside the maze.
Inside the maze there is now more grass, swaying more realistically, and is cheaper to render.
Birds are (again) no longer animated since they were eating a lot of CPU time (like up to 10fps) on older/slower processors.
General Improvements/Bugfixes
Auto Kick AFK will now only affect the Seeker, when they are not counting. Hiders and Spectators will never get this message.
Removed screen space sunshafts and enabled global volumetric lighting on all levels.
Flashlights of Hiders and the Seeker once more are volumetric lights.
Flashlights no longer go through walls unexpectedly.
Reduced application size by ~1.3gb resulting in much faster loading, and (on my test machines at least) resolved the "game looks like it crashed" issue. There's more work for me to do here to really make the loading smooth, but this is phase 1.
Fixed a bug that prevented proper light status when playing on non-dedicated servers
Devblog 6 - January 1 2018
Happy New Year!
Reflection on December
As you have noticed, there was no patch released in December :). I was hoping to release it some time between Christmas and New Years however there were a couple issues in testing that I haven't quite resolved yet so in the next week or so I should be able to push that out.
I'm really excited for all the stuff in this patch and really want to get it out to you all.
Looking Forward
I want to change how I handle Devblogs and Patches. With the current paradigm I am "rewarded" for promising to do smaller tasks that can be released within a month so on the following devblog I can write "look at all these cool things I have delivered in the last month".
While this is cool and has been beneficial to the overall health of the game, since there was a need for all of these smaller tasks, it also prevents me from working on the longer term items, or what we call "technical investment" time.
With the next patch Hide and Seek will be in a much more stable state. At that time I will begin focusing on longer term items.
Of course, I will address any issues reported as quickly as possible. Please report any issues on the Community Hub bug report section, or send me an email at support@llama.software
Longer Term Items
Here's the list of longer term items that I know I will be working on.
Skills - a different set of skills for both Hiders and the Seeker. I don't have anything at this moment finalized so I won't go into details.
Animation Updates - As stated in the last devblog, I see a lot of people being confused about the game saying "it's weird" or something like that. As far as I'm told it may be related to the animations.
November was an unsuccessful month for me. I said I was going to do the UI/Menu Updates, along with some other stuff that was mostly already done, and also work on the Space Station level. In reality I mostly worked on the Space Station level, released what I had (almost all) already completed, and pushed some impressive performance improvement on Haunted House.
So why was I unsuccessful? There's 2 major reasons.
The biggest one:
I allocated way too much time to the Space Station. While its progress is really awesome and I'm really excited about it, I did not deliver on the features that add value now that I said I would be doing.
The other big issue is I underestimated the UI update. After working on it I discovered parts of it I was hoping to defer to a future update need to be done now to provide the most compelling experience while playing Hide and Seek. And...unfortunately these changes are time consuming to implement. If you haven't seen it yet, here's a video showing an in-development preview of the new Menus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z45cbizoDGU . Keep in mind this is not the final product, and even as I'm writing this on Monday, it is very different in some places and some issues were resolved.
Also a feature that was requested, I implemented in a way that appears to cause more pain than it resolved. The Auto Kick AFK implementation I cannot count as a success since it really only makes sense to kick the Seeker, since a lot of the time as a Hider, or Spectator, you will not be providing input.
Looking Forward
Looking to December, I plan to work on things in the following order:
UI/Menu Updates (expanded) I stated last time, the UI/Menu Updates is a 2 part task. After really looking at it, it's more like a 3 or 4 part task. The first 2 are the same as I presented last time. The others are new
The actual UI Changes that you will see and interact with - this includes the items on screen, animations, sprites, etc..
The way I manage the UI data - this is more a structure change in how I present and access the data on the UI
The way I display the UI - more technically - I had 1 canvas that was copy/pasted across every level, so each time I would have to make a change, I'd have to change it everywhere and sometimes that resulted in inconsistencies.
The experience when using the Menus - this is about the experience you have when using the game. Right now, especially on slower computers, the game may appear to crash at several stages, when in fact, it is just loading data off your hard drive, but it needs to load a ton of it. So this task is more about restructuring the data stored on the disk, and how and when I load that data to make the entire experience of playing Hide and Seek more fluid.
So #4 is really time consuming and #3 is a little time consuming now, but saves me time every future change I will make to the menus.
Auto Kick AFK Update Along with the UI/Menu Updates ...update that I will push this month, this Auto Kick AFK feature will change to only affect Seekers so you can hide in peace and spectate in peace without worrying about getting kicked when you being gone doesn't affect anyone else in the game.
In-Game Feedback This was not delievered last month either. It will also probably be a separate update from the main UI updates, but I really do want to add this so you can provide feedback directly from the game instead of having to go to the Community Hub.
Space Station I'd really like to put a lot more time into the Space Station level. Depending on how long it takes to complete the UI changes here, I may or may not have a preview video of some of the level to show this month. We'll see how that pans out.
Longer Term
Skills Yup. Still want to do those. Didn't get to work on them at all this last month. Probably after the Space Station is done I will get way more time on this.
Space Station Level Yeah it's not going to be done this month so it's longer term.
Animation Updates I see a lot of people being confused about the game saying "it's weird" or something like that, and really I don't know what this perception is about. So I asked around and the only feedback I got back was the animations are not 100% fluid and characters sometimes look wonky.
I'd like to address that so it doesn't feel weird and so I'm adding this Animations Update item here. I have no ETA, I have not started on it, and it probably won't be for a while since the current animation structure took quite some time to get set up and working as smoothly as it is now.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you about what improvements or features you would like to seem made. You can:
Here's the short list of updates, scroll down to read full details about each topic.
Hedge Maze got a minor performance improvement. Haunted House got a giant performance improvement (like a factor of 3 or 4 in the previously-really-bad spots).
AFK players will be automatically kicked, so don't go away in the middle of a round.
Chat Commands are here!
Chat Panel got a little UI rework.
Mature Language filter is here and enabled by default. Go to settings to turn it off.
There's now a way to bring back up the "How to play" popup.
Hedge Maze
You should see a relatively minor performance improvement on the Hedge Maze. this is attributable to some improperly configured trees, and also from what was done on the Haunted House which I'll talk about in that section.
The grass detail also extends farther out so you should see..grass farther away when looking outside the level.
Haunted House
Really a giant performance improvement. On my test machine the performance went up 3-4x. In the front yard, looking towards the house, previously I got around 50 cpu fps. With this patch I now get like 160 cpu fps.
Same story in the back yard, previously it was like 45, now 160.
2 factors influenced this.
The most impactful was smarter lighting control. All the realtime lights don't need to be casting perfect shadows if you can't even see them, so I have implemented a Dynamic LOD System for realtime lights which vastly improves performance as you can see here.
The second, you'll notice there are fewer leaves laying around. This was like a 20 cpu fps overhead for some reason so until I can figure out what's happening there, I removed them.
Also LODs for books have been adjusted so they pop in less.
Chat System Update
In chat, you can now type commands! Here's the list:
/help - displays help about what commands are available. Displays only to you.
/all [message] - send this text to all chat
/team [message] - send this text to your team chat
/timeleft - view time left in the match
/nextmap or /nextlevel - view the next map in the rotation
/disconnect - disconnect from the current server and return to the main menu
/quit - exit the application
Typing /anythingelse will still send that message.
Chat System now has a Mature Language Filter. This is enabled by default and can be turned off in the Settings menu.
The UI of the Chat Panel was tweaked to be a little cleaner.
General Improvements
Players who are AFK will now be automatically kicked from the server. This will ensure an AFK seeker doesn't waste a ton of your time. Players will be warned many times before they are actually kicked. thanks D-Train for the bug report :)
At the top right of the screen there is now an icon to bring back up the "How to Play" popup you are presented when you first launch the game. Previously if you asked to stop being presented with this popup there was no way to view it again.
Devblog 4 - November 7 2017
Devblog 4 - November 7 2017
Reflection on October
October was a relatively successful month in terms of feature commitment->delivery. However it was also a relatively small commitment, and I did not deliver the chat commands (though technically those weren't promised on a timeline...).
The new Post Processing stack is available with the Halloween Update, and it looks pretty nice. The Halloween Hedge Maze was delivered as promised and I really think it came out nicely. It also gave some nice improvements to the normal Hedge Maze.
The Dedicated Servers actually run very stably now. I basically don't have to pay attention to it anymore, except that the system it's running on has really low RAM so sometimes it gets full, or Window Update installs & restarts without consent.
I've noticed many comments about how I need to host more servers. The problem with this is, I don't have any additional computers to host on :). I need 3 machines to fully test Client-Server-Client interactions, and as you see, I only have 4 :).
This is precisely why I enabled the ability for anyone to host their own server (and wrote a guide detailing exactly what you needed to do to accomplish this), and since then, worked to solidify the Dedicated Server.
In case you haven't followed the development of Hide and Seek, this is a one man show. I don't have a team of people producing this game. It's just me.
Looking Forward
Again, everything here is what I plan to be immediately working on. Depending on how long each one takes they may or may not all get done in November.
Chat System Improvements As said in October's Devblog, some chat commands are becoming available. I've actually completed this, and the update will be available with some other upgrades pretty soon.
(see, these all work!)
Additionally, an optional language filter will soon be added (this will be turned ON by default, you can turn it off in the game settings).
Some performance improvements related to the Chat System are also going to be batched in with these updates.
UI/Menu Updates This is kind of a 2 part item. The first one, I hope this one is transparent to everyone. The way I have the UI done right now is not very good, so I want to make it easier and more consistent across levels with less copy/pasting work which results in some of the inconsistencies you see.
The second one is to make the UI less static and be more interesting in general. Right now it looks maybe "okay" but I'd like it to look clean, polished, and "good".
Auto Kick AFK this section was added November 10 2017 This was brought up in the Community Hub as a problem (and vote kick was the proposed solution). I will be adding it in the next patch. After 2 minutes of inactivity you will be disconnected from the server. This really a necessary thing in Hide and Seek since an AFK seeker is really annoying and there's nothing really you can do about in the current state of the game. The vote kick option is something I am toying with as well. It does have the potential for abuse and that's why I'm doing the AFK kicking first. I'm not sure at this point if I want to add a potentially abuse-able functionality.
end November 10 2017 edit
In Game Feedback Right now the only way I receive feedback is through reviews (which in most cases tend to be either extremely rude, and/or vague and unhelpful - neither of these types help improve the game), and the few people that come to the Community Hub to talk on the forums.
I want to enable in-game 1-click feedback (+ typing your feedback of course) so any user can leave a bug report, feedback about a level, or whatever they feel they want to convey. I'm hoping the in-game access will give me a broader, and more detailed set of feedback.
Optimizations I am continually optimizing Hide and Seek. I mentioned in the 1.0.1.68 patch notes some performance optimizations were made. More are on the way!
Space Station Level This is probably what I'm most excited about bringing out.
Unfortunately, I didn't get any time at all to work on this last month due to the Halloween Hedge Maze taking more time than expected, mostly due to it having more gameplay & new visual elements than originally anticipated. That's not really a bad thing; I'm really happy with how the Halloween Hedge Maze came out.
Since the rest of these things I'm saying I'll be working on are mostly UI, I'm really excited to spend a lot of time getting the Space Station level developed further. I do not anticipate it being done this month, or even in December. But it is now on the "primary work" track instead of the "when I have unexpected extra time or don't feel like doing something more important" track.
Longer Term
Skills Yes I am still going to add Skills. I have a pretty good idea now what I want the Hiders and Seekers to be able to do, it's just a matter of fully implementing these things.
I did some work on these in October, mainly when baking lighting and/or occlusion since that makes this other computer totally useless for a while. Some modeling, animation, and even player-skill interaction.
I think it's coming along nicely. This is probably what I'm second most excited about so it's a battle for my time between this and the Space Station level. When I have some complete end-to-end solutions I will create a video with all of the skills as a kind of teaser. I also would not expect these this month or even December.
Space Station Level It's not going to be done for a while so technically it's longer term.
1.0.1.70 Patch Notes (25 October 2017)
Overview
This is a hotfix to Halloween Update.
Fixed some places on the Halloween Hedge Maze you could get stuck, or it was difficult to get out.
Fixed overlapping text on UI of Filters that prevent you from toggling Hedge Maze, or Halloween Hedge Maze out of your filter.
HALLOWEEN UPDATE - 1.0.1.68 Patch Notes (24 October 2017)
Overview
Halloween Update! A reskinned version of the Hedge Maze is now available (and on rotation on the server I am hosting)! Watch the trailer here!
Some minor optmizations were made to the Haunted House. And, the new Post Processing Stack is now here, which includes motion blur so if you like, it's at the bottom of the Graphics Menu.
I will be hosting 2 servers for at least a couple of weeks - 1 for Halloween Hedge Maze only, and 1 with all 3 maps on rotation.
Halloween Hedge Maze
A dark and spooky version of the Hedge Maze! Filled with pumpkins, spider webs, spiders, and ghostly skeletons! And a flying Witch!
Totally reskinned the level with new textures, dark lighting, and lamps are on to provide targeted light
Atmopsheric fog
Smashable Pumpkins
Spider webs throughout the maze
Underground tunnels got a new look and more detail in general
Patrolling Spider - if it runs into you, you will be briefly frozen in fear!
2 Wandering Ghostly Skeletons - if they run into you, you will be briefly frozen in fear!
Improvements/Other Changes
Hedge Maze got some small graphical improvements from the Halloween Hedge Maze
Minor optimizations on Haunted House
New Post Processing stack - more effects, motion blur is available, and all existing (Bloom, AA, and SSAO) will look different, arguably nicer.
More logging improvements
Significant Performance improvements to Hats Gallery
More interesting grass setup on Hats Gallery
Devblog 3 - October 1 2017
Notice
Hey all, I am going to Poland for the next week. I will be back on the 8th. Unfortunately that means until then I will not be able to be very responsive, will not be doing development on Hide and Seek, and will be much less attentive to the Dedicated Server I am hosting.
Reflection on September
I think the patches in September were pretty successful. The only remaining item promised was the upgraded post processing stack (which includes motion blur). I think most players actually won't notice the difference unless provided a side-by-side comparison, but image quality enthusiasts should be happy with the new result.
The performance patch vastly improved the general case performance of Hide and Seek, and also vastly improved loading times & application responsiveness while loading.
The Halloween Hedge Maze map is mostly complete, I need to do some private testing to ensure everything works well, but for the most part I think it is complete.
Also some critical network-related bugs were squashed during this month.
There are still some outstanding issues that I would really like to fix. Most importantly, this "rounds don't start" bug is a pretty big one that requires some specific set of circumstances that appear to happen after the server has been up a while, but I cannot reproduce it so far on my own.
I have made targeted improvements to logging on dedicated servers to help me identify this and hopefully then eliminate it completely.
Looking Forward
Again, everything here is what I plan to be immediately working on. Depending on how long each one takes they may or may not all get done in October, especially with me being gone for a week and losing 2 weekends for travel. But we'll see how it goes.
Halloween Hedge Maze In October I'm planning to release the Halloween Hedge Maze level. It's mostly a reskin with some additional fun things. Gameplay in general should be pretty similar to what you would expect from the Hedge Maze.
Post Processing Stack As promised in September this is something I want to implement, just need to actually get time to do it. The advantages will be better performance from post processing effects, better image quality out of them, and also Motion Blur will be available in Video Options (though it will be turned off by default because I hate it)
Dedicated Server Improvements As I started mentioning in the Reflection on September section, there are still some issues with the Dedicated Server, which is why I still am calling it "in Beta".
So I'm hoping to be able to resolve all of these issues and have really a rock solid Dedicated Server solution. This involves both improving the overall stability of the Dedicated Server, as well as functional/"Quality of Life" improvements to the Server Administration Panel.
Chat System Improvements I see some people typing commands at some point into the Chat window. This is actually something I was hoping to bring kind of as a surprise so...SURPRISE! I do plan on adding some commands to the Chat System to allow you to query for some info about the game.
At the moment I'm considering:
/all and /team to change chat channels in addition to the Y & U you can do today
/disconnect to leave the current server
/help to display a list of commands
/nextmap to display what the next level will be. At this point it's probably not so helpful, but in the longer term probably it will be nice
/timeleft to display time remaining in the match (before level swap)
Feel free to leave a comment about what other commands you would like to see and I can see what it would take to implement those as well.
Longer Term
Skills Yes I am still going to add Skills. I haven't actually had time to work on them since last devblog, but I really do want to add them. Both Hiders and Seekers should have some abilities that make it more interesting and maybe you're not totally screwed when the Seeker sees you in some circumstances ;).
Space Station Level This is still in the works (yes I did actually work on this one recently). No ETA yet. There's still a lot to do, and even then... Once I think the level design is complete and all objects are correctly set up to work on the network, then I have to do a few rounds of testing/tweaking/fixing before it will be put in front of you all.
Na razie :)
1.0.1.45 Patch Notes (30 September 2017)
Overview
Not a lot to say here, it's all Dedicated Server stability & logging improvements so
Dedicated server should misbehave less frequently and
When it does misbehave I can much more easily identify what the actual cause of this is.
