The game is feeling really fun, we're almost there, and the number of recent updates has far outpaced my public announcements. So what's new?
There are a dozen achievements to unlock! And for some of you, achievement progress actually started in an earlier build. I just didn't have the graphics ready to go until more recently... actually had to learn Illustrator really fast and take my best shot at it!
I've added even more music than I was initially planning... there are now 6 unique tracks. The title theme is the longest and most elaborate if you let it play for awhile. I was initially hoping to use it for game play, but it felt much better as the title theme.
The story is back in comic form, accessible from the main menu. I cut the final cells because they didn't really make sense... our hero didn't need to have a cup of coffee, followed by a full night's sleep, wake up, go to work and goof off, only to finally fall into a portal around noon on his lunch break.
In this new universe, Ron Mayhem (or applicable alter-ego) is a true man of action.
Coffee, yes.
Sleep, not so much.
Mouse support is gone! That might sound strange, but this game is a console oriented twin-stick shooter, level loading is pretty fast, and switching from a mouse to a game controller just seems cumbersome. So no more mouse and no more mouse code paths or UI to test. It should function the same on both PC and console.
Keyboard still works in both the menus and the game.
WASD functions as the left stick.
Arrows function as the right stick.
There are a TON of bug fixes and improvements. Too many to mention, so I'll let you find them yourself! :-)
At this point, the only known issues are a few local co-op bugs and a situation where after completing the game victoriously, and returning to the main menu, music restarts in every sub-menu.
And despite a few bugs, local co-op is crazy fun! If you want to give it a try, at the moment, only one player has control over menus and pausing. That should be fixed in the next build. Hopefully EVERYTHING is fixed in the next build, but we'll see.
There isn't a solid release date yet, but we're almost there! Each new build can be considered a release candidate now.
Thanks again and I hope you enjoy all the improvements!
Reset Leaderboard
Just in case anyone missed it in the last announcement, I just reset the leaderboard for the first time ever. If you were in the top 20 from 2018, you have a special place in the credits. Thanks again for your understanding!
♪♫♬ Music & More! ♪♫♬
I'm very happy to announce a soundtrack for Horde Of Plenty! I think it really improves the mood and fits the pace of the game, especially on hardcore & 1337 difficulty levels! There are currently 4 tracks, but you'll have to beat the game to hear them all. It was a lot of fun putting these together for you all, and a nice change of pace, but I'll be back finishing up achievements very soon. Please let me know what you think. :-)
Note: The demo video is fairly outdated at this point, and that is not my music. the game looks much nicer than that now! I'll have to update the promo art sometime soon.
Also, I reworked the sound effects and the mixing. There's a little more work to do there... but it should feel better already.
In other news, I fixed a few bugs and reworked the look and feel of Level 6 (aka Forest Run), and it should feel much nicer with loads of lush new forest flora.
Oh and the other big one... reworked scoring! I won't go into the gory details, but will just say it feels better and loot should feel like it's weighted a little higher now... and if it's not perfect, I'll tweak it again.
So, at this point, it's just a bit more polish and a matter of finishing up the achievements, and then we're good to go for release, but I think it's feeling pretty good already! :-)
Thanks again, have a great weekend, and enjoy!
2019.2.10.0 - Huge Performance Boost & More!
Today's release appears to be running silky smooth with the biggest performance boost to date. There are also tweaks to enemy AI, physics based animation improvements, and some of the hardest difficulty modes are harder than ever now with greater numbers of speedier enemies. The easy modes are still as easy as ever.
I really wasn't planning to boost performance further, but after a Unity upgrade exacerbated some underlying issues... I use Unity for development... there was no choice but to find a fix. After a lot of late nights, the result appears to be far better than expected.
I think I can boost it a little further and will see what happens over the next couple days, and then it'll be time to refocus on stats, achievements, and finalizing scoring.
Scoring might be a little over the top when it comes to the number of points you can earn when playing in higher difficulty modes. I think it's actually pretty close to fair, but expect some tweaking there over the next few weeks for sure. I'm going to leave the leaderboards alone for now because it's pretty easy to beat your old scores at the moment.
Also the way the score is calculated is a bit complicated at the moment... it currently takes speed and chain multipliers, difficulty mode, and the current level into account. Seems fair, but not easy to think about on the fly.
Thanks again and I hope you enjoy the changes!
2019.2.2.0 is here with several fixes!
Changes
FIXED: Player unresponsive after warping to center screen from a stuck location.
FIXED: Player head and neck craning strangely at top speed.
FIXED: Some items weren't "warmed up" (devspeak: pooled) correctly at startup.
FIXED: The lower quality modes didn't look quite right on certain levels.
CHANGED: Disabled VSync in favor of higher refresh rate to improve player input handling. Feels more responsive and syncing can be handled externally for most GPUs these days.
This build should perform pretty well. At best there are no hiccups and everything is liquid smooth. At worst, there are a couple hiccups that total less than half of second out of hours of gameplay. Results may vary and the entire issue could be with my laptop. I just want this as close to perfect as possible. :-)
Build 2019.2.1.0 Is Available!
It's been awhile, but the first build in a massive overhaul is now available! Overall performance should be greatly improved and all the existing levels have been reworked or tweaked in some way.
There are a couple small performance hiccups that may be encountered in the first 2 levels during your first passes through those areas in a given play session. I'm fairly certain of the cause... that being the result of a subsystem not getting "warmed up" properly. So once it's warmed up, everything's fine. I'll get this fixed ASAP.
Notable Changes
Major performance improvements (good enough for a console!)
Experimental 2 player local co-op with shared health.
Reworked levels with some major changes in certain areas.
Better lighting! (looks best on a warm monitor... more on that below.)
Artwork improvements.
More secret triggers for hidden goodies or baddies.
Weapon upgrades will always provide a better weapon or a gold star.
Weapon upgrades and gold stars will not refill weapon health.
5 new difficulty levels.
Simplified settings options.
Removed some sounds effects... still working on audio.
Probably forgetting something, but loads and loads of tweaks and fixes!
One small issue that I'll try to address in a future build... the game looks a little overly green (yellow/gold has a green tint) on some monitors including my Razer Blade 15". Screenshots look equally wrong on an iOS screen. It's ok, but it's a little off from what I intended. Obviously there's no way to make it just magically worked perfectly everywhere, so I might add adjustable color correction above and beyond the usual gamma/brightness controls found in many games.
Stats and achievements are currently in development, but not ready for this build.
I haven't reset the leaderboards yet... although I did remove my ridiculously high score achieved through ill-gotten means... well testing a new build actually... and the rightful leader is back in top place for the moment. :-)
As mentioned in an earlier post... I expect local co-op and multiple difficulty levels to be able to share the same leaderboards. Co-op's firepower advantage seems to be canceled out by shared health and more surface area available for damage.
So... I expect to release much more frequently for the remainder of this project. Thanks again to everyone who's picked up a copy and given this a go over the last number of months!
Oh and if you were in the top 20 (not including me), maybe have a look at the credits... :-)
Thanks guys! Really, seriously, thank you.
Almost there!
Hey guys - A belated happy new year and I hope you all had a great holiday season! I was hoping to make more incremental releases last year and at least get something out by December, but wound up making some pretty large and unexpected improvements that broke that workflow.
My desktop dev rig died a few months ago and when I replaced it with a gaming laptop w/ a 1060 on board, I started noticing some obvious performance issues. Long story short, it required a major lighting overhaul as well as some changes to NPCs and their animations. In the end, imho, it both looks and plays much better. I couldn't be happier with the results.
There are a number of gameplay improvements and bug fixes as well.
I expect to have something new out any week now and should be able to finally get back to an incremental release schedule soon after, hopefully with a v1.0 by Q2 this year.
Thanks again for all your support!
More Updates Coming Soon!
It's been awhile since the last update, so just wanted to let you all know that there are more features and fixes in the pipeline for this year. Local co-op is in development and may be exposed as an experimental feature in an upcoming build. A current goal is to allow all game-play modes and difficulty levels to fairly share the same leaderboards, which are visible from the main menu. This actually seems to be working pretty well so far. It's working across difficulty levels because in easy mode, it's not possible to rack up chain & speed bonuses quite as fast. That means that scoring doesn't have to be artificially manipulated. So far this appears to be working for local co-op as well thanks to shared health. Co-op is currently harder than single player... enough so that I'm still investigating possible difficulty tweaks to balance it out a bit... but ultimately am hoping to find a one-size fits all solution that remains as fair as possible and errors in favor of single player. Thanks again for your support and hopefully we'll get another build out soon!
Horde Of Plenty 2018.5.18.1
FIXED: Vibration/Rumble was too weak on some controllers. Every hit to the player should be felt, but not in a distracting way.
FIXED: Rare condition where loot spawned incorrectly.
FIXED: Player was restarting with the wrong weapon when dying with that weapon.
FIXED: Quality was defaulting to the lowest possible setting. Quality will now default to the intended middle setting.
Note: Developer's opinion here... There's not a huge benefit to increasing the quality past this point... some, or the option wouldn't be there... but the downside is that there may be areas (indoors) where the game plays over 200fps and others where it dips below 60fps, and this is a game that should be played at 60fps if possible. But if you have the latest and greatest beast rig, you're probably fine to try any quality setting you want.
Store Is Working Now
Thanks for your patience. The store should be working properly for everyone now. Many thanks to those that pointed out the issue.
