Metrocide
Metrocide 1.0.3 Update
We've got some bug fixes and a gameplay tweak for you this week.
-- Fixed a problem which allowed some players to clip into buildings but not get out of them.
-- Fixed a bug where firing your EMP would de-select your current secondary weapon.
-- Fixed a bug where your tracker would sometimes get 'stuck' and fail to update.
-- You can now pick back up unused flashbangs or lures.
We've also tracked down a few of the more obscure problems people have reported, and hope to have more updates out soon. If you're still having crash-on-load issues and haven't done so already, please post or email your system specs and details to help us track these down.
Thanks again for your feedback, and have fun in Metro City!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 1.0.2 Out!
An update loaded with fixes for your stocking.
-- CRASH FIXED: Prolonged play was causing memory leaks, resulting in random crashes - especially on machines with relatively little memory.
-- CRASH FIXED: A path-finding bug was causing crashes, especially on larger levels, and more often on slower machines.
-- BUG FIXED: Pedestrians were sometimes getting stuck on the spot and not moving.
-- FEATURE: When dropping, picking up or stashing bodies, a visual icon now appears, not text. This means that the information is presented to you much faster, and 'stacks' of text updates are less frequent.
-- FEATURE: As requested, the 'X' key now toggles your weapon being raised or lowered, to make play easier for those of you on trackpads.
Thanks again to everyone who emailed or contacted us with details of the crashes - we couldn't have tracked them down without you! Keep letting us know of any further issues, especially crashes, so we can get them fixed as soon as possible - and apologies to those who were effected by the crashes.
Next update should be about a week from now, with yet more tweaks and any other fixes for any other issues we track down between then and now.
Have a great new year, and try not to get blasted apart by too many police drones in Metro City!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 1.0
We have hit version 1.0 in preparation for our launch next week.
There will no doubt be a few more bugs and minor tweaks between now and then (What's a game without a day-zero patch these days? It's tradition, right?) but we are now feature-complete. Everything we want in the game for its launch is there.
So here's what we've added/fixed for Metrocide 1.0...
-- FEATURE: Difficulty modes. The mode you've been playing so far, which we've tweaked to be *slightly* easier, was 'normal' mode. We've now added TOUGH and, if you unlock it, IMPOSSIBLE difficulty. Because we love you all and want you to die horribly in Metro City. Like we do.
-- FEATURE: Unlock screen. You can now see all your unlocks (with bonus instruction as to how to unlock things which are still out of reach) in the new Help section of the menu.
-- FEATURE: A Controls overview page, also in the Help section.
-- FEATURE: All tutorial panes can now be browsed from the Help screen - so if you want to you can give them all a quick read at the start of things then disable tutorials from the Options menu for a clean game experience.
-- FEATURE: Visual representation of things (levels, weapons etc) being locked (as opposed to being unlocked but too expensive).
-- FEATURE: New tutorial pane for the checkpoint scanners in Zone 2 (which includes the hint that you can drop any DRAWN weapon by pressing F to get through them unnoticed).
-- FIX: Fixed a crash on load happening for some people with specific types of audio hardware.
-- FIX: Fixed a crash when multiple cleaning droids would sometimes attempt to clean the same body (more common in earlier zones)
-- FIX: Fixed a problem where NPCs investigating a body could be spooked into treading on corpses when you fired a weapon near them.
-- FIX: NPCs staring at a corpse wouldn't notice people around them with weapons drawn.
-- FIX: Fixed bug causing body guards to moon-walk sometimes.
-- FIX: Made NPC bodyguards stick a little bit more closely to their target, and added some better functionality to keep them from getting separated.
-- FIX: Clipping error when moving diagonally between two fences perpendicular to each other.
-- FIX: Main menu position remembered when going 'back' from sub-menus.
-- FIX: Ammunition for a weapon you've just purchased now becomes available immediately without you having to back out of the vending machine and re-enter.
-- FIX: Players could be scanned by cops when deceased. No more. Now at least death is an escape.
-- FIX: Fleeing/scared NPCs should no longer stop what they're doing to gawk at dead bodies.
That's quite a list, and we're pretty chuffed with where we're at now.
Let us know of any new issues that arise with this build. We're still working on some minor bugs and some obscure hardware-related stability issues, so please send any bug reports in to us so we can get them sorted as soon as possible.
Thanks so much for your help during this challenging Early Access period - and we'll see you on the other side!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.9 Update
So, this week we have:
-- NEW GAME MODE: Blaster Only. Reckon it's too easy with all the fancy weapons? You can now unlock a mode where no tools or weapons are open to you.
-- NEW GAME MODE: Dead Trench Walking. Still too easy? Don't worry - we got this for you. Enter this game mode and every citizen you see will not only be armed - they'll know your face and shoot on sight.
-- High score tables fixes, related to the new modes
-- Some small NPC AI fixes
-- Fixed something which might have caused crashes loading on some hardware
Coming soon: difficulty modes! Yes, that's right. We may like the game tough-by-design, but it's still worth providing a few options for a wide variety of players nonetheless.
Enjoy, and as always, let us know of any issues you have.
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.8 Update
-- Fixed a crash where two cleaning droids would clean the same body up.
-- Body guards are now highlighted like targets, contacts and gang members.
-- Fixed a bug where pedestrians investigating a dead body would not be able to see you with a gun out.
-- Fixed a bug where bodyguards and their employers would sometimes end up too far apart.
-- Fixed a bug where pedestrians investigating a dead body would walk on top of the dead body if you spook them with a noise.
-- "Paranoid" personality trait is much more serious now. They will react more strongly to suspicious behaviour.
-- Vending machines properly re-draw when you buy weapons, showing ammo for the newly-purchased gun is now available.
-- Main menu now remembers your position when moving back from a sub-menu.
-- Fixed a clipping error which allowed you to move diagonally through walls and into an otherwise-impassable space.
-- Fixed a problem where body guards would 'moonwalk' sometimes.
-- Pedestrian AI for dealing with bodies has been fixed up.
-- Many small aesthetic tweaks, UI sound effects, etc
Most of the changes this time are to fix up some of the AI quirks we've had reported.
Let us know how it plays for you!
Thanks,
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.7 Update
This one's pretty big, so here's what you can expect:
-- Fixed a bug where AIs would stay for too long near bodies they'd found
-- Fixed a crash which happened sometimes restarting levels - especially in level 3
-- Fixed a crash related to bodyguard missions
-- Fixed a bug where bodyguards could get "stuck" in a loop after you kill their target and get killed yourself
-- Fixed a bug resulting in ad blimps not appearing with enough frequency
-- Added 14 new in-game ads for various futuristic products and/or weapons
-- Changed the Cleaning Droid to have his shiny new personality upgrade!
-- Fixed a bug where music would duplicate from previous levels
-- Added a new music track (which you'll only hear in Level 3 near the big malls and the plaza)
One step closer to the big 1.0 release! Our next milestones are adding a new game mode and some changes to the leaderboards.
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.6 Update
Second update for the week is now live! Changes include:
-- Fix to (hopefully permanently) stop the "clipping through walls" bug that can happen during framerate drops or sometimes immediately after load.
-- Fix that stopped the train from appearing in zone 1.
-- Fix that can cause explosions from killing some targets occasionally.
-- An AI tweak which should stop some (if not all) of the "getting stuck staring at a dead body" issues some of you have reported. If that continues to happen, let us know!
Next stop is more of the AI work that needs to be done, especially on later levels.
Thanks!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.5 Update
So, we're back from PAX Australia, and we want to thank everyone who attended and checked out the game - and the rest of you for being patient while we were away. PAX was a huge success, and we even tracked down a few more minor bugs during the show thanks to the myriad of people playing the game at our booth.
So, here's the first update of the week:
-- Fixed some fullscreen / windowed mode bugs on the Windows version
-- Fixed the bug where sometimes the "space to spawn" and post-death stat would not appear after being killed.
-- Fixed some errors relating to picking up and dropping bodies in rivers
-- Fixed some minor typographical errors
-- Tweaked some of the NPC behaviour relating to seeing crimes
And with that out the way, our next priority are the "empty city" bug and some of the odd AI behaviour, especially in level 2 and related to finding bodies.
As always, let us know of any issues you're having.
Also: If you are still getting crashes to desktop before you can even load the game, I have created a "Crashes" thread in the Steam discussion forums. Please post as much information as you can in this thread so we can collate the data and track down what may be causing it.
Thanks, and enjoy!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.4
0.9.4 is up, with the following changes:
-- Fix to allow return to the main menu regardless of the state of the player, to avoid the "cannot respawn or restart" bug.
-- Fix for an in-game crash which was occurring when you took a number of bodyguard missions.
-- A number of small NPC AI tweaks
-- A stablity fix for OpenGL initialisation.
Let us know if this update fixes issues for you. We've got a few other serious bugs to deal with, and then it's on to more of the minor AI issues - and some more in-universe ads & audio assets we recorded last weekend.
Have fun, and thanks!
Rohan Harris
Flat Earth Games
Metrocide 0.9.3, and general update
So, we figured we'd update to let you know what our plans are for the upcoming weeks, and where are priorities lie for the next few Early Access updates to Metrocide.
Firstly, along with this post is an update which adds alternate resolutions and windowed mode support. This update is in the "Bleeding Edge" beta stream right now, but should be live in the main stream in the next hour or so.
Hopefully this will solve some of the launch issues some of you have reported, especially those related to odd monitor resolutions being selected automatically at startup. It also provides more detailed "unable to launch" messages, so we can track down any further issues a bit more easily.
Our priorities for now will always be crashes or show-stopping bugs, for obvious reasons.
Tomorrow we should be putting out an update with a few more serious fixes, including one for the well-reported "can't get back to the main menu after death" bug.
After this, I plan to work on some of the NPC issues, and then it's on to unlocking the remaining game modes and perhaps introducing a few difficulty modes.
We will aim to push out a new build with tweaks and fixes every other day or so.
After this coming week, we will be down in Melbourne attending GameConnect Asia Pacific and then showing off Metrocide at PAX Australia (come say hi!) so we probably won't be pushing out any updates that week. After that, it's back on updates until we're happy enough with the stability and balance of the game to call it done. At this point, we anticipate about two months for that.
As always, please post any issues you find with the game here on the Steam forums - especially any crashes or issues which stop you playing the game at all. These will always be our top priority as much as possible.
Thanks for your support,
Rohan Harris (@expectproblems)
Lead Coder
Flat Earth Games