Accessibility Option - inverting mouse x/y options are now exposed in the mouse menus.
Texture alignment issues in E1M5 fixed.
Updated one of the wanted posters.Yes, this is an important fix.
Removed an unused sound.
Dropped support for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore PET.
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will possibly break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.4.2 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on. Check out more information here.
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.4.2
Here's another minor patch.
Accessibility Option - can adjust the frequency of enemy active/roaming sounds. It still defaults to the older behavior. It's under Sound Options.
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will possibly break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.4.1 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on. Check out more information here.
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.4.1
We have another patch, this one is very minor.
Fixed Blitzcraig not autoswitching once alt-fire completed
Fixed Stonebaked Pizza not working with custom player pawns
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will possibly break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.4 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on. Check out more information here.
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.4 + Realms Deep 2022!
We said we were going to be on break. However, we are going to be at Realms Deep 2022 - the boomer shooter online event. So we decided another patch to polish it all neat for people was necessary.
Realms Deep is from Friday September the 16th to Sunday September the 18th. We hope to see you there!
With that said, we have released a patch for Project Absentia Episode 1
WIGZDoom updated. This release of the engine gets rid of the software renderer as well as the Softpoly and OpenGL ES renderers - so people cannot activate them by mistake (None of these were ever supported).
Revamped weapon system. Weapons now respect priority when depleting and swapping out, as well as have a heirarchy of sorts. No longer will you default to the tommy gun after exhausting your missile weapons if you have a shotgun or a an elemental weapon. Also you have to manually select the BFG weapons.
Orange Soda Cap messages are now logged to the console as well as displayed on the screen. If you need to reread it, open the console.
Refactor Stonebaked Pizza to no longer use CustomInventory. It functions the same.
Make mini-sentries more robust. In a rare occasion, they could become invulnerable to player damage and never explode.
Fix some map issues in E1M6 where some objects were tagged as secret that weren't supposed to be.
Remove vestigial code in ZScript.
Fix some text strings.
Dropped support for the Action Max home video console.
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will possibly break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.3 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on. Check out more information here.
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.3
We have released a patch for Project Absentia Episode 1
The big one is the configuration and save state overhaul. How we store save states in both the demo and early access builds, as well as your settings, might be affected by this. (We like working with GZDoom's oddities in Early Access, it makes us happy!)
Implement better way to separate saves from demo and early access builds for clean installs.
Add options to menus to open config file, saves folder, and screenshots folder from menus. This is under Gameplay Options.
Separate Load Game and Save Game menus, put them on main menu.
There's also the following fixes:
Update WIGZDoom to a new build.
Implement better melee for quick kick and chicken peck to be a bit more powerful and consistent.
Fix some gibbable corpse hitbox issues.
Fix some issues with maps E1M1, E1M5, E1M10, E1M11.
No longer use a WIGZDoom engine check in the ACS library to set the aircontrol. This was not necessary in the end.
Remove smooth mouse option from menu.
Add a missing credit.
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will break for sure. Use the beta branch ep1-1.2 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on.
A note about mods - we encourage modding of Project Absentia, but for now cannot offer direct support or an official dev kit of sorts. This is due to both the game being Early Access and subject to change, as well as us simply not having time at the moment.
We are going to be working on Episode 2 starting in October. For now, we need a break. Stay tuned for more developments.
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.2
We have released a patch for Project Absentia Episode 1.
Implement cutscene skipping option. You can enable it in the menu under Gameplay Options. If turned on, will skip the cutscenes when you replay a completed episode
Turned Hollow Point ammo into High Powered ammo, did some modifications to damage factors for enemies to reflect this
Fixed badly done pentagram on a few of the cutscene slides (Sorry, Bridgeburner!)
Rework man eating plant enemy to take some damage from direct hits, while still motivating the player to fire missiles into its mouth. Also redo some soundwork and graphical design on the plant monster to 'telegraph' its mechanics more
Add optional ammo listing for all weapons in inventory. Can be enabled under HUD Options
Replace armor hit sound
Plethora of bugfixes for maps
Added missing mouse options section in menus (oops)
Removed unused code
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will most definitely break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.1 to use the previous build. Older builds will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on.
Barring any critical bugfixes, this will be the last update before we work on Episode 2. We are excited for what we have planned. Stay tuned!
Early Access Episode 1 version 1.1
We have released a patch for Project Absentia Episode 1.
Make it so player cannot be damaged by their own friendly plant
Replace a few strings.
Fix minor issues on E1M1, E1M3, E1M5
Revamp E1M7 blue and red key rooms
Fix a non-public domain chicken that was left over
Additional fixes on E1M8
Add credit for another beta tester
Update WIGZDoom to newer build
For people with current playthroughs - your savestates will definitely break. Use the beta branch ep1-1.0 to use the older build. These will be kept around as long as possible for people to finish their playthroughs on.
We wanna thank people for the warm reception and positive, constructive feedback you all have given us. We will be releasing another patch in a week or two with some more quality of life improvements, specifically the ability to skip in-game cutscenes via a menu option.
Cheers!
OpenAL Hotfix
There's gonna be another patch later this week with more fixes, but for now:
Revert OpenAL to older version to fix horrifically bad sound mixing issues in some cases.
Project Absentia Is Releasing July 29th!
Hello! We have good news to share!
Project Absentia is releasing into Early Access on July 29th with a launch price of 14.99USD.
This price will scale as more content is added, but if you buy it now, the price won't go up for you later.
Currently the game will launch with all of Episode 1's content available - which is what's available in the demo, plus two additional chapters.
New VA for Abby + Demo Update!
Hello there, hope everyone is doing well.
As we head closer towards releasing Project Absentia, we've been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes.
We listened to a ton of feedback on Abby's VA.
While many of us at WIS liked Sins' performance, we realized for many people she was not the vast majority's cup of tea.
So we decided to go with another VA due to the mixed response. This was not an easy decision, and not any of those on the team's first choice of action.
On the advice of Jake the Voice, who voices Dr. Atmosphere, he suggested his friend and colleague - Mikell Dover - as a potential VA for Abby.
We ended up going with her! Her lines are live and playable in the demo as of the writing of this project.
We've also been retooling the writing to be a bit more smart, while still having the right amount of edge. For now we've gotten rid of the cutscenes as we strive to perfect those.
We appreciate Sin's contributions to WIS and we're keeping her on in a beta testing and possibly for promo graphics design in the future.
Project Absentia's demo has some features being backported from the devbranch including the following:
Select renderer on launch You can select the Vulkan, OpenGL, or GLES (experimental and limited) renderers. Depending on your graphics card you might need to use a different renderer.
Bugfixes to the levels, both functionality and geometry-wise.
Overhaul one-liner system to be more consistent with the cooldown.
Replaced many textures from SHDX/earlier builds of PA that were based on OTEX/Doom.
Pool table in E1M1 works better. (This is an important feature)
