Shadows in the Darkness
An Update from the Developer
I would like to provide an update on Shadows in the Darkness. When I first released the game in October of 2017, I had every intention of consistently updating and enhancing it for about a year. Although I did so for the first several months, I unexpectedly landed a job and my time to program was consumed elsewhere. I apologize for the lack of communication, and, unfortunately, there will be no further updates. I have significantly reduced the price to something I believe is fair. I hope to continue game development sometime in the future.
Best wishes,
Mike
Patch 12.21.2017 (voice chat improvements, multiplayer physics fixes, and difficulty adjustments)
Shadows in the Darkness is now 20% on sale for the Steam holiday sale! Spread the news, as a big update is coming in the new year! Here's what's in this patch:
- Voice chat quality in multiplayer has been greatly improved.
- Voice chat has been suffering in quality because of an old implementation with Unity's networking solution. This has now been redone to provide much higher quality chat.
- There are now minimal software caused 'buzzing' sounds when player's are not talking into their microphone.
- Item positions are more accurate over the network, and the physics interactions between clients is now more responsive.
- The positions of items, such as swords or potions, are now updated quicker in multiplayer.
- Physics is now much more reliable in multiplayer.
- Difficulty adjustments have been made.
- The 'impossible' difficulty level has been redone to stay true to its name.
- The 'classic' difficulty will now contain slightly lower health (around 5%) on shielded orcs.
- The 'easy' difficulty will have a lower chance of spawning difficult enemies, but a higher chance to spawn them without their 'specialized tools' (orcs without their shield, armored goblins without their armor, etc.)
- Many small bug fixes.
The feedback lately has been really helpful since the last major update and many suggestions from the community will surely be implemented in the upcoming new year. Happy holidays!
-SCORNZ
BIG Update 11.28.2017 (tons of new items, shops, new roguelite elements, fixes)
It's an exciting update, I've got a pretty big one for every player today. Here's what is included:
- Buff items to enhance the player have appeared all around the dungeon!
- Tons of new items are now able to be found in chests, shops, and various rooms.
- These items improve player statistics such as health regen, max health, magic range, etc.
- These items could have positive and/or negative effects on the player, and it is a necessary decision whether or not the positive effects outweigh the negative effects.
- Shops now appear throughout all dungeon environments.
- Purchase buffs, scrolls, potions, keys, and weapons to help you in your adventure!
- Shops are now added in as a 'special' room, similar to weapon rooms and libraries.
- Gold to spend in shops can be found by killing different enemies throughout the dungeon. The more difficult the enemy, the more gold coins that are collected.
- Prices scale with the floor number.
- Weapons now need to be 'identified' in order to view their statistics, such as damage, sharpness, etc.
- A weapon's statistics will now be hidden until it is well used or a Scroll of Identify is applied to it.
- Using a weapon to attack enemies will help the weapon become identified quicker.
- Added locked chests.
- There are now three types of chests: normal, silver, and gold.
- Silver chests give a higher chance of containing rare items, with only one guaranteed item.
- Gold chests give a much higher chance of containing very rare items, with two guaranteed RARE items.
- Keys can be found in other chests scattered throughout the dungeon, or purchased with gold in the shop.
- Player statistics, such as health and gold, now have their own panel
- Similar to accessing a weapon's statistics, open the player statistics by swiping left on the touchpad (Vive) or clicking in the joystick (Oculus) with nothing in hand.
- Currently, only health, max health, and gold are visible from this screen, but buffs and level statistics should be seen here in a near update.
- New control schemes for 'two controllers'
- The ability to switch between using the right hand to move and left to rotate has now been added.
- This option can be changed in the 'Control Scheme' section of the options tab in the lobby.
- Increased the integrity of physics.
- For higher-spec systems, the physics in-game will now be more accurate and precise.
- For lower-spec systems, this will lower occurrence of the jittery weapons problem found in graphics intense situations.
- Libraries and scrolls will now appear in all environments of the dungeon.
- Enchanting no longer goes by basic, set numbers
- For most weapon stats, enchanting will increase or decrease that stat by a percentage rather than a set number.
- This system allows for enchanting to be valid across all floors of the dungeon.
- Fixed magic sporadically not being detected by enemies.
- The magic system is now more reliable than ever and hitting any vital part of an enemy will deal at least some damage.
- Hitting armor with magic still does not deal any damage to the enemy.
- Fixed potion use not being applied to the player
- Potions will now definitely be applied if placed to the mouth and drank, this used to sometimes not work because of the raycasting system used.
- Fixed bug where item info would display values that were extended with a seemingly infinite amount of '9's
- Mage enemy modified
- Now with a cape and a 3D floating, crystal eye!
- Scrolls no longer spawn on the top of bookshelves in libraries
- Balanced rare weapons and weapon spawning.
- Fixed networked animations not being played correctly.
...and a whole lot more fixes that would make this already too-long patch notes post even longer.
Over the past few weeks, I've been really happy seeing the player base grow steadily, although slowly. If you have a couple spare minutes, it would be a huge help to leave a review on the Steam page. Thank you all for your feedback and support thus far!
-SCORNZ
Update 11.2.2017 (new enemies, control schemes, and balancing fixes)
It's been quite a busy week and I've been working on much bigger aspects of the game, but here is a small content update with some fixes. Here's what's in it:
- Brand new enemies!
- There are now new enemies that appear on the first few floors to make them more interesting.
-The Floating Mage shoots flaming magic at the players and has armor to protect it's vitals. It can only be killed by a swift strike to the head.
-The Face Masked Goblin adds some randomness to the normal goblin, protecting it's head from critical blows. The player must find an alternative to effectively killing this enemy. There are half masked and full masked goblins.
-The Helmet Orc has a durable helmet on, and cannot be hit from the front or back in the head. He also has a special, devastating overhead blow which deals massive damage.
- Control schemes that allow for single controller and double controller use.
-Switch between using the classic single controller option (both controllers have the same control scheme) or the new 'double controller' option (right controller to rotate and left to move).
- The first floor is now much shorter, serving its purpose as an 'introductory' floor much better than previously.
- Fixed the constant sword sounds even when there was no meaningful hit.
- Fixed sparks always being created on collision with enemy swords.
- Smooth rotation is now slightly faster.
- Dagger enemies now move much slower.
If you have some spare time and would be willing to leave a review on the game, it helps me out a lot! Please feel free to leave feedback and suggestions here in the Steam forums or on the sub-reddit.
-SCORNZ
Update 10.26.2017 (world scale changed, ability to join games in progress, and performance improvements)
The first week has been going smoothly for Shadows in the Darkness and I really appreciate all the feedback I've recieved over the past couple of days. Here's what's in the new update:
- The global scale of the world was reduced by 15%.
-A lot of players reached out and told me that everything in-game felt massive, so I've scaled the world down by 15%. I feel that this has made a huge difference and everything feels much more realistic than before.
- Join multiplayer matches that are already in-progress.
-Originally, players could only join matches that were in the lobby, so there was a lot of waiting for players in order to start the game. Now, players can start the game, and anytime before the first boss fight, new players can join.
- Engine was updated to Unity 2017.2.
-This update brings some new performance enhancements to lower end cards such as the GTX 970.
- New locomotion option added.
-There is now trackpad-based arm swinger, which brings a combination of both the head direction and the position of the finger on the touchpad.
- Rotation options added.
-You can now select from 45 degree snap, 90 degree snap, and smooth rotation in the lobby.
- If players leave mid-game, the difficulty is adjusted accordingly when the next floor is generated.
- Fixed arm swinger locomotion not working if the tutorial is played again.
- Prevented players from older versions of the game joining players that were using an updated version.
- Removed pluses from the level up effect to prevent confusion with 'healing'
- Hit reactions of humanoid enemies lowered significantly to be more realistic.
- Fixed chests from occasionally disappearing after the player moved far away.
- Arm swinger locomotion was made a little bit slower.
I've spent this first week fixing bugs and adding small features (locomotion options, ability to join games in progress, etc.), but I'm going to change my focus to adding and modifying features. There will of course be bug fixes, however now there will be the addition of bigger improvements. Thanks to all who have made videos so far and left reviews, they are really helpful to growing this community. Please leave feedback/suggestions in the Steam forums or on the sub-reddit.
-SCORNZ
Update 10.22.2017 (multiplayer bug fixes, head-based trackpad locomotion, and small adjustments)
I've got a small update today, but it brings some important bug fixes and a few additions/adjustments. Here's what's in it:
- Head-based trackpad locomotion was added.
- This can be changed in the lobby along with regular trackpad movement and a head-based 'arm swinger' option.
- There is now a small vibration to indicate when a wand is ready to fire.
- Modified 'quick-rotate' tutorial for Oculus users to make it more clear.
- Fixed match name not being the player's name and always being 'default'.
- Fixed health bar not updating correctly for enemies in multiplayer.
- Fixed enemy's sword dealing damage even after death in multiplayer.
- Fixed gas-filled enemies not going through their death animation correctly across all clients.
- Made chests much easier to open and fixed bug where players could only open chests by grabbing the lock.
- Fixed bug where the top of the chest's rotation would not properly sync across all clients.
- Fixed chest positions in the library.
- Nametags no longer give a shadow showing the word 'null'.
- Fixed a bug where potions would be seemingly floating in mid-air when a player's inventory was closed in multiplayer.
-SCORNZ
Update 10.21.2017 (new locomotion options, quality settings, and bug fixes)
It's been a great first couple of days for Shadows in the Darkness and I'm really excited for what's in store. That being said, here's a patch which adds a few features and fixes some of the more apparent bugs:
- New locomotion options added.
- In the lobby, there are now options to change which type of locomotion is being used. The options are currently trackpad and a head-based 'arm swinger'. You can change these options on the wall beside the 'join game' lever.
- Fixed bug where graphics would automatically default to the worst option available.
- The game's default graphic setting was set to 'Fastest', meaning that there were no shadows, lighting looked weird, and the textures only showed a quarter of their normal quality. The option now defaults to 'Fantastic' and can be changed in the lobby at any time. It should look much better now!
- Trackpad speeds modified.
- Moving forwards will be the fastest direction when using trackpad movement. Strafing will result in a 30% speed reduction, while moving backwards will result in a 65% speed reduction.
- Fixed bug where player could walk through walls in certain corners at higher speeds.
- Player now collides with objects in the lobby.
- The 'start game' sword no longer fixes itself to an awkward angle upon grabbing it.
Thank you all for the suggestions so far, they've been really helpful. I will continue to look around the Steam forums and r/scornz on Reddit for bugs and more suggestions.
-SCORNZ
Shadows in the Darkness has been released into Early Access!
Shadows in the Darkness is in Early Acesss, so I would really appreciate it if any bugs found could be reported on the Steam forums or directly to me. I will work my hardest to implement suggestions from the community and make this game the best it can possibly be.
Descend into the darkness and have some fun!
-SCORNZ