The Unwelcomed
December Update
Happy Holidays! We hope you've all found some great deals on the various steam sales that dot the landscape for the last few months of the year. It's our favorite time to grab some great titles and spend time with our friends and families.
Development continues on polishing and re-inventing some of our systems to ensure smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience. We're re-tooling a bit for Oculus support to help with specific issues on the platform as well as adding some additional love to the non-VR edition to help make the game much more enjoyable for all players.
We would like to thank the community for being supporting and patient as we continue to work on this game as we are a very small, very new group of developers and as we delve deeper into the game development process we are learning how much we really don't know.
Happy Holidays from everyone here at The Unwelcomed.
October Update
Development slowed a bit during the summer due to our devs wanting to get out of their dark caves and go do things in the sunlight. Now that we've managed to corral them back into their pits of despair, we are making forward progress again.
Thank you all who have submitted information from our betas, we look forward to implementing many of the suggestions provided. For those who have been waiting for our next major release, we don't have a specific timeframe, we do hope to have something out by the end of the year at the latest.
The Unwelcomed v1.27 Release Notes
Minor update and fixes in this release. The most notable on our side is the update to Unity 5.6 to better support our coding and feature set. It has also improved stability and we hope to have an updated path fixing the known issues in the near future.
Thank you to all our testers and players!
The Unwelcomed - Release BETA
As we start to close in on an actual release of the game, we have setup a BETA branch in order to allow more players to test out what we are finishing up and to help us find any issues early on. If you'd like to participate, simply right click on our game, go to properties, then click on the 'Betas' tab. Select 'Beta' from the pulldown and your game should start to update.
Once you have selected the Beta branch, to play the beta edition, simply right click on the game and select either VR or non-VR BETA play options. The default play options will launch the normal game from our last release (v1.25 as of this writing).
Sometimes the beta will work better than the previous release; sometimes it won't. Be prepared as the beta is not QA tested nearly as much as our actual releases (and we sill miss things in those) but sometimes we get lucky.
If you have any issues with the beta, please feel free to post on our Release BETA Feedback board and we'll get back with you as we can.
-The Unwelcomed Team
The Unwelcomed v1.25 Release Notes
We've been working on updating some of the older KB/M interfacing to ensure a better experience for our non-VR players. This update contains a few minor fixes in game mechanics in general, but primarily contains fixes and updates for KB/M players.
KB/M Fixes and Updates:
- Fixed inability to walk with an object pulled too close to the player.
- Added new 'key inventory' to keep track of keys and to make opening objects simpler.
- Reduced size of collider on player to ensure ability to get close enough to objects to inspect them.
- Keypad 3 in Room 3 was bugged, it should now be working as expected.
We hope that this helps with the non-VR experience! As always, please let us know if there are any additional tweaks we can provide to make our game experience better.
Known Issues:
- We've had a few players detail some issues with the game crashing apon entering Room 1. We are currently researching the issue and hope to have a fix soon.
- Additionally, in Room 1, after sending down a random item to the basement, a letter arrives detailing an item was sent up, but it never actually appears. This item is optional to the room, but we will get it fixed up in the next patch.
- In Room 3, placing and replacing fuses in random slots can cause the keypads to not light up. Workaround is to only place them once.
Thank you to everyone who has provided us feedback. It helps us to make a better game for all of you!
The Unwelcomed v1.2a Release Notes
We found a few glitches in our previous v1.2 release.
Resolved Issues:
Room 3: Keypad one randomization had a typo in one of the notes. The number is now correct.
Room 4: Thunder and lighting timing is no longer set to debug mode and will not occur every 30 seconds
Room 1: Added additional vegetables to ensure there is enough for cooking
Thank you all for your feedback!
The Unwelcomed v1.20 Release Notes
Just in time for the Summer Sale! This release details our 4th and 5th rooms, along with a new game mechanic, breakable objects, as well as Oculus Rift support!
As a note, the Summer Sale will be the best price we've had on the game since launch, and will be the last time we offer this deep of a discount until we fully release the game later this year. Get it now while it's cheap!
TL;DR - For those who just want the short list :-D
- Order of rooms has changed.
- Oculus Rift Support
- 2 New rooms
- Breakable objects, Cuttable Objects
- Dynamic Puzzle Answers (keypads and papers randomized)
- Height Adjust Menu Option Works
- Spiders!
- Some crashes have been reported, we're tracking down the issue.
Updates and Fixes in this Release:
- Oculus Rift Support!
- Revamped Room Puzzles. Objects may be shifted around and new items may work in the place of old items.
- Updated several of the old notes left in the rooms to provide better clarity on puzzle clues.
- Revamped Room order by difficulty - The Bedroom (previously room 1) is now room 4. Room 1 is now the kitchen; Bon appetite!
- New Room: Kitchen - Come try your hand at a little cooking and maybe make a friend along the way. (Room 1)
- New Room: Kids Room - What's horrifying to most people? Children! Come play with us... in the new Kids Room (Room 5)
- Room 4 Bedroom: Updated clock to only be accessible after the bookshelf has been triggered to provide more insight into why.
- New Breakable Objects - Glasses, Bottles, Crates, Barrel Lids, Small Stools, and other items can now be destroyed by smashing them on a hard surface or by finding a large item to crush them with.
- New Cuttable Objects - Some objects like ropes and produce and be sliced with sharp objects.
- Updated doors in foyer to handle our new layout. We now have a total of 8 room entrances on the first floor.
- Change in Behavior: Candles will now light when touched to any flame.
- Revamped LightSwitches to handle multiple LightBulb objects correctly.
- Added new Steam Achievements: Tutorial (Complete the Apartment), Room 4 Completion, Room 5 Completion
- Fixed: New drawer script now keeps items in place while drawers are moving without distorting scale on the objects.
- Fixed: Minor typo in Room 3 where one of the plates details 'first' instead of 'First'
- Added dynamic text capabilies to notes and diaries.
- Added puzzle info randimization. Sorry folks - Keypad values are now dynamic and will be different for each playthrough. Additionally, notes and plates may also provide different information on each playthrough.
- Fixed: Players are no longer able to open two menu's
- Fixed: Menu no longer appears 'below' the player in room that have elevation changes.
- Menu now removes room around player to ensure visibility.
- Options menu has been updated:
* Reset button for the current room in case you destroy or lose something important. This will restart the current room from the beginning. Hover for 5 seconds to reset.
* Height adjust now works as expected with all teleporter types.
* Ability to remove Spiders!
* Ability to unlock all doors to wander around and enjoy the rooms ++Disables achievements until the next run of the game++
- Many, many other minor fixes, updates, and additional polish to various mechanics and objects.
Known Issues:
Room 3: KeyPad 1 - The paper is incorrect in one instance of the random code, ending should be 50, not 20.
Currently, the player has the ability to interact with objects inside closed/locked objects using other objects or grab them directly.
If you attach a paper to the corkboard in room 2, you can attach random objects to the paper as if it were a corkboard.
When players grab the candle and turn it, the flame stays upright (correct), but the start point of the flame drops below the wick.
Due to the complexity of the new systems, we've also managed to introduce some instability, there are a few random scenarios that may crash the game. If this happens, please send the log files over to support@theunwelcomed.com
We have now updated the KB/M version to be parallel with the VR release. This does have a few bugs however:
KB/M: Highlighting on objects is 'fuzzy' or 'broken lines'.
KB/M: Getting too close to the barrels in room 1 causes the player to 'Sink'
Development Roadmap:
These are things we want to see implemented at some point. Some are also refinements of existing mechanics. If you have made a suggestion via our discussion board, it will probably end up here!
As we get closer to the actual release of our game, we have started to remove some items from the roadmap as they are either too time consuming, or not something that we feel we can implement well enough to release.
We realized much too late that some of the previous items required much more time and ability than our small team has available, and so we've had to omit some of our favorite ideas in lieu of actually creating a completed product.
These ideas and features are in no particular order and we'll be adding and removing them from the list as time goes on, but we'll post the most current items with our release notes.
- Save state in case you have to bail in the middle of a room
- Multiple endings based on room solve rate/time
- Additional puzzle randomizations and mutations
- Continued improvement on the hands and movement models
- More Puzzles!
- Additional ambient sounds to keep players on their toes
- Additional achievements for exploring the rooms
- Steam Trading cards
June Update
We hope all of you have been enjoying our latest release of The Unwelcomed. While we know that there wasn't much in the way of content, hopefully it shows that we are always continuing to look for ways to improve the player experience. Our next release, should everything stay on track, will include at least one room, Oculus Rift support, and other improvements to the player experience.
Thank you all for your continued support of the game and being such a great community. We've been overwhelmed with the positive support and comradery from the steam community in general. A special thank you to all the members who have worked with us directly over the last several months.
The Unwelcomed v1.1a Release Notes
We found a few glitches in our previous v1.1 release.
Resolved Issues:
VO, SFX, Ambient Sounds, and Music were not completely isolated to each audio mixer, which resulted in some VO's being extremely loud and unexpected when VO's were disabled along with other items playing when they were disabled and others not playing when they were enabled.
Hand models had an erroneous collider when starting each room - this was remedied by touching a pointer zone (area where the hand becomes a pointer). We fixed the initialization script for the hands and it has gone away. It presented itself as being able to nudge objects with the hands, and in some cases pushed the item out of the pickup collider causing issues with ability to pick up some smaller objects.
Known Issues:
After completing room 3, you are sent to our 'end room' which looks a lot like our starting room for the game. The Foyer picture does not take you to the foyer as expected. Instead, it takes you into the tutorial apartment level. This will be fixed in our next release.
Thank you to everyone providing feedback on these issues, we appreciate your comments!
The Unwelcomed v1.1 Release Notes
Good news everyone; We have a new release with the newest version of VRTK and SteamVR! This has been a long time coming, and we would like to apologize for the time it has taken to get this release out the door. It was expected to take a bit longer than our usual timeframe, but we were not prepared for the level of rework that was required when updating our internal frameworks. The good news, moving forward, we should be able to offer many more options for puzzles, interaction, movement styles, and supported VR hardware.
As always, please let us know of any bugs or glitches that you find via our Steam forum and happy gaming!
Updates and Fixes in this Release:
Reworked all interactable objects to work with the new VRTK3 system.
Reworked all puzzle interactions and movements to work with the new VRTK3 system.
New highlighting system is now in use. Rather than tinting the material, we now create an outline on the object mesh.
Highlighting also applies to objects you can use on other objects. This should simplify finding which objects can work on different elements.
Light bulbs now correctly handle emissions for on/off.
Brand new in-game menu, accessible at any time via the 'Menu' button on the controller.
Player options now include:
- Hold to pickup: Enable/Disable
- Audio - SFX, Ambient Sound, Music, and Voiceover volume as well as enable/disable controls
- Locomotion: Teleport and Trackpad Walking - more to come!
Migrated all existing snap points into the new VRTK snap point script, which now includes highlighting of location
Fixed: If you manage to touch two snap points with the same supported object, it can confuse the system and attempt to snap to both locations simultaneously.
Fixed: Attaching a sticky note to a corkboard can have unintended consequences for the sticky note.
Updated teleportation pointer to straight line for compatibility with new menu system
Reworked fuse puzzle in room 2. Fuses now snap to any location. Button should be easier to access as well.
Reworked fuse puzzle in room 3, fuses are no longer colored to indicate that they can be used in any slot.
A few things to note about KB/M support:
In order to handle the new VRTK subsystem we have had to put a hold on our development for the KB/M version of the game. This specific release (the executable) does not support KB/M at this time. We have left the older version 1.00 executable in place and now list it as an exclusive option when launching the game.
Known Issues:
You can trigger two menus (one from each controller)
Height on the menu's are fixed, thus if you are 'above' the standard plane, the menu will be in the ground (or fruther below)
Collision events on some objects can loop indefinitely under some circumstances.
Floor height Calibration does not take effect in this release (we have attempted to increase the height slightly to compensate for extreme cases)
Ability to change hand models for controller models does not work in this release
Currently, the player has the ability to interact with objects inside closed/locked objects using other objects
Some object highlighting is hard to see (doors in apartment)
Development Roadmap:
These are things we want to see implemented at some point. Some are also refinements of existing mechanics. If you have made a suggestion via our discussion board, it will probably end up here!
These ideas and features are in no particular order and we'll be adding and removing them from the list as time goes on, but we'll post the most current items with our release notes.
- Room editor mode for users (workshop compatible)
- Save state in case you have to bail in the middle of a room
- Reset button for the current room in case you destroy or lose something important
- A library of puzzles to use interchangeably in the rooms to support some of our other features
- Procedurally generated rooms and/or puzzles
- Multiple endings based on room solve rate/time
- Puzzle randomizations and mutations
- Continued improvement on the hands and movement models
- More Puzzles!
- Additional and deeper storyline content
- User Options:
1. Button Assignments for both VR and KB/M
2. Pick your voiceover - Male, Female, other?
3. More Robust Floor Adjustment - VR floor adjustment as we all know not all rooms calibrate the same
4. VO Subtitles