Tom vs. The Armies of Hell
New Text Scaling Option
I added, in response to a user request, the ability to change your text scaling (for dialog/speech bubble text) and increased the default size. The setting is in the Graphics Settings menu. Let me know if there are any issues.
In addition, I fixed a few minor bugs, and a really annoyingly obvious bug with the first cutscene of the game not playing correctly (the ghoul wasn't hitting the PM). How I missed that is beyond me.
There is currently a known issue on the Mac version where UI Sliders (audio and the new dialog scale slider) don't work quite right (the right stick is mapped to up/down instead of left/right). It's on my list of things to fix but is harder than it aught to be, so I didn't want to try and jam it in tonight since it's already 2am ;)
-Sean
Input/UI Update Pushed to Default Branch
New Experimental Version
-Sean
Upcoming Fixes
-Sean
Officially Released!
The day has come. They said it couldn't be done. They said it shouldn't be done. They mostly said, "Huh? Tom vs the what now? Never heard of it." Either way, the game is finished and it's officially out of Early Access. Does that mean it has absolutely devoid of bugs/issues? Hah! Sure. Sure it does. That's totally how this works.
That aside, I hope you all like the game it turned out to be. A lot has changed since the first attempted Kickstarter. Some things changed because they had to (the original scope was far FAR too large for one person), and some changed because it makes the game better (I think the soul-based weapon system is far more fun at the scope/scale of this game than the old upgrade based one). What didn't change was my dedication to getting this game done.
So what's next? Well, for a while responding to issues people run into and adding any little things that slipped through the cracks as I find them. After that who knows, maybe I'll take a vacation for the first time in 4 years... Hah! Sure. Sure I will. That's totally how that works.
-Sean
Update Released for Mac Gamepad Issues
I've been pushing out rapid updates this week to address issues as we approach the official launch/exit of early access, which will be July 27th. One I wanted to specifically call out, because its slightly bigger, is that I changed a bunch of things related to how the gamepad controls work. Turns out, the 360 controller is much different on Mac vs Windows, even once you get a working driver.
Previously, it wasn't really working at all on Mac. That was my reward for not specifically testing gamepad on that platform... lesson learned. That should no longer be the case. In fact, both should now work the same, but be on the lookout for weirdness. If buttons don't map correctly in the controlls menu on either platform (ie: you press the A button and it tells you you pressed the dpad, or anything like that) please let me know. Like I said, I'm 90% sure I got it all right, and I ran my own tests, but any change to something like that makes me nervous so I wanted to give fair warning.
-Sean
Mac Version Live and Impending Official Release and Price Adjustment
One thing I wanted to mentioned before it happens though is that I will be adjusting the game's price up a tad for release. The current price was based on it being Early Access and not having much content in the begining, and I never changed it because, why would I, it was still Early Access. Now that its going to be a finished game, I wanted to get it in sync with other games of similar scope. Its actually going to be a small adjustment (I still want to be on the cheap-side comparatively), but I still wanted to mention it since that's the kind of surprise nobody likes. So, if you have been holding off buying the game, and you want to save a few dollars, buy it now ;)
-Sean
New Experimental Build With Checkpoints
I just pushed a new Experimental build (you can get it from your betas tab), that includes new barely tested checkpoint system. Now, instead of lives, you have 1 life, but respawn at your most recent checkpoint. So far I like this change, but we'll see how I feel after some more poking at it.
NOTE: It is really REALLY untested. I'll be testing it more over the next day or two, and then I'll be adding actual visuals to it (currently there is no animation/fx assotiated with the system, and no UI indications, so it just kind of... happens), so unless you want to see a really REALLY early pass on it, stick with the release build for now.
Upcoming Pre-Release Changes
So now that the game has been content complete for a little while, I'm turning my attention to making it as good asa it can be before release. I've been attacking some obvious things recently (Level3 boss being super broken and unbeatable, various obvious bugs that made things not work, and most recently an improvement to the settings menus and general control pad quality of life stuff...) and am now getting down into the more subjective territory. The goal is to make sure the game is not just functional, but fun, before I pull the trigger on exiting Early Access.
To that end, I have some planned changes I'm going to be trying out over the next week or so, and I'm curious if anyone has strong opinions about them (obviously no promises I'll agree, but I'd love to hear them).
Possible Changes:
Lives vs Checkpoints
One of my goals with this game is to make it hard, but enjoyable. Originally I had a model based on old-school games where you had a certain number of lives to complete the level. What I'm finding is that "lives" is old-school for a reason... its just not as fun.
My thought is to replace the current system of lives with a system based on a single mid-level checkpoint. Any time you die, you return to your previous checkpoint, and the level after that checkpoint resets. If you quit the game though, only your level progress is saved (not your checkpoint progress). This gives incentive to clear a level in a play-session (something I want to maintain), but minimizes the amount of the level you have to replay over and over to do so.
I believe this will also give an added benefit of making the game easier to balance/pace, as each checkpoint segment must be beatable on a single health-bar. So yeah, I'm going to be testing this out, and unless its horrible, it will likely be hitting at least the experimental build soonish. It sounds really easy to do, but the game was never setup to save level state so I'm pretty sure its going to be a pain in the ass... so we'll see how this goes.
Difficulty Levels
I've also gotten some feedback that for some people, they want an easy mode. I'm torn on this. On the one-hand, the game is very story-driven, and I'd like everyone to be able to consume the story. On the other-hand, I don't want to cheapen the game by making it too easy. My compromise, I think, is to add in a "Wimp" difficulty level or something like that. The default would remain pretty challenging, but there would be an option for those who want to just breeze through. I'm still kind of torn on this, but if you have any thoughts, definitely comment and let me know.
More Controller Polish
I did a big pass of making the game/menus usable with a controlpad this weekend. That's live now, but its not all I want to do. There's no single giant thing I'm planning, but I wanted to reassure controller users that I'm not done working on that yet. Aiming with the controller is currently kind of crappy, and that's definitely something I'm going to address once some of this other stuff lands.
Gathering Feedback Pre Release
- is there enough ammo? you should occasionally run out of your prefered type, but shouldn't be stuck on empty too long. currently the game drops more souls when you have no ammo, so i'm curious if that is working
- enemy count - how do you feel about the number of enemies? would you prefer less, but harder to kill enemies?
- cutscene skipping - currently you can skip almost all cutscenes by holding the interact button. is that enough? once you've seen a cutscene before, should any button press skip it (instead of holding it down)?
- difficulty - is the game impossible or just hard? or is it actually too easy?
I'm also interested in pretty much any other feedback you might have, that's just some general stuff on my mind. Bugs too. Hopefully not too many people got caught by the horrible save-corrupting bug, but I definitely want to catch any more that might be lurking before leaving Early Access, so anything you find, let me know.
-Sean