The previous week in Overgrowth, end of April edition

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April 29th, 2017

Project status:

Most of the features for Beta 4 have been nailed down, and there are only a few bits of work left to complete. We will likely have a Beta 4 feature lockdown very early next week, and make a release to advanced_testing on Steam. Then it's just bug fixes before that beta is released.

This is one of the last betas before we complete the new campaign, and release the game from early access.

Anton did some work to get all of the SUMLauncher mods to use the new menu system, so now a whole bunch more mods are working again with Beta 3. There are still some out of date mods, but a lot of content-only mods are working perfectly. An interesting fact: There are over 400 community-made mods in SUMLauncher.

The Steam Workshop release has gone very well, with no major problems (besides a few mods just being out of date). We mostly just have a bunch of people enjoying the new way to get mods. Thanks to all you testers for your help!

A reminder - If you want a Steam Workshop testing invite, all you have to do is ask in the right place:

Team progress over the last week:

(This is not a complete change list for all of Beta 4 - check last week's post for the rest of that!)

Gameplay changes:

  • Dogs no longer throw weapons at you (...for now!)
  • Water now puts you out if you are on fire
  • Now there's a movement speed cap while in water
  • Plants don't slow quite as much now while you jump through them

Graphics changes:

  • Made motion blur work while freezing the world (` key), so you can move the camera around and still see the blur effect
  • Improvements to consistency for shadow detail over distance
  • Improved water character splash particle effect
  • Made new poly grass render double-sided
  • Made cloud shadows better match the clouds that were casting them
  • Tweaked insect particle counts (now the world is a bit less infested)
  • Improved text rendering for the mod "description" field in the new mod menu

Modding changes:
  • Added the ability to name objects in the scene (will be useful for scripting mods)
  • Worked on improved (real!) prefab support
  • Re-added some assets that we had removed that were being used by mods
  • All mods in SUMLauncher have been updated to support the Beta 3 menu system
General improvements and bug fixes:
  • Many performance improvements on both GPU and CPU utilization
  • Improved caching and cache invalidation when deactivating mods
  • Fixed bugs with arena/versus/tutorial game modes in internal_testing (not spawning enemies, showing game-mode specific UI, or triggering game-mode specific logic)
  • Fixed split screen setting having no effect from pretty settings menu (always worked from top menu)
  • Fixed bugs launching game on Linux when using Mesa (now requesting OpenGL 3.2 core context instead of compatibility)
  • Added better error messages upon crash, such as listing which mods are activated
  • Improve detection of rapid clicks
  • And several other small bug fixes...
New campaign improvements:
  • Worked on another pass at the story for new campaign (not in game yet)
  • Fishing village - Reduced details in non-central areas, improved player path through level
  • Watchtower level - Improved NPC/enemy placement, visuals
  • Bayou - Major rework to add player path through level and add shape to the level
  • Water cave - Did a major art pass on it, and another pass after critical feedback
  • Sky ark - Improvements to ambient sounds
  • Minor tweaks - 2, 4, 17, 20
In-progress work (some of this may be present, may not quite be finished):
  • Worked on controller support in menus
  • Worked on adding steam workshop mod voting in game, in mods menu
  • Worked on better error messages while mods are set up incorrectly or data cannot be found
  • Worked on some enhancements to navmesh generation
  • Worked on adding automatic saving of play progress to mod campaigns

Posted in Overgrowth Art Videos by David Rosen