Previous two weeks in Overgrowth - Early July

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July 8th, 2017

Project Status:

Yesterday, we finally put the lid on bug fixes and got Beta 4 out the door. There's a few small things we are going to hotfix very soon, but they should not impact many people.

We've been spending the last two weeks on bug fixes and continuing to polish the new Overgrowth campaign. This means doing anything from gameplay tweaks, to tutorial implementation, to level changes, to buffing or nerfing enemies, to rewriting chunks of the story's script. We're still working out how many betas are left (if any!) before leaving Early Access.

Gameplay changes:

  • Added loading screen images for Lugaru campaign
  • Made auto ledge grab a togglable option
  • Made characters a little less likely to self-immolate on campfires
  • Made loading screen text wrap if too long to fit on one line
  • Fixed issue with camera rotation after skipping a dialogue
  • Fixed bug with saving progress on lugaru campaign
  • Improved text alignment on death "click to continue" message, and fixed bug where it was appearing upon pause

Graphics changes:

  • Tweaked brightness of reflective items on waterfall arena level

Modding changes:

  • Added Object::GetPlayer function to angelscript, so mod scripts can tell which characters are the player
  • Fixed bug that didn't allow you to set color style property in from-script UI code
  • Some improvements to script change hotloading for reference types
  • Moved level loading images to their own folder, so it's easier to find levels in File -> Load
  • Fixed some debug UI drawing leaving persisting images/lines while time is frozen
  • Worked on some improvements for "Selected item" properties window
  • Made menus display the currently bound key commands instead of static strings
  • Added "new level" and "open level" shortcut keys (now they actually work, instead of just showing up in the menu), and made them rebindable

General improvements and bug fixes:

  • Fixed bug with particles merging into each other (visual glitch when many fires + slitting throat)
  • Fixed issue with fire texture persisting on character after death
  • Fixed bug on nVidia cards with opaque white halo around plants, water, etc, when AA turned off and simple shadows turned on
  • Fixed bug where "debug level" setting was causing crashes on start on some computers
  • Made some cases of a missing texture no longer be a fatal error/crash while loading
  • Removed texture color space warning log spam
  • Reduced texture loading log spam
  • Reduced mod loading log spam
  • Worked on removing deprecated UI code from old UI toolkit (but didn't check it in to deployed branch)
  • Began work on improving nav mesh behavior (updated library, removed some old code, fixed some bugs in library, regenerated existing nav meshes)
  • Fixed allocation bug related to blood textures
  • Refactored some scripts to make them work better with hotloading
  • Fixed crash bug when switching from complex shadows to simple shadows (or vice versa)
  • Deal better with texture handles when texture cache file is determined to be corrupt
  • Fixed bug loading when navmesh .xml found but a missing navmesh .obj
  • Fixed some deployment problems so we have to worry a bit less about missing files
  • Fixed some debug collision mesh drawing problems

Performance changes:

  • Improved loading speed of Lugaru campaign menu by shrinking images
  • Improved loading times/memory/disk usage of loading images by shrinking them to 1080p res

New Overgrowth campaign:

  • Fixed some floating objects, made enemy in first cutscene not teleport, combined trees to be single objects for better load times in slaver camp level
  • Hooked up arena crowd sounds/music to new OG campaign arenas
  • Tweaks to Magma arena dialogue and sounds (crowd cheering during dialogue, etc), and customized enemies a bit more
  • Tweaks to waterfall arena dialogue and sounds, customized enemies a bit more
  • Added waterfall barracks return back to campaign progression, and customized characters in it a bit more
  • Added knockout shield to turner and tweaked enemy difficulty and vision distance in water cave escape level
  • Tweaks to music and made turner and ally a bit more resilient in rock arena level
  • Made fight last a bit longer in cave barracks level
  • Customized prisoner NPCs a bit in dog base
  • Customized characters and updates to dialogue in garden duel level
  • Updates to dialogue, customized some characters, added ? over some characters, and tweaked nav mesh generation for Sky Ark level
  • Tweaks to environment in volcano platforming level
  • New level loading flavor text and gave Turner a backpack on White Flags Village level
  • Tweaked platforming on ice cliff level, fixed some misplaced decals, and fixed some problems with checkpoint triggering even if you fail the jump to the checkpoint
  • Put doors on holes-in-walls, fixed non-collidable trees, made trees each a single object to improve load times, and brightened up pitch black parts of ship on beach level
  • Fixed bridge floating in air in watchtower level

Posted in Overgrowth Alpha Art by David Rosen