Overgrowth 1.2 - Combat improvements

We're back with another update for Overgrowth. This is the second large patch we've released since leaving early access.

This time we focused on AI and combat improvements on hardcore and expert difficulty settings.

Enemies are now more cautious, and their attacks are bit less predictable. They are better at evading jump kicks, and will roll away when they see them coming.

We've also reduced the attack magnet, and made the maximum shoulder-throw distance shorter. These make it harder to land hits (especially the jump kick).

Last, cats are a bit more tactical about throwing their off-hand weapon. They use to just throw it at random times. Now they throw it to intercept jump kicks, when you're running away, and when you're far away from them.

We've also made many bug fixes, some performance optimizations, and a bunch of improvements to the editor and to mod scripting.

Here's a summary of all the changes in the 1.2 release. You can find the full change log in this document.

Gameplay

• Added back per-character aggression setting (only applies in hardcore or higher), and made AI a bit more cautious on higher difficulty levels
• Disabled attack “magnet” in anything but "casual" mode
• Made AI roll away from jump kicks
• Made it harder to hit large characters as the difficulty increases
• Made shoulder throw require you to be closer at higher difficulty levels
• Made cat offhand throwing more fair

Performance

• Improved script performance of ragdolled NPCs
• Added setting to disable Depth of Field

Reliability

• Added better error messages for many game launch failures
• Added file backup system while while saving a map (at "../Overgrowth/Data/Levels/backup/")
• Print progress on loading screen when nav mesh is generating (if no loading screen image is present)
• Fixed error when showing nav mesh on OSX
• Improved non-english language file system support
• Fixed some problems with texture atlas bleeding when texture sizes changed (decals, mostly)
• Enabled stack trace error logging on OSX
• Fixed many crash bugs, especially when working with mods

Modding/editor

• Improved vignette and depth of field behavior in split screen mode
• Improved error messages in Mods menu
• Bumped up supported mod count to 256
• Added "Species" character script param (just affects behavior, not other script params or appearance)
• Added ability to specify character controller script per-character-instance or per-level
• Many editor UI improvements
• Many additions to Angelscript interface, including split screen controls, and hotspot->object connections
• Added angelscript debugger
• Made "press any key to continue" pulse, so you know level load finished
• Fixed problems setting sky texture
• Fixed issues with character eye target in the dialogue editor
• Fixed File -> New, File -> Open, and File -> "Save Level As..." hotkeys
• Fixed several editor bugs with grouped objects

Overgrowth story

• Made some enemies in Level 1 and Level 2 more aggressive, and more navigation clean up
• Fixed a few small bugs in other levels

Therium 2 story

• Fixed progress unlock and story completion icons
• Made it impossible to bypass Jairo's dialogue on Begin
• Made it impossible to slide up fences on Prologue
• Improvements to collision/stairs
• Made it so you can't pick up enemy weapon scabbards
• Fixed infinite Prologue meeting dialogue loop
• Replaced most static spikes with impaling spikes

Known issues

• There is an issue for some people where you try to launch the game and Steam crashes. We're still investigating the cause of this, but the known work-around is to launch the game from the install folder. Here is a troubleshooting thread here that might help you: Steam Thread
• There is a known performance issue when Steam is running. You can try quitting out of Steam and launching the game from the install folder, and might get a performance boost. We're looking into a fix for this issue as well.

These are just a few of the changes in this update; you can find the full changelog here.

If you find any bugs, and the instructions in "known issues" do not help, please email a full description along with your system specs to bugs@wolfire.com

Thanks as always for all the support! See you guys in Discord and the forums.

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