Since we've added placeholder buttons to the menus and the particulars of the final form of Paint the Town Red is now quite clear to us, we thought it would be a good time to talk about the plans for the upcoming major updates. We don't want to talk too soon about dates or list out each remaining update up until version 1.0 this early, but we do have a plan for the next couple of major updates and know what comes after. Note that some aspects of these plans could always change.

Version 0.6 - Co-op Multiplayer

The next major version will feature the co-op multiplayer we've been looking forward to including for some time. We haven't decided on an exact player count, but more than 4 seems unlikely due to the level sizes. The goal is for you to be able to play with friends or join servers with random players in any Scenario level, the Arena, user created levels and Beneath. There are many technical challenges in developing the multiplayer netcode with the amount of enemies we have and their dynamic obstacle avoidance, the voxel damage and dismemberment, and the large number of physics objects in the levels. To that end we will have multiplayer testing through the 'earlytests' BETA branch of the game in Steam at first while the co-op feature is tested and finalised. We're hoping to have the first version of this made available within the next 2 weeks.

Version 0.7 - Level Editor

This is a commonly requested feature and one we're really excited about adding. Our intention for the level editor is for it to be easy to use and easy to jump in and out of playing the levels for testing and tweaking. We'll be using Steam Workshop to handle uploading and downloading of the custom levels. Weapons and props from all the different scenarios in the game will be available in the editor and you'll have the ability to create any enemy from the game, modify their attributes and set their pre-combat animations, etc.

Major Features Beyond 0.7

It's too early to put version numbers to features after version 0.7, but we have the following major features planned. Beneath A Rogue-like mode in which you'll try to fight your way through a series of randomly generated levels against many new types of enemies, many of which are completely different from the humans of the current levels. If you make enough progress on the main path or on the secret alternate paths towards different endings, you can unlock more abilities and weapons to start with on future runs. Beneath will also provide context and back-story to the game as a whole. We've already made some of the coolest stuff in the game for Beneath and we'll be discussing it in greater detail later. More Arena Challenges We have a lot of Arena challenges still to add, but we'll be rolling them out slowly to allow them to contain newer content. Many of the new enemies from Beneath will be in upcoming Arena challenges as well as many more trap types and weapons. There are a number of gameplay improvements to the Arena coming also including new enemy attacks and trap interaction. Endless Arena An endless Arena challenge will be added that keeps adding more and harder enemies as well as changing up the traps to see how long you can survive. If you can keep your tactics and kills interesting the crowd will throw new weapons into the Arena. This will also work with the co-op multiplayer. We'll likely add this soon and then continue evolving and adding to it as more content from Beneath because available. Scenarios We are planning at least 1 more Scenario level with the possibility of more, including new Scenarios post release. With new Scenarios we can add more content to be used in the level editor for user created levels. We'll also add new fun weapons and props solely for use in the level editor.

Other Upcoming Changes

We have a number of improvements coming to the voxel system soon that will eliminate bugs and help increase performance. For the new enemy types in Beneath we're setting up a pipeline for getting different voxel objects into the game. There's a possibility that could mean custom voxel enemies for mods through Steam Workshop, but it's too early to be sure. We'll also be adding new attacks for the current enemies as well as new tactics for when multiple enemies are chasing the player. Our goal is to add enough unpredictability and variety to enemy behaviour to also keep you on your toes and adjusting your tactics. We'll be continuing to talk about what we're working on and what's coming up on the Steam community forums. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please come to the forum and let us know. Information about the multiplayer development and the beta rollout will be posted there first, and we'll also post an announcement when the first stable multiplayer beta is available.

[ 2016-07-26 00:17:58 CET ] [ Original post ]