Hello everyone! Welcome to the twenty-fourth development update for Haunted: Att... Wait a minute, something's not quite right here. This update isn't about Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men at all! It's just a shameless plug for my next game! While this isn't really a regular update, and isn't about Haunted in particular, I thought it was time to share what I have been doing for the past few months. As I've mentioned a number of times before, I don't have as much spare time to work on game development as I used to. That has left me in a slightly awkward spot regarding the various promises I've made about updates for Haunted, as I've realised that I simply can't keep many of them - at least, not for now. Having thought about it a lot, I've decided that for the next few years I would much rather try something new. Two years is a long time to work on the same thing every day, and Haunted was in development for longer than that. It was a very ambitious project, especially considering I'd never released a full game before, and so I'd never had the chance to learn more about the process and what it takes to actually complete a game. As a part of this thought process, I realised that to get Haunted into the shape it deserves, a lot more work needs to be put into it - and I mean a lot. I'm talking redesigning levels from scratch kind of work, not something that can be done in a few small, sporadic updates. I would like to do all of this one day, but given how much time it will take I would rather leave it for now and come back to it fresh, complete with new knowledge and skills that I will undoubtedly gain from working on something else for a while. I understand that this will be disappointing for some amongst my (admittedly small) audience. But not to worry, because there is a new project to follow - my next game, Station 015! For the time being, I will only record my progress on this new project over on itch.io - it is still only a prototype at the moment, and an incomplete one at that. I will create a Steam page for it early next year once there is something to actually make available to players (after all, $100 is a lot to gamble on something that may never go anywhere), but for now you can read the first announcement post here. The development updates for Station 015 won't be as regular as the ones for Haunted - not for now anyway - but I do plan to cover the technical details of the new features I've been developing for it, and how the things I've learned from Haunted has influenced them. But that's it for now. As always, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-12-19 16:33:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the twenty-third development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. As I said in the release announcement, this update will be the last of the monthly updates and will serve as a postmortem of the project. Before I get into that though, I do feel like I need to set expectations for the future of the game. I will go into a bit more detail later, but unfortunately the game didn't do as well as I'd hoped based on the pre-release feedback. It's actually quite difficult - as I found out the hard way - to stay motivated to work on something that's had a number of negative comments (excluding constructive criticism), so I've decided to reduce my focus on Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men in favour of other pursuits. This does not mean that the game has been abandoned, as I still plan to release updates for it, however I have decided to reduce the scope of these updates for now. Of course, if something changes and the game gets popular again (for example, in a Steam sale or other promotional event) I may reconsider this decision, but for now I am much more motivated to work on a new project which I will briefly cover at the end of this update. With that out of the way, let's start with what went wrong so we can finish on a high note.

The Bad

It Always Takes Longer Than You Think

Trying to determine an accurate release date is a very difficult thing to do. When I initially set the release date for this game, I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to sustain my own interest in it so I went with a very overly-optimistic estimate to try and finish it in just over a year. However, it ended up taking almost two years, which meant I had to delay the game twice and I was very reluctant to delay it a third time. As I would later discover, managing a release is quite a stressful experience, and the pressure did start getting to me in the final month as I still had a few last things to implement and a rapidly approaching deadline.
Map 13 was finished just two months before release On a related note, I have since learned that it is a good idea to make sure the game is (mostly) finished well in-advance of the actual release. Making sure that the last couple of months or so are focused only on small things like bugfixes and polish can really help to ease the stress of actually releasing a game. Additionally, it gives time for reviewers to play the complete game and have their reviews ready for the release date, while also giving beta testers a bit longer to hunt for bugs. Lesson learned - don't commit to a concrete release date until you are really sure you can make it, and when you do give yourself a few extra months.

Mechanics Before Mapping

This was a mistake I made early on, long before the consequences became apparent which made it very difficult to rectify. Level design is very difficult to get right, especially when you have no feedback to iterate on. The first four levels of the game were made without getting any real feedback outside of a few friends, and when the demo was released there were still eleven more levels to make. I decided to focus on getting the rest of the levels done first and implement any mechanics they needed as I went.
A very early screenshot of Map 5 from the first development update! However, when the demo started gaining steam and more players gave their feedback on those early levels, I felt that trying to redo them from scratch would take too long. So, I did what I could to address more specific concerns but stopped short of throwing them out entirely. That was a bit of a problem though, as those early levels are very important for getting players hooked. One reason for this odd approach to level design was simply because I never expected to actually release the game when I started working on it more consistently about three years ago. At that point it was still only a hobby project and I had a lot to learn about good level design - knowledge that would help a lot when making the later levels. Lesson learned - figure out all of the gameplay mechanics first in simpler levels, then commit to proper level design when players are happy with the mechanics.

Develop Efficient Processes

Another reason why it was difficult for me to redesign the early levels was that I didn't have a very good workflow for making them. I used a mish-mash of engine features to produce them - for example, many levels used Godot's Gridmap nodes (essentially like a 3D tilemap where models can be "painted" in the world), while others used terrain generated in Blender with various assets added on top. The workflow for creating levels often involved flipping between several different tools and applications, and working around various engine issues with some of those features. This slowed down the level design process a lot, and while I was able to improve my efficiency over time it still wasn't a great workflow.
Map 7 was crafted with a mish-mash of some very oddly shaped Gridmaps... Ideally getting this right is something you do at the start of a project, because when you've been building a game using one way of doing things for a while it gets harder and harder to switch to different ways of doing things. It would be very inconvenient if, for example, the first half of the game was made one way and the second half another way - it could introduce bugs and other problems that are specific to only one half of the game. Lesson learned - I need to start my next project with a better way of doing things.

Don't Upgrade the Engine Half-way Through

OK, this one can be very awkward to deal with when a major new version comes out half-way through development. I started the project in Godot 3.4, and later switched to Godot 3.5. However, a lot of very important (and useful) features were coming in Godot 4.0, which initially released a few months after the demo. This created a huge dilemma for me, as I knew I needed some of those features but the game was already half-finished by the time I decided to upgrade. This upgrade set me back by a whole month and created a number of bugs, some of which I was never quite able to resolve.
Upgrading the engine was difficult but did provide some nicer visual effects Lesson learned - next time I won't get quite so jumpy if Godot 5 comes out half-way through my next project. Although, that seems very unlikely right now.

The Good

Release a Demo

Demos are really good in many ways. They are good for players as it allows them to try the game before buying, and they are good for getting feedback and building a community before release. Doing so also helped me to commit to finishing the game, which was quite daunting given that I'd never done so before.
Development Update #1, published a month after the demo was released, showed off some new weapons

Get Feedback Early

This is something I think I got right with how I managed the demo. I decided to participate in Steam Next Fest early on (only a few months after the initial demo release), and despite the game being very rough around the edges it still got way more attention than I was expecting which led to a good amount of feedback. I will definitely do the same for my future projects, but I will likely focus more on getting the store page and branding right first to make them stand out better.
Development Update #5, published a few weeks after Steam Next Fest, revealed the train in Map 7 and garnered quite a bit of interest

Keep Players Updated

Writing these development updates was very useful for two reasons - it kept players informed on what was going on, and it also helped me to break the game down into month-sized chunks. By breaking the game down like that, it became a lot easier to manage and decide what to work on, as I only had to figure out what I wanted to show off in the next update rather than wondering how I was going to actually finish the game.
Development Update #22 was the final update before release. The game took approximately 22 months (and a few weeks) to finish!

Get Good at Planning

If you want to see a project through to the end, you have to have a good way to organise and plan the next things to work on. After trying and failing to work on things ad-hoc, with a bunch of notes containing jumbled up ideas I wrote down as they came to mind, I decided to use an issue tracker to organise things properly. I think this single decision is why the game got finished in the first place - it was really important for helping me to understand what needed doing and allowed me to plan what to work on next. Later on I started using milestone tracking which became very useful for planning updates to the demo (and later the beta). If you want to make a game of your own, but it feels too daunting, it's a very good idea to start by using an issue tracker!

What's Next

As I said at the beginning, unfortunately Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men did not do as well as I'd hoped. This isn't anything I could have predicted, and I am very grateful to everyone who did decide to buy the game, however before release the game was getting a decently large number of wishlists which unfortunately didn't translate very well into sales in the first month. Of course, I can't know exactly what the reason for this is - it could be that wishlists are simply not a great indicator of how successful a game will be, and my expectations were just too high. Or, it could be that most players are waiting to pick it up in a sale. Nevertheless, I have decided to focus a bit less on Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men for now. I have spent the past two years working pretty solidly on it, and it is about time I took a break from it so I can return with a fresh perspective. I am more than happy with what I've been able to achieve, and at the end of the day this game is just the game I always wanted to make. It was the game I often daydreamed of making as a teenager when I should have been paying attention in school. But if I want to make use of what I've learned, I need to be able to move on from it and try something new.
Which means that this isn't the end of my game-development projects, far from it. I found it very difficult to actually take a break from my hobby, so after about two weeks I was already starting work on a new project - something where I can test new ideas and apply the things I've learned (especially the things I've mentioned in this update). That something will remain a bit of a secret for now, but I will say this - it will be a first-person horror game, and with any luck there will be something to show off by the end of this year. But why not, I'll throw in a screenshot as a reward for reading this far.
What lies at the end of this dark corridor...? But that's quite enough for now. If you made it to the end of this update then congratulations, that was a lot to take in! If there's any aspiring game developers among my audience, I hope this update proved somewhat useful to you as that was one of the reasons why I published this kind of update. For everyone else, I hope it's provided some insight into how a game is developed and why things tend to happen in the way they do. As always, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-09-04 16:25:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Things are going well in the first week for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men but unfortunately the game wasn't without a few obscure bugs that needed fixing. This quick hotfix should resolve the fullscreen issues some players were seeing when AMD VSR (Virtual Super Resolution) or Nvidia DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) was enabled.

Full Release Notes for v1.0.1

• Fixed fullscreen mode when AMD VSR/Nvidia DSR are enabled. There should no longer be a grey border around part of the screen in this setup
• Added a literal "X marks the spot" near the iron key in Map 2

These changes have also been added to the demo, which is at v2.0.1.

[ 2024-08-10 07:53:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I am pleased to announce that Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men has been released on Steam. Of course this is after there were a few last-minute bugs to fix but that's not totally unexpected.

What Now?

It's been a wild ride getting to this point, but it's finally time for me to have a break. Of course, that doesn't mean this game will be abandoned from this point on. There are still plenty of things I want to add to the game, but don't expect to see anything more than routine bugfix updates for a few months at least. Here's a few of the things I have planned for future updates:

• Unique icons for each achievement
• An "endless" mode, a new campaign mode where you fight until you die
• A music DLC
• Full controller support
• Steam Deck support

That's it for now. I will write up a retrospective of the entire project at the end of this month (or early next month) but from now on development updates will not be every month. As always, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-08-06 12:06:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the twenty-second development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update will be fairly brief as there isn't actually a whole lot to go over, other than the fact that, well, yes, the game has in fact been been completed on time and is due to be released tomorrow! This is quite exciting on its own but there are still a few new features to look at compared to last month. Before we start however, I would like to make it clear that as of this update being published, access to the beta is permanently disabled. This means that if you downloaded it then you will no longer see it in your library. With that out of the way, let's get started!

The Beast(iary)

This feature was planned a long time ago, but it was never really that important so I just left it for the end. The end came in July so it was finally time to have a look at it - and I'll let you in on a secret, that message displayed when you click the button in the demo ("Not available in the demo") was actually hiding the fact that the feature wasn't implemented at the time. The same applied to the achievements menu that I covered in the last update. Here is what it looks like now:
Each enemy has a unique description giving them some background information, and all of their animations will be displayed in sequence. Sometimes the information may help you defeat them, other times it will just poke fun at them. It's quite a small feature but I think it helps make the game feel more polished.

The End(ing)

In the beta there wasn't much of an ending after defeating the final boss, other than some scrolling text. That has all changed now as I have been hard at work making a much nicer looking one. Here's a sneak-peak of it:


I'm quite happy with the way this turned out, so I hope you will find this a bit more of an interesting (and satisfying) end to the game as well.

Done At Last

Yep, I can finally say that! It's quite hard to describe how I feel at the moment. This is the first real game I've managed to see all the way through to release and I guess I am very pleased with how things have gone. This last month has been surprisingly stressful as I didn't have much time to work on the game (surprisingly even less than in June) so it was quite nice that there weren't many things to cross off the list this past month. I hope it proves to be enjoyable for all those who choose to buy and play it but even if it turns out to be a complete commercial failure I won't be too bothered - I have gained a huge amount of experience doing this and I'm also looking forward to giving it another go so I can apply all of the new things I've learned for my next project. Almost two years ago I made a promise to publish one of these every month until release. I'm so pleased to say that I was able to keep that promise! It's unfortunately rare these days for game developers (especially the big ones) to keep promises so I hope those of you who have stuck around since the beginning appreciate this as much as I do. Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men will be releasing tomorrow, on 6th August 2024. Once again, a big thank you to all of those who played the demo and the beta, wishlisted the game and gave feedback that made this all possible. I know I have quite a small audience (as of writing this, hopefully that statement will age like milk!), but I still really appreciate the audience I have had so far. See you tomorrow for the release announcement, and thanks for reading!

[ 2024-08-05 19:47:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This is just a quick announcement to let everyone know that the beta for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men will be ending on Monday 5th August. I don't have a specific time that it will end just yet, but the next development update (the last one before release!) will announce this officially. This means that you have just this weekend to beta test the game and give any feedback if you wish to. I have opened up the signups on it so anyone can download it this weekend but after Monday it will be permanently deactivated (and will no longer show up in your Steam library). Many thanks to all those who have tested the game and given feedback. You've helped get the game to where it is now! Stay tuned next week as there will be a (short) development update which will go over what I've been up to this month, followed very soon by the full release of the game on Tuesday 6th August!

[ 2024-08-02 19:31:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.7.3 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update brings a fairly major change to Map 4, that being the addition of a special pickup to reveal part of the minimap, along with some smaller improvements and bugfixes.

Full Release Notes for v1.7.3

• Added a pickup to Map 4 that partially reveals the minimap. This pickup is not available on Feldmarschall or above
• Achieving ranks C and B on Oberleutnant difficulty no longer requires perfect play and should be easier. Ranks A through H have remained as before
• Fixed a number of out-of-bounds exploits in Maps 1 and 3

Known Issues

• Button highlighting in the menus may be broken when first launching the game in fullscreen mode. The buttons will still work when clicked on, however they will not change colour or play a sound when hovered over - this can be fixed by tabbing out of the game and back in again. This appears to be an engine issue introduced by Godot 4.2.1 and only seems to be a problem on Linux.

[ 2024-07-11 17:06:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the twenty-first development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. As I said in a previous update, I was expecting to have a busy June this time around, but as it turned out I had an even busier one than I anticipated back then. This means I didn't have as much time to work on the game this month and this update will therefore be a bit smaller than usual, but despite that I still managed to finish Map 15 and implement a few features and bugfixes, so I'm still happy with how the game is progressing. Let's get started with that most elusive of levels...

Dungeons and Draugr

This level is an interesting one. Early on in development I knew it would be nice to have an extra level somewhere, something for returning players to try and find. But, being so far removed from the rest of the game, it was a bit of a challenge trying to figure out what Map 15 should look like, and really just what the general theme of the level would be. Eventually I settled on a theme of resurrection, not of Russians or anything like that, but of the game itself. Wait, what does that even mean? Well, before Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men became Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men, it was going to be something completely different. To give an idea of what I mean by that, here is a screenshot from a very old build - over five years old in fact.
This build of the game is so old it actually predates my initial "boomer shooter" prototype. Back then the game was intended to be a more realistic psychological horror game of some kind, but it never really went anywhere. When the project morphed into the early boomer shooter prototype, these "dungeon" graphics were ditched in favour of something that was intended to look more like a First World War-style bunker (which itself would get ditched even later). However, I decided to resurrect these assets to use them for the secret level, as I figured it would make for a fun Easter-egg.
Not only were these assets resurrected, but I also brought back the same layout as the initial prototype level I made. This level was far from finished, but it was enough to serve as the opening of Map 15. But that wasn't all I brought back from the dead here. You may have noticed that something looks a bit off about the enemy in this screenshot. Here's a side-by-side comparison of him and the basic Dead Man encountered throughout most of the game...
That's right, this is yet another thing that I resurrected from the prototype. Five years ago, when the idea for this game popped into my head after listening to a certain Swedish power metal band's latest album (at the time), I got to work making the first enemy sprite for the game just to see if the idea would work. Naturally, on my first attempt I made countless mistakes with the model. Like, is he wearing mittens or something? And don't even ask about the strange way he reloads his (anachronistic) rifle... So why would I want this guy in the final game? He's clearly not up to the task of being the main enemy in the game. However, for a very long time he was just that - in fact, I only replaced him about a month before I initially released the demo just shy of two years ago. That means for the majority of this game's lifespan, this early prototype sprite was the face of it (literally, his face was the icon at first). It was hard not to get attached to the guy in that time, and so I knew I couldn't just cast him out of the game forever. So when I was pondering what to do with the secret level, I decided it would be a great way of keeping this ancient sprite in without affecting the rest of the game. And so there he is, reborn as Easter Egg Man. The bastard's pretty tough too for surviving this long, so watch out if you happen to play through this level! This stuff, on its own, was never going to cut it for a whole level though, so I had to come up with a few more interesting things to put in it. In the end I figured it would be nice to have a challenge level of sorts, a series of puzzles to solve rather than just straight-up shooting stuff. Here's what I mean...
How are you supposed to get across here? You'll have to take the hint when you get to it
You don't want to hang around in here for too long And of course, it wouldn't be much of a dungeon without, well, a dungeon...
This is where you'll find most of the health and ammo in this level

Achievements

This is the other big feature I was able to implement this month. Not only are all the achievements implemented, the in-game menu and popups are also done! As Steam has its own system for achievements, the in-game popups will only appear in non-Steam builds of the game, however the menu will be present in both versions.
You'll have to excuse the programmer-art icons at the moment. And don't worry, these are not the icons that will end up in the initial release either, despite the fact that I mentioned previously that custom icons for each achievement would not be coming until a bit later. Before release I will update the game's icon again and use that as the temporary icon for all achievements. If you've had the chance to play the beta and look at some of these descriptions, you'll probably have noticed that there are a lot of references here. Of course, the references may be difficult to spot until the custom icons are in place, but I took quite a bit of inspiration from the achievements in Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games, which are always fun to go for. In this screenshot you can see one of those references, Anti-Human Revolution. Can you guess the reference here? It's a bit of a double-pun, but I'll give you a clue - the icon planned for this one will show the main character wearing some nice sunglasses, at night of course.

Just One More Month

That is a scary heading to be typing. But it is true, there is just one more month left of development before I plan to finally release this game. As a quick recap from the end of the last update, here is what there is left to do.

• Implement the "beastiary" (the screen that shows the descriptions of all the enemies)
• Touch up the enemy sprites a bit (5 are left to do)
• Implement a secret "bad" ending
• Record some custom voice lines for the final boss
• Add an ending cutscene that plays while the end-game text is displayed

This list is three (fairly big) items shorter than it was last month. I don't expect the rest of these things to take very long, but there is always the chance that things will go wrong at the last minute so we'll see. I will only make a concrete prediction of the game's release date in next month's development update, as at that point the game will either be only a few days from release or it will still need a bit more work which will require a delay. Hopefully though, next month everything will be finished (including fixing a few bugs that have been found in the beta)! Stay tuned for the next update, and as always, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-07-01 19:58:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I am pleased to announce that the closed(-ish) beta for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men is now available and accepting sign-ups through Steam Playtest! This is a little later than I said it would be in the last development update, however it was only afterwards that I discovered that the beta build has to be reviewed by Valve separately to the full game, so apologies for the slight delay. This initial beta release contains all 14 of the base levels. The 15th (secret level) is also in there in a very bare-bones shape at the moment, but if you manage to find it then you can enjoy exploring what there is so far. Of course, it goes without saying that this is not a finished product and you should expect to encounter bugs. Please report any bugs you find in the bug reports forum. Finally, I have prepared a simple Google form for getting some more detailed feedback on the game (there is also a button to open it in the main menu). This form is completely anonymous and I won't see any of your personal information. If you do decide to beta test the game, please fill out the form when you are finished as this will help me improve the game further. You don't have to complete the whole game to fill out the form but please do try to get as far as you can before leaving feedback. Special thanks to all of you who have supported the game so far and have helped to get it to this significant milestone! Enjoy!

[ 2024-06-12 10:30:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the twentieth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. A lot has happened in the past month and to be honest, I've quite surprised myself with just how much I've been able to get done. Not only was Map 13 finished in record time, but (almost) all of the work needed to polish Maps 5, 6, 7 and 8 has been done. On top of that, the demo has been updated again, some extra finishing touches have been done for Maps 10, 11 and 12, a whole host of bugs have been fixed, and a new feature has been added to the main game to ensure that there will be a seamless transition from the demo. What all this means is, the game is finally ready for its first beta release through Steam Playtest! More on that later though, as there are a few videos to start this update off with.

Unlucky for Some

That's right, Map 13 is finally finished and it's time to reveal it. Without further ado, here's the video I'm sure many of you have been waiting for since the last update... [previewyoutube=Q-BpU2Q2Thg;full][/previewyoutube] Well that sure looks hard doesn't it? I died a lot while recording this video, and I also died a lot while testing it. Before you get scared off though, this was all recorded on the hardest difficulty, and it is designed to be punishing on that difficulty. However, it is not trying to frustrate players either - all of these deaths were avoidable by learning the layout of the map. The enemies in each area (each of the trials, if you will) always spawn in the same locations so they are predictable. This means that once you learn where enemies will be coming from, you can anticipate and prepare yourself much better for each area which makes the level much easier. It's a good idea to go secret hunting as well, there are eight secrets in this level and each of them will help you a lot with the next area. You've probably also noticed the last few floors are... interesting, to say the least. Aren't we supposed to be miles and miles underground down here? How can we possibly end up going outside? Who knows? Who cares? It's supposed to be hell!

That background though, that's quite something. This map has the unique feature of "dynamic fog", where the fog colour is slowly blended from the blues of Map 12 to this nice shade of red at the bottom. I think it really completes the look of these last few areas. For those of you who read the previous updates on the final boss (here and here) and are now curious, this new look has lead to some changes to Map 14's visuals as well...

I think this arena looks a lot more menacing than before, but that's just me. Let me know what you think of this change!

The Second Act

As promised, I also have some new gameplay footage of Maps 5, 6, 7 and 8. Some of this is just a refresh of older clips and videos, but this video shows off some areas of Maps 7 and 8 that have really only been hinted at before. Specifically, this includes the inside of the station in Map 7 (which was previously a bit bare-bones), the fights in the train carriages (which were a bit buggy before!) and also the full hundred-man fight in Map 8, which I'm sure many of you have been curious to see in action. [previewyoutube=4sMYA62CG4k;full][/previewyoutube] It will be interesting to see how people react to these levels when the game opens up to a full closed beta. Speaking of which...

What's Next

With all but the secret level finished, plus all the polish that's been done on it over the past couple of months, the game is finally in a decent enough shape for more players to actually try it in a beta release. I have just started investigating what I need to do to make use of the Steam Playtest feature for this and I hope to have something ready by the end of this week! Unfortunately, since itch.io doesn't offer a similar feature those players who want to play the game DRM-free will have to wait until the final release in order to do so. With 6th August only two months away, there can't be a whole lot left to do right? That does seem to be the case, so I figured that now would be a good time to provide a more in-depth roadmap containing exactly what features are going to be added in this time.

• Implement Map 15
• Implement the rest of the achievements (there's only about ~15 left now)
• Implement the "beastiary" (the screen that shows the descriptions of all the enemies)
• Implement the 3 bonus difficulties
• Touch up the enemy sprites a bit (5 are left to do)
• Implement a secret "bad" ending
• Record some custom voice lines for the final boss
• Add an ending cutscene that plays while the end-game text is displayed

That isn't a lot, and hopefully it won't take me all of the time I have left before release to implement it all. However, I did cut a few small features from this initial release:

• Achievement icons - this will be fairly time consuming as there are going to be around 54 to do
• Hats - each difficulty was supposed to get a corresponding "hat" for the player character to wear. For example, Feldmarschall would give the player a very fancy fur hat with the "deaths head" insignia on it like a true Prussian field marshal. These would be visible in both the main menu and on the player character in the HUD

These two features were considered not worth delaying the game over as they are really only cosmetic things that won't affect the gameplay. However, the above roadmap does not account for any major issues that may come up as a result of the beta period. If such issues arise that cause the game to be delayed until the backup date in September, then I likely will have the time to implement those little extras for the initial release. Anyway, that's it for this update! Next month you can look forward to the reveal of the game's final level, Map 15 - Dungeons and Draugr, the secret level. Until then, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-06-04 15:40:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.7.2 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update brings a number of bugfixes and smaller improvements, as well as some new cover art.

Full Release Notes for v1.7.2

• Update the splash screen artwork
• Added an epilepsy warning before the main menu
• Added an option to the graphics menu to reduce the intensity of flickering lights
• Fixed most issues with enemy pathfinding. Enemies should no longer get stuck around doors or the narrow corridors in Map 4
• Significantly reduced shadow pop-in
• Fixed a number of lighting bugs in Map 4
• Fixed highscores not saving correctly after the first highscore is added
• Tweaked the "logo" background
• Fixed collisions with some enemies that die before seeing the player
• Updated engine to Godot 4.2.2, which brings a few more fixes and improvements

Known Issues

• Button highlighting in the menus may be broken when first launching the game in fullscreen mode. The buttons will still work when clicked on, however they will not change colour or play a sound when hovered over - this can be fixed by tabbing out of the game and back in again. This appears to be an engine issue introduced by Godot 4.2.1 and only seems to be a problem on Linux.

[ 2024-05-27 12:09:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the nineteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This month has again been interesting - a couple of maps have had some much needed polish, but most surprisingly (both to me and, as I suspect, to you, if you read the last update), Map 13 is progressing very nicely! Before you have a chance to fully process that sentence, let's get straight into it!

The March to Hell

Wait, where the hell (pardon the pun) did that come from? Haven't I just spent weeks, months even, talking about how much of a pain this damn map was, and that I was very clearly trying to put it off and off and off again, until it ended up being the very last thing to get added to the game? What gives? Well, it is absolutely true that this map was proving to be a massive headache for me... up until sometime earlier this month, when the idea abruptly popped into my head. This level, with such a name as The March to Hell, had to be about hell in some form or another. I had some vague desires to make a level that looked a bit like Doom's third episode, Inferno, but with little more than that to go on I just couldn't picture it. I was then made aware of another Inferno (why is everything about hell called Inferno...), this one being a poem about hell by a 14th century Italian named Dante. Specifically, it was a more modern re-imagining of the poem, but using the same idea at its core - that being the Nine Circles of Hell. And so, here we have it - Map 13 at last...




This map will consist of a series of trials of increasing difficulty, each of which taking place across nine floors. Each floor has a different layout but adheres to one of three themes, starting with a continuation of Map 12's more industrial-style graphics, then descending into a more medieval look (reusing assets from Maps 4 and 5), and finally finishing off with some real hell-like environments that are very much inspired by Doom.
So, why does the game have a hell level now? And more importantly, did it actually need one? Well, personally I wanted at least one level where I could really test my creativity. Most of the levels in the game are based on Osowiec Fortress itself, and while I did take some creative liberty with the design of each level, at the end of the day ten of the fifteen levels in the game are directly based on maps and reference photos of the place. These maps also try to be (mostly) period-accurate, with the kind of backdrops you'd expect from a World War One game. Starting with Map 12, things deviate a lot from this design, but having only one level like this could feel a bit jarring. Having another, wackier level allows me to expand on some of the ideas and mechanics that were developed for Map 12.
Enjoy some spooky areas...
...Or outright dangerous ones! Make sure you don't blow yourself up in here Map 13 is easily the most linear map in the game, but hopefully with the variety of environments and the challenging traps it will still prove a fun and memorable one. There's still a bit more left to do for it before I can really show it off in a video - my current estimate is that it will be finished in just a couple more weeks. Once done, I will go back to polishing a few more of the existing levels (Maps 5 and 8), and with all of that done, I will make two new videos for the next development update - one for Map 13, and a slightly longer one showcasing Maps 5 through 8 in more detail. Speaking of polish, let's move on to what I've been up to in that regard.

Revisiting Maps 6 and 7

These maps were both "finished" over a year ago, however at that time a map couldn't really be finished as such. With the game still heavily in-development, both were lacking when it comes to the bits of scenery - simply put, a lot of the assets that are in the game now just didn't exist back then. Now, with nearly all the extra assets in place, it was a good time to revisit these maps and add those missing pieces.
The view of Fort III that you can now enjoy at the start of Map 6
An interesting plane crash through a window at the train yard

There's a bit more going on inside the station in Map 7 now...
...And a few extra assets to make the outside feel more like a real station
I had too much fun placing some of these corpses! Gameplay-wise little has changed here. This polish was all about bringing these two maps up-to-par with some of the latest additions (such as Map 10, and the more thoroughly refined demo levels). There's not a whole lot more to say here, so before I bring this update to a close I will just briefly mention something about the roadmap. Now that Map 13 has definitely not taken six weeks as I thought it would, the previously-announced release date of 6th August 2024 is looking a lot more certain! However, it is looking likely that I will have a very busy June and so I will be losing out on some development time I thought I would have when I last updated the roadmap. On the plus-side, I forgot to account for the two bank holiday weekends in May that we have here in the UK so that might make up some of the difference. Of course, none of this accounts for unforeseen circumstances that may crop up between now and August so nothing can be set in stone just yet. I thought this was good news overall in the end though! That's it for this update. You can look forward to a few more gameplay videos next month, including a proper reveal of Map 13 in all its glory! Thanks for reading!

[ 2024-05-01 17:25:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam's FPS Fest is starting very soon, so as is tradition at this point there is a last-minute hotfix to address a few bugs. Yep, you heard that right, Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men will be taking part in this promotional event - and in case any of you were wondering, this was the reason for the v1.7.0 update, the new trailer and the store page updates a few weeks ago! Full release notes for v1.7.1:

• Mashing spacebar to skip the intermission between levels will no longer crash the game
• Bullets should no longer warp through walls if you stand close enough to them
• Increased the view distance slightly. This should reduce some of the pop-in that affected some of the larger props

[ 2024-04-15 16:42:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.7.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. It turns out that when I said sometime this week in the development update earlier today, little did I know I actually meant today! This update brings a new highscores screen, many enhancements to existing mechanics, improved enemy sprites and more.

Full Release Notes for v1.7.0

• Added a new highscores section to the intermission screen. This section tracks the five best scores for each level
• Improved the enemy sprites. The Russians no longer carry around any Lee Enfields
• Added a bayonet stab attack for the Dead Man (the basic enemy)
• Added an option to the "Sound" menu to change the music played in the main menu
• Plates, cups and plant pots are now destructible
• Fire is now hot and will burn you
• Portraits, locked doors, large gates, artillery and certain signs are now interactive and display a message when interacting with them
• Added armoured cars as a new piece of scenery to Map 3
• Pickups are now bigger, brighter and have better contrast. They should stand out a lot more, especially in Map 2
• The switches required to progress in Maps 2 and 4 are now connected to the things they open with wires
• A number of minor bugfixes and improvements

Known Issues

• Button highlighting in the menus may be broken when first launching the game in fullscreen mode. The buttons will still work when clicked on, however they will not change colour or play a sound when hovered over - this can be fixed by tabbing out of the game and back in again. This appears to be an engine issue introduced by Godot 4.2.1 and only seems to be a problem on Linux.

[ 2024-04-02 16:02:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update is another interesting one as there's quite a lot to cover - first there's Map 10, then there's demo v1.7.0, and finally some more news about the future of the game along with a new trailer! Let's start with what the deal is with Map 10.

Pathway of the Damned

This map has an interesting position, both in the game and in the area of Osowiec itself. It sits neatly between the boss fight in Map 9 and the hordes of undead in Map 11, and covers the area between Fort I (the central hub of the fortress complex) and Fort II. Historically, this region saw a significant amount of fighting during the three major battles for Osowiec, as the Germans attempted to cut off supplies to Fort II. Here it is on the map of the site for context.
There are two major features of this area that I've captured in the design of Map 10. The first is the single road that runs between the two forts, while the second, and perhaps more notable, is the Biebrza river that runs through it. This river provided an interesting opportunity to add a significant obstacle in this level that must be overcome in some way - I recorded another video to show this off. [previewyoutube=W6eul8DVnSY;full][/previewyoutube] In the video I took the obvious path through the level - going straight across the bridge. Of course, this bridge is very heavily defended and there aren't many items to help you out until after you've crossed. This made it difficult for me as I already had quite low health and had to briefly take a detour to scrounge around for a few more med kits before attempting it. There are other ways to cross though - you can always swim under or around it! You'll want to be careful doing this though as your movement is slower and more restricted while swimming, making you an easy target. If you do decide to do this, you can enjoy attacking the defences from behind, with the added benefit of picking up the items before the fight.
The other unique feature of this map is something I've teased a little bit in the past - the corpses come alive! This actually applies to every corpse on the map. They can pose a significant challenge if you aren't paying attention to them - they won't wait around for you to dispatch a large group of enemies before deciding to join in. The saving grace here is that they only do this when you get too close, and there is a delay between each encounter which prevents things from getting too hectic. That being said, I had quite a hairy moment with only four health left at one point - this was on the hardest difficulty though, so don't get too worried about this map being a massive difficulty spike.
Another thing I've done with this map is make it a lot more open-ended - there are only two keys, one to open the gate and access the second half of it, and the other unlocks the exit. This makes the level a lot less linear and (hopefully) a bit more interesting to explore. One thing you can enjoy with a bit of exploration is a bit of train spotting. The train makes its return here for one final time, but purely as part of the backdrop for the level (so you don't have to worry about getting run over again!).

Another Major Update

v1.7.0 started off as just a more minor update to complement the more major changes in v1.5.0 and v1.6.0, making a few tweaks and enhancements here and there (one of which has already been covered in the last development update). However, since then it's actually ballooned way out of proportion and there is quite a lot to talk about for this upcoming release. The headline feature is actually a good example of something new that wasn't planned until fairly recently - there is now a highscores screen!
This improves on the current scoring system by allowing you to track your five best scores for each level. At the moment they are only displayed in the intermission screen between levels, but eventually there will be a button in the menu to view all highscores. This will also pave the way for implementing global leaderboards through Steam (itch.io doesn't really have an equivalent of this so unfortunately itch players will miss out on that one). Another big feature is a bit less obvious, but still quite important. The enemy sprites have had a much-needed refresh, cleaning up some rough patches and making them a bit more consistent. Here's the new Dead Man (the basic enemy):
Notably, he no longer carries an anachronistic Lee Enfield! Even better, that bayonet is not just for show - he will try to stab you with it if you get too close.
The Shotgunner also got a slight improvement:
While he too has a bayonet now, this one is just for show. Why stab when you can deliver a point-blank shotgun blast to the face!? The Officer has had some minor tweaks as well, but this was just a clean-up of the existing sprites and he will largely look the same as before. The last major new feature is focused on making the environment feel more "interactive". For example, you can now smash certain objects, including all those plates and cups on the dining tables:
In addition, a number of other objects will display a message in the HUD when interacting with them:

Finally, a bit of an oversight has at last been fixed. Fire is now hot and will burn you!
This last one is actually what killed me in the video of Map 10. Notice how I got slightly too close to the burning aeroplane engine?

What's Next?

That's a good question. I mentioned last month that the next trailer would hopefully include an actual, concrete release date for the game. Said trailer is now finished and uploaded to YouTube as an unlisted video (for now, as of writing). That means those of you who read this far can enjoy early access to it! [previewyoutube=3O3JU11z6m8;full][/previewyoutube] Yep, that's right. I've chosen 6th August 2024 as the release date for the game. I thought it would be very fitting to release the game on the anniversary of the battle that the game is (very loosely) based on. But hang on a minute - August isn't in Q2 is it? That's right - unfortunately I've had to delay the game once again. The good news is that this time the delay is not because I massively overestimated how much work there was left to do - instead I simply have less time to work on the game than I did last year. I briefly mentioned that my personal life had been a lot busier last month and that trend is only going to continue this year. That does mean I am not quite 100% confident that I will make this later release date either - more like 90% confident. I do have a contingency plan in the event that the game isn't ready for August, which is to release it on 25th September (the anniversary of the release of the demo). I'm 100% confident that I will make the September release date (at the moment). As a consequence of this new release date, it's once again time to update the roadmap for the game.

• Release v1.7.0 of the demo - this update is imminent and should be available later this week!
• Implement Map 15 - I have some assets for this level already, and I've also decided to reduce the size and scope of this level so it shouldn't take as long as some of the other levels did. This should be done by mid-April
• Make a start on polishing Maps 5 through 8 as well as cleaning up the other enemy sprites. This is to get the game ready for a closed beta (which will hopefully come sometime in June). This will likely take around one month, taking us to mid-May
• Implement Map 13 - I will allow six weeks for this, which will bring us to the end of June
• Finally, the finishing touches. I will implement the remaining achievements and the other features that I have planned, and fix any bugs etc. that come up from the closed beta. With any luck, this process won't take longer than the month of July and the game will be ready for release!

That's it for this update. You can look forward to seeing an announcement for demo v1.7.0 very soon - alongside this update there will also be another refresh of the store page (including the new trailer). Come back next month where I will be covering more on the mysterious secret level, Map 15, and perhaps some updated videos for the older maps. Thanks for reading!

[ 2024-04-02 09:21:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventeenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This month's been very interesting indeed - not only have I had a much busier personal life than usual, I've also had a system update gone wrong which led to me having to reinstall my OS. Despite all of that, and despite this month being the shortest of the year, I've still managed to accomplish quite a lot - the completion of not one, but two new maps! Of course, both had already been started (with Map 14 being covered in last month's update), but on top of that I also made good progress on Map 10 and should have it finished very soon! Once I'm done with that I will make a start on v1.7.0 of the demo alongside a new trailer, which will (hopefully!) reveal the exact release date of the game. While most of this update will focus on Map 11, I have also recorded a video of the final boss fight so stick around to the end if you are interested in watching that.

The Gaze of the Abyss

Remember this short clip from the itch.io release trailer?
This was covered in Development Update #12 but I will recap the story so far here. Map 11 comes after the first boss fight, where you defeat the right-hand man of the main villain. Naturally, doing so has greatly angered him and now he has a personal vendetta against you. In Map 10 you will witness the corpses of your fallen comrades being resurrected to fight you in addition to the Russians, but if you've made it this far then clearly that was not enough.
In Map 11, you will need to wait for an elevator to arrive - the elevator that will take you deeper inside Osowiec where you will uncover who is behind the resurrection of all of these Russian soldiers, and how he's doing it... But before you can get there, you are going to need to fight some enemies. Well, really you'll need to fight a lot of enemies. In two waves! Here's a video I've recorded showing it all in action. [previewyoutube=LlSGxoBFqS8;full][/previewyoutube] Now, I actually struggled to beat the level even on Oberleutnant (medium) difficulty in this video, so I had to make a few balance changes afterwards before I could even attempt it on Feldmarschall (very hard - I have to test this difficulty to make sure each level is actually possible). There will likely be further changes to come once I start getting feedback from the closed beta, but you get the general gist of this level.
Instead of a more open environment with plenty of areas to explore, this fort (Osoweic's Fort II) is small and densely-packed. There are several sets of stairs leading down to the central area surrounding the elevator, which form a number of choke-points that allow you to funnel enemies in to grenades and other high-damage, high-spread weapons (such as the Trenchgun and Flammenwerfer). You do have to be careful though, as if you stay in one spot for too long you will start getting hit by enemies sneaking up behind you. And, once you think you've got it all sorted, you'll kill the last enemy and the second wave will begin...
What it can look like after killing everything on the hardest difficulty You can see in the video I was caught with my pants down at first, being stuck in the centre and quickly surrounded. I have since tweaked this so not all the enemies are resurrected at once, but it is still a challenge as you have a limited amount of time to find a good spot to deal with the start of this wave. Generally, the centre is a bit of a trap, having lots of health and armour pickups but being very difficult to manoeuvre in at first. It's better to clear out some enemies before trying to get those goodies.
Jump down too early and you can get cornered...
...Which is especially easy in this area as there's only one way in and out! If you're a bit worried about this map being too difficult, that's understandable as it is supposed to be a challenge. However, the difficulty here is actually a bit more dynamic than I make it seem in this video - I was trying to kill every enemy, but this is absolutely optional and you can exit the level at any time once the elevator has arrived (after approximately ten minutes). This can even be done without triggering the second wave! So, if you happen to struggle with this level you can make it easier for yourself by focusing on survival rather than aggressively taking out every enemy.

Music

There's been a lot of positive feedback on the game's music so far, which has been a pleasant surprise to me as I don't have much experience in this area. I know some of you have been asking me to release the game's soundtrack somewhere, and I do have plans to do just that after the full release. Much of the game's music comes from free MIDI assets I found and later edited, with only a few tracks being original compositions from myself, so before I make a soundtrack DLC I will reach out to the original creators to check if they are OK with this. All but one of the tracks are public domain so I don't expect there to be any problems but, you never know. While you wait for this though, I did think of a little something extra that I could add to the demo...

This new option sets the music to be played in the main menu screen, and will be included in the v1.7.0 update. I'm sure many of you will enjoy this but the setting will serve a secondary purpose of allowing me to get feedback on some of the other tracks that have not been revealed yet. It's also worth noting two more things: these track titles are subject to change (if I can think of better names), and Map 15's music has not been finalised yet (I have two potential tracks for this map and I haven't decided which one I want to use). You can therefore expect this menu to look a little different when the demo update is released.

Undying Lair

Spoiler warning! Before I finish off this update, here is the video of the final boss fight. This video will remain unlisted on my YouTube channel so no one accidentally spoils the ending for themselves. [previewyoutube=BJ3-j4xY1UY;full][/previewyoutube] [spoiler]Well, I hope I didn't make it look too easy! This fight is designed to be more straight-forward than the first boss, but only once you've learned his attack patterns. I also made sure that on the harder difficulties there is actually not enough ammo to finish him off unless you unlock the secret area. You can see at the end of the video (where I was playing on Feldmarschall difficulty) that I did indeed run out of ammo despite having a lot of help from a rogue Flammentruppe.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Although I said Map 14 was finished, there's a few caveats to this. Firstly, in this preview he is reusing the sound effects from the first boss fight - this is temporary and I will record custom sounds for him later on. Secondly, the graphical effects for his attacks may change before release as I'm not quite happy with how they turned out.[/spoiler] Well, that's it for this update. Join me next month where I should have a gameplay video of Map 10 ready, and will also go into more detail about the other features coming in v1.7.0 of the demo. Thanks for reading!

[ 2024-03-02 12:50:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the sixteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update will start by going over some of the other features that made it into v1.6.0 of the demo (which weren't mentioned last month), but rather excitingly, will also cover the progress I've made on the final boss fight! Naturally, such a major addition both content- and "story"-wise must come with a spoiler warning. If you want to discover the final boss for yourself, the last section will be clearly marked so you can stop reading there.

(Yet More) New Scenery

The last major bit of scenery I had planned for v1.6.0 may have been a surprise for some. While the historical accounts of The Attack of the Dead Men focus solely on the battle on the ground, the First World War was very much unique in being the first major conflict that was also fought in the air. Most of the great powers of the time had started to build up their air forces and were experimenting with using aircraft for many different purposes, including reconnaissance, maintaining aerial supremacy (through fighter planes), and bombing enemy positions. At the start of the war, aircraft was primarily used for reconnaissance, but by 1915 (when the battle took place) various fighters and bombers had already been developed and seen limited use in combat. How is this relevant to the game then? Well, I thought it would be strange if there was no evidence of any air warfare having taken place in the area around Osowiec, given the intense battles that were fought over it. So, I decided to add some scenery to that effect - here are some examples:

Germany had a much more advanced industry than Russia in WW1, so this is reflected in-game by there being more downed German planes than Russian ones
This Russian plane marks an important location in Map 3... These planes have made an appearance in Maps 1, 2 and 3, however in Map 3 especially they serve an important role as landmarks in the environment. Speaking of which...

Improvements in Level Design

A lot of the criticism of the game so far has come from the design of some of the levels (notably Maps 3 and 4). While adding new scenery goes some way towards helping to address this (by providing new landmarks to identify key locations), it was not enough to overcome some of the shortcomings. Having thought a bit longer about how to solve these problems, I came up with a set of changes for Maps 2, 3 and 4 to make them easier to navigate. Below are some screenshots of what I did to Map 3:

This entire north-east section of the map has been fenced off with some locked gates that require the brass key. This seemingly small change has made a fairly big difference on how players perceive the map - instead of this giant open area that can feel overwhelming to explore at first, there is now a more obvious goal to progress - a brass key is needed to enter this section. This means you no longer spend time getting lost in here and can instead focus on the other areas of the map to find the key. Map 2 received some smaller changes, mostly around hiding the secret switches and making the switch that opens the exit more obvious. The other big change was to Map 4, however. Previously in Map 4 the goal was to find two switches to reveal the steel key, however because it wasn't obvious what each switch did, many players confused these two switches with the secret switches instead. The other problem with Map 4 was that one of the switches was located in a maze, and if you weren't already aware of what you were looking for in this maze it often became frustrating to navigate. Again, the solution to this problem was simple - instead of hiding a switch in the maze, hide the iron key in there instead. The iron key is a more obvious item to be looking for given that there are several iron-locked doors that can be found before reaching the maze. Like in Map 2, the other secret switches were better hidden to make them less confusing. That's it for the other changes in demo v1.6.0. If you don't want spoilers for the final boss I suggest you stop reading here as spoiler tags don't work very well on images. For those of you who are curious though, feel free to read on...

Finally, the Final Boss (Spoiler Alert)

[spoiler]I teased this all the way back in the ninth development update last July (how time flies!). The first boss (in Map 9), being a protege of our main villain, made it necessary to reveal who he was, but I didn't go into much detail on him back then. Since that was such a long time ago, this is a good time for a recap on this first boss and then we can dive into who he works for...[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia was a member of the Russian royal family and a known occultist. His palace was described as "the central point of the powers of evil" and he had close ties with the main antagonist of the game, which made him a perfect choice for the first boss fight. Here you can see him using black magic to resurrect the corpses of your fallen comrades as the fight begins. While evil, this guy is still a bit of a one-trick pony in the first boss fight. He primarily relies on manipulating lightning, either to attack the player or resurrect more minions to do the dirty work for him. There are a lot of dark powers he has yet to master, however you have already put a stop to this by defeating him. Now, in Map 14, it's time to face the final boss...[/spoiler] [spoiler]Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. You could probably see that one coming, right? Who better to serve as the mastermind behind a bunch of Russians coming back from the dead than the man who wouldn't die? Anyway, who is the guy really? He's quite interesting in reality, and quite famous - even if you don't know who he was you've probably at least heard of him from somewhere. From humble beginnings as a peasant growing up in Siberia, he managed to rise up through Russian society to become a close associate of the Tsar of Russia, even becoming a major power behind the throne after healing the Tsar's son. It was this power and influence that would later become his undoing though, as he angered a lot of the other Russian nobility. Eventually, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of nobles led by Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Yusupov - the latter of which just so happens to be the same guy that said Grand Duke Petr's house was evil - interesting how that works out! Rasputin's assassination became legendary after Yusupov's account described him as having survived both poisoned wine and a shot to the chest. Further stories about the event describe him as having only died after drowning in a river, despite a gunshot wound to the head as well as to the chest. This last bit doesn't come from Yusupov however, and is simply a later addition to the legend. It does give us plenty to go on for his portrayal in the game though![/spoiler] [spoiler]So, what can you expect from the fight? Unfortunately I haven't been able to record a gameplay video of it just yet, so for now we'll have to make do with some screenshots. I will have a video ready in time for next month's update, once the final polish and balance changes have been done.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]The level starts in the typical style for a boss fight, showering you with weapons and ammo to get you started![/spoiler]
[spoiler]The main combat arena, with Rasputin and an altar front-and-centre[/spoiler]
[spoiler]He'll start the fight off by effortlessly resurrecting a new enemy on the altar![/spoiler]

[spoiler]At times he'll turn the lights off with a snap of his fingers so he can float around at a rapid speed[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Other times he'll try to hypnotise you. If you can't break line-of-sight on him before he claps his hands, you'll be forced to walk towards him for a time while he attacks again[/spoiler]
[spoiler]His main attacks do a lot of damage. One of them will likely kill you in one hit if you aren't ready[/spoiler] That's it for this development update. It's been great fun working on this boss fight so I hope you've enjoyed reading about it, and will enjoy playing it when the game is released. Stay tuned for next month's update, where there will hopefully be two videos - one of the boss fight, and another of either Map 10 or 11 in it's entirety. It'll be good to finally finish those maps as well! Once again, thanks for reading!

[ 2024-02-03 15:18:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.6.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update provides significant changes to the level design, new scenery, major performance improvements and more.

Full Release Notes for v1.6.0

• Reworked the layouts of Maps 2, 3 and 4 - it should now be more obvious what to look for to finish each of these levels. This includes adding new markers for important switches, better hiding and placement of secret switches and fencing off different areas to act as a clearer indication of where to go next
• Added new scenery:
  • Crashed planes (German and Russian variants)
  • Portraits
  • Banners and flags
  • Crates
• Significantly improved performance in Maps 1 and 3
• Added stats tracking for progress towards achievements that can be earned in Maps 1 - 4. Achievements unlocked in the demo will not be visible but will unlock when purchasing the full game
• Updated engine to Godot 4.2.1
• Tweaked the blood decal effects. Blood now appears more translucent and should no longer appear on the ground-floor ceilings in Map 2
• Recoloured some minimap sprites. Barrels and doors are now green to make it clearer that enemies are not visible on the minimap
• Finished and improved the secret exit. It should now be somewhat possible to find it (as opposed to virtually impossible)
• Fixed crash when interacting with already open doors
• Fixed several bugs with different resolutions in both fullscreen and windowed modes
• Fixed weapon animations when loading an autosave
• Minor bug fixes and improvements

Known Issues

• v1.5.0 save games in Maps 2, 3 and 4 may no longer load correctly as a result of the level design changes. Autosaves will load fine, however manual and quick saves may put the player character in an inaccessible location and soft-lock the level. These saves will appear as out-of-date in the load menu but it is strongly recommended to start a new game.
• Button highlighting in the menus may be broken when first launching the game in fullscreen mode. The buttons will still work when clicked on, however they will not change colour or play a sound when hovered over - this can be fixed by tabbing out of the game and back in again. This appears to be an engine issue introduced by Godot 4.2.1.

[ 2024-01-13 17:12:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Merry Christmas everyone! Welcome to the fifteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. As with the last update of 2022, I will start this update with another retrospective on how much the game has changed over the course of the year, then I will follow that up by covering some of the interesting changes coming in v1.6.0 of the demo in January. Let's get started!

Haunted in 2023

It goes without saying that 2023 has been a big year for the game. This time last year the demo had only been out for a few months, there hadn't been a whole lot of feedback, and a lot of the features that you can enjoy today (as of v1.5.0 of the demo) were either missing or hadn't even crossed my mind! I had estimated that the game would have been released by around this time, but unfortunately the game required a bit more effort than that so I had to delay it. Despite that I think the game is looking in much much better shape than it was, so I'll show this difference off with a series of screenshots (as I did last year):



The new weapon sprites are looking good!

It's much easier to see where you're going in this level!

The new blood effects are nice...

...But that first version of the Luger wasn't! In addition to the changes in gameplay, the main menu screen has gone from this...
...to this:
It's much more interesting to look at now! And finally, the game's cover art went from this...
Yep, at first it was just a screenshot of the menu! ...to this:
And that's not to mention all the new game options, quality-of-life improvements, performance improvements, the engine upgrade, bugfixes, and much more that went on behind-the-scenes to make the game what it is today. Even better, since this time last year five new levels have been completed, with good progress made on two more. Oh, and the game came out on itch.io! All-in-all, a very good year for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men! For those of you who are curious, last year I mentioned that the game went from 200 commits in version control to 1200. This year, that number reached almost 3600, which is quite impressive I think! That effort is definitely reflected in the changes visible in the screenshots. But those of you who are paying close attention will notice (yet more) new things in these screenshots...

New Scenery

Those last few comparison screenshots, of Map 1 and the main menu, will look a little different to some. That's because I have been working on several new items of scenery and other assets to enhance the levels in the demo even further for v1.6.0. The first of these are flags. Osowiec was the site of an intense battle after all, so it would be nice to see a bit more evidence of this. We already have the various corpses of German soldiers littering the place, and of course all the enemies you face are Russians, but we could do an even better job of representing the two sides and the territorial control with their respective flags. In Map 1 we have several flags of the German Empire in the starting area, but as you make your way towards Fort IV you will start seeing more of the Russian Empire's flag.
In Map 2 (and the other "indoor" maps) you will only see Russian flags, seeing as the Germans never set foot in any of the forts, but you will see German flags again on the western edge of Map 3. You'll also see more Russian flags flying on Fort III as you approach it:
It's hard to tell in these screenshots but you'll see soon enough that these flags have an added touch - they are animated, fluttering in the wind, which makes them a bit more interesting. There's more stuff appearing in the indoor areas as well though. I already covered the addition of paintings in Development Update #12, which have now been added to Map 2. You'll only find these in the nice upstairs areas of the fort though, as the ground floor is meant to be more of a "storage" area. So I've made that clearer by adding a variety of different crates to the lower levels:
I have more assets planned for the v1.6.0 update which I haven't made yet, so expect to see even more new stuff when the update releases next month!

Achievements

This is an interesting one. You can't get achievements in the demo, so why am I spending time on this for v1.6.0? That's a good question, but the answer is simple - my intention with the demo is for there to be a seamless transition between it and the full game, should you choose to buy it. That means all your save games from the demo should continue to work, and any achievement progress you made should carry over. Additionally, I want it to be more intuitive to continue where you left off - if you finished Map 4 in the demo, you should be able to start the full game from Map 5 if you want, but it wouldn't be very fun if you forgot to make a save before going through the exit door. So how can I provide players an easier way of starting from Map 5? Simple - I just check to see if they have the achievement for finishing Map 4, and if so I can add an option to start from Map 5 in one of the menus when starting a new game. For all of this to work, I need to track achievement progress now, so all the data I need in order to make the transition from demo to full game is already there. Of course, since this is only being added now (and was not present in v1.5.0 or earlier), you'll have to finish the demo again in v1.6.0 to unlock the new starting option, but that's better than nothing I think! While I was at it, I did have a quick play around with the Steamworks API (at long last) to see how easy it was to use. I was quite surprised at just how easy it was in the end, so here's a little taste of what you can expect to see in the full game! Just ignore the temporary icons for now, I will add some nicer icons later...


Hmm, some might start to wonder if I'm a Clint Eastwood fan...
These two go hand-in-hand! Attempt at your peril... These screenshots show the achievements in Steam, but those of you who play the itch.io version of the game need not despair. The achievements system is completely platform-independent, so you will be able to view all of your achievements in-game if you aren't playing through Steam (but Steam users will still be able to view their achievements in-game). I had quite a bit of fun coming up with these achievements, but only half of the currently planned 54 have been implemented so far. The other half only apply to the maps that come after the demo, so it wasn't necessary to implement those just yet. At some point in the coming months I will implement the rest and show off the fancy icons for them as well!

Performance

What, this again? Yep. As I've been spending a bit more time on my laptop over Christmas it was a good time to see if I could make the game run even better. The good news is that I have, and quite dramatically in fact! A few months ago I thought of a script I could add that might make an impact, and I was quite surprised by the results - I have pretty much doubled the frame-rate in the outdoor levels! But, how? The answer boils down to some very technical details about how GPUs do things. In short, GPUs are very fast at drawing lots of polygons (the things that make up 3D models), so the real performance bottleneck comes when the CPU asks it to render something. This means there are two things you can do to render an entire scene - you can either ask the GPU to draw things one at a time, and so get caught up in this communications bottleneck, or you can ask it to just draw as much as possible at once - also known as batching. You can't draw the entire scene in one go, as the chances are you'll have multiple different models you want to draw. What you can do though, is batch all uses of a single model into one, and have the GPU draw that - you can then rinse and repeat for each model. If you are interested in learning more about it, this video has a good section on it. So if I've doubled the performance, you can probably guess what I was doing wrong before - each of the bushes that appear in Map 3 for example, were being sent to the GPU one at a time. So I wrote a script that converts all of them into one model, and draws that. Even better, this script can be added to pretty much any group of assets that share the same model - so I added it to everything I could, and, well, the numbers speak for themselves. Now that this is done, there probably won't be any other big optimisations to really do for the game before I finish it.

Haunted in 2024

With all of that out of the way, what's next for the game? Most of this update has been about v1.6.0 of the demo coming in January, but there are a few tweaks to the roadmap that I should briefly go over. The first is that v1.6.0 will not be the last major update to the demo before the game is released - instead, there will be a v1.7.0 update coming (probably) at the end of March, alongside a new trailer that will (hopefully) also announce the actual release date for the game (if I can predict it accurately enough!). This means that some of the more minor features I had planned for v1.6.0 will actually get deferred until v1.7.0, just so I can get back to working on new levels slightly sooner. I can't explain the reason for this just yet, but it will be a big deal and you'll see soon enough. Now, new levels - what's happening next on that front? Well, I am having the same trouble with Map 13 that I had with Map 5 last year, in that I can't figure out what I want to do with it yet. So I will skip ahead to Map 14 first - which is the final boss fight. I'm looking forward to making this one! After that, I will likely go back and finish Map 10 as the engine problems that stopped me from working on it before appear to have been fixed now. I will then (probably) look at adding Map 15, finishing Map 11, and finally coming back to Map 13, in that order. So the new roadmap (after v1.6.0 has been released) will look something like this:

• Implement Map 14 - hopefully will only take a few weeks, so will be done by early February
• Finish Map 10 - much of the backdrop is already in place, so this will hopefully be done by late February
• Implement Map 15 - I have some assets for this level already, but I'll still allow a month for it so it should be done by late March
• Release v1.7.0 of the demo - I don't have much planned for this update so it shouldn't take long, it will mostly focus on bugfixes and polish. It will be done by the end of March or early April at the latest
• Finish Map 11 - This won't take long as I already have most of it in place, it just needs proper balancing and testing (as well as a few secrets). This should take us to mid-April
• Implement Map 13 - I will allow six weeks for this, which will bring us to the end of May
• With all the maps in place finally, I will begin a closed beta period to test everything while I finish what is left. More details on this will come nearer the time
• Polish the rest of the maps - this hopefully won't take too long, and will bring us to mid-June (I know, a bit later than I previously estimated but still in Q2)
• Finally, the finishing touches. I will implement the remaining achievements and the other features that I have planned, and fix any bugs etc. that come up from the closed beta. With any luck, it will still be June (so Q2 2024) at this point and I won't have to announce another delay!

That's all for this update. It's funny how similar this post is to the third development update a year ago, starting with a retrospective and ending with details on the next version of the demo (last year it was the first update, v1.1.0). I'd like to thank everyone who made all of this possible, everyone who gave feedback, wishlisted the game, read these updates and showed their support (you know who you are!). It's been an amazing year and I'm looking forward to (finally) finishing the game next year! Stay tuned for the v1.6.0 update which will be out in a few weeks. I wish everyone a very Happy New Year!

[ 2023-12-27 12:03:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Following on from yesterday's major update, I have released a hotfix (v1.5.1) which addresses the enemy loading bug which was mentioned in the previous announcement. This turned out to be a larger issue with the save system which should now be a bit more reliable. Full release notes for v1.5.1:

• Fixed a bug where the enemies that spawn in when picking up the keys in Maps 3 and 4 would not load correctly after a save
• Fixed the Luger pickup not being consumed if the ammo cap for the Luger had been reached
• Fixed some minor enemy animation issues

[ 2023-12-09 15:45:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.5.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update delivers a significant upgrade for the weapon sprites and a redesign of the player character (in line with the cover art). Full release notes for v1.5.0:

• Updated the sprites and artwork for each weapon, providing enhanced visual quality and new animations
• Added dual-wielding for the Luger. This will be activated when finding a second Luger pickup (which can be found in every level), and can be toggled by holding down the "alternate fire" button (default is right mouse button)
• Redesigned the player character's sprites (both in the main menu and the head that appears in the default HUD layout)
• Refactored the weapon handling and enemy AI code, fixing many bugs and in some cases improving performance. Such a significant change may well introduce new bugs, so please report any bugs you find in the forums
• Tweaked the weapon "bobbing" logic. Weapons should now bob up and down even when the "head bob amount" in the gameplay menu is set to zero
• Increased the scale factor in Map 4 slightly. The map should still feel claustrophobic, but movement and collision issues are now much less likely
• Fixed some issues with windowed mode
• Updated engine to Godot 4.1.3, providing numerous bug fixes and performance and stability improvements. This update will also fix the decal problems with the Simple renderer
• Numerous additional bug fixes and improvements
• Some minor edits and improvements to the cover art

Known Issues

• Please be aware that this update breaks save game compatibility. You will not be able to load saves made with v1.4.0 or earlier after this update.
• The enemies that spawn in at the end of Maps 3 and 4 (when picking up the final keys in these levels) don't load correctly when loading a save. The bug is purely visual and shouldn't affect gameplay. I have some ideas about why this is happening but haven't been able to fix it yet so there will (hopefully) be a v1.5.1 update shortly to address this.

[ 2023-12-08 21:47:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the fourteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. If you've read the last update, you'll probably know what the focus of this update will be already and have been looking forward to it. For the benefit of those who aren't aware though, I have been very busy on perhaps one of the most important improvements to the demo all year - the new weapon sprites. Last month I showed off some footage with the new Luger, Revolver, Trenchgun, Granaten (grenades) and Shashka (sword). I am pleased to announce that I have now finished what I started, so all the weapons have new, much improved graphics. Again, instead of me talking about how great they are, why don't I show you? [previewyoutube=bsZoZRHwxD8;full][/previewyoutube] Impressive stuff right? I certainly think so. Compared to the old programmer art, this is a massive improvement and I think it really helps to make the game feel more polished and fun to play. Speaking of fun to play, I'm sure many of you will be surprised by the other new feature shown in the video, which I have deliberately kept a secret until now...

The Luger(s)

The Luger has long felt a little underwhelming, especially once the other weapons start being unlocked. This is not unusual for a boomer shooter - for example, when you pick up the chaingun in DOOM there is no longer any point in switching back to the pistol as they share the same ammo type. It's sole purpose was to get you started, and after that point you could ignore it. And so the Luger was DOOMed (heh) to suffer the same fate in Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men, serving only as a stop-gap until you picked up a better gun... but I had other ideas. I thought about what to do to make sure it was still useful (and fun) when you have all the other weapons, and the obvious choice was to, well, add another!
I had originally planned to do this last year when I implemented alternate fire modes for several other weapons, but realised it looked a bit odd without custom graphics since they aren't centred. Having finished a fresh batch of weapon sprites and with a much improved and streamlined setup for making new animations, I decided now would be the time to implement the feature. Needless to say, I think the video speaks for itself - I had way too much fun with them! I hope you all have a lot of fun with them too when I release v1.5.0 of the demo soon.

New Animations

The dual-wielding Lugers aren't the only new animations however. I wanted to take this opportunity to give each weapon a bit more personality, as such. Previously, all you got were the different shooting animations, and a fairly bland "move up and down" for switching between them. With my new setup for animating them, I decided it would be nice to give each weapon a unique animation for being drawn and holstered, which you can see in the video (I took the time to stop and switch between them all occasionally just to highlight this). On top of that, I also added a couple of animations for when certain weapons get picked up for the first time - for example, when I pick up the Flammenwerfer you can see the player character swinging the fuel tank onto his back. To help get the point across, here are the new "draw" animations for each weapon:







There is another reason I wanted to this. Eight weapons is a bit much for anyone to carry if you think about it - I mean, where do you put them all??? By adding these new animations, I can show you how the player character does it - if you pay closer attention, each weapon has a different place for it to "live" - the Luger is inside his trenchcoat, the Revolver is holstered by his right hip, the Rifle is slung on his right shoulder while the Trenchgun is on his left, he puts the MG08's strap round his neck so it hangs around his waist, the Granaten are strapped to his belt, the Flammenwerfer is strapped to his back, and the Shashka is sheathed by his left hip. Simple really! I've also added a lot more detail to some of the weapons. I think this is especially noticeable for the MG08, which now has a sight (animated when deploying it statically), a charging arm (the thing that gets cranked before it is readied), and probably most importantly of all, an ammo belt! Yes, this was a bit of a discrepancy with the old model for it - where were the bullets supposed to come from before? Aside from that, we also have a bullet casing being ejected when shooting the Rifle (like the shell casing for the Trenchgun), the Granate actually gets primed before being thrown, and we can all enjoy the Flammenwerfer actually being turned on and off now (just so you know he isn't at risk of setting himself on fire)!

New Code

This is really a behind-the-scenes thing, but I thought I would cover it as it forms a large part of what enabled me to make use of the new animations. The original weapon code was written way back when I started this project, over four years ago, and had remained mostly the same since then. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing back then, and there were much better ways of achieving what I wanted. The gist of it is something that any programmers in the audience will likely understand - polling vs event handling. For the benefit of the non-programmers, polling is when you repeat some checks every frame, to find out if something happened, whereas event handling is when you register to perform some action whenever you receive a notification that whatever thing you are interested in has just happened. These may sound similar, but the former is (slightly) less performant and you are also reliant on the game running at a high enough frame rate that you don't miss anything. Up until now, that is precisely what I was doing for everything - I was simply running lots of checks every frame, to see if for example, a key was pressed. With the new code, I am now using the latter technique - I register to do things when a key is pressed, or when the frame of an animation changes. This means I don't have to run lots of checks unnecessarily, and I also don't miss anything - I actually encountered that bug a few times early on, where if the game was lagging the guns wouldn't shoot properly. It wasn't just the weapons that had this revamp. I realised I could apply the same technique to the enemy code, as that also relied on performing actions on different animation frames. You may well see the effects of the enemy code rework compared to v1.4.0, if you have an older PC - I did notice less stuttering when I was testing it on my laptop.

Demo v1.5.0

I'm pretty sure I know the question you're all asking now. When is all this new stuff going to be available in the demo? Not to worry, you don't have long to wait. There is only one small feature (a secret for now!) that I want to add in time for v1.5.0, after which I will focus on releasing the update. Hopefully it will be out as soon as the end of next week! This release will take a bit longer than usual, as was the case for v1.3.0, as I want to make sure the store page is up-to-date and more accurately reflects the current state of the game. I don't plan on recording a new trailer yet, but instead I will use the gameplay video featured in this development update as the main "trailer" for the store page for now. I figured that, despite being quite a long and detailed video, it would be best if new players got to see what the game looks like as it does now. To make sure newcomers can still get more of an understanding of the game's setting, I have re-recorded the original "Welcome to Osowiec" trailer to serve as a shorter, "cinematic" teaser trailer. I've uploaded it to my YouTube channel already, so here it is if you're interested: [previewyoutube=QNj1vA53M6s;full][/previewyoutube] ...And that will be my Christmas present to you all! Merry Christmas everyone!

[ 2023-12-01 20:33:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the thirteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. What a fitting number for the week of Hallowe'en! This update will focus on the newly added Map 12, and will also cover some changes that I've wanted to do for a long time. Before we get into all that though, I figured it's best to start off with the important news about the game and its future development.

New Release Date and Roadmap

That's right. Unfortunately, I will have to delay the release of the game. I suspected as much last month but wanted to see how much longer Map 12 would take before making a firm decision, and this map took an additional two weeks, meaning it took six weeks from start to finish. I strongly suspect Map 13 will take the same length of time, and with all the other polish that needs doing it just doesn't add up. I will not be able to get the game finished by the end of this year - I have instead chosen Q2 2024 as a provisional release window. I don't think the game will take until the end of Q2 to finish - my estimate at the moment is some time in May, but setting a release date a little further in the future gives me a bit more time to play with, and makes it unlikely I will have to delay the game a second time. I covered what made me fall behind schedule in last month's update, but to summarise: Map 12 took a lot longer than I thought it would, and I forgot to account for the time it would take to upgrade the engine to Godot 4 in the original roadmap. With the game much closer to completion now, I at least have a better idea of how much longer it will take, so I will outline a more detailed roadmap at the end of this development update. Anyway, let's get into the good stuff shall we?

Map 12 - Descent into Darkness

Last month's update also had a teaser for this new map, as well as a little bit of detail on what this map is about, so if you haven't read that be sure to check it out. In short, this is where the game starts to get a little weird. While all the maps up until Map 11 are (loosely) based on Osowiec Fortress and real-world locations within it, I wanted something different for the final boss fight, and maps 12 and 13 are the lead-up to that fight. Here's another video to show that off. [previewyoutube=rIWMUccCeOM;full][/previewyoutube] I mentioned that this was a secret underground lab, and many of the rooms have been designed with that in mind. The idea with this level is to show off some of the research and experiments that have led to the resurrection of the garrison of Osowiec - here are some examples:
You can enjoy smashing up their laboratory...
...Or blow it up, that works too
Future undead soldiers need to be caged, for the experiment's safety... or for yours
They need to be able to shoot straight too!
I have also been adding some new features to make this map more interesting. Among these are the smash-able scenery items found in the labs (you can see the various test tubes shattering when I use the machine gun in the video), and more interesting traps - there are several rooms in this level which will seal you inside until you achieve some objective (e.g. killing the enemies or finding something). The smash-able objects is also noteworthy because I can now easily make any prop smash-able - I will likely go back and do this for other objects at some point (like the barrels, which are a bit static at the moment). But wait a minute. Notice anything different about the video and these screenshots? If you've been following the game's development for a while you'll definitely have noticed...

New Weapon Sprites

This was a long time coming. It's been pretty obvious that the old weapon sprites just weren't going to be good enough for the finished game - they were quite janky, and a bit inconsistent as well. Especially those hands - ugh! But, what made them bad, and why? The "why" is simple, this is called programmer art. These assets were thrown together fairly quickly to get the point across, rather than to look pretty, so I could focus on adding content to the game. Understanding the "what" is important though, and has helped me make the new weapons look much much better. The gist of it is this: perspective, and scaling. I make the sprites for the weapons and enemies by first making (and animating) 3D models in Blender, and then taking screenshots of these models at different angles. The major problem with the old sprites is that they were made without any real frame-of-reference, so I was mostly judging by eye how to position the camera and how much to zoom-in. This lead to the larger weapons having smaller, less detailed sprites than they should have, while the smaller weapons had more detail. On top of this, the hands were actually an afterthought as the original models didn't have them, so I added the hands on top of the existing sprites - again, these hands had inconsistent perspectives and scaling which made them look a bit odd. So what have I done to fix this? Well, I started by redesigning the player character's model to be more in-line with the game's cover art (internally he is referred to as "PlayerGuy", I haven't named him yet). I made the original model not long after I started working on the game, and hadn't really revisited him since then, so it was high time I changed that. Here he is in the main menu:
I realise I haven't really included much in the way of behind-the-scenes screenshots so far, so why not start now. Here's how he looks to me (in Blender):
This model is a lot more detailed than the old one. But here you can also see how I've ensured a consistent perspective for all of the new sprites - they are all attached to this new model. In fact, I even made his head detachable and included a camera to make the process a lot easier:
If you've used Blender before, you might also have noticed that his Pickelhaube is a separate model as well - the reasons for that are still classified... This has had a massive impact on the new Trenchgun sprite, for example. You can see here he is actually holding it as you'd expect someone to hold a shotgun, and the result is a much bigger-looking weapon than before - in fact, Wikipedia says the Winchester Model 1897 (the weapon that the Trenchgun is based on) is a metre long, and that's without the bayonet! I still think the left arm looks a little strange at the moment though, so it would be nice to have some more feedback on that. When I get to it, I will try tweaking the pose a bit for the rifle (which will have a similar size) and see if I can apply that to the Trenchgun to make it look even better. How much of this rework is done then? So far, I have updated the Luger, Revolver, Trenchgun, Granate and the Shashka. I should have the remaining weapons finished by next month, and I will go into more detail about them and the new animations in next month's development update. So, what prompted me to rework these sprites now? I have a good reason for doing this, and it all ties in to the updated roadmap. Essentially, I have decided that if I can't get the game finished by the end of the year, I can at least improve the demo as much as I can, so it more closely matches what the final game will be like. This leads me nicely into the last section of this update...

The New Roadmap

Much of this roadmap comes from the original, posted back in February, but I have reshuffled things a bit. My priority for the next few months is to effectively finish the demo - well, as much as I can at this point anyway. This means, to begin with, you can expect two major updates to the demo - the first, v1.5.0, will contain the new weapons and whatever else I am able to get done before Christmas; while the second, v1.6.0, will contain the remaining polish I have planned, including new scenery objects, balance changes and more. I have included the full roadmap (v2) below:

• Demo updates v1.5.0 (December) and v1.6.0 (hopefully by the end of January, but aiming for sooner than that):
  • Finish the new weapon sprites
  • Update some enemy sprites (following the weapon changes)
  • Add new scenery to maps 1-4
  • Improve some of the visual effects (including for barrel explosions)
  • Add icons for the levels in the intermission screen
  • Refactor the enemy AI to try and improve performance
  • Implement stats tracking (which will be used for achievements later)
  • Numerous bug fixes and other small improvements
• Implement Map 13 - allowing six weeks for this takes us to March
• Implement Map 14 - a simpler map containing the final boss fight which will not take so long (maybe two weeks, as did Map 9). This takes us to (hopefully) mid-March
• Implement Map 15 (the secret level) - I will allow one month for this as I already have the assets for it. This takes us to mid-April
• Finish Maps 10 and 11 - Map 11 is done in terms of the backdrop but needs tweaking and balance changes. The backdrop for Map 10 is also mostly there (barring some extra scenery), but it still needs enemies/items/etc. I suspect this will take a few weeks, up to early May
• Polish Maps 5, 6, 7 and 8. These maps, having been already added, will be missing some of the new scenery objects, and they may also need some balance changes. With any luck, this won't take long - perhaps a week or two. This takes us to mid-May
• Once all this is done, it will be time for the finishing touches. I will be adding achievements at this point, and will also have to thoroughly test the game - this may include a closed beta period to get more feedback
• Hopefully, this roadmap is a lot more accurate than the last one, as it is based on another nine months' worth of development. If it does turn out to be too ambitious still, then with the Q2 2024 release window I will still have June to continue working on the game before having to announce another delay.

That's it for this month! Stay tuned for next month's update as that one will focus on the new weapon sprites - there will also be another gameplay video for you to enjoy, specifically to show off the new sprites. Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-11-03 21:24:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the twelfth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. That's right, number twelve - it's been a whole year of monthly updates! When I released the demo last year, I had no idea what to expect. I had never done something like this before, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep it up or how much progress I'd be able to make. A year on from then, however, it's safe to say I've achieved more than I could have hoped for - I will cover some of that in this development update, in addition to what hasn't gone well, and what is yet to come. But before I do that, I'd just like to thank everyone who has shown their support so far - all of you who wishlisted the game, downloaded and played the demo, and left feedback for me to help me improve the game. There are a lot of things which I don't think I could have done without this support. Anyway, let's get started. This update will be a bit more of a retrospective but if you stick around there will be a nice little teaser of Map 12 as a reward!

A Year in Review

So, as you'll know, last year I released v1.0.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. It felt like the right decision at the time - the first four levels had been finished, but I had bigger plans and wanted to make sure this was a game that people would enjoy playing. Releasing what I'd done as a demo would allow me to get feedback on how the game looked and felt to play, and people would be able to suggest things to improve the game or let me know what worked and what didn't work. I have had a good amount of feedback so far, but some of the improvements I made came from watching others play the game (yep, there are a few gameplay videos on YouTube now if you weren't aware already). Let's see how the game looked back then and how it does now shall we?





Let's start with the obvious differences. First off - wow, it was really dark before. I had a good reason for making the game look this dark though - I wanted a more horror-style atmosphere to begin with, so the game takes place at night with dark fog obscuring things. This looked fine on my monitor but I guess my monitor brightness was high enough that I didn't realise how dark the game might look for other players. This made some maps - especially Map 3 - quite hard to get through, and a lot of the criticism I saw was for that map in particular. A few of the updates I made to the demo were specifically to make this map more fun to play - for example, I made the bushes stand-out more in v1.1.3, made it less green in v1.2.0, and it even influenced the new fog colour for v1.3.0 as I noticed enemies were very hard to spot from a distance when the fog was a stronger shade of green. Second, some of the old sprites. That Luger from v1.0.0 looked horrible! I knew it would be the first sprite to get a rework, but crucially I decided to do this before the influx of new players from Steam Next Fest. I think this was a good decision as it definitely made the game more appealing. Thirdly, the new blood effects - I've talked a lot about them before but it's nice to see a comparison like this as it is clear just how much better the game looks with them. So, that's a few of the bigger changes the game has seen, but actually that is just a fraction of what I managed to do. If you've been following these updates from the start, you'll know a lot of the other things I managed to do, but I'll summarise them here:

• Maps 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 have been finished, with good progress made on Maps 10, 11 and 12
• Five new enemies have been added - the Machinegunner, the Cossack, the Grenadier and the Flammentruppe, as well as the first boss
• Three new weapons (grenades, the Flammenwerfer and the Shashka)
• Four major updates to the demo, which came along with:
  • New abilities for several weapons (alternate fire modes)
  • New scenery items to make the levels look more interesting
  • An engine upgrade to Godot 4 (previously the game was running on Godot 3)
  • Improvements to sprites and other visual effects
  • Completely reworked enemy AI so the enemies behave a bit more intelligently and will put more pressure on you
  • Extra difficulty options
  • A reworked minimap
  • Several new gameplay and graphics options in the options menu (including invert mouse Y-axis and the head bob strength slider, both of which were requests from players)

That's a lot of positive stuff, but I mentioned at the start "what hasn't gone well" - what did I mean by that? I can think of one good thing to talk about next - the roadmap. When I released the demo I set the goal of releasing the game by the end of 2023. It felt a little bit ambitious at the time, but I thought I would be able to pull it off, especially when I posted The Long Road Ahead, which contained a breakdown of what I needed to do and the time-frames for doing them. This started off quite well, and I stuck to it pretty much exactly until I finished Map 9. However, I started falling behind with the upgrade to Godot 4, which I had overlooked initially. This upgrade took roughly a month, and so this already started to push me behind schedule. Alone, this wouldn't have been too bad, but unfortunately I completely underestimated how long Map 12 would take. Once I'd figured out roughly what it would look like, it didn't take long to put together, but that's the problem - it took several weeks just to figure out what it should look like. I suspect Map 13 will be similar, as this map will also look quite different. So where does this leave things? Well, I won't confirm this until next month's development update, but it looks like I will have to delay the release of the game for a few months. If this is the case, I will also provide an updated roadmap alongside the new release date. Don't worry though - I have no intention of cancelling the game or cutting content to finish it faster. You may just have to bear with me a little bit longer.

The Next Step of the Journey

So, Map 12. If Map 11 is the last of the "Osowiec" levels, then what could this possibly entail? Well, you may remember this little sequence from the new trailer...
Something very sinister must be lurking down there. Something that must be the cause of all the calamity going on at Osowiec. The only way to find out is, well, to take a ride down and see for yourself. That is what Map 11 is all about - in that arena, you will need to fight your way through a lot of enemies in a very tight space, while you wait for the elevator to take you down into it. Oh, and don't think you can just call the elevator and wait in the corner for it - to summon it, you will have to shoot this switch:
Naturally, this means waking up all the enemies. And you have to shoot it from this spot where they can all see you do it. Nasty stuff right? OK, so you've shot the switch, dispatched the enemies, and the elevator has arrived. What's next? Here's a teaser for you... [previewyoutube=xdtHDvx0LXI;full][/previewyoutube] Wait, what is going on? Where did all this come from? And how did the Russians manage to build it without anybody finding out? But, more importantly... is that an un-skip-able cutscene? In a boomer shooter??? How dare I???? Well, let me answer all those questions right now. So, we are approaching the end of the game, where we will meet the final boss. The guy needs a secret underground lair though, just for dramatic effect. For this map, I still wanted to keep things somewhat grounded in reality, before they go more off-the-rails in Map 13. So this place is a top-secret research facility - the place where the the Tsar, with the help of his nefarious friend (the main villain), has been conducting research and development into new weapons to turn the tide of World War One - including experiments in necromancy. And, what better cover to hide it all than an impregnable fortress? So that is what you will be doing here - exploring some of this facility, seeing some of the experiments, and so on. But, to address that last question - no, it is not an un-skip-able cutscene! I just chose to show it off in full because it is deliberately timed to the music. In fact, if you really are that impatient (it only lasts for about twenty seconds), you can simply... jump off the elevator. Yep, not only can you just jump off, I have carefully crafted the intro sequence to account for you doing that! The enemies will still wake up if you shoot them, but you can get the drop on them and prepare yourself better for this opening fight as they won't be able to see very well until the lights come on. But then again, neither will you, so you will have to be careful if you do this. That's most of what I have to show off for now. I have added some scenery to a few of the rooms but at the moment the rest is quite empty, so you'll have to wait for next month's update for a full-length gameplay preview. But, before I go, here is some of the new scenery you can expect:
I planned for a while to include portraits of the Tsar in the levels, but only now have I finally done so. That's it for this update! As always, thanks for reading!

[ 2023-10-01 15:34:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.4.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update brings a few new major features - expanded difficulty options and a reworked minimap. Alongside these new features, the update also brings reworked and improved enemy AI and pathfinding, a new graphics option, and many smaller improvements and bugfixes.

• New difficulty options:
  • Pistol start same as the old setting from the Gameplay menu. Weapons, ammo and health are reset at the start of every level, and the setting is now locked for the whole playthrough and cant be changed unless a new game is started
  • Permadeath locks the playthrough to a single save slot, which is deleted on death
  • Both of these options increase the score gained on every level, so two new level rankings have been added: S+ and H
• Reworked and expanded the minimap:
  • More detail about the surroundings is shown
  • It now reveals itself as the map is explored
  • It will also adjust the floor it shows based on the players position
• Reworked enemy pathfinding to be more intelligent. They are now better able to follow the player (if they decide to do so) and less likely to get stuck
• Added new Renderer setting to the Graphics menu:
  • Advanced is what the default was for v1.3.2
  • Simple offers improved performance on laptops, and if a laptop GPU is detected this renderer is selected automatically
• Replaced the font for the credits and difficulty descriptions so they are easier to read
• Updated some music tracks
• Fixed a potential crash when finishing a map
• Fixed some lighting and stuttering issues in Map 4
• Updated engine to Godot 4.1.2 which brings minor stability and performance improvements
• Several bugfixes and minor improvements

Known issues:

• The blood effects dont display correctly on the Simple renderer. It may be preferable to turn off decals in the Graphics menu when using this renderer. This is an engine bug that has been fixed but the fix was not included in Godot 4.1.2
• The Legacy renderer setting, which was mentioned in the last development update, has had to be removed due to some game-breaking graphical issues in Maps 3 and 4. This renderer will be re-added at a later date. If you have a GPU that doesn't support Vulkan, v1.2.1 is still available to play in the "betas" tab

[ 2023-09-29 17:29:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the eleventh development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. It's been another busy month with the release on itch.io (as I'm sure you're aware of by now), but like last month this update will be more technical than previous updates as there isn't a new level to show off. Map 11 (the newest map) is mostly done now, but it needs more polish before it is ready for its own gameplay video. Besides, I included some preview footage of it in the new trailer, which you can find below in case you missed it. [previewyoutube=tLDYah9GEUw;full][/previewyoutube] So what else have I been up to this month then? Well, I was on my laptop for a few weeks so the most pressing issue was getting the game running better on it. That isn't all though - there have been a few more additions which will become available in an update to the demo soon, which I will go over in this post.

AI and Pathfinding

This is probably the biggest change I've been working on this month, and surprisingly didn't take very long to implement. I mentioned some AI changes in the release notes for v1.3.2, but also mentioned plans for further improvements to this. The main problem with the old AI was this - I had tried to use only simple pathfinding techniques before, to give the enemies a more "retro" feel (in other words, not too precise when avoiding things). However, this approach doesn't work well with the more complex, free-form level design that most of the maps have. This was particularly notable in Map 3, where the enemies struggled to get around the rows of bushes. The new system makes use of Godot's built-in navigation and pathfinding logic, which I have experimented with in the past and found to be clunky. Fortunately, Godot 4 has improved this a lot, and it didn't take long to generate the necessary navigation "meshes" from the level data - I was able to get this (mostly) working in just one afternoon in the end (which may be a running theme in this development update!). The enemy AI then uses this data to navigate the environment in a more intelligent and less error-prone way. So don't be alarmed when the enemies start chasing you more effectively!

New Difficulty Options

One feature I've wanted to implement for a while now is better difficulty tuning. The basic difficulty options affect how many items you will find and how many enemies you encounter, but for those of you who like a challenge these might not be enough. So, allow me to introduce these new options:
OK, so the "pistol start" option isn't new. This was previously in the gameplay options menu, but I've thought for a while now that it didn't belong there as it shouldn't be possible to "opt-out" of it if you've started the game that way. This option resets your weapons, ammo, health and armour at the beginning of every level, so you will always be on the hunt for new toys. Permadeath is new though, and it will be very tough to get through the whole game with this enabled. For the benefit of those who don't know what this means, when "permadeath" is enabled you are locked to a single save slot, and when you die this save is deleted. So in effect, you have to beat the whole game without dying. Good luck! If you think the game will get too hard with these new options, well, it probably will. But there are new rewards for enabling them - I have added a score multiplier associated with each. This allows you to get the higher rankings even on Oberleutnant (medium) difficulty. Naturally, with all this extra score floating around there needed to be new rankings for the masochists among you who want the challenge to still be satisfying - I've added S+ and H (for Haunted, right?). H is only achievable by playing on Feldmarschall (very hard) with both of the new options enabled. You can see this below:
That isn't it for difficulty customisation. I plan to add more of these options in the future, and possibly a "new game+" mode to go with them.

The "Minimap"

This feature was long overdue. The old "minimap" was badly implemented and didn't really help much with navigation, so it needed a complete redesign. The new minimap relies on sprites for all the different objects that make up the background and scenery for each level, which are then placed according to where each object is. I had assumed this redesign would take a long time, but (again) it only took an afternoon to get the basic system in place and working for map 1 - after this all I had to do was add more sprites. A nice advantage of the new system is that I can show and hide sprites based on which "floor" they are on, so you only see what you can actually interact with. Here's an example of it in action:
Another useful feature of the new minimap - it only reveals itself as you explore the level. This way, you can actually see the areas you haven't explored yet, which wasn't possible with the old one.

Performance

I mentioned in the release notes for v1.3.0 that performance on integrated GPUs was a big problem, and I managed to (partially) fix this in v1.3.1. I've been doing a lot more tuning on my laptop (which has an iGPU) so I'll end this update by going over some of the problems in more detail, and how I've addressed them. So the first problem - what was causing so much lag in v1.3.0, and what did I change to fix it in v1.3.1? Well, it turned out this was actually the "rain" effect - in Godot 4, there are now two types of particles - those that run on the GPU and those that run on the CPU. It turns out, if you want to render a lot of particles on the GPU, you need a dedicated graphics card. Since the rain effect makes heavy use of particles, this was the first thing to change - the small fix in v1.3.1 was simply to switch the effect to use the CPU if the graphics card detected by the game wasn't up to the task. But this isn't great really. My laptop is getting old now, so more modern iGPUs can probably handle this better, so just assuming any integrated chip needs simpler effects is wrong. Instead, there should be an option for it in the graphics menu. How about this one?
"Advanced" because nothing is really advanced about pixel art! This new option doesn't just affect the rain though. It actually changes Godot's rendering backend - "Advanced" is simply better optimised for desktop graphics cards, and supports the most features (it is also the only one that supports the fancy volumetric fog effect). There are two other options - Simple is better optimised for integrated graphics (and smartphone GPUs, but who cares about those?), and finally, Legacy is available for those who have older computers which don't support the Vulkan graphics API. You may want to play around with this setting, even if you do have the graphics card for the best quality. You can get a much more "retro" look by lowering the resolution and using the Simple renderer for example:

What's Next

That's it for this development update. The next thing on the list is to update the demo - v1.4.0 will be out (hopefully) later this month. It is almost ready as-is, but needs a bit more tweaking and testing first. More importantly however, there is an engine bug with the Simple renderer which I would like fixed before I release v1.4.0. Luckily it has already been fixed, but I will need to wait for Godot 4.1.2 first. If that patch release for the engine isn't out by the end of this month I will just go ahead and release v1.4.0 and a later hotfix (v1.4.1) to address the bug. Other than that, a big new milestone is approaching. With the design of all of the maps that take place in Osowiec itself now pretty much finalised, it is time to start on the final three maps - each of these will share a similar new design, centered around the underground lair that the main villain has built for himself. Hopefully I will be able to show some of this off in the next development update! Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-09-05 18:47:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, I am pleased to announce that Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men has been released on itch.io! This release comes alongside a new trailer that shows off gameplay from the v1.3 update, and a minor patch (v1.3.2). You can find the game on itch.io here. Release notes for v1.3.2:

• Adjusted AI behaviour. AI will now try to remain within a certain distance of the player, this distance being unique for each enemy (for example, shotgunners will try to get close to you while the standard riflemen stay at medium range). Further improvements to AI navigation are planned for a future release
• Minor artwork improvements
• Several bugfixes and improvements

[ 2023-08-18 17:30:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the tenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. It's been a very busy month trying to get the game running properly on the latest version of Godot, however you will probably have seen by now that I managed it in the end with the release of v1.3.0 and v1.3.1 of the demo last week. I've decided that this month I would go with a more technical and behind-the-scenes update since there isn't as much to show off in terms of new features. I will finish off with a teaser for Map 10 and a brief update on what I will be working on next month. Without further ado, let's get into it!

A Mammoth Undertaking

So, if you weren't already aware, Haunted runs on the Godot game engine. Previously, I was using v3.5.1, however v4.0 of the engine has been out for some time and came with a number of significant changes and improvements so my intention since the start of the project has always been to upgrade to v4.x at some point (although I overlooked this in the roadmap back in February), and with the release of Godot v4.1 (a more stable and polished version compared to v4.0) I decided the time was finally right to go through with this upgrade. So, how did that go? Well, the Godot developers kindly provide a converter tool that can do much of the boring stuff for me (for example, renaming methods, variables and classes that have changed). Once the tool had done its thing, it was time to open the game up in Godot 4 for the first time!
Well, that was to be expected. 164 errors and 66 warnings, so there's a lot of things that need fixing. A few days of fixing later...
Still some way off being done, but an improvement. Can we actually run it now?
Hmm, kind of. The menu is working but it looks a bit off - where did the clouds and the fog go? Well, whatever. Does the game part work?
Nope! It looks like there's some more errors to fix before the game will work. A few hours later though...
Oh. Well, Map 1 loaded up OK, but I'm stuck in the middle of it. Let's fix that and try again...
Hmm, OK. There's some sprite issues which will be easy to fix. But wait...
Where did everything go??? Ah. Turns out some optimisation code that I had added to make the game run better in Godot 3.5 was no longer working properly. I fixed that and most things seemed to be working again.
I will skip over most of the other fixes I was working on as these weren't particularly interesting, and at this point I was focusing on getting Map 9 working again for last month's development update. However, once these smaller fixes were done there was still an elephant in the room...

Performance Improvements

I've talked a lot about how Godot 4 was supposed to bring performance improvements. This was largely based on the fact that Godot 4 uses Vulkan for rendering, whereas Godot 3 uses OpenGL 3 which is quite old at this point. So you can imagine how alarmed I was when I tried running Map 4 (possibly the most demanding map in the demo) and got this result.
The performance was all over the place! What made it worse was that I was running this on my desktop, which has a fairly beefy GPU in it. Something was very wrong here as the game shouldn't be dipping below 60 FPS on my hardware. After doing some debugging, I actually found the answer was not what I expected at all - it turned out, the optimisation code I had added to get the game working smoothly in Godot 3, was actually making things a lot worse in Godot 4. I removed pretty much all of this code, and this happened...
The performance is still a bit inconsistent, but I had to disable the frame rate cap to record this. The new peak performance was not 60 FPS now, it was more like 160 FPS. Part of the reason for this was that some of my optimisation code was trying to achieve what Godot 4 already does out-of-the-box, and so it was fighting with the engine instead of working with it. But wait, something still isn't right. Why do the lights look weird here?
After doing some digging, this turned out to be a similar problem to one that I tried to work around in Godot 3. Essentially, there is a limit on how many lights can cast shadows at the same time, and if this limit is exceeded the lights start rendering incorrectly. In Godot 3, this limit was only 8, so my previous code tried to work out the 8 closest lights and only enable shadows on these. However, this constant sorting of hundreds of lights was partly responsible for the bad performance I had seen before. Luckily, in Godot 4 the "light limit" was around 44, so knowing I would probably never have more than this too close to the player at any time I thought of a cleverer piece of code that could turn off shadows for far away lights without doing any sorting at all... And then this happened.

Not only had I fixed the lighting issue, performance had seen another significant jump. The peak FPS was now well over 200, and the frame rate actually looked more consistent while playing. It was at this point I knew the v1.3.0 update was nearly ready to release, and just needed a bit more polish.

The Save System

One last thing that needed looking at before releasing the update was the save system. If you played the game before v1.3.0, you probably saw the warning about old saves being incompatible, so here's the explanation for that if you are interested. I knew that saves were going to be problematic as there have been some variable renames which I would have to account for if old saves were going to work. I figured that while new saves would work fine, old saves would fail to load. And again, Godot surprised me. What actually happened, was that while the Godot 4 version of the game was fine loading old saves from Godot 3, it instead failed to load new saves! It turns out, the saving code was making some bad assumptions about how the maps would be set up when loading, which used to work fine but didn't any more due to some internal engine changes. I realised fixing this would also break loading, so it would no longer be possible to load old saves either. There was a more significant issue here though. This was being tested with my "dev" build of the game, which uses a text-based format for the save files so I can debug issues with them. However, in the exported game the saves are encrypted in a binary format (so you can't cheat). This encryption is an engine feature, and unfortunately this has also changed, so the Godot 4 version of the game actually can't read the files saved by the old version at all.

Finishing Touches

With all of that done, the v1.3.0 update was getting closer to being finished. I showed off some of the new graphical effects last month, such as the new decal-based blood and the new fog.
An interesting side-effect of the decals - they also "painted" the barbed wire red! I thought this looked pretty cool I also mentioned some physics problems last month, including the ability to jump through ceilings. Once I'd switched to the Jolt physics engine, I found out that this was my bad. Turns out I was calculating the player's collision shape wrong!
This required an out-of-body experience to fix... So, it was finally time to try exporting the project. Wait a minute...
Where did the fog go??? It seems I ran into an engine bug here. The fog only shows up if there is a directional light (which comes from the moon in Haunted), but for some reason if one scene doesn't have this, then the fog remains broken even after changing to a new scene. In the exported build, the "logo" screen shows up first, which didn't have a sky or moon present so I had to add them to fix this awkward bug. And that concludes the adventure I had upgrading the engine to Godot 4.

What's Next

It is safe to say that the game has had quite an upgrade in terms of the visuals now. The screenshots and trailers are quite out of date as a result, so it's about time I updated them. Because of this, I've decided that not only will I revamp the Steam store page, I will also be releasing the game on itch.io to serve as the official "DRM-free" version of the game. I won't do this just yet as I would like to finish at least one more map first, and I have made a start on Map 10. However, I have encountered a few more engine problems which make it difficult to work on this map at the moment, so instead Map 11 will be the next map I will complete before spending time on the new store page(s). That's it for this month. Before I go, I will leave you with a teaser for what will come next in your fight through Osowiec...
Someone isn't happy that you killed his protege... Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-07-29 14:10:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Following on from yesterday's major update, I have released a hotfix (v1.3.1) which addresses some of the performance problems on integrated GPUs. The game works about as well as it did before on my laptop now, however there is still more that can be done later to improve things. The full release notes for this hotfix are below.

• Fixed the significant lag on iGPUs. v1.3.1 should now run about as well as v1.2.1, but I would still recommend reducing the rendering resolution and turning off shadows if you are running on an iGPU
• Fixed a resolution scaling issue in fullscreen mode

[ 2023-07-22 11:13:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.3.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. With this update, the game is now running on Godot 4.1.1 (previously it was on 3.5.1). This was planned a while ago (but overlooked in the roadmap), and was necessary for bringing in new features, bug fixes, performance improvements and more.

Release Notes

• Upgraded the engine to Godot 4.1.1
• Added a new decal-based blood effect. Go wild painting the maps red!
• Improved the fog effect. It now uses the new volumetric fog, and has been coloured to look like lingering poison gas. Let me know what you think of this new look in the comments
• Improved performance (in Map 4 especially, but also in the other maps. More on this below)
• Fixed the camera clipping through walls in some places in Map 4
• Added a setting to the graphics options for limiting the number of decals
• Added a warning for when incompatible saves are detected (more on this below)
• Several other bug fixes

Known Issues

With such significant changes, there were bound to be some issues which I would not be able to fix right away. While I have tested the demo in full several times now, and have done my best to fix as many things as possible, there are still a few things that should be noted.

• Save games from v1.2.1 and before will no longer work. This was the reason for the "incompatible saves warning" - anyone who has played the game before will see this. Unfortunately, the reason for this is an internal engine change that I have no control over, but I did use this opportunity to clean up and refactor the save system code.
• Performance on integrated GPUs may be worse than before. I know I mentioned performance improvements, but unfortunately I found out today that these will only be relevant for those with dedicated GPUs. It turns out, in Godot 4.x there is a distinction between the full-featured, "desktop" renderer and a faster but lower quality "mobile" renderer. To get the game working properly again on integrated GPUs, I will need to spend more time optimising specifically for them, but as the majority of Steam users have dedicated GPUs anyway the priority for now is just to get the game finished. If you do rely on an iGPU, rest assured I will not release the full game like this as I do have a laptop to test it on.
• The physics don't work quite as they did before. I have tried my best to tune it so it works just as well, but you may encounter some differences in behaviour compared to the previous releases.

With this in mind, why did I choose to release this update now? Well, I have been working on it for a while already, and I decided it would be nice to have some feedback on the new features. There will likely be more updates to address the shortcomings before the full release.

Reverting to v1.2.1

If you have issues running the game following this update, or just wanted to finish your current save game, don't worry. I have added the previous version of the game as a "beta" so you can switch back to it. The instructions for this are below:

• On the game's library page, click "Manage" (the gear icon) -> "Properties"
• Click the "Betas" tab
• Select "v1.2.1" from the "Beta Participation" dropdown

[ 2023-07-21 20:49:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

v1.2.1 of the demo has been released. The full release notes can be found below.

• Added setting to control the "head bob" amount, which also allows it to be turned off completely
• Fixed issues that prevented saves from loading correctly from the "game over" screen
• Removed the "Damage Taken" score. This wasn't implemented very well, didn't contribute much to the overall score and encouraged hiding from enemies which conflicted with the "Aggression" score. The space on the intermission screen will be used for extra bonus multipliers later on
• Several other minor bug fixes and improvements

[ 2023-07-05 16:37:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update will be longer than usual as I have quite a lot to cover - first there is the new boss fight, and second is some news about the demo which will get a bit technical. Without further ado, lets begin!

Map 09 - Necromancer's Temple

So, the boss fight. I've been mentioning this for the past few months so now its time to reveal who I've chosen for you to fight. We have a bit of a problem though - the man I've chosen for the job will make no sense to anyone without first revealing who he works for - that is, I need to spoil the final boss as well. If you don't like spoilers, don't worry - you can still enjoy this month's preview video (a longer one too!) without too many spoilers, but you will probably have no idea who I'm fighting in the video. Anyway, with that out of the way, who is our main man? Who is behind all these resurrections? Well, there could only really be one man who fits the bill... [spoiler]Grigori Rasputin.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Did you manage to guess him? I probably left too large a clue on the store page, but it was too perfect a fit to pass up. Who better to serve as the mastermind behind a bunch of Russians coming back from the dead than the man who wouldn't die?[/spoiler] So now we know who the main antagonist is. But he is not the subject of today's update. Knowing who the final boss was, I needed to find a right-hand-man for him, a protege of sorts. This was very likely to be [spoiler]a member of the Russian royal family[/spoiler], given the close relationship they had with him. After doing some digging, I (again) found the perfect fit: [spoiler]Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia.[/spoiler]
Here's a picture of him, which I used as a reference to make his sprites. Unfortunately spoiler tags don't work well with images. [spoiler]So who is this random Russian prince? What a strange choice right? Well, if you decide to read his Wikipedia page (which I linked above), you'll easily spot why. Turns out he was part of a cult called "The Black Peril", who introduced Rasputin to Tsar Nicholas II and was very likely close friends with the guy, seeing as the two were making plots to gain influence and the like. Oh, and his house was even described as "the central point of the powers of evil". What's not to like?[/spoiler] So we have an occultist, known for being evil, and he was best mates with the main villain of the game. What's he actually like to fight? Well, here's a video for you. [previewyoutube=nRq4Twl_XGA;full][/previewyoutube] Wait, what's going on here? There are undead Germans, in a game that's supposed to be about undead Russians? What's this madness all about!? These guys are actually the last two (non-boss) enemies you will encounter, which I teased a while back in Development Update #7. Expect to see them pop up in the last five levels as well. Anyway, you can see from the video that this fight was quite difficult. I died twice before I finally managed to beat him, and this was on medium difficulty! Granted, I did make the game harder for myself by enabling the "pistol start" option (so I couldn't carry over weapons, ammo, health and armour from the previous level), and I didn't want to spoil the secrets either. That second point is why I played on medium difficulty - I intentionally made it very difficult, to almost impossible, to beat the fight on the harder difficulties without at least finding a few of the secrets. If you want some more advice on how to beat it, pay close attention to the guys throwing grenades at you. They are usually what killed me during testing. Oh, and if you can, try to hit the German enemies from behind. They are both carrying highly explosive items on their backs and you can blow them up this way!

Demo Progress Report

Well, that was the boss fight, now for the technical part of this update. If you're not so interested in the details, the TL:DR is that I was planning a big 1.3 update but this could take weeks or months before it is ready, so enjoy a 1.2.1 bugfix update in a few days instead. So, I have some important news regarding the demo - over the past few weeks I have been working hard to upgrade the engine from Godot 3.5 to Godot 4.1. This is a major change that has broken a lot of things, but it was always my intention to do this as the benefits far outweighed the risks. However, while most things are working again, it has unfortunately not gone totally smoothly and there is one significant issue which will delay my planned 1.3 update. What is that issue? Well, it's a pretty major one, it's the physics engine. With the upgrade to Godot 4.1, the engine has switched from using the Bullet physics engine to the in-house GodotPhysics engine. This, unfortunately, is not working very well in 3D currently, and I don't seem to be the only one having issues with it. You may have noticed some of these issues in the video of the boss fight - I recorded the video using the Godot 4 build of the game, and you can see both myself and enemies sometimes getting stuck on bits of the terrain which is far from ideal. A more alarming issue I've had is that collisions with ceilings don't seem to be working properly, so you can just jump straight through them. Obviously, the 1.3 update cannot be released when the physics are in this state, so I will hold off on it for now. The good news is that there may be a solution to it, but I have to be a bit patient - there is a third-party plugin providing the Jolt physics engine, which has been well-received as far as I can tell so I would like to try it. It doesn't work with Godot 4.1 just yet, but it is still in active development so hopefully that will come soon. Regardless, it could take weeks, or (worst case) even months for the 1.3 update to become stable, so I will be releasing a 1.2.1 update in a few days time containing some bug fixes and other small improvements that I had intended to include in 1.3. So, you might be wondering, if everything is horribly broken with Godot 4, why do I still say the benefits outweighed the risks? Well, I have a few more screenshots of the Godot 4 build of the game to satisfy your curiosity.
I've waited a long time for these decal blood effects...






As you can see, there are some interesting new visual effects coming up. First, there is the fancy new volumetric fog, which I think makes it look much more like chlorine gas just rolled over Osowiec (like it should do). Second, I am working on making the blood effects more gory with decals, which are another new feature in Godot 4. Outside of the new eye-candy, there are several other reasons. Performance is much improved with the new Vulkan renderer, and it has provided a good opportunity to clean up old code and make use of new systems to optimise the game a bit better. Plus, Godot 4 will continue to be supported much longer than Godot 3, which will help with stability and performance as well in future. Anyway, that was another long update. Next month will be even more technical, as I will go into a bit more detail about the upgrade process to Godot 4 and the various systems that have been tweaked and reworked. Until then, stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

[ 2023-07-02 13:59:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. In this update I will go over how Map 5 has turned out and also provide a few teaser screenshots for Map 9. Well, it's been a while hasn't it. I first posted some early screenshots of Map 5 all the way back in the first development update, but I can finally say that it's done. After all that hard work, I'm actually quite pleased with the result in the end. So what's the deal with this map then? I mentioned last month that I thought I'd come up with some ideas for a fun level, so I'll explain what I meant now. Map 5 is, as you'll be able to tell, based on a variety of medieval and Gothic castles. This means high, imposing walls, cramped rooms, and plenty of traps to fall into. That last one was probably less of a problem in real castles, but is fairly typical for games set inside them. What kind of traps can you expect then? Well, here's some examples...
Hmm, a large room with lots of items and no enemies. Something smells funny...
I knew it! I got ambushed when I picked up the key in this room!
I survived, but still took a beating...
There's a lot of enemies out in the courtyard here, and you can add more by picking up the key or opening up the secret in this area
A lot of twice-dead men left in my wake...
...And again in this hall I'm sure you missed having a video to watch last month, but making these is only worth it when there is new gameplay to show off. And that we have plenty of now, so enjoy! [previewyoutube=puH15Onks78;full][/previewyoutube] Before I continue, I thought I'd better mention something about this video. It's not up to the same quality as my other videos - in fact, I recorded it in 720p/30 FPS, which is quite a downgrade compared to the 1080p/60 FPS I usually do. The problem is, this map needs a lot more optimisation to get it to perform as well as the other maps. This is mainly because it is one of the most densely packed maps I have made so far, and most of the optimisation done until now has helped when things are more spread-out. It runs well enough on my desktop despite this, but when I add recording software to the mix the performance takes quite a beating and recording it at 60 FPS would have made the video stutter a lot more. Not to worry though. I have some plans for how to fix this which I may be covering as soon as July, along with a major update for the demo. I will cover this in more detail next month. Anyway, you can see from the video there were plenty of moments where I performed certain actions (picking up keys, opening secrets etc.) and enemies ambushed me. In fact, there is one particularly nasty fight which is completely optional - if you open up the secret in the courtyard, 8 Machine-gunners will spawn in (on the hardest difficulty) to try and make you regret it! The rewards are more than worth it, however. You probably also noticed something a bit out of the ordinary at the end, too. Here's a close up of it.
You might remember from the second development update, I introduced "ambushing" enemies - not to be confused with enemies who spawn in, these are enemies who will start off facing away from you, and will only attack once you get too close or they hear you shooting. This allowed me to set up a crazy fight in Map 8, but I also mentioned I wanted more fights like this in other maps. So here we have the first of these big fights, but, as it will be your first encounter like this, there is a pretty big hint for how to deal with it:
Might want to use those grenades... So, that was Map 5! I hope you will enjoy dealing with the traps and finding some interesting secrets in this level. To finish off this update, I here are the screenshots I have for Map 9:


If you remember from the second development update, I showed off the outside of this church. The exit for Map 8 is the main entrance of the church - that means the next fight will be inside it. The good news is I have managed to finish designing the interior of the church for Map 9, so I should be ready to show off the whole boss fight next month. But, you will have to wait until then to find out what that fight will entail... Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-05-28 17:20:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventh development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. In this update I will go into a bit more detail about the changes in the v1.2.0 update and their significance for future levels. I will also talk about how Map 5 is shaping up and what my plans are for it. Anyway, let's start by going over the biggest addition in v1.2.0 - corpses! These were definitely missing before, and they serve to emphasise the horror element of the game. It also didn't really make sense that after a large battle between Germans and Russians, there was no evidence of any Germans being there, other than the player character. I really enjoyed making these, so here's some examples of my favourites!
Enjoy your meal!
Some morbid decoration
Is he pointing to something...?
A warning perhaps... All this effort served a secondary purpose, however. These sprites (and the 3D model that they were created from) are not just going to stay dead. They will also serve as the basis for two new enemies, who will make their debut in the mini-boss fight in Map 9. Stay tuned as I will be talking more about this in a few months time! That wasn't the only big change in v1.2.0 though. I covered the addition of signs last month, which have also decorated the demo levels, but most of the rest of the update was focused on improving Map 3. Map 3 has probably received the most criticism out of all the demo levels, and I don't think that criticism was unreasonable. It was quite hard to make out where to go, and I didn't notice this because I already knew how to navigate it and what to look for. So, what have I done to fix it? Well, the first thing was to apply the new terrain texturing technique from Map 6 to it, so at least the ground isn't just green everywhere. But there was still a lot of green in the scenery, especially the bushes, so I adjusted those as well. I have some before and after screenshots to show how this changed things:





Players were also finding it frustrating trying to get through the hedges to find the brass key. This was much more of a problem before I made the bushes larger in v1.1.3, as before then it looked like you could jump over them which was not intentional. To try and make this more interesting I added more entrances and exits to the hedge "maze", and I also placed some extra items to act as a "guide" of sorts. I haven't had much feedback on these changes so I hope they have helped make Map 3 more fun. Finally, a less prominent change in v1.2.0, but still fairly important, was adjusting the brightness of pickups. Here's an example of what I mean:

As you can see, in this dark corner of Map 3 it was quite hard to see these pickups as they blended in to the dark background. Now though, they easily stand out - this should help me with placing bread crumb trails in future, as I can be more sure that they will be noticed. Well, that was a lot about the changes in v1.2.0. But what about Map 5? I will start this section off in the usual fashion, by referring back to the handy map:
This fort is quite a distinctive shape I think. There is a sort of pentagon in the middle, surrounded by what looks like a couple of outer walls and a road. It isn't easy to work out what was actually there though - Osowiec fortress was partially demolished twice since the infamous battle in 1915, once when the Russians abandoned it and again when the Germans occupied it during World War II. This means that the reference images available are of a very limited area, mostly around Fort I - so we may never know exactly what Fort III once looked like. So, I once again have to fill in the gaps with some imagination, and this time I chose to make it look like a Gothic-medieval castle. You might remember, all the way back in the first development update, some early screenshots of this level. Well, since then I have a few more...




Of course, it's a bit empty at the moment, but you can see the kind of look I'm going for. You might also remember, in the first development update, I mentioned that I didn't have a clear enough picture of what it would look like in my head. Well, after making three other maps, I've had plenty of time to think about it, and I hope what I've come up with will make for a fun level... But this development update is getting quite long already, so you'll have to wait until next month's development update to find out more. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

[ 2023-04-30 13:26:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce the release of v1.2.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update focuses on level improvements, in line with the changes I've made to the newer levels (that are not part of the demo), as well as some new scenery and many bugfixes. The full release notes can be found below.

• Added new scenery items:
  • Signs these should help you find your way. Of course, they are not in English as the game takes place in Russian-controlled Poland, but important signs have icons that will help you understand what they are pointing to
  • Corpses some morbid decoration for every level! There are several variations of these, each featuring advanced 8-directional sprite technology. You might want to pay attention to which way some of them are looking
• Significant improvements to Map 3:
  • Added texture variation to the terrain, so roads and artillery craters will be muddier
  • Adjusted colours of the bushes to stand out more
  • Opened up the hedge maze area. There are now a few different routes to the brass key
  • Adjusted enemy positions to cluster them more
• Improvements to Map 2:
  • Added another texture for important rooms
  • Updated monster closets to better fit in with the environment
• Adjusted pickup placement in Maps 2 and 3 so more pickups are located along the intended route. This should help guide players on medium difficulty (and below)
• Added some more ammo to Maps 2 and 3 on easier difficulties
• Enemy and secret counts are now shown on the intermission screen next to the scores
• Renamed the maps. Details can be found in the last development update, but here are the new names for the demo maps:
  • MAP01 Welcome to Osowiec
  • MAP02 Revenant Garrison
  • MAP03 Poisoned Marshes
  • MAP04 Halls of Despair
• Made pickups brighter so they stand out more
• Improved some weapon sprites
• Minor save file changes. v1.1.x saves will show as out-of-date, but will still load correctly (it is recommended to re-save current save games anyway)
• Fixed lag spike when pausing
• Increased default for Exposure setting in the graphics menu
• Several bugfixes

[ 2023-04-16 13:09:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the sixth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This update will be focused on Map 6, but I will also (briefly) cover some changes planned for the next demo update, which will (hopefully) be released next month. As with the previous levels I've covered, let's start by looking at where this one is located. If you've read the other development updates, you'll know I have a handy map of Osowiec that I base my levels on, so again I have circled the point of interest:
Here we can see the area between Fort III (the location of the soon-to-be Map 5), and both the station and Fort I (where Maps 7 and 8 are). There are a couple of roads running between these areas, and a couple of buildings towards the station. Another point of interest is the track coming out from the station, which could be a train yard of some kind. But aside from all this, it is hard to tell exactly what else is there. So, I've used a bit of my imagination to fill in the gaps. This is a World War One game, but so far there's a big part of World War One that's currently missing from - No Man's Land. So that's what I decided to fill this map in with - in fact, that is actually the name I gave it. Here's a few screenshots:



If you get bored of mud and barbed wire, you can also pay the train yard a visit. Is this foreshadowing? And as in last month's update, I felt it was easiest to convey the atmosphere of the level with a short video: [previewyoutube=YwFhBbOhLR0;full][/previewyoutube] As you can see, this is more the sort of feel you'd expect from a classic World War One game - barbed wire, waterlogged artillery craters and trenches, dead trees, dead men, and endless mud. But there are a few important new features which should be pointed out. I have had yet more feedback on the level design since the last development update, which I have tried to address in the new map. Some players find it hard to navigate certain maps, especially big outdoors areas with lots of places to explore. Being No Man's Land, we again have another large open map, so I needed to be careful how I designed it so that it is easy to navigate. Alongside the breadcrumb trails of items to pick up, which I mentioned last time, there are some new environment set-pieces to help you find your way through this map - these signs.

These signs are in both Russian and Polish - after all, Osowiec is part of Poland, which at the time was controlled by Russia. It wouldn't make sense for these to be in English! However, I know that most people playing the game won't understand either Russian or Polish, so for important signs I have included icons next to the text, to make it clear what the sign is pointing to. It's not just signposts you will find throughout the various levels though. You will also find signs above important doors, as well as indoor signs that point to different rooms in the indoor levels.
It's a little difficult to see in this screenshot, but in-game you will see that this says "Station" like the signposts did

This looks useful! Some of you with a keen eye will notice that parts of the map aren't quite so brown and muddy. This is another feature I have included to help with navigation - texture variation. Map 3 had a lot of green, which made everything look the same. To avoid having this problem again, I have blended between the green grass from the level you've just come from and the muddy look you'd expect in No Man's Land. This means that if you get lost in this map, keep going towards the muddy areas and you'll be heading in the right direction. And finally, another problem players had with Map 3 was getting stuck in the "hedge maze" area. This was mostly because there was only one entrance and exit to that area - in Map 6, there is no single path forward. You can choose whichever way around you want, but you will still need to find a key to finish the level. If you follow pretty much any stretch of barbed wire, you will find a hole in it somewhere. So, with that out of the way, what's this about another update to the demo? Well, if you remember the roadmap from The Long Road Ahead, my plan was to get Map 5 out of the way and then address some of the issues with the demo. I have decided to shake this up a bit, and do these tasks the other way round - that way you all get to enjoy some of the changes I've already made, as well as the other changes I am about to discuss, sooner than expected. Here's what I'm planning to include in the demo update:

• New signs in Maps 2 & 3 to help with navigation
• Texture variation in Map 3 so it is less green
• Opening up of the "hedge maze" in Map 3
• New scenery in every demo level. More details on this will be in the release notes
• Balance changes for medium difficulty
• Better enemy and item placement to make combat more engaging
• Improved telegraphing of secrets
• New map names

That last point is worth emphasising. Up until now, each of the level names have been fairly bland - "Fort IV", "Marshes", "Fort I", "Station" and so on. I have thought about this again, and decided to spice them up a bit. Here's a preview of the new names for the demo levels:

• Map 01 - Welcome to Osowiec (unchanged)
• Map 02 - Revenant Garrison
• Map 03 - Poisoned Marshes
• Map 04 - Halls of Despair

And, why not. Here's the names of the other levels I've made (or started on):

• Map 05 - Resurrected Keep
• Map 06 - No Man's Land
• Map 07 - Engines of Chaos
• Map 08 - Hopelessly Outmatched

Of course, these names aren't final and I may tweak them again later. Anyway, that's all for today, I hope you enjoyed reading this update. Stay tuned for v1.2 of the demo, which will hopefully be released in a few weeks. And once again, thanks for reading!

[ 2023-03-28 19:14:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the fifth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. In this update I will go over how Map 7 is shaping up, and as I mentioned in the last announcement (The Long Road Ahead), this one will be a fun one. Before I show off what the map looks like, let's address the elephant in the room from Development Update #4 - specifically, that train I made last month. Some of you probably worked out where Map 7 will take place from that image, but for those who haven't read the last development update, Map 7 will take place at Osowiec's station. We can see where this lies in relation to the other levels using this handy map (which I've shown before):
We can clearly see a railway going past Fort I (the location of Map 8), and the layout of the tracks served as a starting point for the design of the map. Here are some screenshots to show that:



That's cool and all, but what about the train - how does that fit in to the level? Well, I prepared something special to show that off - a short video. [previewyoutube=4917FFYLlmw;full][/previewyoutube] As you can see, the trains will be both a help and a hindrance. If you're careful, you can use it to crush your enemies for you, but don't get crushed yourself. As an aside, I would like to say that I do now have a YouTube channel. I've known for a while that it is hard to demonstrate new maps and enemies with just screenshots alone, so from now on I will aim to have a preview video alongside screenshots when covering major features. In the next few days I will also upload the trailers for the game to this channel. Let me know what you think of this change! Now, back to the game. Crushing enemies isn't the only thing the train will do. Part of the level will also involve boarding the train to find a key - and this means stopping it first.
The beast has been tamed Now, to finish this development update off, I'd like to go over how I've incorporated the feedback I've had so far into the design of the level. Thanks to the Next Fest event, I got a lot of useful feedback, so here's some common criticism people had and how I've addressed it.

I'm stuck/lost/I don't know where to go

This came up quite a lot. Interestingly, I found the solution in a development blog for another boomer shooter, Ion Fury. In that blog post, the developer talked about the same problem, and the solution they had was to place smaller items along the intended path like a trail of breadcrumbs. Here's an example of this:
In this screenshot, I've just entered the level and killed the first few enemies. Now where do I go - straight on through the door, or left up the stairs? Well, up the stairs is a dead end for now, as the door at the top is locked. This means the way forward is straight on, through the door. This is telegraphed through the health and armour bonuses, which you'll probably want now as this initial area can be a bit hectic. Most of the rest of the level is like this, with smaller health and armour items (and sometimes ammo) which guide you.

I keep running out of ammo and end up resorting to the rifle

This one came as a surprise to me, as I'd always thought I put too much ammo in the levels. This one can be tricky to balance, but at this mid-point through the game, all the weapons have been unlocked and so I need to place ammo around for all of them anyway. Additionally, on the harder difficulties there are always more enemies, which means plenty of weapon and ammo drops from those enemies. One thing I have done differently to address this, is test it a little differently. I always balance the hardest difficulty first, as this is the difficulty I play on (what can I say, I find it too easy!). I consider this difficulty balanced if I can beat the level without dying, while the "Pistol Start" option is enabled (in the gameplay menu). This means there must be enough items for me to be able to complete it from a fresh start, with just the Luger and no health or armour carried over from the previous level. What I now did differently, is I went back through the level and noted any items I didn't pick up, then looked at my final health, armour and ammo counts.
I finished the level in a decent shape, despite taking a beating in the final fight. I have some leftover rounds for the Revolver, but what isn't shown is that I have a lot of spare MG ammo. I could probably disable some of the MG ammo pickups on Feldmarschall difficulty, but won't tweak the health or armour anymore. With that in mind, I can adjust how many items are available for the harder difficulties, and then leave the rest for the easier ones as there are less enemies to deal with on easier difficulties.

I sometimes flip switches that reveal secrets but don't know where they are

This is a simple one to resolve, and comes down to telegraphing of secret locations. In the demo levels, secrets are usually near to the switches that open them, however the actual locations don't look any different to the surrounding environment. This one was easy to fix - the secret doors in Map 7 have slightly different textures. They still blend in, but at least they can be spotted with a keen eye. Additionally, some secrets are actually visible from other secret areas. An example of this is below:
Here, I am standing in a hard-to-reach area, and I can see items on the roof through the window. Now I just need to figure out how to get there. Of course, this example works both ways - if I get the items on the roof first, I'll still see the other secret from the other side of the window.

I didn't like the enemy placement

OK, I admit this one is quite vague. I can guess one problem with the enemy placement though - there is rarely a quiet moment in the demo levels. For the most part, the enemies are placed in large groups, with the odd one or two scattered between them. This is especially a problem on Map 3. What this means is that it is difficult to deal with one group of enemies, without triggering another and having to immediately deal with that group. Then when you are dealing with the next one, you get distracted by some scattered enemies which leads to another group, and so on. This means there is often very little time after a fight to take a breather and explore for items.
I survived this fight by the skin of my teeth. Time to find some health. The solution for this is easy - move the previously-scattered enemies into other groups, so that there are bigger gaps between groups of enemies. This is something that was easy to do in Map 7 as its overall layout meant I could divide it up into different sections with lots of enemies in them, and separate these sections with items and secrets. All that was just a handful of points, and there is a lot more feedback I can address later. Hopefully it's enough to prove that I do pay attention to the feedback you give, so don't be afraid to say what you think about the game! Anyway, this has been a long development update, so it's time to end it. Join me next month where (hopefully) I can show off the next map that is planned, Map 6... Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-03-02 18:07:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! The Steam Next Fest event has ended, and the results were far better than I could have hoped for. Not only did the number of players (and wishlists) increase dramatically, I also received valuable feedback for making the game better. Some of this feedback lead to immediate patches, while the rest will be taken on-board going forward, and will influence the demo content later on. Anyway, with a much-increased following, I feel obliged to talk about how the game will actually be finished on time. As it stands, the estimated release date is the end of this year, which will give me roughly ten more months of development time. So, what will I fill that time with? Well, below is a provisional roadmap for the game, all the way to release.

• Implement Map 7. This will hopefully be finished by the end of February (or early March at the latest).
• Implement Maps 5 & 6. These will likely take about one month each, which will take us to May.
• At this point, the first half of the game will be done. I will take a short break from level design to address some of the issues with the maps in the demo, such as adding more scenery to the emptier areas, and balance changes for the easier difficulties. This will take us to somewhere between mid May and early June.
• Create three new enemies - a mini-boss and two more regular enemies that will make their first appearance in Map 9. This will bring us to mid June.
• Implement Map 9. This will be an arena-style level (for the mini-boss) and won't take as long, so will be finished by early July.
• Implement Maps 10 & 11. These will likely take one month each, taking us to early September.
• Implement Maps 12 & 13. I haven't decided exactly what these maps will be yet, however they (along with Map 14) will not take place inside Osowiec itself, instead being more abstract. With most of the assets for the game being done by this point, I don't expect these two to take as long, so they will probably be done by early October.
• Implement Map 14 - the final boss fight. Again, this will be an arena-style level and won't take as long, but will need a good boss for a satisfying end to the game. This will probably be done by around mid October.
• Implement Map 15 (the secret level). I know where this will go, but haven't thought about what will be in it yet. Again, with most of the assets already in place it won't take as long, so this will bring us to early to mid November.
• By this point, all of the levels will be finished. There will be an extensive polish period, where some of the poorer-quality sprites and textures get updated to improve the overall look of the game. There will also be a lot of balance tuning, and perhaps the placement of enemies, items and secrets will be revisited.
• Finally, we will have the finishing touches. I am planning to add Steam Achievements and other Steam integration features (such as cloud saves), and there will be a lot of bug fixing and testing. There will also be a few extra features which I will announce later...
• Hopefully, when all that polish and the finishing touches have been done, it will still be 2023. However, I will not rush things. If it looks like I need more time (something I can only really know later in the year), then the game will be released in early 2024 instead.

Of course, this roadmap isn't final. I will refine it as development progresses, and I get a clearer picture of how long things are taking. Oh, and look out for the next development update at the end of this month, it will be a fun one! Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-02-13 20:02:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

There were still a few bugs in the last hotfix, these should all be fixed now. Please let me know if there are any issues with this hotfix as I have made some more significant changes (compared to the last hotfix). Here's the full list of changes for 1.1.3:

• Fixed another Map 4 bug with enemy hitboxes. Enemies now have separate hitboxes for checking if they've been shot, which I've made slightly bigger
• Updated the hedge "walls" on Map 3. They are larger now and it should be more obvious that they are actual walls, not just invisible walls
• Updated and expanded the secret mechanics. This is an internal change for now, so it shouldn't affect how the current secrets work, but should allow me to create more interesting secrets for future levels. Please let me know if you encounter any bugs with this

[ 2023-02-12 12:21:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

So the Next Fest event has started, and I must admit, the results so far are very pleasing - interest in the game has literally doubled overnight! Many thanks to all those who gave the demo a try and wishlisted it. Anyway, the game wasn't without issues it seems - there was a critical (game-breaking) bug on Map 4 which was pointed out to me today, so apologies if it spoiled things for you. That bug has now been fixed. Here's the full list of changes for 1.1.2:

• Fixed a bug on Map 4 where the enemies were getting stuck, and weren't removing their hitboxes after being killed
• Added an option to invert the mouse Y axis - the option can be found in the Controls menu
• Slightly reduced maximum enemy attack distances again

[ 2023-02-07 18:13:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

This hotfix mostly addresses some balance issues, among other things. Full list of changes for 1.1.1:

• Rebalanced maximum enemy attack distances - the attack distance has been reduced substantially on Oberleutnant (Medium) difficulty and below, while the distance has been reduced slightly for General (Hard) and above
• Rebalanced the Trenchgun - it now does slightly less damage per-pellet, but has much greater accuracy than before
• Fixed a number of imprecise hitboxes for both enemies and environment objects
• Reworked the audio player code to be more efficient
• Spiced up the menu screen background a bit

[ 2023-02-06 17:23:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the fourth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. I've been quite busy this month, as you will probably know by now, as I was finishing off the first update to the demo. I also spent some time to make a new trailer, which should do a better job at showing off the gameplay. Let's start by going over some of the things that I added to the update. First of all, I have updated some of the weapon sprites, most notable of which is the Luger. Here is how it looks now:
What prompted me to do this was actually last month's development update - I realised the Luger was the same (rather bad-looking) sprite from way back when I started this project. I had overlooked it as it was intended to be a back-up weapon, so usually you would be using one of the others instead. Of course, now that it looks a lot better, I may revisit it later on and make it a bit more useful. Secondly, as I mentioned last month, I have added "alternate fire modes". These were the highlight of the update, and expand the options available to you to dispatch the hordes of enemies you will be fighting, which should help to keep things interesting. So what are the new options? Well, I mentioned them briefly in the release notes for 1.1.0, but I'll go over them again in more detail here. First off, we have the revolver:
Here I'm in a duel with an officer, over who's quicker on the draw. By holding the right mouse button, I can repeatedly fan the hammer, and shoot more than twice as fast as normal! This will naturally make the revolver a lot stronger, but there is a catch - it's about as accurate as the trenchgun while doing this, so don't try it at a distance. Next up, the rifle and the trenchgun. These have the same addition - a bayonet, which you can even see on the trenchgun when you fire it.
The bayonet is simple really - when you right click, you stab with it. This provides a melee option for the early game, before the Shashka is unlocked, and should help if you are struggling with ammo. Finally we have the machine gun. Previously, the machine gun wasn't very strong, because its poor accuracy meant it was difficult to use at a distance, and its low damage per shot meant it took a while to kill things up close. Now, there is an option when you are at a distance:
Here, I've deployed it statically, which means going "prone" and keeping it more under control. It is much more accurate now, and a good option for sniping fast-moving enemies. You still need to be careful though, as you can't move in this position, which makes you an easier target. There will be some more options for the new weapons, too - grenades can be "cooked" to make them detonate more quickly after throwing, but if you're too late, you'll blow yourself up. Finally, the Shashka can block incoming melee attacks. But who's doing that? They all have guns right? Well, wrong. The other thing I was working on this month is the latest enemy:
This is the Cossack - you may remember I mentioned him last month. This enemy was quite fun to make, and he has perhaps the most complex AI behaviour of all the enemies so far. In the above image, you can see him charging - he will do this to begin an attack, and he runs fast. He will also keep chasing you for a while, even if you manage to break line-of-sight. But when he gets close, he packs a punch. If he hits you while charging, he does extra damage - but then he will follow this up with three attacks (unless you can get away).
He might be trying to kill you, but he's got a nice hat On top of that, he can block your melee attacks too:
Don't try to beat him at his own game, that can only go badly for you It might be better to dispatch him from a distance.
That's it for this development update. So, what's next? Well, I am hoping to make some progress with another level for next month, which will be Map 7. For now, I will leave you with this teaser:
What could I possibly want this for? Thanks for reading!

[ 2023-01-28 18:19:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce that update 1.1.0 for the demo has been released. Changes in 1.1.0:

• Implemented several alternate fire modes these are activated with right mouse button by default. The following weapons gained an alternate fire mode:
  • Revolver faster (but less accurate) shooting by repeatedly fanning the hammer
  • Rifle/Trenchgun bayonet stab attack
  • Machine gun deploys the machine gun, preventing movement but greatly increasing accuracy
• Improved some sprites (including the Luger)
• Made Officer AI smarter and more aggressive on harder difficulties
• Several enemy AI fixes and improvements
• Added Exposure setting to the graphics menu, providing a nicer looking alternative to Brightness for making the game brighter
• UI scaling is now based on the window size rather than the selected resolution, so it should be easier to read if a resolution lower than the native screen resolution is selected (in fullscreen mode this does not apply to windowed mode)
• Made some improvements to the save system. v1.0.0 saves will show as out-of-date, but will still load correctly (it is recommended to re-save current save games anyway)
• Several bugfixes

[ 2023-01-17 18:57:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the third development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This month has been surprisingly productive despite the festivities, and I hope you all had a good Christmas too. This update will be a bit longer than usual as I wanted to cover how far the game has come over the course of the year, as well as talk a bit about what will happen next - both in the next few months, as well as longer term. With that out of the way, let's get started!

From Tech Demo To, Well, Actual Demo

2022 has been a big year for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. At the start of the year, the game was little more than a simple tech demo, one of a number of projects I'd started and not really done anything with. At the beginning of the year, it looked like this...
This title screen doesn't actually do anything. The only buttons that work are "New Game" and "Quit"!
Where are his hands!??
It was somehow even harder to see what was going on back then!
The machine gun has since had a much needed update... As you can see from these screenshots, it's a bit rough(er) around the edges. There are several things that the screenshots can't show though:

• The sound effects for the weapons are borderline placeholder assets
• The music sounds a bit off
• It was so dark I had to make some edits to take these screenshots!
• The performance was horrible. Map 2, seen in the last screenshot, was lagging even though almost nothing was in it!
• No scores at the end of each level. It just abruptly switches to the next level
• No pause menu, so taking these screenshots was quite annoying...
• Etc.

This old build only had one functioning level - Map 2 was almost empty. There was also only one enemy, which is using older sprites that I made as more of a proof-of-concept than anything else. He does make an appearance in the current demo though, see if you can find him! So what has changed since then? Well, there have been roughly 1000 commits in the version control since this time last year, which brings the total commit count to about 1200. That means over 80% of the work done on the game so far has been done this year, even though I started it almost 4 years ago now. Needless to say, I'm taking it a bit more seriously now!

New Enemy, New Weapon

Now that's out of the way, it's time to talk about what I was doing this month. As I hinted at last month, the only things left to add to Map 8 were some new enemies. I had originally intended to make both of them this month, but I will explain why I changed my mind on that later. Anyway, it's time to introduce the new guy:
He is just referred to as Machine Gun Guy in the code because I haven't found a better name for him yet. As you can probably tell, that extra weight he's packing slows him down a bit. You can also hear him coming. But that extra padding is good for one thing - absorbing the recoil from those machine guns...
He's pretty devastating at close range, but also quite dangerous at a distance too. Oh, and he'll lay down some suppressive fire if you run and hide, as if it wasn't difficult enough.
If you let him pin you behind cover, you'll be easy pickings for the other enemies... Now onto the new weapon. If you've read the manual, or looked through the key bindings menu, you've probably noticed references to a "sabre" of some kind. This was to be the last weapon in the arsenal, to provide a melee option for when ammo is running low. I had originally intended it to be some kind of cavalry sabre, since World War One had cavalry in it right? Well, I did a bit more research and had a better idea - it looks like this:

This is a Cossack Shashka - it was issued to Cossack regiments in both World Wars. Here is a Cossack carrying one:
If you hadn't guessed yet, the other enemy I was planning to add to Map 8 is a Cossack. He'll definitely have that fancy hat too! But, back to the weapon. Here is what it looks like in-game.
It doesn't do as much damage as the guns, but it benefits from very fast attacks (and not requiring ammo).
He doesn't know what hit him! And with that, all 8 weapons are in the game at last.

What's Next?

Finally, it's time to talk about where I will go from here. In February, there will be a Steam Next Fest event, which focuses on promoting demos for upcoming games. I've decided to participate in this event, which will (hopefully) help the game reach a broader audience. There is still time to make some improvements to the demo in time for this event, so the game will be the best it can be for new players. This means that version 1.1.0 of the demo will be out soon - but what will it contain? Well, I had some ideas while making the Shashka. I realised that if I was going to have a melee weapon, and a melee-focussed enemy, it would be nice to be able to block attacks. This meant adding a new button for it, but why should this button only work for one weapon? In 1.1.0, I will be introducing a new feature - alternate fire modes. The general gist of it is, most weapons will have a secondary "attack" - these will be specific to the weapon. This is still a work-in-progress, but I will cover it in more detail in next month's update (along with more details on the additions in 1.1.0). For now though, here is a preview:
Can you work out what's about to happen? Longer term, I know I have set a provisional release date for the game as Q4 2023. This means one more year of development time. It has yet to be determined if this was too ambitious, but I will give it my best shot. Rest assured, I will make an announcement later in the year if it becomes clear that more time is needed. That's all for this update. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!

[ 2022-12-29 15:06:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the second development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This last month I have been working on Map 8, which will take place in Fort I. Below is the map of the fortress I have been using to plan the levels so far, which should help to place it in regards to the other levels. I have circled where Fort I is for reference:
You may recognise this map - I used an edited version of it as the basis for the end-of-level screen which shows where the next level is located (it has entered the public domain now as it is almost 100 years old, which is why I decided to include it in the game). It is probably also time I reminded you of the reference image I showed in the last update, as a refresher.
Before I get in to why this image inspired (most of) the map, let's see what we can find out from it. Some things are immediately clear:

• The site was used for some kind of parade or ceremony, possibly giving out medals
• There is a church here, and it is most likely Orthodox given the domes on the roof
• There are a lot of trees around

But one thing is a little less obvious, in the background. You can see the outer walls of the fort if you look closely - I've circled some points of interest:
So why does all this matter? Well, it can be used to build an interesting looking level:

• If ceremonies are being held there, then there will be lots of enemies
• The church provides an interesting backdrop, and an idea for where the next level will be
• The trees will help differentiate the level from the other levels taking place inside the different forts (i.e. Fort IV and Fort III)
• The background can be cross-referenced with other images to figure out what style of buildings should be there

The last point is important to try and make the level feel more authentic - I did find some other, more detailed, reference images, such as this one:
Note the structural supports at either end of this section of the wall, which were visible in the previous image You might be wondering what the point of all this was. Well, here are some screenshots from the new level, where you can see influences from the reference image:


And, the grand finale:
That's right. There are (roughly) a hundred enemies in this small section of the map in front of the church. They will be present on all difficulty levels as well. It is also worth mentioning that I was able to set this screenshot up because of some new AI behaviour which can be toggled per-enemy. Essentially, these enemies are set to "ambush" you, which means that they won't be alerted unless they get shot at, or you get too close. So why did I do this? Well, after having looked at the reference image a couple of times, I thought this was an interesting opportunity to create a really, really tough encounter. It also serves as a nice little build-up to a mini-boss battle inside the church, which will make up Map 9.
This part can get quite hectic!
But I manage to defeat them... barely Some of you may be wondering - can the game even handle that many enemies at once? The answer, for now, is... sort of. There are no glitches or physics problems with it, and the performance seems to be OK. The main issue right now is that with so many gunshots, the sounds can get a little bit distorted at times. Rest assured I will make sure to optimise this section before release. This is mostly because I would like more areas of the game to have big fights like this. I will also make use of the new enemy behaviour in other levels. This level is almost done. The only things which are missing at the moment are the enemies which I haven't designed yet. That would be an interesting topic for next month, wouldn't it? That's it for this development update, thanks for reading!

[ 2022-11-30 19:10:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! As promised, this is the first development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. It's been a very busy month for me, but despite that I have still had a decent amount of time to work on the game. Hopefully what I am going to talk about is enough to keep you interested! To start with, let's have a look at what I see when I start the first level now.
I said "when I start" because this is what the game looks like in "developer" mode. I give myself a number of "cheats" to make development and testing easier, and one of those is unlocking all the weapons. As you can see, there are two more numbers in the status bar - the new weapons. Let's go through them in order.

Grenades

Grenades (or Granate in-game) are a classic weapon in FPS games, and the German-style "stick" grenades are also a classic. There isn't a whole lot else to say about this weapon - just toss it and enjoy.
From a development perspective though, this was a surprisingly big change. Up until this point, all of the weapons in the game had identical logic - each would spawn a "bullet" object when fired, and this bullet is the same for all weapons (and for enemies too). The only difference was how much damage each one did, which was determined by the weapon that fired it. Now though, there are more projectiles, which means new logic for creating them, and how they interact with the environment. These changes lead nicely on to the next weapon, which was a much bigger endeavour...

FLAMMENWERFER

That's right. As some of you may have found by looking at the keybindings menu, there was always going to be a Flammenwerfer (flamethrower in English), and, well, here it is. This was fun to make and I hope you will all find it fun to use when it's available!
This weapon has a few supporting additions as well. First of all, notice how the head changes in the status bar when it is equipped...
Those empty, uncaring eyes are enough to terrify even the dead Not only are the flames reflected in the gas mask, he will look a bit maniacal whenever the weapon is fired! But while the player character is enjoying himself, the Russians certainly aren't. They will try to run away if you chase them with the Flammenwerfer...
...But if you manage corner them with it, they will also fight like hell until they manage to get out again, so be careful if you corner one of the tougher enemies.

New Levels

As I already mentioned, the new weapons aren't the only changes I've made so far. I have also begun working on two new levels - Maps 5 and 8. It may seem strange to skip past 6 and 7, but the truth is that level design is hard. It's probably the hardest part of making a game, and since I've already set a target to release the game by the end of next year I won't have much time to ponder what to do for each level. This doesn't mean I will rush to create each level, but it does mean that if I have an idea for a level, it is better to start working on it immediately - that way I can think about what I want to do with other levels while I work on that one. Anyway, here are some screenshots of the new maps!

Map 5

Map 8 As you can see, they are a bit empty at the moment. I don't yet have a clear picture in my mind of what map 5 should look like, which is why I started working on map 8 instead. Once the general layout is done (+all the assets required), filling the level in with enemies, items, and other scenery generally happens quite quickly. So what is it I have in mind for map 8? Well, here is one of the reference images I have been using for it. This can be a little teaser for what I will cover next month...
That's all for now! Thanks for reading, I will see you again next month for the second development update!

[ 2022-10-29 16:47:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

I am pleased to announce that the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men is here! This demo provides a sneak peek of the final product by offering the first 4 levels of the game. While core gameplay elements will not be changing over the remainder of development, there is still room for minor changes to these levels (e.g. balance changes, more detail in the environment etc.). I will be open to feedback on the demo, so if you have any comments please post them in the Feedback forum.

What happens now?

Now, the waiting starts. The first development update will be posted next month, where I will go through some of the things I have been working on since the release of the demo. Stay tuned!

[ 2022-09-25 16:35:47 CET ] [ Original post ]