It has been a very busy 8 months but it is finally time to release the new version of Disinfection: 0.07 a.k.a. The Overhaul. Pretty much everything has been at least touched upon and updated. There's a lot of ground to cover here so lets take it bit-by-bit.

The Visuals:

We have switched from Leadwerks to Godot 4. With a new game engine also comes a new rendering engine and Godots has all the modern features we need such as:

• Global Illumination in full realtime,
• SSAO,
• Volumetric fog and lights,
• Realtime reflections,
• Improved bloom,
• Resolution AI upscaling, so it's easier to play in 4k without huge performance hit.
• Modern Anti-Aliasing such as FXAA and TAA.

Despite all this new graphical flair the game performs similar or better than the old version in most cases. We have a dedicated testing PC now, with somewhat older hardware (i3 dual core, GTX750ti and AMD equivalent) and the game ran perfectly fine on that on low setting. Weve been able to implement much more detail in the models and textures, this is especially obvious in the new Lobby and Tutorial. The Afterlife vision players have when they are dead has been replaced with an experimental new style, inspired by Tron and System Shock. Of course for version 0.08 (Afterlife) this will be further improved and expanded upon.

The Code:

Switching to a new game engine means rewriting all the code as well. Although this took tremendous effort and time it also allowed us to take a fresh look at how we approached features and implementations, upgrading and changing as we went. This has fixed a lot of core issues and bugs (especially in the networking code) and, of course, introduced some new bugs. Overall the core is much more stable now and we have a much better basis to further improve and build upon.

The Level Generator:

The level generator, which builds the mission ships, has been largely revamped and now allows for much more consistent ship designs. It also allows for new features such as looping hallways and more ship-like arrangements. We've added some new decorations and details to the mission ships too, though some are still unfinished and/or missing. These will be further added upon in the coming weeks.

The AI and Infection:

The AI for the infection and monsters has been rewritten from scratch as a lot of things changed in how the infection works at its core: The Infection Source not always morphs into a monster to hunt players, instead some of the monsters are separate entities. This makes the gameplay more dynamic and interesting as players can be both hunter as prey at the same time. It makes hunting down the infection and killing more challenging. Currently only the Hunter monster is implemented, the other monster will be implemented soon as well. Theres a new pathfinding system for the AI to use, which the Hunter especially benefits from as it needs to navigate the ships interior to reach its target. The Hunter will now try anything it can to reach its prey, having the new ability to force open doors. This will delay it for a couple seconds, depending on mission difficulty. It is also able to do short sprints when having a direct line-of-sight to its target, how long it can sprint again depends on mission difficulty. With the new engine we can much more easily implement the hiding mechanics that we wanted, which will offset the extra challenge to balance things out. This mechanic will be implemented for 0.08 (Afterlife).

The Tools and Weapons:

Most of the Tools and Weapons function similarly to the old version of the game, but have been polished somewhat. The Reprogrammer has been completely changed however as we felt it was too lacking and a pain to use. Instead it now works like so: The infection will grow so called 'Lymph Nodes' over time, which are detected and displayed by the Reprogrammer. You'll have to move close to each Lymph Node and use the Reprogrammer on it to hack and weaken the infection. Once enough Nodes are hacked the infection will be destroyed. This change makes for more tactical and dynamic gameplay, especially with the new AI. The hacking mini-game or animation itself is still a work-in-progress, the rest is fully working and you can already use it to kill the infection.

The Animations:

The player character and the monster(s) have been given new animations. These animations have all been made from scratch as the new game engine supports much more complex animation transitions and blending. At some point we want to implement inverse kinematics more properly for the player character (weve experimented with this already) to make the interactions with the world around you more immersive.

The Sounds:

Most of the sounds have been given some overhaul and were making good use of the new game engines audio system. It has allowed us to finally implement more proper dynamic audio that changes and adapts to the environment. This means things like your footsteps and other sounds reverberating differently depending on the area youre in, far away sounds becoming more and more muffled the farther away they are and sounds outside your space suit becoming very muffled when youre in a vacuum. Just like real life!

The Interfaces:

The Mission Control, Team Stats, Store and Ship System interfaces have been completely redone from scratch: you no longer have to press "buttons" on the models, instead your character will look at the screen and you will be able to use your mouse cursor to interact with the new interface. These interfaces are much more dynamic and are an actual UI rather than static textures. This should improve both easy-of-use as well as immersion. The Computer Core now requires you to enter a password, which is given by the Mission Control mission information or found within the mission ship, before you can access the data dump. In the future we may expand on Computer Core functionality, to allow you to turn on/off various parts of the ship or other things.

The Lobby:

The Lobby has been given an overhaul, making it slightly smaller but more detailed and immersive. A lot of detail models have been added and the existing models have been given an upgrade. The textures have all been given a grime pass, making things look more worn and well-used to increase immersion. The downstairs area has been completely removed, as most of you didnt like the long walk up to the main mission area every time. We also felt the downstairs area was too under utilized and didnt fit the narrative very well as the transport ship that takes you to the various missions is supposed to be more akin to a disposable rental than something the player owns themselves.

The Tutorial:

The Tutorial has been re-made from scratch, much like the Lobby, but is still a work-in-progress. The overall structure of the Tutorial hasn't changed much, aside from changes in the Weapons and Tools. You will be able to test out the Tools and Weapons freely, as well as practice in a basic mission where you have to find evidence and destroy the infection. Again, keep in mind that the Tutorial is still a work-in-progress for now, so some things are still missing. These will be added in the coming week(s).

The Main Menu and Loading Screens:

The main menu and loading screens have been remade from scratch as we felt these really needed an upgrade and we really wanted to get rid of the boring static loading screens. The main menu now has an in-game background to really pull players into the vibe of the game. It has been given some new elements too such as version/update information and buttons to our various social media, Steam and Discord. The loading screens have been replaced with in-game transitions and animations. Starting a mission, loading the mission ship etc. happens in the background whilst in-game (sound) effects and animations play as your transport ship is flying to and docking with the mission ship, without interrupting gameplay,

Linux Build:

With the new engine it is now possible for us to release a Linux version of the game. Keep in mind this build will be experimental for now. We have Debian on our testing PC so we have been able to test for Linux but feedback will be very welcome as testing on one machine doesn't catch all bugs and issues. These were the biggest changes so far, let us know what you think and happy disinfecting! Greetings from Rachel, Jeroen and friends.

[ 2023-07-03 13:15:32 CET ] [ Original post ]