Today I am releasing an update which is fairly large under the hood, and therefore, took quite a while to develop. This update adds some new enemies, weapons, and abilities. Behind the scenes, a large refactor of many systems has been done, to better prepare for the larger progression update.

Mechanical Changes

First, some of the more important mechanical changes are listed below:

• Max level is now 100, and max level for any attribute is now 30.
• Attributes now increase stats in a non-uniform way, similar to many Soulslike games. They tend to ramp up at level 10, softcap at 20, and hardcap at 30.
• Intelligence now increases Magitech power, at the cost of HP loss for each level invested. It's previous effects on criticals were never actually implemented.
• Strength now increases Mettle (stagger resistance). Constitution, Endurance, Agility, and Expertise have been readjusted.
• All weapons are more accurate, have less recoil, and have less pellet spread. Enemies are now able to be hit more consistently when at different heights relative to the player.
• Many misc. balance changes have been made to weapons, Magitech, and perks.

New Monsters

The Legion has been expanded with three new enemies. Pesterer
These annoying creatures are extremely fast and attack in large numbers, with their strategy being to swarm their foes. However, they have very low HP and deal relatively low amounts of damage. Mage
The first 'support' type enemy added to Magitech Requiem. When close to their allies, they will place a buff on the ground which imbues other Legion with increased movement speed and damage dealt. After they have used their ability, they will shoot Defiers with a moderate damage projectile. They have roughly the same HP as Pesterers, and move slowly. Spitter
Spitters are the main 'Ranged' type enemy. When within medium range, they will shoot a small barrage of projectiles which individually deal low damage.

New Abilities

To torment your new foes, three new abilities have been added to the Defiers' arsenal. Ether Form
Upon activation, transmute your body into Ether for 6 seconds. While in this form, you move extremely quickly and are immune to all damage. Using any weapon or other Magitech will cause Ether Form to expire immediately. Mark for Death
Create a field of darkness with a radius of 8 meters. Enemies caught within the field become Hexed for 10 seconds. Hexed enemies move 20% slower, take 20% more damage, and grant 6% lifesteal to any attackers. Darklight
Create a blast of Darklight, directed forward with a short range. Enemies caught within the blast take 450 damage immediately, and then continue to burn for a total of 180 damage over 3 seconds.

New Weapon

IRR M1873
Several modifications have enabled this antiquated weapon to maintain great reliablity despite it's old design. The IRR M1879 bridges the gap between heavy sniper rifles and easier to use marksman rifles, exhibiting high damage per shot as well as reasonable handling. Drawbacks include a slow rate of fire, and reduced accuracy when moving.

New Perks

Spray n' Pray
Continuously firing a gun with a fire rate of at least 450 RPM adds up to 10 stacks of Spray n' Pray. Each stack increases damage by a flat value of 1. Reloading or swapping weapons removes all stacks. Phantom Round
Increases clip size by 25%. Additionally, killing an enemy restores 1 round of ammo for your currently equipped firearm. Center of Mass
Eliminates firearm damage spread. Cheers, Jack V. Full changelog:

• Added new perks: Spray n' Pray, Phantom Round, Center of Mass.
• Added new Magitech: Ether Form, Mark for Death, Darklight.
• Added new weapon: IRR M1879.
• Added new enemies: Pesterer, Mage, Spitter
• Rebalanced enemies.
• Some states and their stacks are now visible on the HUD.
• Adjusted visual effects.
• Adjusted the falloff of sfx.
• Max level is now 100, and max level for attributes is now 30.
• Attributes now raise stats in a non-uniform manner (similar to many soulslike games). Growth typically starts slow, then speeds up lvl ~10, then soft-caps at ~20.
• Intelligence now raises Magitech Power. (it's effects on criticals before this version were not implemented. Criticals will be reworked at a later date.)
• Overall rebalance to attributes and player stats.
• Stats modified by attributes are now highlighted, in the Details submenu.
• Ballistic overcharge is now ~40% faster to cast and reloads your current firearm.
• Entities can now be weak or resistant to states. The Brute now has a 33% resistance to stuns.
• When aiming a grenade, the explosion radius is now shown.
• Slightly reduced the base radius of Blinding Metaphysik.
• Moderately increased the base radius of Volatile Metaphysik.
• Increased firearm accuracy and reduced recoil across the board.
• Reduced pellet spread for all shotguns.
• Improved consistency of shooting enemies that are taller or shorter than the player.
• Added footstep sounds to various ground props.
• Revamped entity shader and material system. All entities now share the same shader, and can have various effects toggled on/off at runtime.
• Improved transform interpolation of entities - synced movement should be less floaty.
• Added client position prediction on the server, which is now used for AI.
• Rewrote most of the AI code, and migrated it to a new system.
• Largely refactored the 'Action' system, which controls things such as attacking, dodging, getting staggered, etc.
• Rewrote the system which handles unique IDs for perks, weapons, enemies, etc.
• Slightly reduced netcode latency / overhead in general.
• Various smaller tweaks to Magitech, perks, and weapons.
• Various tweaks to descriptions and texts.
• Improved UI handling in the builds menu.
• Changed some of the stats shown in the 'details' submenu.
• Fixed issue where projectiles would never despawn if they travelled past their max distance without hitting an obstacle.
• Fixed recoil being transferred between weapon swaps.
• Fixed Gunslinger stacks being removed under invalid circumstances.
• Fixed Gunslinger applying to Magitech damage when pistol is equipped, and gaining invalid stacks from kills earned under similar circumstances.
• Fixed collision issue where grenades could go through the walls of some buildings.
• Fixed potential issue where effect values (damage or heals) could overflow/wrap when interacting with perks.
• An engine limitation related to map generation has been overcome. Maps can now be generated in more sizes.
• Fixed a navmesh generation bug causing enemies to act weird.
• Fixed UI issue where scrolling would instantly snap to the bottom or top of a scroll view.
• Fixed hit VFX triggered on players not being synced for clients.
• Fixed several other less severe netcode desync issues.
• Fixed a race condition where entities were not internally registered if the client had bad ping.
• Grenades and spells are now spawned or thrown towards exactly where the preview was, rather than where the player is aiming at the moment of activation (which could be many frames later).
• (ALPHA ver. only) Fixed issue where older saves would not gain new build items when opening with newer versions.
• On Windows, DX11 is now used by default, which should reduce cases of graphical issues on older devices. DX12, GLCore and Vulkan are still supported via launch args.
• Optimisation - Added per-tile static batching for ProcGen.
• Optimised particle effects.
• Optimised internal data structures.
• Optimised main menu.
• Reduced memory usage of textures and shaders.
• Standardised the 'advanced materials' setting such that setting it to 'off' will improve GPU performance more consistently.
• Fixed issue where unused materials and textures were being loaded during initialization.
• Updated Unity from 2022.3.55f1 to 2022.3.61f1.

[ 2025-05-26 19:36:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today I am finally bundling together Alpha release 0.1.2! This update took much longer to develop than I anticipated.

ProcGen

The main feature of a0.1.2 is a new procedural generation system for scenes, which replaces the placeholder scene from prior versions. Without getting too technical, it is a tile-based system which generates levels from one or more layers, which can be customised with rules. These generated maps are automatically synced to all clients with very little data transfer (only the seed + a basic ID is sent). The new map is currently created from 'roads' and 'filler' layers, to simulate a sort of destroyed city environment. Below are in-editor screenshots of some generations. They definitely wouldn't pass the approval of a city planner, so I plan on implementing several changes in the next few days to make the layouts less nonsensical.


Here is a screenshot of what it looks like in-game:

Other Changes

• Several parts of the codebase have been refactored, which should allow me to integrate new features faster.
• 9 new perks have been added (many taking advantage of the above change).
• Improved the camera by further extending FOV, and adding an auto-adjustment feature.
• Rebalanced some weapons, and increased overall Magitech damage.

What's Next?

In the coming updates I plan to move from minor additions and polish, to actually tying the game together such that it resembles an actual experience, rather than a vertical slice. The first part of this will involve adding new enemies and enemy variants, so you can put your abilities and perks to good use. After that, I'll begin implementing the strategy layer, which will basically allow you to choose a path through multiple levels. Cheers, Jack V. [hr][/hr] Full changelog:

• Added new perks: Adrenaline Surge, Rebound, Gambit, Heart of Stone, Auspice Catalyst, Bloodlust, Abyssal Charge, Sleight of Hand, Sharpshooter.
• Added procedural generation.
• Added new level, based on proc-gen.
• Adjusted various perks.
• Considerably increased Magitech damage.
• Increased projectile speed of all weapons (shotguns affected the most).
• Increased range of all firearms slightly.
• Adjusted other stats of various weapons.
• Enemy health has been slightly increased.
• Further increased FOV slightly.
• Added a feature where the camera will rotate to a better angle when the player is obscured by geometry.
• Adjusted several aspects of collision to prevent player getting stuck on level geometry.
• Changed visual effect of Ballistic Overcharge.
• Misc. visual adjustments.
• (ALPHA ver. only) Added a one-time popup asking the player if they want to change their loadout before starting, since it's currently the main feature of the game.
• (ALPHA ver. only) While spectating/dead, players can now change their loadout.
• Improved brute hitboxes.
• Fixed issue where entities could incorrectly spawn with the states of previous entities.
• Fixed audio settings not saving.
• Improved the 'FRandom' algorithm, resulting in more accurate/varied randomness with things like damage spread.
• Improved error handling when a player is spawned incorrectly, such as in cases of extreme packet loss, lag, or corrupted data.
• System for how players connect and initialize their game session has been refactored, likely fixing and/or causing various bugs.
• Disabling "Advanced Meshes" will now hide some small geometry details, which improves performance on low spec machines.
• Reduced memory usage of shaders.

LOC: 47,877

[ 2025-04-10 17:49:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Here's a quick news update. There's now a Discord server! https://discord.gg/HfbpjvmR I also released the source code for OathFramework, the underlying layer which powers Magitech Requiem, as well as the code for the game itself: https://github.com/Gitspathe/OathFramework-Reference-Source Note that the source code release is reference only, and is not a complete project. Despite that you're free to use the code however you wish.

Update Coming Soon

I hope to release version a0.1.2 in a few days. It contains the initial procedural generation system, several new perks, and many internal changes.

[ 2025-04-08 11:01:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first patch is here! My focus with this patch was to overhaul a few aspects and mechanics of the game, and to add a layer of polish before I move onto adding sizable chunks of new content. Below I will summarize the most important changes:

• 2 new perks have been added - Finesse and Gunslinger. These are geared toward a skilled play-style where enemies are killed very quickly.
• 3 new weapons have been added - Spez-12, J&W Model 19, and the Sawed-off.
• The first new enemy has made it's appearance - the Brute. As it's name suggests, it is a large beast capable of dealing tons of damage. It's main method of attack is to charge at it's foes. Two key weaknesses were incorporated into it's design. I'll leave it to the defiers to figure them out!
• Collision has been added to enemies. This means you will need to be cautious, so as to avoid getting cornered.
• The visual style of enemies has been overhauled, putting them more in-line with my vision for what they will ultimately be as I further develop this project. Their visuals are still a work in progress, of course.
• Friendly-fire is now a consistent mechanic, with different values possible for each damage type (explosive, bullet, etc). Please see the full changelog for precise details.
• Several aspects of the game have been rebalanced, with the goal being to make playing Magitech Requiem fairer.
• Many bugs have been fixed, and performance has been increased in key areas.

(New enemy visuals)

What's Next?

Within the coming weeks I hope to begin development of the "progression update". This will add higher-level systems to the game, meaning you'll be able to start different runs with varied levels, routes, and modifiers. Very soon I'll try to write an actual announcement going over what exactly the progression update is. While working on the major update, I also plan to develop one or two more minor patches. These would be focused on more bug-fixes and general polish. Cheers, Jack V. [hr][/hr] Full changelog:

• Added new miniboss: Brute.
• Added new perks: Finesse, Gunslinger.
• Added new weapons: Spez-12, J&W Model 19, Sawed-off. (sawed-off animations are WIP)
• Friendly-fire is now a consistent mechanic:
  • Self: Projectiles 0%, Melee 0%, Explosive 50% (33% stagger)
  • Allies: Projectiles 0%, Melee 0%, Explosive 33% (0% stagger)
• Added audio settings.
• Added sounds to UI.
• Added collision to enemies.
• Overhauled the visuals for enemies.
• Slightly reduced the movement speed of enemies.
• Increased field of vision (camera distance from ground).
• Range and accuracy has been increased for all weapons, while pellet spread has been reduced.
• Adjusted action input buffer timings.
• Decreased amount of time ragdolls are visible (prevents dead enemies from clogging the environment).
• Fixed issue where visual effects would not appear under certain circumstances.
• Fixed issue with scroll rects snapping to the bottom upon selecting an item in the Loadout menu, when using keyboard+mouse control scheme.
• Fixed possible internal issue with entity states.
• Fixed internal issue with entity team/hostile flags.
• Fixed potential issue where player and enemy animations could be incorrectly 'queued' and played at the wrong time.
• Fixed issue where enemy attack animations would incorrectly loop.
• Fixed a bug where sounds with a very short duration would occasionally fail to play correctly.
• Fixed issue where attack animations could fail to play on clients in certain cases.
• Fixed issue where client-side validation of hits would fail to notify the instigator of said hits, causing desync of health values.
• Improved timing of firing weapons after reloading.
• Small improvements to weapon audio.
• Small misc improvements to enemy attack animations.
• Optimised main menu performance.
• Optimised callback performance.
• Optimised ragdoll performance.
• Small optimisations to projectile spawning and handling.
• Reduced memory usage in some areas, mostly VRAM / textures & shaders.

[ 2025-03-20 12:56:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! Today I've released the first publicly available version of Magitech Requiem, Alpha 0.1.0-dev7. This release is obviously very early, and is only a prototype of the final game. Importantly, the release is centered around the implementation and testing of core features including builds (weapons, perks, etc), and overall controls/gameplay. To facilitate easier testing, you automatically unlock all build options from the start (available in 'Loadout'), aside from attribute levels. Note that in the final release, there will be actual progression systems. Below is a rough outline of planned upcoming versions:

• 0.1.1 - Miniboss enemy, new perk, and a few new weapons.
• 0.2.0 - Early progression update, enemy variants, character customisation? (currently researching my options for this)
• 0.3.0 - Melee weapons / melee combat for players
• 0.4.0 - Mid progression update and first boss

There will be a lot of news to come. Thanks to anyone who follows development of Magitech Requiem! Cheers, Jack V

[ 2025-03-13 06:41:57 CET ] [ Original post ]