0.9.0.5 Update Howdy Agents () Welcome to the 0.9.0.5 update. This comes with a bunch of fixes and some cool new toys. Since our last update, DDS has reached 10,000 copies sold! Thank you so much to everyone who picked up the game or left it a review. As always. be sure to join the discord! Need to sell your friends on DDS? Consider sending them this awesome review by Diavil. Their twitch streams helped me find a lot of the bugs in today's patch. [previewyoutube=Q_AISXsqDwQ;full][/previewyoutube] New Stuff -Added a new ammo type: BEAM. Beams generate a straight line of damage after a brief delay. They bypass many projectile counter effects, and can fire through glass without breaking it. IThis ammo has some fun nuances so I hope you enjoy it. -Added Speed Bumps to levels. Speed bumps are a wall of lasers that will trigger when a hostile unit passes through. These have been sprinkled into many existing missions to provide a fun new challenge. -Completing the PGD mission now gives you an additional reward, re-rolling the equipment in your shop for free! This is just a small convenience, and theres another better reward coming along but itll take some time to finish. You can also unlock this early in future playthroughs using the _reroll cheat code. Fixes -Fixed lots of errors with AI pathfinding. Agents can now correctly adjust their path if they bump into a wall along the way. Agents should be far better at pursuing you and navigating through the level. -Updated the AI for Guilt. Guilt also had a lot of trouble getting stuck in walls and wandering off to the fringes of the level. Guilt now has the ability to get a very rough approximation of the nearest enemys location, always keeping them relevant. -AI now immediately smashes through glass when investigating, instead of getting stuck on it for a moment before. -Made some adjustments to how AI behaves when finding you after pathfinding to your location. -Grenades now have angular drag, so they wont spin crazy rapidly after clipping on a wall. -Fixed an issue that prevented shooting enemies from cover when they themselves were behind cover on the other side. -Freyja now has a training_wheels command that opens up the ez hack interface without diving into gameplay settings. This appears as the first option when you type helpremote. -Fixed another issue with the Flame Maw ability that could make you immune to burning even after the duration was up. -Sneaky weasel now applies to speed bumps. -Fixed a bug that unequipped abilities after picking up a character during Starbuccs questline. -Added a new and hopefully better sound effect to sleep nades. -Updated the shader on grenade progress to help the sprite stand out more -added a _unstuck command that forces your speed to 10

[ 2025-03-22 19:24:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () DDS Version 0.9 is out! This comes with a new mission, new endings, new secret vocation, and a few improvements and bug fixes. It's actually been out a few days but I didn't have time to finish the writeup till now teehee! Thank you so much to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always. be sure to join the discord! Here are the notes. New Stuff New Stuff

• New mission, an epic heist in the most sensitive depths of the corporation. Everyone wants a piece :O
• New ending(s)
• New secret vocation with 4 passives and 6 skills. This vocation is not balanced very well LOL so Ill be tweaking it soon.
• One of the longest and most up-its-own ass dialogue sequences in the entire game (if you can believe it!)

Fixes Fixes Fixes

• Updated agent pathfinding so that your friends dont get caught in doors as much. Pathfinding is still a little wonky since the big AI overhaul but its getting there.
• Fixed the deadeye skill so it no longer bricks your guns accuracy. Several agents reported this problem and I couldnt recreate it for the life of me. Started happening on my end all of the sudden the other day! :| I rewrote the ability and it should be fixed now.
• Fixed some directional audio stuff in the abilities. Still super wonky and bad as youll see in the new mission, but not as bad.
• Fixed typos.

With this update, DDS will enter a bit of a mission freeze until version 1.0. This is basically what I want to be in the """full""" game, and additional story content will only appear after were out of early access. Between now and then, Ill be focusing on polishing the game and updating existing missions and side quests. *Ahem* There is *one* additional bit of ending / story content Ill release before then. It ties into the new ending, a choice your character should be able to make but cant yet. Just a little dialogue sequence is all. Nothing special. Ahead of 1.0, here are some things Ill be working on:

• Updating quest chains with more satisfying rewards and narrative conclusions.
• Adding more stuff: new ammo types, grenade types, melee weapon types, skelly passives, etc.
• Adding 2 additional perks to each vocation.
• Updating sound effects.
• Updating AI, pathfinding especially.
• Adding additional enemy types.
• Adding Steam saves.
• Adding visual and audio effects to perks. Many of these operate in the background which isnt super satisfying. This was intentional to avoid visual clutter, but I think Ill just add an option to turn visuals off on a perk perk basis if it gets too noisy for you.
• Patching up the UI and clumsy menus.
• Improving performance.
• Adding abilities to the lighter vocation packs out there.
• Overhauling the jester vocation to make it more impactful and more fun.
• Fine tuning core gameplay and rules.
• And much more!

Ive begun work on a roguelike mode for DDS hosted by an exciting new character! This might be in the game before 1.0 depending on how things go. There's also more quest stuff planned for after release revolving around various factions and more out there gameplay ideas. This would probably hold up release another year though so I'm tabling it for now! By the end of this month I plan to have a 1.0 release date decided. Probably won't be for a while so I have plenty of time to polish things up. Its been a long road getting here but the end is in sight! Thank you all for reading and keeping up with development.

[ 2025-03-05 23:44:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hellooo Agents () Here's a little update ahead of 0.9. That should drop March 2nd or so, but I wanted to throw some updates out now before I begin my final sprint on that. This update comes with a few tweaks, bug fixes. and some nice quality of life improvements. Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. And as always be sure to join the discord! Here are the notes

• All auto hack attacks now have a symbol that moves with their package. This is intended to make hack attacks more clear, and help out color-blind agents who might have had trouble differentiating between some attacks.
• Items in the shop and armory now show you a "quality" bar for each stat, showing how the item was rolled.
• The shop now allows you to preview options just by hovering over them. Let me know what you think of this change, I'm considering adding this to all the equipment menus if the change is welcome. I hope these changes will make comparing weapons in the shop much easier.
• Fixed a bug causing Melee weapon penetration to use the damage roll for its quality. Now these two stats are completely independent as intended.
• Smoke and sleep nades now roll for sound, but with a 50% quiet bonus. Making these grenades completely silent eliminated a lot of variety between themselves.
• Fixed a bug that would mess up Freyja's right weapon if you tried to sprint.
• Fixed a bug with the Alcubierre Drive ability visual that occurred when enemies died mid dash.
• Adjusted enemy melee AI (yet again) if enemies get close to you they'll stop sprinting, which hopefully makes them feel a little more natural.
• "Chad" enemies in the first and second Angel missions now have bigger bodies. These silly billies are no joke and I thought a larger body size would make them feel a little more intimidating.
• Characters now wiggle their bodies when sprinting with the Assume the Position ability active.
• Clarified the description on some perks.
• Fixed typos.

[ 2025-02-16 21:49:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Here with some quick fixes to top us off ahead of the winter steam sale. None of these updates are too major but a few builds should be working correctly now. Todays update is brought to you with artwork from Watari!! You can find more of their amazing work here https://twitter.com/nijimukiokuiro Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always, be sure to join the discord! Here are da notes!

• Added a little fade out effect to the peek shader
• Fixed the pyromancy flame maw ability so that it doesn't grant permanent fire invulnerability >:|
• The word "releasing" is now spelled correctly when ending a pilot through the terminal.
• Bloodmage perk should now work with laptop casting.
• BBS missions featuring zombies or guilt should no longer break.
• fixed many 3D effects so they don't poke through the screen in weird annoying ways.
• Adjusted the damage flash effect to make it more visible.
• Added a new floor shader to the PGD hell mission that should improve performance and load times.
• Enemies now shatter glass more smoothly, since the AI update they've been getting caught on glass before kicking to break it, now they do so in fluid motion.
• Couches now burn correctly.
• Shield drones now provide fire immunity and extinguish fire. The interaction between fire and shields was in weird undefined behavior territory.
• Made an adjustment to the Deadeye ability that should prevent it from messing up gun accuracy in the apartment when buying things from the shop with the skill in effect.
• Made some small adjustments to melee AI behavior.
• Fixed typos.
• Updated windows, mac, and linux to 0.8.2, along with the demos!

The massive 0.9 update is well underway! Over the holiday break I'll have lots of time to finish that up. Thank you all for playing and see you again soon!

[ 2024-12-20 01:31:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () Special thanks to everyone who left a review since the last update. We're almost up to 500 for that juicy juicy overwhelmingly positive rating () As always, be sure to join the discord! Tonight I bring you update 0.8.8.1. Currently this update is only available for Windows, but will go out for the 2 of you on Mac and Linux if no critical issues are found. This update is brought to you by some artwork from Emett! Please go check out their new bluesky account here: https://bsky.app/profile/emett-b.bsky.social Also follow me on bluesky while you're at it :> This update has a couple of misc. fixes and adjustments. Update 0.9 is till in production, but is taking a while due to work eating up most of my time. That update will have some alternate endings, a new mission, new class, and tons of stuff, so stay tuned. Some of these changes are long overdue so I thought I might as well upload a new build now. I feel like writing tonight so you're getting some lengthy justifications with a few of these whether you want them or not! Anyway here are da notes. 0. Agent AI now stops moving in ranged combat Just some lazy programming on my part. AI could move in a random direction when firing a gun, but would keep doing so until the state ended, leading to lots of sliding and bumping against walls. AI will now hold position 1-2 seconds into this random movement. 1. Added a minimum reaction time to the AI for new targets. AI in DDS currently has a long delay after first spotting a target, but effectively zero reaction delay when dealing with a target already spotted. This means AI can spot you, lose sight of you, and then instantly pop you if you peek back around a corner. This is intended behavior, as you're meant to flank enemies and take advantage of the same aim delay you the player has. However, this zero reaction time also applies when switching targets while in active combat, leading to a frustrating situation where the AI defeats a target, and then instantly pops you as you peek around a corner and become the new target, even when this is the first time you're seeing the AI. To address this, the AI now has a minimum pause of .15 seconds when switching targets. That's still pretty quick! But has largely resolved this issue in my own playtests. 2. There and Back Necromancer perk has a new downside, abilities can't be used when health is below max. There and Back is a weird perk with some busted implications if you play your cards right, especially considering some of the new abilities and perks coming in 0.9. The old downside, spawning with half ego, was not interesting and outright overridden by other perks in the same class that add ego recharge. The new downside places you in a vulnerable state whenever your health is not maxed out where you want it to be, meaning agents will have to be clever about using other passives, or finding ways to restore health within the level reliably. I think the perk is a lot more interesting with this change so lemme know what you think. 3. Added a tasteful fade to the line of sight effect. I've always wanted to do this but never found a way that was both pleasing and functional. I think the new effect is a decent balance between the two. 4. Fixed an issue where perks affecting the same skeleton resource could interfere with one another. I think this is like 99% fixed now. Due to how things were loaded, perks could have different outcomes based on equip order (or just randomly), meaning your skeleton armor, ego, and slug wasn't consistent. There are probably some issues hiding out in the game still but I've fixed a lot of these interactions. Other fixes.

• Fixed some dialogue cutoff issues.
• Fixed a bug causing the shop to show you a lower armor value than the purchased skeleton would actually have.
• Severance perk now correctly limits max ego when loading into an area.
• added freezer commands to auto complete so ez hackers can get the chiplet in there
• Fixed many bugs with the Make it Double guns akimbo ability.
• Bloodmage perk description was updated to specify that skills are effected, not perks too.
• Avatars now reset their barcode when moving without a target.
• Defensive Twirl perk now hides your player accuracy sight.
• Blimp ricochet ammo no longer bypasses their shield array and will bounce back and forth as intended.
• Fixed a bug allowing you to "edge" hackers by getting them trapped right at line of sight distance. This would freeze up their AI since they were close enough to see you, but not technically close enough to hack you.
• Fixed typos.
• Fixed issue with shower zombie spawning with wrong weapon.

Thank you all again for keeping up with Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum. 0.9 Is on its way and will be out by the end of December. After that it's just the roguelike mode and adjustments ahead of 1.0!

[ 2024-11-19 05:37:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Switch ability now uses enemy closest to mouse cursor, not player body. Should allow for more interesting synergies. Special thanks to Steam user The_MixMaster for suggesting this change forever ago.
• Fixed overlord auto hack attacks, these should now be working properly.
• Updated Mac and Linux Versions to 0.8.8

[ 2024-10-14 22:49:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () This is update 0.8.8. It comes with a huge rewrite to DDSs AI, along with tons of refinements, tweaks, and fixes. Todays update is brought to you with artwork from Watari!! You can find more of their amazing work here https://twitter.com/nijimukiokuiro Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always, be sure to join the discord! The update is currently only available for windows, but will be up for Mac and Linux this weekend if no critical issues are found. Here are da notes: AI Rewrite

• AICode written from (almost) scratch, now much more performant and reliable.
• AI is more capable, since it is now actually working correctly.
• Agents now search for targets using a spatial hash grid. This means time-to-notice is very consistent. AI previously found targets with a time-sliced linear search, creating artificially long notice times in levels with lots of creatures.
• Agent melee attack pattern was reworked to make them more aggressive and capable.

AI is mostly the same, but much easier to code with on my end and a little more fun to play against in my experience. Enemy Changes

• Agents can now refill their ammo by picking up an unused weapon off the ground.
• Probuscised Meatlords no longer materialize barb ammo out of nowhere, and have a new balloon attack.
• Umbral Squids no longer materialize orb ammo out of nowhere, and have a new laser attack.
• Turrets now have a laser sight. It was previously difficult to see where turrets were pointing when they spawned with short weapons.
• Turrets can now see farther and react faster, making it harder to edge hack them. Not sure how I feel about this change, definitely makes turrets more interesting but open to reverting it.
• Black knights have been completely reworked. The drop pod now pings the player location for them. Drop pods can be hacked to disable this effect, and gain access to the knights.
• The speedy agent from the PGD mission has been reworked. This was unintentionally a major F U moment that could insta-kill the player. The agent is now more forgiving to deal with, on top of being even sillier.
• All enemies in the Zombie faction can now be hacked. These enemies used to be unhackable to make them scarier (I think), but hard immunities arent in the immersive sim holiday spirit. Autohacking also works on these enemies too now.
• Mimics can now chain their laser attack rapidly.
• Acolytes are now trigger happy with they nades.
• Standalone hackers in the cloud office level now use the snipe hack attack.
• Grunts in the cloud office level can now use the Alcubierre Drive ability
• Dog enemies now use the bypass hack attack, making them more thematic.

Misc. Tweaks and Changes

• Gave some of the final climb levels a visual and mechanical makeover.
• Added some walls around the House level. This will prevent the AI from awkwardly wandering around into the void.
• Graph display will now show up the next level you load after you close it. Some players accidentally closed this thing and didnt think to open it up again, making hacking a LOT harder. Virtually no one is gonna close this thing forever.
• Intro text scroll is now progressed with a next button for accessibility reasons. Many players couldnt quite keep up with the speed of the text. You can still skip everything like before.
• Zombie teeth are now a proper weapon you can pick up and equip.
• Opening the temple of the worm now brings the chippy worm out sooner.
• Big concierge room received a visual makeover to fit the urgency of the situation.
• Added some new floor tiles to the acid rain office level.
• Improved love effects for Squirmy.

Bug Fixes

• Late game Mission BBS levels should no longer break. One of the computers was not hooked up to the spawner properly, causing the generator to crash.
• Fixed a bizarre bug causing a tiny piece of the player UI to collide with furniture, which would push stuff around offscreen without your knowing.
• Fixed a weird flash bug with Black Knight nades.
• Special ammo no longer clips through cover (except rod ammo as intended)
• Fixed an issue preventing train tracks from appearing
• Fixed a bug causing the blowable kiss to linger after hitting a wall, creating an invisible zone of love.
• Fixed a bug causing the silent skelly passive to make breakable walls non-breakable.
• Fixed visual issue with spike bubbles, causing them to grow a little too big.
• Fixed a bug where failing the Angel interrogation would complete the mission you originally selected.
• Fixed a bug causing the correct weapon panel not to show after purchasing one in the shop.
• Fixed a bug preventing certain land mines from detecting cyborgs.
• Fixed a bug allowing you to spawn infinite worms and worm chiplets from the worm temple.
• Fixed a bug causing melee shop panel to not update its price.
• Fixed typos.
• Many other tiny misc fixes.

Thats all for now! The next major update should wrap up the story content ahead of 1.0. Thank you all for playing and continuing to keep up with DDS Time for 1000 years sleep ( *) Z z z

[ 2024-10-08 04:20:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents Quick hotfix to fix some critical issues from the last hotfix.

• Fixed a critical bug disabling player movement after convo in museum
• Fixed a visual bug causing loops to appear all over said museum
• Fixed a bug allowing you to kill NPCs using clever use of the kick skill in areas without equipment. Story missions will now always disable the kick ability for this reason.
• Fixed an issue preventing mines from exploding

I'm on vacation so these fixes will not appear on mac and linux for a few days, sorry about the delay :<

[ 2024-08-16 05:12:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents, () Here with a hotfix to fix a buncha BUSTED nonsense from the last patch. Here are the notes.

• Fixed a bug that could crash email window after completing the first angel team mission
• Fixed a bug involving the weight loss perk that could disable movement for a brief period upon loading an area.
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from seeing the skeleton perks before the skeleton was equipped.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to move around and enter combat while being interrogated.
• Fixed a bug allowing you to walk past a dog dialogue sequence if you moved too quickly.
• Fixed a bug causing night-mode enemies to display the light-mode damage flash effect.

[ 2024-08-07 03:21:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always, be sure to join the discord! Today's update comes with some fantastic artwork from Emett, go check out their work here! Today I bring you the 0.8.7 update. This comes with a major change to skeletons, a big new mission, a new story encounter, and lots of fixes. This update is currently only available for Windows do to an issue on my end :< Mac and Linux versions will release soon. Here are the notes. Skelly Passives Skeletons now come with a random passive ability! The idea behind this is to make the skeleton a little more exciting to roll for. My concern was that unlike guns, melee, and nades; skeletons dont have much of a difference in *feel* except for the speed they move. This new feature also gives me the creative freedom to add requested bonuses that werent quite deserving of a full perk slot. These passives should sit somewhere between the classic +3% ice damage and the existing busted-ass passives already in DDS. All of them should be at least *nice* to have, and clever agents should be capable of making game breaking builds out of some of them. Ive added 25 of these to the game and plan to add at least another 25 more before we hit 1.0. Skeletons should now have a firmer place in your build beyond their stat distribution. Skelly passives appear as an adjective in your HUD, and a full description can be found in the shop and armory. This system has a few limitations to speak of. Currently, only the player and clones of the player will make use of these passives, enemies will spawn without them. This is because some of the passives are NOT fun to play against. Eventually Ill add a whitelist of all the passives enemies can spawn with so we dont have a weird break in symmetry between player and AI, but youll have to wait for the next update on that. The spread of passives also leaves some builds wanting for more right now. I have some ideas for more dedicated melee passives that I didnt have time to get around to. Meanwhile gun-heavy builds are getting a buffet of passives this patch. Special thanks to Koka productions for requesting this feature a long time ago. Be sure to check out their DDS video here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3h7e6sXAdE New Skelly Passives

• JACKED - Gain +1 starting data per skeleton level rounded up.
• STRAPPED - Gain +1 bonus mag per skeleton level rounded up.
• PACKED - Gain +1 bonus nade per skeleton level rounded up.
• SWIFT - +15% sprint speed bonus.
• LUCKY - 10% chance to ignore damage.
• CONSISTENT - Switching weapons preserves rotation.
• INFORMED - Your data can't fall below 1.
• STREETWISE - Your ego can't fall below 1.
• STOIC - Gain 20% damage resistance when standing still.
• HEADLONG - Gain 15% damage resistance when sprinting.
• SILENT - Walking into glass silently dissolves it.
• MASTERFUL - Your kick deals 1 damage per skeleton level.
• PUSHY - Your kicks push units and objects 50% harder.
• STEADY - Reduce gun recoil by 50% when standing still.
• PRECISE - Reduce gun innaccuracy by 50% when standing still.
• VEERING - Reduce gun rotation difficulty by 25% when standing still.
• MUTED - Your gun is silent when fired with a full magazine.
• RESOURCEFUL - Without magazines, you may reload your weapon with 1 round.
• GENTLE - Colliding with units puts them to sleep for 1 second per skeleton level.
• DEFIANT - On death enter an invincible state for [timePerLevel] seconds per level then die fr.
• INNOCENT - Overlord punishments are half as likely.
• DYNAMIC - Ready your gun 50% faster after sprinting.
• MINDFUL - Your top listed abilitiy has +1 uses per 4 skeleton levels, rounded up.
• DESPERATE - The last charge of an ability is free to use.
• SAFE - Your grenades are safe from damage while you cook them.

New Story Sequence and New Mission! Angel Team needs your help! Again! You could technically cheat your way into this mission since the last patch but now its officially in the game! This mission comes with a new story encounter Im very proud of. I hope youll find it both stressful and entertaining (. .). These new missions can only be accessed by meeting with fallen_angle in the tutorial area. Once the quest is done Ill add a shortcut or two, allowing you to begin the sidequest while skipping the tutorial. Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing player laid landmines to not trigger when stepping on to them.
• Fixed a bug causing the terminal to crash if you attempted to talk to daemon_de_los_juegos twice.
• Removed the bouncing cats from the angel introduction mission. Dont worry, these lil guys are coming back in another level. They appeared for some players due to a weird plugin error I only just discovered.
• Fixed the punch clock in the angel introduction mission, enemies will now appear in your graph when its used.
• Fixed a few audio fading issues in certain zones. Some special conditions could result in music being switched off.
• Fixed a bug in the angel introduction mission that made the mission a success even if you just completed floor 1 and then backed out to the apartment.
• Fixed a few typos in agent emails.
• Fixed some bugs involving blimp AI losing track of targets.

Thats all for now. The next major update (0.9) will add a final mission to the Angel Team sidequest, a huge overhaul to DDS AI that Im in the middle of rn, and a few new endings to the game. This might take a while, so Ill try to be better about releasing intermediate updates as we go. The game will release in 1.0 upon completion of the roguelike mode and a few passes for polish, dialogue rewrites, and mission adjustments. Thank you all for keeping up with DDS! Were nearing the approach of our full release and Im so excited to get there with all of you <()>

[ 2024-08-05 02:50:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () Quick hotfix for the last patch just dropped. Here are da notes.

• Fixed a few typos in the new side quest emails, messages, dialogue, etc.
• Fixed the names of the nodes in the new mission, they now all have different names. Ive added a bit of code to hopefully avoid this issue in the future.
• Fixed a small visual bug with the new mural in the Concierges pleasure fortress.
• Fixed a visual bug that occurred when horses try to hack you.
• Fixed an issue with the AI for the black hole agent in the PGD mission that caused them to freeze up.
• Fixed an issue with bypass hacker AI, preventing them from hacking you for several seconds if the hack was interrupted by damage.
• Fixed an issue preventing different pillars to appear in BBS missions
• Buffed bows to deal 400% more damage. I originally thought bows needed to be weak since they are a ranged melee option, but they're actually pretty hard to use. I'm hoping the 400% damage buff makes them more fun.
• Added a few new skelly sprites. Did some things behind the scenes so adding new skellies doesn't reset your appearance in game.

[ 2024-06-13 04:43:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Today I bring you DDS version 0.8.5. This update comes with a new mission, new mechanics, and some tweaks and fixes. Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always, be sure to join the discord! Today's update comes with some fantastic artwork from Emett, go check out their work here! Here are da notes. Da Notes

• Added a new early-game mission, this mission can be accessed by speaking with the strange angle fella near the beginning of the game. This will mark the the beginning of a alternate quest route to the main story with three missions in total.
• Gave DDS a slight visual makeover. The more extreme makeover didn't pan out the way I wanted it too, so only minor things have changed. Post processing effects now have default slider values when you boot the game up for the first time.
• Removed the vignette effect. Unity's built in vignette has some terrible color banding issues and it just looks awful.
• Fixed color banding issues for many in-game effects and user line of sight with some tasteful dithering.
• Rewrote the way hostile hacking is handled in DDS. This should make the system more stable, and allow me to create neat new hacking types in the future. A new hacking type appears in the new mission :O
• Added a new Heart Monitor computer. This device works like the tollbooth and puppet master, adding a new rule to the area. Killing a unit within its line of sight will expose the player through walls. This computer appears in the new mission, and BBS missions past a certain level.
• Enemies in BBS missions can now appear with alternative hacking types.
• The Gun Runner perk has evolved to Arms Runner, you can now run and use melee weapons as well with this perk.
• Fixed the damage flashing effect, should work on all enemies now.
• Increased blimp speed. These things are meant to be slow, but they had a little bit of trouble doing anything until now. Blimps now move about half the speed of an average humanoid, up from 1/4th speed.
• Spike vision around servers will now update more smoothly. Spike vision updates kinda slow for other computers as a cost-saving measure, but I have a better way to optimize this in mind for the future.
• Added a sound effect to sight nades.
• Expanded range of possible cook times and throw speeds for grenade generation.
• Increased sleep melee weapon time floor from 1.5s to 5s. Sleep melee weapons should all be a lot more viable now.
• Fixed a visual bug that could occur if a scene transition and black knight drop pod landing occurred at the same time.
• The demo has been updated to 0.8.5.

That's all for now. I should have another mission for you in a week or two. That mission is mostly complete already, but I need to finish some narrative stuff before it goes in the gam propere. If you're impatient and wanna try that new mission now, just type "go_to_scene_ AngelOutpost" into your terminal :D The mission level will be raised to match your shop level. Thank you all for keeping up with DDS! We are nearing 1.0. Two more missions will cap off this alternate route, and then all that's left to do is add the roguelike mode and polish polish polish!

[ 2024-06-07 05:27:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Here with a new update for you. This one is all over the place! Next update will be more focused featuring a substantial visual makeover for the entire game, and a new main-story mission for the early levels. Thank you to everyone who left a review since our last update. As always, be sure to join the discord! Today's update comes with some fantastic artwork from Emett, go check out their work here! New Stuff

• Two new abilities and two new perks for a secret class (not the new one the old one)
• Added a new shader to the first secret class folder, I figure all the secret classes should get fancy folders.
• Added three new hacking attacks to the system overlord
• Removed alert nearby enemy overlord attack. This attack consistently confused players. The weapon discharge attack has the same effect and is easier to understand.
• Added a secret armory to your apartment that stores legendary weapons. These will not appear if you've already picked them up but it should kick in for subsequent playthroughs.
• Legendary weapons can now be purchased from the best shop ever once discovered on a different save file. Other meta progression will probably be handled through this shop in the future, since it feels a bit weird to just start from everything.
• You can also buy sex through the best shop ever now (for 1 million dollarinos)
• Improved algorithm to generate random distributions for weapon and gear generation.
• Added a handful of new skeleton and grenade sprites.
• Added dozens of new tiles to procedurally generated missions.
• Piloted units now (finally) have an aim guide if the setting is enabled in gameplay options, which it is by default.
• Added a dedicated "exposed" status effect that appears to show enemies can see you through walls. Previously this status effect was implicit and easy to forget about.

Fixes

• Overheal mechanic nerfed to max out at 300% of max health, down from infinite percent. This makes the mechanic interesting instead of completely broken. Many medic abilities have been buffed slightly to make up for this change. This change does not apply to the unsalted cracker ability, which can still overcharge your armor indefinitely.
• Fixed material on the replica moon in museum. Unity really likes disconnecting materials from objects for some reason >:|
• Fixed bug where enemies using the clone ability would create invisible clones of themselves.
• reduced brightness on some daemon character portraits
• Adjusted damage body flash effect, enemies with brighter colors will flash to black.

[ 2024-04-07 06:54:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixed a lil bug that disabled the new secret class if you had already unlocked it when the last patch went out.

[ 2024-02-29 02:33:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () Here with an extra spicy update for you. Work has been beatin my ass lately, but I finally eked out some time to get this done. A special thanks to everyone who left a review since the last patch. And as always, join the discord! to meet your fellow agents and get some help unlocking the new secret class. Anyway, here are the notes. Notes

• Added a new secret class with 4 new perks, 6 new skills, and a new core mechanic. This class is a weird one and might need some buffs, but Ive had lots of fun toying around with it. Expect to see some new skills added between now and release too!
• Added new damage feedback effects. Player UI will now shake proportionally to damage taken, and enemy bodies will flash when taking damage. I know some players can find stuff like this grating, so you can turn it off in the new Gameplay VFX section of the Gameplay settings.
• Added some new daemon-y encounters around the apartment.
• Fixed several spelling mistakes across dialogue and alert messages.
• Fixed an issue with the pulsating heart enemys shader.
• Fixed a bug preventing squirmy from appearing in prism missions. I think I fixed it anyway, couldnt recreate it but I suspect I found the issue.
• Fixed several issues that had audio fading out where it was not supposed to be.

Thats it for this update! Ive started working on the final bit of main story content before 1.0 releases. Ive also got some short-term changes planned for legendary items, new overlord attacks, and more incorporation of the secret new core mechanic.

[ 2024-02-28 08:20:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Here with another small update. This one was delayed by a little bit since the changes I made to DDS's sleep system were not good! I'll revisit sleep later but for now I'm just leaving the current system in place. Thank you to everyone who left a review since the last update. As always, be sure to join the discord so you can meet your fellow agents! Here are da notes.

• Added a new """common""" enemy type. You can find these sprinkled in a few missions. I've been wanting to add a little bit more enemy variety to DDS for a while now so this is just the start.
• Added Cloud Cohort, a new technician ability allowing you to summon this new enemy type as a friend.
• Added Creep, new ability to the infiltrator class. Lose 50% movement speed but see through EVERYTHING for 30 seconds. The idea of this ability is to give infiltrators a slightly more interesting way of stealthing through larger late game mission.
• Rebalanced many infiltrator abilities. Allowed infinite and more rapid uses of the rat trap ability, and reduced the cost of many other abilities. I
• The peek ability for infiltrator now adds computers to the network graph, also increased duration from 10s to 15s.
• Removed exploit allowing you to shoot through walls if you poke your gun through them.
• Fixed a bug causing mounted guns to play their sound when starting the desert op mission.
• Fixed a bug preventing wallhack enemy AI from using their accuracy ability. This ability is meant to give the player further warning, so hopefully these little dudes are less frustrating to deal with again.
• Fixed a bug introduced in the last update causing the accuracy visual to freak out when picking up a gun with perfect accuracy.

That's all for now. The next update will feature...a whole new vocation! :O Possibly a new mission too depending on how busy I am.

[ 2024-01-21 22:09:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

whoopsie!

• Fixed bug causing zomble ai to break.
• Fixed bugs causing hackers to not pursue you after leaving their line of sight range

[ 2024-01-10 02:32:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () This month I'm experimenting with a more rapid update schedule, so you can expect about 1 of these per week. We've just hit 400 reviews on Steam (yipee!) Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a review. Just 100 more and we may have a shot at that delicious Overwhelmingly Positive rating. As always, be sure to join the discord if you have anything to request or report. Here are the changes. New Stuffs

• Added cow.
• Ending a sprint will now rotate your gun to the angle it was at when you began the sprint.
• Added some "pity chiplets" the player receives for completing main line missions 3 and 6. These will appear in a package by your desk, and should help round out progression for agents who are very bad at finding them.
• Began overhauling some of the audio setup. Eventually this will further reduce load times. For now there should no longer be frame drops when initially slowing down time on potato computers. Changes also allowed me to implement a global audio fadeout when changing scenes.
• Modified AI behavior so that they take a brief pause after reaching a location they want to investigate. This makes it easier to lure enemies into a trap!
• You can now stop Freyja's pathfinding by using the stop command. This will prevent soft lock situations when freyja gets stuck and can't pathfind to places.
• Toilets, landmines, and other computers are now named based off a static tracker instead of a random value. Previously there were rare cases where two computers had the same name. TLDR. These computers will now be named things like "toilet_0, toilet_1" instead of "toilet_0451"
• Removed some sussy words from the in game dictionary.

Tune in next week for some overdue changes to guns, a new common enemy type, and some updates to the infiltrator class.

[ 2024-01-08 02:38:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Just a few little fixes to 0.8, details below. Changes

• Fixed a bug that allowed you to aggro a nurse and kill Starbucc, possibly breaking the questline without a cheat code to repair it.
• Abilities from the knight class should not all be compatible with the light mech. These mostly only effected the right handed melee weapon but should now effect both as intended.
• Fixed an issue with swapping between melee and ranged weapons with the light mech
• Fixed an issue that made the aim guide invisible if weapons were sufficiently accurate
• Fixed a bug with warpicks that gave them negative damage.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to both kill and rescue a character in the new sidequest leading to some strange scenes.
• Fixed a visual bug with the divine mandate skill preventing the effect from triggering properly.

[ 2023-12-30 19:54:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helloooo Agents () Been a while. Today I bring you DDS version 0.8! This comes with the finale to the stackhunter sidequest, new missions, new toys to play with, and lots of new story content. This update is brought to you with some excellent art from Emett! Theyre always a pleasure to work with. Go check out their work and commission something from them here: https://twitter.com/KSteakay A special thank you to everyone who left a positive review since the last update. Ill include some development details after the changelog for anyone interested. As always, be sure to join the discord if you have any bugs to report or suggestions to make. New Stuff

• Completed Stackhunter Sidequest. This comes with a new mission, and tons of story content.
• Added Frejya
• Added Shark Attack!
• Overhauled much of the player gun code. Many gun abilities now apply to the players gun(s) instead of their character model.
• Changed how player accuracy sight works. This can now appear on multiple guns at once.
• Mounted guns can now be instructed to continuously fire.
• Introduced a new stat rolling algorithm. If youve seen my video on this, you might have spotted an error in how I was creating random distributions. This error occasionally generated guns that were suckier than they should be. The new stat rolling algorithm should not have this issue.
• Added an ez hack panel for Freyja if you have that option enabled.

Fixed and Adjustments

• Silence ability extended from 4.33 seconds to 15 seconds in duration. No longer a John Cage reference but feels much more usable.
• Toll booths now deal damage equal to mission level. These things are a much bigger issue later into the game.
• Fixed many typos.
• Removed some naughty words from the game dictionary.
• Fixed a bizarre bug that prevented the background shaders in the PGD from spawning if the player picked up a particular chiplet earlier in the game.
• The network graph is now open automatically in the tutorial. Too many players were missing the message on how to open it and ended up playing the entire game without a mini map LOL
• Fixed a bug with the Become Succ perk that caused it to not apply the perk downside. Somehow this perk is always broken idk why.
• Non lethal melee weapons have a 1.5 second stun floor, so theyre all guaranteed to do at least something.
• Enemy patrol radius reduced from 30 meters to 15 meters. When enemies hear something and go to investigate, theyll mill about the area in this radius. This makes distracting enemies a more viable strategy.
• Increased speed of blackout animation
• Fixed several bugs associated with hacking grenades through walls, and after they exploded.
• Added a new fade shader to many trees and torii gates in the game.
• Sewer level now specifies that you need to spike the target computer.
• Fixed a bug causing bows to override the sound of the next melee weapon you picked up.
• You can now backtrack through options with ctrl+tab since shift+tab opens steam overlay

Known Issues

• All abilities are meant to work with Freyja, but there are lots of weird bugs I couldn't get around to fixing. The idea is Freyja should compliment your build rather than erase it. It'll take a few updates before everything is working properly.
• Deluge has some bugs, this mode is getting a small rework down the line anyway so I'm just ignoring them for now.
• There are LOTS of dumb story flags in this update. I tested almost all of them but there are a few permutations that might be a little broken if you played the 0.7.9999 preview update on Itch. Testing everything switching between versions of the game was just too much work, but this shouldn't be a problem for most of you.
• Some players reported issues with the new gun aim sight. I was never able to recreate this on my end but I think I found the problem and fixed it.
• Freyja's ez hack window is kinda ugly. Made the thing last night in like an hour, will probably get a fresh coat of paint down the road.

Development Update The 0.8 Update has been in the works for a looong time. There is a lot more I wanted to add, including an entire alternate route. Those things might appear in a post 1.0 update Im calling DDS: Consequences, along with other cut features. After treading water on this side quest for so long, I wanted to release it and get back on track for 1.0 release. Im happy with the state of it. All the best (and worst) ideas ultimately made it in. Im aware development has slowed down a bit and want to address the reasons why. A few months ago I graduated from grad school and landed a great job. Im still working on DDS just about every day, but it took a few months for me to figure out my work-life balance. Some of the Stackhunter sidequest was extremely difficult to implement and that put a damper on things too. Thank you all for your patience while I got this done. () There are only a few things left to do before we reach 1.0. This includes:

• An alt-route to the main quest (3 new missions)
• Roguelike mode
• Possibly 2 more standalone missions (might get booted to post 1.0)

Ill be taking the rest of December off to play around with my next project, and Ill get a hotfix out to fix 0.8 bugs if need be. Im planning on spending January working on fixing annoying issues, adding some new enemy types, visual improvements, new abilities, fun stuff like that. February we'll start charging through the rest of the 1.0 requirements. Gonna move back to a weekly update schedule after this month, so expect more regular content drops! Releasing in big chunks is more efficient, but I get kinda anxious when DDS goes without an update for too long >.< Happy holidays! Thank you all again for keeping up with DDS and supporting the project.

[ 2023-12-21 20:26:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () Most of my dev time is focused on story and mission stuff for the final stackhunter update, so I don't have *too* much to share with you today. It's been a while since our last update though, so I wanted to deliver a few goodies. Thank you to everyone who left a review this month! As always, be sure to join the discord! for updates and cute pictures of frogs. The Notes

• added the ability to toggle vsync from the options menu
• optimized elements of the player's hud for a minor performance increase
• added several new skeleton and grenade sprites
• fixed an issue in the Bellagamba Grid mission where two neighboring computers had the same name
• autocomplete backtracking is now done by holding control and pressing tab. Shift tab opened up the Steam overlay and no one liked that
• enemies can now aim pick weapons properly
• modified some code involving the initialization of melee weapons which should improve load times
• fixed some dialogue typos
• smoke grenades now generate with double duration

I was hoping I would have more time to dev once I finished up my degree and started my new job, but in reality I've had much less :< The current plan is to start staying up to 2:00am like I used to. October is just around the corner which will mark the 1 year anniversary of DDS! I'd like to finish Stackhunter by the end next month, which should leave a pretty straight shot to releasing 1.0. I'll be adding ~3 additional missions to serve as an alt-route to the main story, and the long awaited roguelike mode! DDS will receive some additional content past this, but only things I didn't originally imagine in the 1.0 release. It's been an amazing experience getting to this point and sharing DDS with all of you, and I hope these final content updates are worth the wait! Some recent news regarding Unity's clown carnival revenue model has many devs seriously bummed out :< This recent decision (along with many others) feels deeply misguided at best, and many developers big and small are taking this opportunity to jump ship. I love working with Unity in large part because of the community and their support, but decisions like these put Unity's greatest asset at risk. I will not be porting DDS to Godot or anything as it would be a nightmarish amount of work, and because these changes shouldn't effect me personally. But I'll definitely be turning my eye towards Godot for my next major project.

[ 2023-09-14 07:34:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () This update is brought to you with some lovely art from Emett! Please go check out their twitter and commission some art from them. I overworked myself again. Oopsie! But I'm here with the 0.7.4 update which includes 2 new missions for the Stackhunter side quest (1 per route) and a comfy story scene with your client. I haven't had as much time to test this build so there might be some bugs lurking around. Be sure to join the discord! so you can help report them and see pictures of cool frogs! In addition to the new content there are a few other notes:

• Adjusted the player line of sight shader, the effect should be a little more subtle now.
• Fixed some spelling mistakes.
• That's actually it the rest of my time was spent on story stuff -_-

Thank you all for keeping up with Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum. Gonna take a little time off this month to focus on bug fixing and finishing a new enemy type I'm working on before wrapping up the Stackhunter sidequest with its third and final installment!

[ 2023-08-07 03:34:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya Agents () Here with a little hotfix to correct some bugs and adjust some things introduced in the last update.

• Shortened the description of some new abilities so text doesn't go off screen
• Defensive twirl skill will now end with your weapon aimed in the same direction it started.
• Fixed a bug causing time dilation to get locked when pausing the game with slug active.
• The seducer perk now correctly applies the seduced status effect. This perk was also buffed so the effect triggers 40% of the time instead of 25%.

[ 2023-07-15 04:23:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hellooooo Agents () Here with another monthly update for y'all. I am extremely close to having two more missions done buuuut I'm not quite happy with them and I'm in the process of moving rn. I've decided to release the 0.7.3 update now and then put those new missions up once I've moved in and had the time to polish them. This new update still comes with a ton of stuff though! Check down below for a list of specifics. Thank you so much to all of you who picked up a copy of DDS during the Steam sale. And a special super thank u so much with a cherry on top to everyone who left a review! We've blasted past 300 and are on our way to 500! As always, be sure to join the discord! Here are da notes. New Perks!

• Every non-secret class got a new perk. Many of these will allow you to spice up your playstyle in crazy impactful ways.
• Gunmeister - Defensive Twirl - reloads are longer but you gain massive damage resistance while you do. Special thanks to Grace from the discord for suggesting this idea!
• Acrobat - Red Light Green Light - Move faster but stop when attacking.
• Medic - Flesh Pact - Damage is increased but damage is shared with hostile units in line of sight distance.
• Technician - Dedicated Hardware - Cameras and Turrets are free to hack and command, but other hops cost double.
• Chronomancer - Double Time - Doubles the cast time of your abilities.
• Esper - Psychic Shield - Damage is first dealt to your Ego.
• Hacker - Going Mobile - While your laptop is open, your character moves in the direction of your cursor.
• Empath - Obedience - Allies lose the ability to move on their own.
• Infiltrator - Blindsight - Reduce your view distance by 25%, along with all enemies.
• Knight - True Warrior - Lethal weapons put targets to sleep instead.
• Necromancer - There and Back - Death is not the end!

New Abilities

• Gunmeister - Self-Defense - Each source of damage is negated at the price of a bullet from your magazine. Very proud of the effect for this though it does render over menus for some reason. I'll fix that eventually.
• Empath - Spank - Your next melee swing converts enemies to your side.
• Empath - Friends with Benefits - Consume your most recent friend, gaining all their resources.
• Infiltrator - Peek - Create a small vision circle around your cursor.

Big Changes

• Slug Rework. Slug now drains at a rate proportional to time dilation. 5 seconds of slug means you can slow time for 5 seconds of real world time. To compensate for this nerf, all skeletons can have 5x as much slug as before! This change was made to make Chronomancer cheese builds more interesting. Don't worry! They haven't been nerfed into the ground. Chronomancer stuff is still totally busted, you just need to be a little more strategic with your resources in the early game, and build your character around it in the late game. The Slug Guzzler perk was also buffed to drain slug 200% faster rather than 800% faster.
• New Lighting effects for player line of sight! Your vision now has a subtle glow towards the edges. I always wanted it to look like this but only now got the shader working properly. This should make overlapping sight lines a little clearer, and add a bit of visual flair to the look of DDS. I'll probably add an option to turn this off later if you don't like it though!
• The Empath Become Succ perk has been reworked (again) to make it more in line with the spirit of the original. Empath abilities now have half cost and double charges, at the cost of the opposite being true for all other abilities.
• You can now press left shift + tab to cycle back through auto complete suggestions. Thank you zenbu for requesting this in the discord!
• The Jester class now awards 8 random abilities and 4 random perks, up from 7 an d 3.
• Added some additional tutorialization stuff here and there after watching some confused streamers take a crack at DDS.
• Added a bunch of new skeleton and grenade sprites.

Bug Fixes

• AI no longer breaks when a hacking action is interrupted by the death of a target.
• Fixed some performance issues with security cameras. These things were doing way more work than they needed to so you might notice some performance improvements in a handful of levels.
• enemies no longer shatter glass if their melee weapon intersects with it in an inactive state
• removed the vacuum cleaner from the house call mission. This thing had a habit of breaking windows and sending all the enemies in the house into patrol mode.
• lots of other minor tweaks and fixes I'm too lazy to list out

That's all for now! I should have 2 new missions for you soon so keep a lookout for those in the next week or two.

[ 2023-07-07 04:23:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixed a rare issue where one of the final missions would count as completed if the player died. That's all!

[ 2023-06-03 05:50:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

A mysterious treasure hunter arrives Hello Agents () Today I bring you part 1 of the Stackhunter side quest! In order to hold myself to reasonable deadlines, Im gonna release this in three parts with parts II and III arriving in July and August. Help your new client locate a mysterious treasure hidden in the depths of the corporate complex. Part I will kick off the story with three new missions and an introduction to Starbucc, a cold, calculating fortune seeker with many secrets, and a little bit of a tsundere side (O///O). This side quest will appear automatically after completing the Malicious Emails mission half way through the main story. Youll have to choose between two missions for each playthrough. If you wanna jump straight to the action or experience all three without starting a fresh save, you can use the following codes in your terminal. go_to_scene_ PrismTaster go_to_scene_ BathhouseGen go_to_scene_ PrismSwamp If youre working from a completed save, I recommend turning on the scale enemies with shop option in the gameplay options. This will increase the difficulty to match your character. Outside the new mechanics which I will not spoil here, there are a few bug fixes and changes to go over. Here are da notes.

• 3 New Missions! But you knew that already.
• Added 14 new Grenade Sprites, doubling the total number. This is a long overdue chore to give nades some much needed visual variety. I'll be sprinkling more of these in over the next couple updates.
• Added a handful of new skeleton sprites.
• Fixed a bug causing enemies to shatter class when it connected with their weapon, even when the blade was not live
• Fixed a bug with operator computers causing them to crash your terminal if you attempted to connect to an invalid machine.

Thank you all so much for playing DDS! Im excited to finally show off some of these new missions. Theyve been very hard to develop but I think youll enjoy them. See you all next month with 2 more! (Btw, could like 2 of u leave a review? Were really close to hitting that 300 milestone!)

[ 2023-06-01 23:47:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents () Here with a quick update for you. Still hard at work on the next sidequest. I'll have some missions to share in the open beta next month. Be sure to join the discord if you want access to them! As always, a special thanks to everyone who checked out the game or left a review! This update features some huge bug fixes, balance changes, and a quality of life improvement several of you have suggested. Check out da notes down below. Da Notes

• Fixed the Concierge's Pleasure Fortress Mission in the Duvet sidequest. This mission was TOTALLY broken and let you just walk to the finish line and skip the whole thing. Big oversight on my part, should be back to working now.
• You can now rebind they autocomplete button!
• Fixed lots of visual weirdness in Duvet's apartment
• Buffed the Technician Deep Pockets ability to provide 3 grenade refills instead of 2. I've heard a lot of talk on the discord of grenades being underpowered. I personally rely on them heavily while playing but that might just be me!
• Necromancer perk severance buffed, the downside of this ability now reduces your ego by a factor of 3 instead of 4.
• Chronomancer perk Endless Cycle buffed to reduce maximum slug by 75% instead of 90%
• Fixed an offset title in the gameplay options menu
• Chronomancer's Instant Rewind ability now rewinds you 5 seconds instead of 10. This just makes it a little easier to use and you can also run a cheese build by combining it with Necromancer's The Slip ability. Not that chrono-necro-mancer-wancers needed additional cheese but whatever.
• The Shower Daemon will no longer appear if you have another visitor. There was an edge case before where you could end up in a sticky situation but get locked into dialogue and die.
• Some other small bug fixes involving niche ai behavior, UI stuff, and notifications in the apartment

[ 2023-05-18 06:16:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Kinda took the week off of development but I have a few important fixes.

• Fixed several bugs associated with autohackers. This skill was basically unusably broken. Autohackers will no longer attack you when summoned, and can be hacked properly without breaking your terminal.
• Fixed a bug where hackers would sometimes become frozen after destroying their target.
• Reduced the size of ripples in water environments.

[ 2023-04-24 18:15:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fixed a bug causing breakable walls to be placed down incorrectly in generated missions.
• You can make toilets explode now! This was working before I just forgot to include it in the patch notes.

[ 2023-04-17 04:35:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hellooo Agents () Today's update features some lovely artwork from Emett! Go check out their work! A special thanks to everyone who left a review this week. Be sure to join the discord if you wanna leave feedback, or see cool pictures of frogs! This update features a rework for the BBS side contracts. The goal was to make these missions more fun and interesting, and balance them better to fit with the difficulty curve of the main story. This system is also flexible enough to generate missions for the future roguelike mode. I'll also be writing a little development update underneath the patch notes for those of you interested. Here are da notes. Missions BBS Rework!

• Created the new "kit" generation system for levels. Layouts are more interesting.
• BBS missions now support locked doors. This wasn't possible previously because I couldn't guarantee that everywhere in the level was accessible with the old system. There may be some edge cases where this causes problems so be sure to lemme know if u see that happening!
• BBS missions can now feature tons of computers from the campaign.
• BBS missions can now generate with different sizes.
• Added pretty new floor shaders to spice up the visual variety.
• Missions can now be selected based off of size and enemy level. Contracts can still spawn with small sizes in the late game if you just want a quick little mission to do.
• Enemy equipment is now featured in mission selection independent of the mission modifier. You'll be fighting a much more diverse selection of enemies.
• New "Collect" Mission type. A fairly simple mode that requires you to pick up keycards scattered around the level. Perfect for speedy agents.
• Added lots of new modifiers, modifiers become more common as mission level increases. Special modifiers unlock as you complete missions in the story.
• Added a new layered noise system. This creates slightly more interesting visual effects as a backdrop to missions past level 3.
• Added some new B-sides to the BBS soundtrack. Mission themes can now appear in BBS missions after completing the corresponding mission.
• Added some checks to prevent objectives from spawning literally right next to the player's spawn.

I have more updates planned for side contracts, but this is a huge improvement over the old system imo and I think feedback is necessary before going further. Other Changes

• Added THISBOYB to the musical guest credits. Apologies for forgetting this! Go check out their soundcloud.
• Many particle effects, such as blood, sparks, and landmine bits now bounce off walls. Looks cool B)
• Enemy pathfinding now understands the concept of "diagonal," meaning enemies can get across the map quicker and look more natural doing so. Look out!
• Black Knight Update! These babies felt kinda unfair since they were given continuous sight of the player after landing. Now knights will move to defend points of interest on the map after landing, including the player's position for one time only. However, drop pods now carry 1 extra knight, and knights come equipped with an ability, oh no!
• the_dog now uses the bypass hacking attack
• Massively buffed auto hacker turrets. These things used to guarantee die in one hit, now they have health levels somewhere between an humanoid and a standard turret.
• Many melee based abilities automatically swap the user to melee mode if not there already.
• Added like 15 new skeleton sprites.
• Buffed the Deepfake ability to have 9 charges. It's still kind of a weak ability, so I'll look into updating it in the future.
• Enemies using melee can now sprint to close larger gaps while in combat.
• the_dog no longer appears in a certain mirror past a certain story mission.
• lots of small fixes, mostly visual bugs, and things in levels not rendering in the proper order.
• Fixed some typos in dialogue, and altered a line from an obscure guest at a party to eliminate absurdly stupid lore implications.

Development Update Finally, I wanted to update everyone on the state of development. DDS had a planned Early Access period of 6 months, and has been in early access for...5 months? (;*_*) So...the game isn't anywhere near complete. There are a couple of reasons that, some of which I can work to correct. My life has been very busy lately as I wrap up my degree and look for an actual job. This issue hopefully resolve itself in the next couple months. A lot of my dev time has been spent on bug fixes, and minor updates. While these definitely seem to be appreciated, they get in the way of completing substantial chunks of side-story content. I might take a break to just work on long term goals for a while once the next round of feedback is in. Speaking of which, the new side quest has been seriously kicking my butt! Some features are just really annoying to get working and make fun, and the story has been giving me some trouble too. At this point it's about 2/3rds complete and I'm going to be scoping it down slightly so I can complete the stupid thing in a reasonable amount of time. Another issue is that I haven't set proper deadlines for myself with everything going on. I'm gonna aim to have a strict deadline for the next sidequest by the end of this week. All in all, DDS is gonna be in early access for a while longer than I wanted. I'm sorry that I won't be able to live up to my original promise of getting to 1.0 in 6 months. I promise to keep working and releasing updates until we reach 1.0. I don't wanna turn into one of those early access devs who never finishes their project, both so I can deliver the full thing to you and so I can get working on other games! Thank you all for the continued feedback and support. Working on this is a pleasure and I believe DDS is a much better game now than when it initially launched thanks to all of you. See you again soon for more fun!

[ 2023-04-16 04:33:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () April Fools is now over! Thank you to everyone who left a review during the event, and as always, join the discord! If you didn't have a chance to play during the event and claim ur pet rat, you can still unlock them by typing "have_sex_" into your terminal. I might find a way to tie this ability organically into the game some day, but for now you'll have to use a cheat code. A few additional things were added in the sex update, but were left out of the patch notes for comedic effect. Patch Notes

• Huge new optimizations to saving and loading. Changing levels should feel noticeably snappier. This unfortunately came with lots of bugs. I haven't run into one in quite a long time but beware of lingering buginess while I continue testing.
• Enemies can now sprint when repositioning with a melee weapon.
• Fixed a bug that caused enemies moving with melee weapons to travel slower than their actual skeleton speed.
• Fixed a bug causing the rain in Duvet's apartment to not render.
• The Become Succ perk now replaces all your abilities with Kiss X. This perk was originally designed when you had to pay chiplets to unequip them (what a wild idea that was!). This new version now feels like it has an appropriate upside and downside.
• Disabling the communication hub should no longer disable the camera hub. This was a weird implicit rule that I didn't like. Com hub only blocks enemies from radioing each other now.

In other news, the Mission BBS rework is almost complete! I'm hoping to have that done by the end of this week. The current BBS system has a lot of issues, like how all levels are basically the same size and kind of samey outside of 2 variants. The new system will scale the size of levels as you progress through the story, introduce more combinations of effects, and feature a slightly reworked black knights system. It's shaping up to be a nice little update that'll elevate the quality of random missions to be more in line with the rest of the game. This will finally tick us over into version 0.7 as well! I have a lot more to share about the development schedule but I'll save that for next time.

[ 2023-04-03 09:22:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes

• Fixed a rare but dangerous bug where players could be locked out of the ability menu when rolling a particular ability from the jester vocation.

[ 2023-04-02 05:07:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes

• added sex

[ 2023-04-01 17:41:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Got another little update for you. If you haven't noticed, DDS is 25% off! So...go tell a friend I guess (_)? If you're a new to the DDS cool club, then u should join the discord! DDS has almost made it to 250 reviews! That's halfway to the delicious 500 review milestone where we might get updated to "Overwhelmingly Positive" :O Thank you so much to everyone who left a review! I wanted to provide a progress update while you're here. My life is super busy with job applications and finishing my degree, so the new sidequest is gonna take a while. I've only got two more missions to make, but they're both extremely complex :< Don't worry though, a substantial update is on the horizon in the form of the Missions BBS rework! As one user pointed out, the randomly generated missions in DDS feel way more "random" than "generated right now. I've written some hot n' fresh level generation code that fixes almost all of the problems I have with the current system, so look forward to seeing that in the near future! Anyways, here are da notes.

• Added a new difficulty option. You can now increase the time it takes enemies to hack you up to 10x!
• Fixed a bug that caused your terminal to break when using one of the teleporters in the prison break mission. This happened when teleporters had no destination set. I've added a check so that this won't break the game anymore.
• Added some new floors in the final climb sequence. Been making a lot of new floorset shaders lately to improve the look of DDS overall.
• Fixed some errors in the wiki page for Ammo Types.
• Fixed the warning line and darkness line shaders to remove weird artifacts on higher resolutions.
• Fixed several typos in email messages.
• Autocomplete now works for the mega_hacker computer in the Duvet questline.

[ 2023-03-19 05:52:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents () Here again with another small update. This one features some fanart from SrslyTrash! Go check out their twitch n' twitter.

• New Ability for Gunmeister, Pirate Latitudes. Hold out three guns in front of you and shoot them all. ker blam
• Made it so weapon buffs and mobile shields now spawn on ALL guns you're wielding as a result of the new skill and guns akimbo.
• Fixed a bug where pick style weapons could maintain an active hitbox after being swung
• Added a new page to the wiki briefly explaining ammo types

[ 2023-03-02 09:15:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () This is a very small update with a few bug fixes and an ultra niche feature that a few of you have requested. Thank you to everyone who has kept up with the project and a special thanks to everyone who left a review! As always, join the discord! Here are the notes.

• You can now downgrade items in your armory for free. This is for agents who use builds centered on self-damaging and need to reduce the intensity of their equipment in the lategame when it disappears from the shop.
• Prison hub computer in the rescue mission now displays properly on network graph
• fixed a typo in one of the error messages you get in the prison break level
• deluge mode no longer despawns your mounted guns
• fixed a visual bug where full stack enemies had their melee weapons drawn by default in addition to their guns
• adjusted colors of buttons in the abilities menu so they don't turn white when you hover over them
• fixed a bug preventing the player from switching between some legendary weapons in their armory

There is another bug found recently involving pick style weapons that makes their hitbox stay active even when the attack completes, but this happens vary vary rarely when I try to test for it so I haven't been able to fix it :< Anyways that's all. My life is busy busy rn and dev time is still being directed towards the new sidequest, so don't expect too many big changes for a while!

[ 2023-02-14 08:23:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Ai can now use the mounted gun ability, still a little weirdness but the issue is largely fixed.
• The punch clock in the desert op level now works as intended.

[ 2023-01-24 22:50:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents! () Got a weird one for you. This week I had fun with a new feature and added a bunch of other random stuff. This update features some more lovely artwork from @saspicious! Go commission something from them on twitter here! As always, join the discord! Here are da notes! New Stuff

• Added Mounted Guns. I attempted to make the lamest thing in video games fun, hopefully you like them! These bad bois appear in a few existing levels. The AI can generally use them too, although there are a few weird behaviors I might change later. And if you want one on demand
• New Gunmeister Ability: Hell Fire Club. Summon a mounted gun wherever you want it! Gunmeister is in a good spot balance and fun wise imo but not in a good spot variety wise. This is the first ability that doesnt involve just applying a buff to your weapon. Its also absolutely BUSTED if ur even a little creative so it costs 12 ego fuck you
• Level Updates! Ive been going through and fixing up some missions based on feedback. I did three this week and Ive got changes planned for many more.
• Desert Op mission now has you hunting down 3 commanders instead of everyone. These dudes are tough, and very reluctant to leave their starting spots so they can step on a landmine. I also modified the level geometry, and threw in some mounted guns for good measure.
• The Cartel Job mission was slightly modified to make it more fair. This mission was a brick wall for a lot of players, myself included. Theres now a mounted gun in the north west, and some changes to turret placement to help out hackers. The standard grunt enemies also got a 75% damage reduction penalty. There are so many of them its only fair they go down quickly.
• The Cabin in the Woods mission was kinda hard on hackers, so Ive added some new computers to provide additional pathways towards completing the level.
• Added new computer: Blood Bank. A datastore that succs you!
• Added some new skeleton sprites.

Tweaks and Fixes

• Bows now work with the unstoppable force, and forbidden technique perks. Bows were hacked in as a ranged melee option so these perks didnt play nice before.
• Grenades had their damage generation floor adjusted from level x 3 to just 3. This is meant to accommodate players who build around hurting (but not killing) themselves with their own grenades. Ill be looking into adding a downgrade option for your armory soon!
• Fixed a lot of UI buttons that turned pure white when you hovered over them. There are still buttons that do this but the Missions screen, email, and other big menus have been fixed. This was a stylistic choice that was sort of obnoxious so I'm working to patch it out. Thanks to Taigen Moon for suggesting this change!
• Fixed several bugs with exotic weapon types not upgrading or summoning properly, including Meepiss legendary twin saber Abdul Rayyan!
• Meepiss legendary twin saber Abdul Rayyan is now considered a Full Swing melee type. Operates the same as a half swing but the hitbox causes damage to be dealt 360 degrees around the user.
• Bows dropped by pagan sneakers are now visible to the player, even if the sneaker dies underneath the shadow of the swamp.
• Fixed a bug where walkie talkies looked crooked when pulled out mid kick by enemies.
• An enemy in the rescue mission was placed out of bounds so I got them back to where they needed to be.

Known Issues

• Enemies cant use the mounted gun ability, something about it messes with their AI so Ive disabled it for now.
• Plenty not listed here.

Feeling mentally ready to resume work on the next big side quest, so I may take a week off from regular updates depending on how that goes. Thank you to everyone who submitted a report this week, and a special thanks to everyone who left a review!

[ 2023-01-24 10:46:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixed a bug that caused piloted units to become hostile after hacking a computer from them. There is still a bug that causes AI to freeze up sometimes when depiloting, you can pilot units again to fix this. Fixed some typos Breaker boxes in the train how hit connective segments as well Fixed several bugs with melee weapon generation, enemies dropping a different weapon after dying, that sort of thing

[ 2023-01-14 21:53:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents, this is a loooong overdue update featuring a big new mission! This post will also include a general update at the end talking about changes going forward, overall progress, and plans for the future. This update features some awesome artwork from @saspicious! Go check out their stuff on twitter here! If you wanna access this mission, all you gotta do is [spoiler]Pay 100k towards your debt. This means that finished save files can't currently access the mission. [/spoiler] I'm working on a way to make that happen tho. As always, Join the Discord! New Stuff

• Added Meepis
• Added the new secret Rewards Program Mission. Good little agents who pay their debts get rewards! This new mission features the song Fake Creative by THISBOYB who was kind enough to lend it to me. You can check out their stuff on soundcloud here!
• You can now zoom out a lot more on the network graph to 0.5x
• Added several new variants of hacking enemies. These only appear in the new mission currently, however I plan to make different types of hacking a bigger deal in DDS moving forward.
• Added tons of new computers, including the shutter stations, blood sucking toll booths, radar arrays, operators, punchclocks, fatnodes, and the atrocious symbol of disdain. These currently only appear in the new mission, but depending on reception I may incorporate them in existing levels later on as well!
• Added some new curved directional melee weapons, including the Khopesh, Sabre, and more!
• 5 new skeleton sprites!
• Added Scronkle

Tweaks and Fixes

• Easy Hack Menu no longer leaves remaining text
• Fixed a bug where brass knuckles were putting targets to sleep in addition to dealing damage, now they just deal damage.
• Camera alert range increased by 25% This had previously been nerfed but it was breaking some of the encounter designs so boosted it back up.
• Fixed several duplicate workstation names in the Rescue Mission
• Lots of small bug fixes involving AI.
• Fixed bug where ez hack panel would get very big if you changed size back to 1x
• Stabbing units used to have a universal pause period of half a second after attacking, this has been changed to 1/60th of a second.

Known Issues Introduced In this Update One of the mechanical rewards for completing this quest requires some big changes to work, so currently it is not available. Ill be adding that in at a later date. Red Bypass hackers can sometimes get locked into not attacking you if you attack them first. Ive had a really hard time figuring this out and I decided not to delay everything just to fix it. Currently, you can only access this mission by paying into your debt, meaning it isn't accessible from finished save files. I'm working on a quick alternate way of getting to this mission for agents who have beaten the game and don't wanna start a new character This mission has a lot of padding, in terms of the story stuff before hand. Some Thoughts Finally, I wanted to write some general thoughts on how the project is coming along. DDS was released in early access three months ago, meaning that there are supposed to be three months left in the early access period. Completing DDS by then will be basically impossible and Ill be updating the early access banner in the near future to reflect that >:| My life and work outside of gamedev has gotten busy and its been difficult to keep up. Im very sorry about this. I dont want to be one of those devs who keeps their project in early access forever, but this period will definitely need to be extended to finish the planned content. Next some thoughts on future content. This will contain some spoilers for the new mission. The new optional mission added in this update is frankly ridiculous in terms of difficulty and size. Its meant to serve as a final challenge and something to chew on while I finish up the next side quest. Ive added lots of options for getting around the huge map, so hopefully this does not end up being a failed experiment. Going forward, I want to focus on smaller shorter missions like those featured in the early to mid game that are challenging due to more interesting mechanics. Ive made a few of these for the new sidequest, and while theyre much harder to design, theyre easier to test and maintain. For those of you concerned that future DDS missions will continue ballooning out of control please be aware that Im working to avoid this. There are also a few mechanical rewards missing from this new sidequest that will appear in your apartment in a later update depending on your choices. For my own sanity I wanted to get this out and didnt wanna delay the entire update another week. For the next few weeks Im going to be shifting gears back towards fixing bugs, and fundamental issues in DDSs core codebase. Lots of issues have been reported over the last few weeks and I want to address those ASAP now that this update is out. Im also working on an overhaul to the randomly generated missions which, as a player mentioned, feel much more random than generated at the moment. This was needed anyway for the planned roguelike mode. Thats all for now, thank you everyone who picked up DDS and a special thanks to everyone who left a review!

[ 2023-01-11 20:45:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Holidays Agents () Lots of you have purchased the game during this Steam sale, so welcome! This is a smol update with some very important bug fixes! New Stuff

• Added a button to the top right of the ez hack window that will scale its size.
• Bubble drones now have a stay and roam command so they can hold a position for you.
• Maintenance Hub have a new drain command that lowers enemy ego down to zero. This is a pretty niche thing right now but will be more useful in later missions.
• Added a hacking resistance parameter. This extends the time it takes to be autohacked. Currently doesn't really matter but will be important in future updates.

Fixes

• Fixed a BIG BUG where a dialogue encounter at the end of the "champion" mission was skipped if you talked to certain secret NPCs earlier in the game. This was due to a weird flag mislabel mistake on my end. This dialogue encounter has been reset for all players if you wanna go back and see it. If you finished the champion mission and things felt really weird and incomplete, you probably ran into this bug!
• Fixed a bug where you could receive a pacifist reward without going pacifist if you completed a mission and then died on your way to the exit.
• I found many weird bugs in the bubble drone AI when ordering it into a position with the [X] key so ordering has been disabled for this unit temporarily.
• Shifter and Secret Stash computers now work with the ez hax interface

Currently working on a new standalone mission that imma try and have done next week. Big changes to level generation, lots of new ways for enemies to hack you are also in the works, along with a big new sidequest! Thank you again to everyone who has kept up with the game and left a review :> I finally have a few days off for the holidays and imma spend it getting some serious dev work done ()

[ 2022-12-25 05:06:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () Here with a weird and chaotic DDS update. This one features some amazing artwork from Emett. Go check out their work on twitter! Btw, did you know DDS has a difficulty slider that reduces the damage you take? A lot of agents didn't! You can find this in the gameplay section of the options menu. Here are da notes. New Stuff

• Customize the DDS a e s t h e t i c with lots of new color settings!
• Added new highly customizable scanline shader. If you feel like playing around with these new customization settings, tweet out your creations using the #ddsvibes hastag! I'm looking for a new default profile plus some presets and would love to borrow some community creations for that purpose.
  
• Updated options menu with tabs for each category. This will give me room to add even more options.
• You can now delete items from your armory to remove annoying clutter.
• Updated the Train mission with an emergency braking system. Using this will allow you to walk outside, but stopping the train may lead to unforeseen consequences :O
• Updated a big chunk of the rescue mission. This section previously had an annoying hacking puzzle that most players just went around.
• Added like 5 new extra cute skeleton sprites to the generation pool.
• Added a speedrunnin' timer you can turn on from the options menu. I don't know much about speedrunning so I'm sure there are some improvements I can make to this thing. Some other requested features like the ability to disable secret ability unlocks from previous runs are also in the works. I've been told that DDS has some speedrunnin' potential so I'll be providing some additional support for this in the future. Check out the current world record here! https://www.speedrun.com/deadeye_deepfake_simulacrum/run/z1q1kxwy

Fixes

• Haunters spawned from the Necromancer whiteout ability no longer leave invisible corpses.
• The Hungry aura perk no longer stacks when multiple units in an area have it.
• These changes prevent the game from EXPLODING when doing a particular level. This previously lead to hundreds of zombies being spawned which, while funny, brought the game to its knees.

Taking a short break from the development of the next beeg sidequest to do a shorter standalone mission thing. I'm planning on releasing that in the next two weeks!

[ 2022-12-18 02:25:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Removed a secret ability from the gunmeister class that was not supposed to be there (O_O)

[ 2022-12-06 04:22:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Very quick weekly update for you. This comes with save file corruption protection, and a bunch of tweaks and fixes. New Stuff

• Save File Corruption protection! DDS will now backup your save game each time you load successfully, and attempt to restore things in the event of space wedgie. I have received a single digit number of complaints about save files dying since launch. While this doesn't seem to affect a lot of people, losing your save file really really sucks! This is not a perfect solution, but I think it'll greatly lower the chance of your save getting screwed up.

Fixes

• Jump the Gun Perk buffed, reload penalty is now 1.5x instead of 2x. This perk is weird, and this buff doesn't necessarily make it good. Keeping an eye on it.
• Breach! Ability now has 1 charge. You can still use this to bypass some levels, but it now requires combining with a second ability of some kind.
• Breach charges no longer pass through doors.
• Fixed some spelling mistakes in vocation descriptions, and changed description for technician.
• Equipping items in the shop now reloads your perks. This should solve a lot of weird issues in the apartment where perks could temporarily boost your stats. If you know you know.
• Fixed a bug where the immovable object perk for knight would stack the speed debuff after interacting with the abilities menu.
• Baby mimics should no longer cause cameras to break. Cameras still look like disco balls with so many of them crawling around but that's a problem for another day.
• Nosh ability buff. This ability was pretty good but people were only using it for the ego recovery. Now Nosh will restore 3 hp, 2 slug, and 1 ego, instead of 1s across the board. I hope this makes the ability more useful to different types of agents!
• Fixed a bug where NPCs with legendary weapons would not drop them if you one shotted them before they become alerted.

Now for a quick development update! It's about 1 month into the development of the next side quest. I have 7 missions planned for this with possibly an 8th standalone joining them. The first 3 are done, along with the story bits connecting them. That means I'm kind of behind schedule for getting this released by the end of the year :/ I expect development for this to extend into January but I promise to make the new content worth the wait :> Thanks as always for checking out DDS and keeping up with development! See you next week with more esoteric bug fixes and maybe a new feature!

[ 2022-12-05 03:35:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hellooooo Agents! () This update is crazy late. Sorry about that! My life is still pretty busy but I've got some fun bite-sized changes to share with y'all this week. Here are da notes!

• Orb ammo gets a buff! These rounds no longer hover for a second before changing course to the nearest target. They previously had a 50% damage penalty after this for some reason. No more! Orb ammo is now actually fun to use. I've also updated the sound effect to give it some bass.
• New ability for Technician - Breach! - Throw a satchel charge that destroys walls. I've wanted to add something like this for a while but there were lots of details to iron out. You can't currently hack the satchel charges but I'll be updating these things for stuff like that in the future.
• Many changes to superfast travel. I resolved a lot of bugs associated with moving crazy fast. The player should now have a much harder time glitching through walls when traveling this fast, and some of the weird movement-skipping should be greatly reduced at certain speed thresholds. If you still wanna slip through walls with this strat, check out the necromancer vocation! This fix was ANNOYING to get working, and it's still not perfect :< I think we're on the right track though.
• Added remotehelp and localhelp to autocomplete
• you can now press ctrl+backspace to delete full words in the terminal, special thanks to user modern in the discord for decompiling the game and writing the code for this!

Thanks again to everyone who has given DDS a try so far, and a *special* thanks to everyone who left a review! We still got that perfect streak going. A few more positive reviews and I can start developing that God complex I've always wanted. Fufufufu~ <()> Join the Discord!

[ 2022-11-30 09:34:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! Here with a quick little announcement. The Steam awards are fast approaching and that means you get to nominate your favorite games for funzo categories :O I would be absolutely honored if any of you would like to nominate DDS for the Most Innovative Gameplay category! That is all. Have a wonderful day (oo)

[ 2022-11-22 18:01:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents (oo) My personal life will be very busy for the next ~2 weeks as try to complete my PhD proposal! Most of my dev work is also being directed at the Stackhunter sidequest which will remain under raps until it's done. I'll still be releasing weekly updates but for these reasons they'll be a little sparser than usual. Here are da notes! New Stuff

• Respecc your character! This will refund all the chiplets you've spent on abilities and relock each folder. You can purchase one of these bad bois from the best shop ever. These are pretty expensive ($500k). If they seem too expensive, please let me know on the steam discussions or on the discord! Join the Discord!

Bug Fixins

• Guilt is no longer pushed back by kicking. In fixing a some bugs with Guilt they started getting stuck on walls a lot. Guilt will still take damage from kick effects but the push is disabled for now while I search for better solutions.
• Corpses and guns in Deluge now stick around for a full wave after you've killed them. This is meant to make the mode a little friendlier for necromancers
• Added the 'esc' command to the ez hacker. Scaling options for this thing will arrive soon too!
• Deepfakes now carry spiked line of sight correctly when kicked.

Special thanks this week to everyone who left a review this week! We're at 131 and that perfect streak is still going!

[ 2022-11-21 06:56:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helooooo Agents! () Lots more of you bought the game this week :O Welcome! I was down bad with food poisoning so the weekly update is a little late. But it's got some cool new stuff! Here are da patch notes. New Stuff

• Added new EZ Hack window! It allows you to hack without typing. This is for agents who have difficulty typing or are playing on steam deck. You can enable this window from the Assistance section in the options. Steamdeck users *should* have this enabled by default but I don't have a steam deck to confirm this for myself. This window probably needs some adjustments but I was able to complete a full run with it.
• Two new fist weapons, one sweet, one spicy. Punch enemies to death with the brass knuckles, or bop them off to sleep with the boxing gloves.
• New ability for Gunmeister: Let it Rip - Grant your gun a firerate of 12 r/s. That's a lotta bullets! Been meaning to add this for a while now!

Fixes and Adjustments

• The Gun Runner perk now consumes slug at half the original rate, this perk's downside was a little too severe before.
• Perfect Circle ability now lasts 10 seconds instead of 5.
• Cost of spare clips ability increased to 1 from 0.
• Fixed bug where zombies resurrected by the All my Friends are Dead (AMFAD) ability were unable to deal damage.
• Probuscised Meat Soveriegns can now be resurrected by AMFAD.
• Turrets can now be ressurected by AMFAD.
• Bubble drones can now be resurrected by AMFAD.
• I think all allies can be resurrected by AFMAD now!!! Except Squirmy, and that's only because they mean so much more to you!!
• Reduced the camera beep sound as I found it a little grating
• toilets in the train level are now hackable

I'm also cooking up some WILD stuff for the new sidequest. Gonna keep a tight lid on this until it's out in (hopefully) a month and a half. I think this will end up being the strongest story content in the game once it's finished :O Thank you as always to everyone who took a chance on the game and picked up a copy. And an extra thanks if you took the time to leave a review or drop a bug report!

[ 2022-11-15 06:56:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents () Here with a quick hotfix fixing one critical bug and one small bug. + Fixed a bug where doors could become permanently locked if a large number of enemies tried moving through them. I did not stress test doors as hard as I should have for the last patch but things are looking good now. +Fixed a bug that prevented sleep grenades from activating properly when thrown by a clone of the player.

[ 2022-11-08 02:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () As alluded to earlier, updates will be a little sparser for the next ~2 months as I focus my attention on new story content. Here are da weekly notes. New Stuff

• New nonlethal weaponry! These weapons will put targets to sleep rather than dealing damage. There are only 4 of these weapons currently but I'll be adding more in as time goes on. In the shop you'll now find the blackjack, cattle prod, staff, and jointed staff.

Fixes

• Shifted some enemy placements in the shopping mall level so that security cameras do not make a beep when level is loaded.
• the guiding moonlight spell for knight now allows you to hack computers revealed behind walls
• compass not rotates twice as fast and independently of your time dilation factor
• Fixed a bajillion bugs associated with the All your Friends are dead ability. This skill straight up didn't work, causing AI to bug out and sometimes not resurrect correctly at all. This also previously made resurrected units unhackable.
• using the 'esc' command will now clear the written text on your command line. previously your terminal would say 'esc' after opening it back up again.
• Fixed a bug that would allow you to swap weapon types on piloted units when it should not be allowed.
• last but not least, corpses no longer hold open doors! This was a huge pain to fix.

[ 2022-11-07 02:27:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents, quick hotfix cleaning up some of the bugs I missed last time around. Due to my schedule its convenient to put out the updates friday or saturday, and then do a mini touch up at the end of the weekend. Let me know if this is annoying and you want it to stop! New Stuff

• New ability for Hacker - Emergency Firewall - interrupts all hacking attacks and hacks and reverses all bullets in line of sight distance. I made this a while ago and forgot to put it in the game! This is a weird and niche defensive ability but it's only an ego!

Fixes

• Fixed several issues with grenades upgrading and generating weirdly due to the new type being added. Some stats may change based on balance updates to the game when upgrading but the type should at least stay the same now.
• Attempting to pilot a mountable unit no longer switches it to your side immediately even if you fail.
• Security cameras will now lose track of you if you activate stealth after you're initially spotted.
• Removed a way to soft lock the tutorial by hacking really outside the lines. This was probably only gonna happen with really experienced agents but it's probably best fixed up.

[ 2022-10-31 02:12:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () Today I bring you the 0.6.9.2 Update. This comes with some new abilities, some love for the acrobat class, a new grenade type, and lots of bug fixes. With the start of the new month I'll be directing more of my time to the next sidequest and other new story content, so apologies if these regular updates may get a little more sparse. In other news, I'll be trying to upload the DDS soundtrack to my youtube channel tomorrow since so many of you have requested it. Here are da notes. New Stuff

• Security Camera Rework! Cameras now have audio cues and show you everything theyre tracking. This makes their actions much more explicit. Cameras also give you a second grace period before activating so you arent immediately punished for bumping into one.
• New Grenades Type! Agents can now equip smoke grenades, which blocks sight for both you and enemies. This operates similarly to the Goodbye! Ability for infiltrator, only now you can throw it. Im hoping this serves as a handy tool for agents who want to dabble in a little stealth or who want a new way to disengage from combat. The Goodbye! Ability has been reworked slightly to be consistent with this effect. Careful! Everyone inside the smoke zone can see each other.
• New Ability for Acrobat - Ram. Turn your body into a weapon and deal damage to the enemies you run into based on your speed.
• New Ability for Acrobat - Boosto Boosto Energy! Chug down an energy drink and refill the charges on all your other abilities.
• New Ability for Infiltrator - Silence. This ability disables all sound and all alerts for a brief time period. Use this to keep your engagements reinforcement free, or when you need to break a window without anyone noticing. This one is weird and situational but I think clever agents will have lots of fun with it.
• Ability unlock rework - new vocations now increase future costs by +2 instead of doubling them.
• Perk rework! This technically came in the last hotfix but I didnt explain it too well. Previously you had to spend a chiplet to equip a perk. This was supposed to add a sense of progression and permanence to your character, but punished experimentation waaaay too much. Previously you had to pay to unequip them too and whew what a wild and bad idea that was! Now perks can be swapped in and out freely, but youll have to pay chiplets to initially free up each slot. I hope this keeps the sense of progression while allowing much more experimentation.
• Sight Grenades now allow you to hack the computers they reveal.
• Breaker Boxes will now show their activation zones through the zone command.

Fixes and Adjustments

• Removed some enemies from the train level. Many rooms that used to have 4 enemies now have 2. This level is still very challenging but this should bring it more in line with the games overall difficulty curve. Also made some hit boxes more forgiving around the edges of walkways.
• Adjusted the hitbox on the grapple hook so that it doesnt immediately cancel out thrown from against a wall.
• Buffed the quickstep and alcubierre drive abilities for acrobats to make them faster and more useful. Many agents go for the acrobat class initially and find themselves underwhelmed. Hopefully these new and improved bread and butter abilities will help remedy that.
• Fixed a bug where piloting allies could make them hostile to your other allies.
• The Jump the Gun and Final Round perks for Gunmeister now synergize with each other instead of anti-synergizing with each other. Fully automatic pump action shotgun go brrrr. Final round also triggers off of ammo station reloads now so have fun with that.
• Autohackers from the Hackers MyLittleHelper ability now actually work. Previously these were unable to kill anything.
• Added 10 abilities and 8 perks to the Jester vocations selection pool that were not added before.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to kick Guilt through walls so that they couldnt reach you anymore.
• Nerfed the spare grenade count for sight grenades. Previously they got like a 300% bonus to this and you would have more than you would ever need. Lowered this to +50%, forcing the player to think strategically when using them for hacking now that its enabled.
• Fixed a bug where hostile NPCs pacified through the Kiss X ability would turn hostile again after attacking them.

[ 2022-10-30 02:57:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Agents, This is a little hotfix to address a critical issue. Also you get the ability chiplet rework a week early because I can't be bothered to deal with version control rn.

• Fixed critical issue causing FPS to crash in Party Sequence and other unarmed sequences.
• Fixed issue where rocket shotguns could spawn with projectile counts that weren't whole numbers.
• Added new chiplet unlock system for perks and abilities. Perks are now free to equip but the slots cost chiplets to unlock. Existing save files should have all slots unlocked for free!

[ 2022-10-24 08:56:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () This is the first minor update for DDS. It's aimed at addressing lots of bugs and providing some commonly requested features. Next update will probably come out next weekend. Planning an update to security cameras, and the perk system so experimentation isn't so expensive and discouraged. Here are da patch notes. New Stuff

• New Secret Ability - Lets Ride! Show some love to your pet worm and theyll be ready to join you in the field.
• New ability for Technician - One Stop Shop, spawn a station that refills all health, slug, ammo.
• Improved hacking sight mechanics. Previously you needed a direct line (no walls between your camera and target) of sight to hack a computer, even if it was visible on your screen via the sight bubble from a spiked computer. Now computers are accessible so long as theyre on screen and visible. This also works with witnesses which allow you to see through walls.
• Game now pauses when you hit escape and go to the menu. There are some small issues caused by this but it's working 99% as intended.
• You can now rebind alternate mouse buttons and primary mouse buttons in the keymap settings.

Fixes and Adjustments

• Gave the Knight class some love. This class is among the most broken imo but some of the abilities were too annoying to use. The Helicopter and Assume the Position abilities now ignore wall collisions. Divine Mandate reduced to cost 1.
• Addressed a rare issue that could cause the screen to turn black when black knights landed. I am still not sure what caused this and havent been able to reproduce it but Ive updated some sussy code involved with this effect and I'm hoping that fixed it.
• Updated hitboxes in the train level so its harder to fall off the edge. I did not expect this to be the notorious weed out level lol. Ill be looking into improving it.
• Fixed a bug preventing the player from snapping back from an exploded landmine. Snapback now occurs automatically.
• Fixed an issue with xX_flybynight_Xxs dialogue tree that could abruptly end the conversation.
• Mind Expansion now allows clones of the players to hack through walls while piloting.
• Fixed some issues with AI pathfinding that would cause units to get stuck if they were too close to a corner. This can still happen but should be much much rarer now.
• Fixed a bug that prevented you from equipping secret abilities during the please stand by story sequence
• Autocomplete should now work when typing in all caps (idk why you would do this but the bug is gone)
• Slug now displays correctly in the shop after pushing and popping the endless cycle perk
• Spiking the dummy server in the tutorial before being asked to no longer breaks the sequence.
• Fixed a bug where teleporting to a particular fridge in the rescue mission would disable sound and hacking discovery.
• Teleporters and summoners now work with piloted enemies instead of just the player.
• Shortened description for forbidden technique perk.
• Updated description for final round perk to make it more clear whats happening.

Known Bugs

• Rebinding a duplicate key while in game requires you to close and open the menu before you can rebind again. Has to do with pausing, will fix soon.
• Dead bodies keep doors open. This makes sense but causes some issues.
• Key bind labels in the ability equip screen do not match what you've rebound them to.

[ 2022-10-23 05:18:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! This is a quick hotfix to fix one major issue with a late game mission and a few small ones pointed out on the forums and in the discord. Here are the notes.

• Fixed a major issue in the Prison Break mission. If you followed all instructions, the mission would soft lock forcing you to start it over again. Mission should be working fine now.
• Fixed small bug in prison break mission where cell numbers for the bottom of block two were off by 1, meaning the cell code you got could be inaccurate by 1.
• also fixed a typo in the prison level alerts
• Fixed a bug where data in the smol display panel sometimes didn't match the beeg one in your hacking interface.
• Autocomplete now works for the 'flush' command on toilets
• Fixed a bug with the phantom blade perk that required you to attack once for it to take effect.
• Adjusted how skeleton ego is generated. LONG TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION INCOMMING. All other stats in the game have a lower bound which doesn't scale with level. This means the minimum armor for a level 1 skeleton is the same for level 9. This was not true for minimum ego however, where the floor was set to the skeleton's level. For instance, level 9 skeletons had a minimum ego of 9. The floor for all skeletons is now 1. So that this isn't an annoying nerf, the maximum possible ego has been increased by half the skeleton's level.

[ 2022-10-14 09:10:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum is out in Early Access! Grab it now to experience the completed main story and unlock two new character classes: The Knight and The Necromancer. New to DDS? Its a top-down immersive sim with crazy character customization, hand crafted missions, and a hacking system so granular you can hack the individual bullets flying at you! Here are some things you can do in DDS that you cant do in real life.

• turn invisible
• brainwash your foes
• walk at the speed of light
• shoot 700,000 people
• ride a horse
• hack a horse
• eat so many saltine crackers that you become physically unable to move
• die
• summon a succubus ;)
• stab people with ur proboscis
• drive a car
• hug your strangely dominant handler on top of Diego Velzquezs Las Meninas (1656) (_)
• pay off your debt (its mathematically possible right?)

For this week only, you can snag DDS at a measly $9.74. If you feel that your purchase was worth it, please leave a positive review. Doing so will juice the algorithm and help get more eyes on the game. Its been a joy working on DDS and a pleasure sharing it with all of you. I plan to keep DDS in early access for the next six months. During that time, the game will receive regular patches every 1 to 2 weeks. These will include bug fixes, new abilities, small standalone missions, and changes based on community feedback. I also plan to roll out chonky optional content every 1 to 2 months. These updates will have larger sidequests similar to the one you may have encountered with Duvet. I plan to continue supporting DDS after the early access period is over as well, however my main focus will shift to my next project after that point. Thank you to everyone who has followed the project up to this point. Before you go, we gotta list out the patch notes for Early Access Version 0.6.9! I put a feature freeze on DDS a few weeks ago so most of these will be tweaks and fixes. New Stuff

• Added the esc command to the terminal. Feel like youre in danger while hacking? Typing esc will close out of EVERYTHING so that youre ready to respond. Special thanks to Steam user Vovix for suggesting this!

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where your car would turn invisible if you resurrected it back from the dead.
• Fixed a bug where some doors could not be opened from very specific angles.
• Fixed several typos in dialogue sequences across the entire game. Apologies for those that remain.
• Slowing down time to extreme levels no longer breaks the game.
• Traveling at extreme speeds above .03 C no longer breaks the game. There are a few minor bugs associated with crazy movement speed but Ill be looking at those soon.
• Scene transition timers now act independently of time dilation. This means you will no longer be trapped in a loading screen for literally 400 years if youve slowed time down to a ludicrous level.
• Fixed a bug that spawned clones of enemies with an imperfectly copied grenade.
• Fixed an interaction with clones and the sorcery perk, this caused their ability uses and costs to be doubled instead of quadrupled.
• Fixed a bug during the final climb sequence that could cause the music to play twice.
• Fixed a bug that caused guilt to appear stationary on the network graph.
• Fixed a critical bug that caused your slow down ability to speed up time after using the The World ability.
• The duvet questline will now properly end if Duvet is killed on the helipad where you meet them.
• Fixed several bugs associated with pacifist rewards.
• Camera alert radius reduced from 2 line of sight distances to 1.5. Cameras are going to get a full rework in the future but this should mitigate the apocalyptic consequences of bumping into one.
• Lowered stealth time of forbidden technique perk from 5 seconds to 4.

Finally, there are a few known issues and missing things I couldnt get around to before Early Access rolled around.

• Enemies pull out their walkie talkies at a weird angle if they do it at the same time theyre kicking.
• The Duvet Questline should really respond to your debt being paid off if you happen to do that before. Im in the process of writing some new dialogue for this but its the sort of thing so few people will see that I couldnt prioritize it.
• The Shocking Reveal perk for infiltrators kind of sucks. I cant think of a scenario where its all that useful so expect this to get a rework soon.
• There are some strange bugs involved with pacifist rewards. Occasionally DDS seems to reward you even when you havent earned it. Ive had a really hard time reproducing these however.
• The Prison Break and Rescue missions need updating. Im not a fan of these missions but didnt have time to overhaul them.
• Cameras need a complete rework. Right now they can feel unfair and can alert way too many people at once.
• The hacking system has a lot of undesirable ambiguity when it comes to what counts as within your line of sight. Spiking a computer should probably give you access to all the computers it illuminates even without snapping to it.
• The dating sim mission is not in the game yet. That screenshot isnt just a joke but I did a complete 180 on the idea for this mission a few months back and never got back to it.
• Theres some weirdness with the sniper in the hidden snowfield mission. Implementing a sniper that works off line of sight in 2D was really weird and a lot of problems popped up. Most of those are resolved but there are some edge cases I need to take care of.
• The time it takes enemies to notice you is dependent on the number of enemies in the level. This is due to some really awful spaghetti code I wrote literally on day 1 of DDS development, but the alert system will need to be largely overhauled to fix it. This will be unnoticeable to the vast majority of players so it's going on the backburner for now.

To everyone who took a chance on DDS, I can't thank you enough. That's all for now.

[ 2022-10-13 19:21:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () If you haven't seen, DDS is releasing in early access soon! We're gonna participate in the Steam Next Fest this October to get some last minute eyes on the demo. We'll be doing another stream for the Steam Next Fest on October 8th at 8pm CDT. Come meet the developer and learn what DDS is all about! We'll be playing the game, talking about games, talking about anime, having a jolly good time, etc. What is Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum? It's a top-down immersive sim set in the horrific shadows of the far future ()*: Its a game about conquering challenging missions at the behest of your corporate masters. Check out our new trailer to see things in action! [previewyoutube=4G7rHJ8g3ng;full][/previewyoutube] Face off against rogue agents, automated defense systems, and shambling monstrosities. Build relationships with with a cast of colorful characters as you navigate a branching narrative. While youre at it, enjoy a comfy soundtrack of original lofi hip hop beats to relax / commit cyber atrocities to. DDS encourages player freedom with open-ended level design and more than a 100 abilities and perks to customize ur little guy with. These abilities include cloning yourself on the fly, inducing mass hysteria, and riding a horse! Dont tell anyone, but you can even summon a succubus (>) Need more customization? Take your pick from 16 billion pieces of lovingly, caringly, procedurally generated weapons and equipment pieces. You can also hack anything! Bring the system to its knees using DDSs text-based hacking system. Hack computers, enemies, even live grenades and the individual bullets flying towards you!!!!!!! () Kill God. Become God. We hope to see you at the streams!

[ 2022-10-05 01:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () The 0.6.7.5 update has arrived on Steam. This contains lots of overdue bug fixes and some last minute editions I wanted in before release. Many of these apply to the Beta / Finished product so they might not be relevant if you're sticking to the demo. This announcement features some lovely fan art from The Great Avv over at https://twitter.com/TheGreatAvv Don't forget we're gonna be attending the Steam Next Festival in October! Be sure to check out the streams on our store page this October 4th at 2pm CDT, and October 8th at 8pm. And as always Join the discord do it now!!!!!!!! Now for da notes. New Stuff

• Completely redid the swamp op mission. This one was previously weird and terrible imo, also extremely easy. The new mission has a much stronger sense of identity and is really really hard
• New Visuals and music for the Acid Rain Office level, plus some adjustments.
• New Perk for Infiltrator! - Forbidden Technique - kills with melee grant 5 seconds of stealth. Misses with melee deal self damage minus penetration
• New Empath Perk: Friend in Need - Damage taken is divided by the number of allies you have. Damage taken by allies is transferred to you instead.
• New Gunmeister Perk: Final Round - Reloading your gun fires all remaining bullets.
• Updated Gunmeister Perk Nimble Operator is now Jump the Gun. Reload speed is 4x faster, down to 2x slower based on ammo in magazine. Previously this perk allowed faster reloads on empty magazines. I think it's more interesting when the effect is inverted.
• New Technician Perk: KABOOM - double the explosion radius of your grenades
• Updated Technician Perk - Boomer is now Mad Bomber. You are immune to your own grenades but you can no longer throw them. This perk (especially when combined with the one above) provides a fun new build to try out.
• Added the traveling_salesman NPC. Hoard cash to meet them.
• Seeker rounds now prioritize enemy closest to mouse cursor when used by the player.
• You can now kill an important NPC during a final meeting.
• New Chronomancer ability: Instant Rewind. Return to the position you were standing in 10 seconds ago
• Polished up the cabin in the woods mission. New placements, colors, added a car in the middle of nowhere because why not.
• You can now put cyborgs to sleep after hacking them. Costs 1 data and lasts for 20 seconds
• New running """"animation"""" when wielding a melee weapon
• Added the firewall computer. This prevents you from hopping to protected computers without a direct line of sight. Kind of a weird one, but allows me to design more interesting networks. Lemme know what you think!
• Added a ton of new Mission BBS modifiers and messed with the parameters a bit.
• Scaling enemies with the shop now displays the correct level of missions in the email panel.
• Summoned quadrupeds now scale with skeleton level
• Enemies can now kick furniture when they run into it. There was previously a restriction that required them to be within one meter to do this. Because a lot of furniture is larger than one meter, this condition was never satisfied.
• Key remind menu now has duplicate assignment protection, and a nicer layout.
• Live Melee weapons now cancel out when colliding with one another
• Your ranged/melee selection is now saved between scenes. Some agents prefer to use melee, and having to switch every time made them feel left out. I hope this change indicates that both are valid as a main piece.

Fixes and Tweaks

• Overhauled how the stealth and sleep status effects work. Mostly backend stuff. These were previously hacked into the game but an actual system for handling status effects is now in place
• Fixed a bug where blast grenades were not breaking glass
• Fixed a bug where mimiced enemies would be invisible if the enemy had a non-generated body color
• Fixed a bug where mounted units would only play the first half of the mount sound effect when alerted
• Fixed a bug with the helicopter ability where spinning counter clockwise would only deal damage once per enemy
• Increased Guiding Moonlight view radius from 25 degrees to 150. This ability was really hard to use and kinda useless.
• Effect for the homura protocol ability now renders on correct layer.
• Melee enemies in the train level can now spawn with any small melee weapon, not just daggers.
• Replaced samurai enemies in train level, these now appear in the swamp op mission.
• A new email arrives after completing all three hand missions and the Email Hub mission. This contains some backpay you're owed.
• Updated dialogue for a very obscure NPC named black.paper.moon, now 200% more pretentious
• Updated an extremely obscure dialogue event with The Concierge. You can ask them if you're living in a simulation and get an extremely unsatisfying answer.
• Construct enemies can now respond to radio and sound.
• Enemies can no longer kick grenades with their laptops out. You aren't allowed to do this so why should they be?
• Changed the way weapons generate firerate. The distribution was all sorts of whack. You should now see more full auto weapons in the world and a greater diversity of fire rates.
• Befriending seeker rounds works again.
• Camera hub in the Cartel Job mission was a milllion miles off screen for some reason, now in the correct place within the level.
• Fixed Domain ability description
• Fixed some bugs with the Network Graph not tracking the player properly, also improved performance of the network graph by 50%
• Fixed hitboxes on some doors, relevant for the sneaky weasle ability
• Fixed a bug preventing AI followers from being ordered through locked doors even after being opened
• Fixed A LOT of bugs in the Concierge's Pleasure Fortress Level. Enemies now don't wander all over the place, the mimic doesn't wander off on its own, lots of other minor things
• Fixed a bug preventing the credits from rolling during one ending.
• Removed a piece of furniture causing an agent on the train level to kick over and over again
• Cleaned up some email text.
• Fixed a visual bug with the Secret Admirer ability that was incorrectly coloring agents through walls
• Removed a particle system that was accidentally appearing during a NPC encounter in the apartment
• Made it so an email from an NPC thanking you for sparing them now only appears if you actually spare them.
• Fixed weird stutter that occurred when opening the dialogue interface
• Substantial loading time improvements for many levels, especially the player apartment.
• When riding a mount you move at the same speed the mount would move on its own

[ 2022-09-26 02:55:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () If you haven't seen, DDS is releasing in early access soon! We're gonna participate in the Steam Next Fest this October to get some last minute eyes on the demo. We'll be doing two live streams for the festival on October 4th at 2pm CDT, and October 8th at 8pm CDT. Come meet the developer and learn what DDS is all about! We'll be playing the game, talking about games, talking about anime, having a jolly good time, etc. What is Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum? It's a top-down immersive sim set in the horrific shadows of the far future ()*: Its a game about conquering challenging missions at the behest of your corporate masters. Check out our new trailer to see things in action! [previewyoutube=4G7rHJ8g3ng;full][/previewyoutube] Face off against rogue agents, automated defense systems, and shambling monstrosities. Build relationships with with a cast of colorful characters as you navigate a branching narrative. While youre at it, enjoy a comfy soundtrack of original lofi hip hop beats to relax / commit cyber atrocities to. DDS encourages player freedom with open-ended level design and more than a 100 abilities and perks to customize ur little guy with. These abilities include cloning yourself on the fly, inducing mass hysteria, and riding a horse! Dont tell anyone, but you can even summon a succubus (>) Need more customization? Take your pick from 16 billion pieces of lovingly, caringly, procedurally generated weapons and equipment pieces. You can also hack anything! Bring the system to its knees using DDSs text-based hacking system. Hack computers, enemies, even live grenades and the individual bullets flying towards you!!!!!!! () Kill God. Become God. We hope to see you at the streams!

[ 2022-09-22 07:48:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents, Felt like fixing some stuff tonight. Here are the changes

• Locks for skeletons and grenades are now responsive in the armory. Previously you would have to change pages for the buttons to reflect their locked status.
• Renamed the explosives tab to the grenades tab, since some grenades technically don't splode.
• Smol data panel in the bottom right now updates its value after the bar has loaded.
• Fixed a weird graphical bug that may have been showing up over locked ability classes in the demo.
• Fixed a bug where demo would always say you have new emails, even if you had none.
• Fixed a null reference in the tutorial, not sure if this impacted the game but it's removed now.
• Fixed a behavior in the new snowfield level where the sniper would attempt to shoot a camera, but be unable to hit it forever. Other behavior like this may still be present.
• fixed summoner computer in snowfield level, it was previously unnamed, now named 'summoner'
• fixed duplicated name of helipad beacon in snowfield level

[ 2022-09-02 05:31:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heloooo Agents! () Tonight I bring you the 0.6.6 update. It comes with the end of the main quest, a new secret mission, better difficulty options, and so much love! To access some of the new story content, you'll need to grab the beta from our discord. Join join join! Join the discord do it now!!!!!!!! Our early access release is fast approaching on October 13th! I'm happy to announce that DDS has all the content I wanted by that date. I'll be spending the next month and a half polishing, fixing bugs, responding to feedback, and shilling the hecc out of it to anyone who will listen. Anyways here are the patch notes. New Stuff!

• Added 2 new missions to the beta and an ending sequence that completes the main questline! There are some more alternate endings, dialogue choices, and adjustments I'll be adding over time but you can watch them credits roll.
• New standalone mission. Venture into the frozen wastes under sniper fire. This mission is unlocked by talking to a hidden NPC, and is even available in the demo.
• Updated the Duvet questline's Liar route. At the end of the route, you could meet The Concierge for a secret convo to reach an alternate outcome. The Concierge now beckons to you, making this ending feel like more of a choice and less of a random encounter.
• New Assistance Options! I've replaced them with a simple damage reduction slider. A lot of the previous options were highly situational and confusing for players to use. The aim guide and scale up enemies options are still there.
• Added several new 'martial arts' perks that upgrade your kick. Waa-cha!
• Removed the Dimitrescu medic ability and replaced it with Sanguine Lagoon, an area of effect health drain spell. Dimitriscu was removed for being too complicated, sucky looking, and annoying to fight against when enemies came equipped with it.
• Removed chiplet cost for removing a perk. I want perks to be semi-permanent but having a cost to equip AND dequip was just too much.
• Enemies will now gift you a chiplet if you complete their mission without killing any of them.
• Improved the Trauma Team ability. Units can now slow-hack and have a lot more health. This ability kind of sucked before.
• Added new stuff on the backend so that missions can award individual abilities as reward. The hidden sniper mission will award an ability if you find a secret within it. DDS struggles with providing meaningful rewards, I hope this will mitigate this issue moving forward as more quests award abilities and weapons.
• Updated dialogue with xX_flybynight_Xx. Definitely has nothing to do with the new secret mission.
• Updated the eichler home mission. Some enemies were removed and enemy placements were changed.
• Added a drivable police car to the eichler home mission.
• Overhauled how emails are spawned and stored. Emails should now be listed in order of appearance, rather than a weird wacky order.
• Added two new computers: The witness and the minion. The witness provides sight through walls, the minion provides a choice of doubling your data or resetting system overlord aggro.

Adjustments

• Fixed a bug where enemies could sometimes shoot their weapons while hacking.
• Updated a lot of sound sources so they work better. Melee weapons can now trigger multiple enemy death sounds per swing.
• Added a camera hub to Train Heist mission so cameras actually work.
• Fixed the rain effect in Duvet's apartment.
• Fixed oversized explosion particles on rocket explosions.
• Reduced intensity of the vignette effect.
• Fixed several typos in the terminal.
• Increased minimum blast grenade damage.
• Sight grenades now last longer and activate faster, making them more viable.
• Removed weird invisible wall from prison level that appeared on minimap but was not interactable.
• Fixed the freezer get_temp command in the sushi bar level
• fixed time bubble effect from appearing under the floor
• Fixed the weird picture of the ostritch in the acid rain level so it doesn't render above the player
• Renamed doors in prison level with duplicate names.
• Fixed a bug causing zomble attack delays. After being alerted, zombies would pause for a moment before chasing their target. They now immediately attack, making them much spookier.
• Fixed some typos in the secret Guilt convo.

[ 2022-08-31 05:40:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents! () Today I bring you the 0.6.2 update, featuring a photograph from Stefan Zier! This update was sadly delayed by some Steam related technical difficulties. I'm currently wrapping up the main campaign as early access is fast approaching. We'll be doing the Steam Next fest in October so keep ur eyes peeled for that. This comes with an update to grenades, stun effects, and a bed to sleep in. If you want access to the beta, be sure to join the discord! We got frogs, neco arc, and a brand new mission! https://discord.gg/Jvv3kU8TKS Anyways here are the notes. New Stuff

• New Main quest level for the Beta! One more mission to go + the epilogue and the main story will be done!
• Added the new Avatar enemy type.
• Added mouse wheel zoom to network graph
• Added new grenade types: stun and sight flavors
• You can now sleep in your bed to pass time in the apartment. This removes the need to do random proc gen missions while waiting for story quests to appear in your inbox.
• Added optional hint to the door puzzle in tutorial.
• Added new secret encounter that can show up during BBS missions
• Added a new vignette effect, you can turn it off in the options if you dislike it.

Fixes

• Greatly optimized hacking UI
• Stun effects now have variable duration depending on damage stat, displayed as duration in the UI
• Adjusted how legendary weapons work, these now always appear with level 9 stats.
• Ranged enemies now pathfind while in combat rather than moving in random directions
• Fixed several ambush mimics that would wander off on their own.
• Fixed error with horses where they would move on their own after being mounted by enemies.
• Grenade range radius is now displayed in shop instead of diameter
• Grenade splosion particles now scale based on range
• Fixed issue with cloned enemies not generating identical grenades
• Renamed the door control panels in Swamp Op mission.
• Fixed bug where piloted enemies would not update the ability panel UI properly if the player did not have an ability of their own in the corresponding slot.
• Messed around with a lot of stat generation params for weapons and armor.
• Lots of misc fixes

[ 2022-07-13 04:37:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () DDS has hit version 0.6! This is a pretty big update that comes with a new mission (for beta testers) , a new class, improved UI, and lots of delicious fixes. With this update comes a release announcement! DDS will be launching in Early Access this October! The planned date is October 13th but this may change slightly depending on coinciding Steam Next Fest. Reminder that if youd like to join the closed beta, you can get access on the official DDS discord! https://discord.com/invite/Jvv3kU8TKS Thats all for now, patch notes down below. New Stuff +New mission for the closed beta! Some VIPs are blocking an important merger. Not good! +Added ending sequence for paying off your debt. +Added a new secret class with 5 new abilities and 2 perks. +Better upgrades! You can now upgrade your skeleton and grenade. The new upgrade system just levels up the weapon instead of adding a flat two damage like before. +Better shop UI. They now display each stat with its full name instead of using abbreviations. Hopefully this will make things easier on new players. This also applies to the armory. +Updated the way proc gen mission colors are chosen. +Construct enemies now apply a slowing effect to their target while hacking them. +Added the ability to apply slow debuff to hacked enemies. +Added a secret and extremely brief conversation to the closed beta. Fixes +Vac Bois no longer throws up an exclamation point when seeing you. +Tweaked the effects on several abilities that were not fading properly. +Fixed some computers that did not snap properly in the Safehouse mission +Added a fade effect to the Im In ability. +Disabled sprinting in dialogue sequences +Fixed bug where players first gun was not being placed in the armory. +Fixed an AI issue where enemies were sometimes unable to pursue targets after losing sight of them while hacking. +Fixed a bug where piloting a turret would disable its alert sound from there on out +Selective Relativity spell now only applies to gunfire. +Enemies will now wait until you are 5 meters within their line of sight before attempting to hack you. This cuts down on enemies repeatedly hacking and failing while at the edge of your line of sight, and makes them a little trickier to deal with. +Many other small bug fixes.

[ 2022-06-06 00:19:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () After a night of tinkering with Steamworks, the Mac and Linux demos are now available through Steam. These new demos also come with some notable mid-month fixes. +New Stuff---------- +New Beta Mission! Negotiations have fallen through between the corporation and a local cartel. Go kill em I guess. If you want access to the closed beta, come join our discord! https://discord.gg/Jvv3kU8TKS +New 'assistance option. You can now have story missions scale based on your spending limit in the shop. This allows you to maintain the challenge of a mission without fear of over leveling. +Updated camera alerts. Cameras now alert ALL enemies within 2 line of sight distance instead of summoning the nearest enemy. This makes them much more dangerous. This change was made because a) cameras could feel inconsequential and b) agents using a camera to lure enemies to a guarded position would have to play tediously. This change makes the game harder, but also more fun! +Improved intro configuration. Instead of unskippable scrolling text, you get skippable text that fades in quickly. +Thats it! -Fixes--------------- -Your character will now stop sprinting when opening their laptop. Previously the gun wobble animation would continue even when movement was disabled. -Made some deep changes to the main UI that will provide a substantial performance increase on older machines. -Spiking your horse will no longer cause line of sight to clip through walls while moving. There are some bugs with secondary line of sight cones atm. Drawing line of sight is one of the most expensive operations in DDS and the cost-saving measures have led to a lot of jank. Im working on overhauling how this all works. -Fridges in the shopping mall level no longer have the exact same name. -Fixed an issue with kick hitboxes that caused them to be affected by gravity. -Item buttons in the shop window are now deselected when swapping categories. -Fixed issues with the rain effect on several levels, where only half the particles were appearing. -Fixed an issue where the email inbox could break if you opened a beta save file in a demo version of the game. -Added framerate to resolution settings. -The bow now shoots larger arrows when using the Engorge Knight ability.

[ 2022-04-19 17:17:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Here with a quick update to fix BBS Spike missions. Here are da notes.

• Spike missions from the BBS no longer assign destructible computers as your target. Previously it was possible to destroy a camera you were meant to spike and be unable to win the mission without a reload.
• The kick action now only triggers its sound effect when connecting with a piece of furniture, a grenade, or a unit. The sound was playing every time because it was hitting the grenade in your inventory. No longer!

[ 2022-02-28 22:46:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.5.3 Update (Cow + Shrimp) Hello Agents () Here with a pretty chonky update before my dev time is replaced with elden ring time. Here are the notes! New Stuff Added a new level to the Beta. Accessible by completing the mainline lilypad shrine mission. Melee attack replaced with a kick! Still uses the [c] key by default This move can break glass, and sends enemies, furniture, and grenades flying. You can kick enemies and furniture through windows too! New effect for the optical stabilizer ability. The old one was lazy, this one is lazy, but looks much better! New effect for the Running in the 90s ability. Should make you feel like a real life car. The sneaky weasel ability now disables, cameras, turrets, and opens locked doors in addition to silently breaking glass. Previously this ability was too niche, I hope the added flexibility makes it relevant. Killing enemies now causes enemies nearby to begin patrolling. New Grenade throwing system. The old throw was purely physics based and a little imprecise as a result. The new system has the grenade fly exactly to your cursor position. This may feel less natural but it should be far more reliable. Might change it back if people dislike it, idk. AI can now utilize the Mind expansion ability with a unique interaction. 3 New Abilities! Infiltrator - Rat Trap - Throw a silent trap to your cursor position. Necromancer - kill urself :( - die! Acrobat - Deep Breath - Cast abilities for FREE while the effect is active. I hope this rounds out the acrobat class a little bit. Im planning a perk or two that does something along these lines. This ability is also BUSTED probably but idc. Expanded Concierge Dialogue tree after completing the AMS mission. You can now ask about some of the suspicious goings on and get a little bit of insight. Fixes Fixed pathfinding error where enemies would no longer pathfind through locked doors in some levels. Fixed bug with engorge ability that allowed u to infinitely grow your weapon by swapping it out. This was kind of a fun bug so Ill try to incorporate it back in later Concierge is now immortal for realsies. She should ignore your attacks too. Its just beneath them. Fixed a bug where unstoppable force would kill you when swinging some weapons. Fixed an issue where weapon attachments like silencers or shields would persist on dropped weapons after the carrier died. All that stuff just gets deleted now. Enemies mid alcubierre dash no longer bleed 1000% more than they should. Overlord forced unload and forced discharge attacks now swap the player to ranged combat so they can take effect. Melee weapon cooldown times are now listed in the shop and armory Fixed bug where classes required chiplets but only cost one upon purchase. Added new audio sources so that melee weapon sounds dont cut each other off.

[ 2022-02-24 05:02:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents. () Uploading some work I got done this weekend. Here are the changes! New Stuff Added Mac and Linux builds to the beta page. Player UI now reflects piloted units. Your UI panels are now tied to whatever thing youre controlling. You can now use the abilities of units you pilot. Added melee weapons to the armory, you can now upgrade their damage like you can with guns. Updated the self superschism ability in the Esper vocation. This ability now creates a much purer clone of your character, including your laptop, grenades, melee weapon, abilities, and even perks! Clones cannot use the clone ability though, it breaks clone law. Dont break clone law! Improved AI patrol behavior, After being alerted, enemies would previously move in random directions. This led to them getting stuck on walls and ending up in corners. Enemies now choose nearby positions to pathfind to, making for more natural and efficient patrolling. Improved AI pursuit behavior. In some of the new environments, enemies were having trouble following the player after they ducked around a corner. Im allowing the AI to cheat just a little to remedy this. They will now move to your last known position 1 second after they lost the ability to see you. This helps them follow you through doors, and immediate corners. Its still pretty easy to lose them if you straight up run away so hopefully it doesn't feel cheap. Improved pathfinding efficiency. Cleaned up a lot of the pathfinding code so that its time sliced far more efficiently. Enemies pathfind using a resource budget that causes them to give up if the algorithm fails to find a path in 1000 steps. In virtually all scenarios, enemies only needed 50 to 100 to reach their goal, so this resource pool was reduced to 400. --- Fixes Perk pop button now has the correct error message when lacking chips. Spectre effect on the The Slip ability now renders on the effect layer as intended Fixed a bug where the dialogue panel would play a click sound after sliding out. Fixed an error where haunters could not be killed when summoned by the system overlord Terminal now closes automatically when dialogue begins Raised skeltal warriors now leave corpses...which can be used to raise MORE skeltal warriors Fixed bug where only enemies without guns would not wobble their melee weapons when sprinting Fixed bug some story missions would reload with identical weapons, enemies, etc. This was due to the players skeleton customization corrupting the level gen seed. Fixed piloting bug where enemies would retain partial control over themselves for a few seconds when piloted in the middle of a combat routine Ressurected Succubi now flap their wings.

[ 2022-02-07 03:14:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helloooo Agents () I've been rolling out pieces of this update over the past ~two weeks but now it's all here along with the full patch notes. Before we get to that, I wanted to announce the DDS closed beta. This will be available starting Feb 4th and will include the first 50% of DDS's narrative content for your testing pleasure. If you'd like to participate in the Beta and give us feedback, you can request a spot over at the *very* official DDS discord server linked below. https://discord.gg/Jvv3kU8TKS Apparently lots of you are actually clicking on these updates! Thank you all for your continued support. On to the patch notes! ---------------------------------------------------- NEW STUFF Hacking punishment redux! The system overlord now dishes out punishment in response to computer hopping, rather than passively over time. Many of the attacks are now persistent, such as those distorting your camera. You'll need to 'scrub' your system for 5 data in order to get rid of them! Hacking more computers increases the severity and likelihood of punishment. Updated the tutorial to better explain hacking punishments, and system scrubbing. Your gun now comes unloaded, forcing players to learn that the [R] key reloads their gun. Added text auto-completion. You can now press [Tab] while typing in the terminal to attempt an auto complete. There are still a few issues with how this works but it's very close to where I want it. New hacking attacks! This includes the Dead Pixel attack that places a opaque blob on your screen, the UI attack that removes either your gun, grenade, or skeleton panel, and the grumpy grumpy overlord attack that makes future attacks more likely, and the scrub cost increase attack that increases the cost of scrubbing increase scrub attack scrub scrub bub blub blerp. New ammo type! Barb ammo applies a -50% damage modifier to your weapon, but slows enemies proportional to their missing health. FIXES Fixed many issues with melee weapons and wall collisions. Duplicated sounds and particles should no longer appear. Fixed issue with overlord where you would receive warnings instead of real attacks. most of the time. Distribution of attacks has been tweaked as well. Added snapback instructions to the terminal after snapping to a computer. Thanks to OrthelloDev for reminding me to do this. Enemy pathfinding has been improved. Friendly units will no longer get stuck trying to pathfind through locked doors. They will now give up, or find a new path around them. Melee attacks can now be made while sprinting, but will cancel the sprint for their duration. Lots of sound bugs fixed. Objects would sometimes double apply the volume level to sounds, making them very quiet. This applied to grenades and abilities. Their volume should be consistent now. Restored sound to repair station. Guns spawned during slowdown no longer have high pitched firing noises to compensate. Changed priority of attack and reload key registration. You can now hold down [R] and the attack key to "lever" a single shot weapon. Before it would reload indefinitely without firing a shot. Melee hitbox display is now locked in place when a melee attack is activated. Camera Boi enemies now return your vision on death, you no longer have to snap back manually unless you want it back early. Added variance to how hard enemies will throw grenades at you. Orange planet mercenaries in the Duvet Alliance mission now use grenades instead of the dash ability. AIs with no offensive vocabulary besides hacking can no longer hack unhackable enemies. AIs no longer switch targets while hacking. Removed bug where hackers could sometimes instantly kill you after entering and leaving their line of sight for exactly one frame. Added a grenade timer to enemies equal to twice grenade's cook time. This prevents enemies from spamming grenades like crazy. Removed compass jamming attack from Overlord, and removed compass jamming mission variant. The concept of a level without a compass will be explored in a secret mission, but these modifiers were frustrating and confusing to new players. Evil Twin enemy can now use hacking and grenades. They will eventually be able to use your abilities as well. Changed scene transition fade time from 1 second to half a second. Makes things a little more snappy. Fixed a """memory leak""" issue with mimics that could cause the game to freeze up with two many on screen. Fixed an issue with the technician class that could break your unlock window Fixed particles to align with global orientation instead of camera orientation. camera distortion effects should no longer produce weird sideways rain or water ripples Improved grenade throwing accuracy, the greande should land closer to your cursor now. Nerfed the health of dialogue character NPCs. Fighting characters will probably need an overhaul at some point. Fight against fallen_angel changed, they now use grenades+hacking and have a nerfed health pool. More bug fixes lost to the sands of time because I shut my computer down before saving the notepad I was keeping track of them in ;_;

[ 2022-02-02 06:00:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helloooo Agents () I was planning on pushing this update out at the end of the month with some other stuff, but I noticed a critical bug and decided to push out a piece of it now. Here are the changes! New Hacking System! ------------------------ Well, not entirely new. These changes apply to the system overlord. Previously the overlord would randomly send attacks at fixed intervals depending on its anger level. No more! Attacks are now dished on when you make a hop to a new computer. The chance of being punished increases as you hop to more computers. Some attacks are now persistent, such as those that mess with your camera, or flip your movement controls. To remove these pesky effects, you'll need to 'scrub' your system for the cost of 5 data. If you don't have 5 data handy, you're gonna have to live with those penalties for a while! Some new types of attacks are in the works, but those won't appear in the demo until the end of the month. I might do a video based devlog about these changes and why I made them. Basically, the passive attacks from the overlord felt like little annoyances you just had to wait out. The overlord hurling attacks at you after a single hack also didn't feel good to a lot of players, who would prefer to hack and stay quiet at the start of a mission. This hacking update comes with some helpful messages that will appear in your terminal walking you through things, keep an eye out for them and you should be fine. Bug Fixes ------------------------ Fixed a critical bug where guns couldn't be picked up from enemies! This bug only appears in the compiled game and not in the editor for some reason! Fixed several bugs relating to enemy sprinting. Fixed several bugs relating to melee weapons not completing their swings properly. Removed a couple of duplicated rain noise generators in levels. Changes ------------------------ Remote Arsenal ability is absurdly busted, cut cast time to 30 seconds from 60 and raised cost from 5 to 9. This change will appropriately stat is as an ultimate ability.

[ 2022-01-10 06:49:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () This is a huuuuuge update with tons of additions! New Additions ===== -Added melee weapons (22 varieties!) -- Hard to learn, impossible to master! But they don't make noise and never run out of ammo. You can switch between ranged and melee combat pressing [MIDDLE MOUSE] by default. (Don't tell anyone, but a well timed swing can even reflect bullets ;^) -Skills can now be cast from the command line. -- You can do this by typing skill [NUMBER] in your terminal. This is especially helpful for dedicated hackers, but has some uses for other classes as well -New Hacker ability: Spoof -- Prevents the overlord from registering your hops for a brief period. The next update will involve some changes to the overlord and QoL fixes to hacking like autocomplete. This ability will be much more useful by then. -Squad commands -- You can order your combat-oriented allies into position with the [X] key. -You can now disable the chromatic aberration slow-mo effect in the options menu. -Updated wardrobe menu. -- You can now customize the color of your skeleton, gun, melee weapon, and grenade. The menu should be a lot more intuitive to use now. -Grenade Update -- Removed the FRC (force) stat from grenades. This previously dictated how far they would fly. Distance thrown is now determined by mouse cursor position. Grenade explosions are also the color of your grenade now. New Perk for Each Class ===== Technician Boomer - Ignore explosion damage. Weapon rotation difficulty increased by 35% Gunmeister Ol Reliable - Interacting with fallen guns refills your current one, rather than replacing it. Medic Heart-Under-Blade - Killing humanoids with a melee swing refills your armor. Begin each mission with 1% of your maximum armor. Acrobat Weight Loss - Movement speed reduced by 20% Gain 2% movement speed for each 1% armor ur missing. Esper Energy Vampire - Begin missions with 0 ego. Killing a humanoid with a melee weapon grants 5 ego up to your maximum. Chronomancer Endless Cycle - Your slug is reduced by 90%. It now automatically recharges after a 3 second delay. Empath Become Succ - Become a succubus. Your top ability is locked to Kiss X and free to cast. Sprout cute wings. Hacker Out of Bound - Discover and hop to computers through walls. Opening your laptop creates a sound reaching 1 line of sight distance. Infiltrator Shocking Reveal - Enemies take 1.5 seconds longer to initially notice you. They immediately call for backup after doing so. Balance Changes ===== -The Gorilla Grip and Optical Stabilizer abilities now last 10 seconds instead of 5 -Enemies now wait 3 seconds to call for backup instead of 1.5. Im working on a better visual for this but its not ready yet. -Ammo stations now empty your current mag, but grant 1 mag above your maximum cap to your reserve. Ammo stations were a little too easy to abuse, they now require more consideration since they empty your current mag. -100% ability is now limited to 1 refill instead of 3. Hopefully this doesnt disappoint anyone too much. I want characters to get to the point where they have absurd amounts of sustain, but this ability made it too easy from the start. Ill be introducing new ways to refill your ego, or substitute other resources for it. Bug Fixes and Adjustments ===== -Security cameras now alert the closest enemy instead of a quasi-random one in the level. -Added nicer trail effect on kiss x ability -Enemy alert code was largely rewritten to be more reliable and fair. A lot is happening under the hood when enemies call for help and these changes will set the stage for better visual feedback in the future. -The Concierge is no longer hackable. This was done so that players wouldnt get bogged down messing around with their terminal in the intro scene. There are story reasons why they shouldnt be hackable as well. -Fixed a bug where picking up a weapon dropped by a turret would give it infinite ammo. -Changed the stun effect from gross lighting to cute sleepy zees -Fixed a bug where stunned sprinting enemies would remain in the sprinting animation Secret Announcement ==== For those of you who made it this far. I promised during the last update that I would arrive at a release date for the game by now. I have *sort* of done this. There will be 2 Steam Next fests next year, and I plan to do the full release immediately after the second one. I believe this will be in October. Whenever I get the exact date for that Ill put the date up on steam. More DDS content is coming soon though. At the end of this month there will be an early build available on itch with the first 50% of the game fully complete. This will sell for a discounted price and come with a steam key when the full release is ready. (This is being done on the DL though, so dont tell anyone :^)

[ 2022-01-01 10:25:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Not sleeping well tonight so I'm throwing a little update up with some bug fixes and balance changes. NEW: New sprites for beds! CHANGE: Allied units now pause for shorter periods of time while following you. CHANGE: Color of Stem Cell Injection ability now matches others in the medic class. CHANGE: Weapons that shoot multiple projectiles now have their damage divided by total projectiles / 2. CHANGE: Range of generated armor values on skeletons increased from level => level * 3 to level^.7 => level^1.3. This tweak and the previous one were done to make slow tanky builds more viable in the late game without dramatically altering the lethality of combat leading up to that point. CHANGE: Kiss X ability no longer passes through walls. Casting it in crowded levels basically set the entire thing on fire. The Mass Hysteria ability and seducer perks are meant for this outcome. Kiss X is now for precision smooching only! CHANGE: Allied Succubi received a buff to account for Kiss X nerf, and now have 10x more armor than before. They were previously way too fragile, this should help them stick around and make them feel worth the cost of summoning them. CHANGE: Tables are no longer transparent. This is done so they look better with endgame levels. CHANGE: Changed the display names of some ammo types. TAZER is now STUN and FIXER is now ORB. BUGFIX: Penetrator perk no longer disables system overlord. BUGFIX: Penetrator perk no longer makes hops to previously hopped computers take data. BUGFIX: Fixed an issue where AI could hang on enemies with laptops after being team changed via Kiss X or other empath abilities.

[ 2021-11-16 08:56:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy agents! () Big update this time. This post is a two-parter! First part covers the patch notes and the second part will cover the state of development. Here's the patch notes! Additions Added 9 passive perks, 1 per class

• Gunmeister - Nimbler Operator - Your weapon reloads 3x slower, or 3x faster depending on how empty your magazine is.
• Acrobat - Gun Runner - You can aim, reload, and shoot while sprinting, but sprinting now consumes slug from your slug meter.
• Medic - Bloodmage - Abilities use armor instead of ego.
• Technician - Hot Potato - When you throw a grenade, drop another at your feet for free!
• Chronomancer - Slug Guzzler - Slug slows time by an additional factor of 4, but is consumed 8x as quickly while doing so.
• Esper - Sorcerer - Your abilities can be cast twice as many times, but cost twice as much.
• Hacker - Penetrator - Hopping to computers is instant at the cost of 1 additional data.
• Empath - Seducer - Enemies can see you through walls but have a 25% of falling it love ()
• Infiltrator - Sound Caster - noises from your gun are twice as loud, but draw enemies to your cursor position instead of your own.

Each class only has 1 perk for now, but there will be more (probably 4) per class in the full release. Added 3 new abilities, because why not???

• Esper - Summon the Orb - Summon an orb at your cursor position that reflects weapon-born projectiles.
• Chronomancer - End Precognition - End Precognition (meme ability)
• Technician - Panic Room - Surround yourself with four pieces of cover.

+ Added hackable toilets, you can flush them to alert enemies! + Updated the demo story missions. Some got small changes, and some got pretty big ones! This involved the addition of new secrets, changing geometry, and remixing some enemy and computer placements. + Added new blight effect that can appear in proc gen missions. + Added like...20 new body sprites (about that many) + Added a new difficulty reduction modifier! This one reduces damage taken by 75% Somehow...it doesn't make the game that much easier. Adjustments + Overhauled physics interactions, updated colliders, lowered fixed time step. Game should feel smoother now. + Autohackers no longer alert enemies + Autohacker hop cost lowered to 2 + Updated the the effect of the low-profile perk. + Thermoptic Camouflage cost lowered to 3 ego, max charges increased to 3, time active decreased from 20s to 5s. This ability let players completely break the game in a bad, not fun way. This change will keep the ability useful without making it a press to win button. + Moved the icons around on your desktop computer so they're a little more sensibly organized. There have also been lots of bug fixes, these are all listed in the last few steam posts if you're *really* that interested. D E V L O P M E N T U P D A T E ----------------------------------- So DDS was slated to come out in Winter of 2021. You might have noticed that Winter 2021 is right now!!! I'm pleased to report that DDS has enough content for an early access release. HOWEVER, I've decided that I'd like to skip any sort of early access launch, and just delay things a bit until the game is in a mostly complete state. Updates will still happen post-launch, but I want the released product to feel like a full experience. Playing a few recent early access titles has soured me on that whole thing. This delay will give me time to polish things more, maybe add a few new features, and hopefully get some press coverage before release. The new release date has been set for 2022, and I vow to post a concrete release date by January 1st of next year where the game will 100% come out by, or else I'll die!!!!! Since DDS is getting delayed, I wanted to give y'all an update on what sort of content the final game will have, and how much of it is complete. The following contains some mild spoilers, so beware! Story DDS has a main campaign split loosely into 4 chapters. Each chapter contains 3 main story missions, and a side quest of 2-4 missions. Note that some of these missions are locked or unlocked by the decisions you make. Just know that a playthrough will have 12 main missions, and around 12 side-quest missions depending on what you choose to do. There are also a few one-off secret missions sprinkled in there for good measure, and all the proc gen missions you can eat!. All of this is followed by a "grand finale," but y'all don't need to know what that is. The first 3/4 chapters of DDS, and the first 3 side questlines are ready to go! The final 3 story missions are in different stages of progress, along with that final questline and aforementioned grand finale. Abilities There are also some locked classes in the abilities menu. These final classes are: Necromancer, Jester, Knight, Accountant, and two secret classes unlocked with secretly secrets. These are all in varying stages of development, but making abilities isn't too much work. Major Gameplay Features The two big features still missing from DDS are a grenade overhaul and the addition of melee weapons. Grenades will be replaced with more generalized "throwables" in the future. This will include things like throwing knives, and some non-lethal options. I'd also like to add melee weapons into the game. I plan to import them from the previous project DDS was built off of, but there are some design challenges I'm gonna have to tackle to make them work. Roguelike Mode This will come after release lol. Huge feature, wanna take my time with it. Music DDS's musical identity has strayed a little bit off the path I wanted. Some new songs are being made, not much else to say on that. ----------------- There's plenty of other miscellaneous stuff to be done, but that kinda sums it up. Big thanks to all of you following the project. Your support has been amazing and it keeps me going () The next big update might not be for a while, I wanna dedicate as much of my dev time as possible to getting the game ready for release.

[ 2021-11-13 06:22:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () An update just dropped. Some of these changes were going to come with perks at the end of the month, but I decided to just push them out when I noticed a few major bugs. Most of these have to do with generated missions. Here's what changed. + Fixed a major bug where hub computers stopped working properly if their first child was destroyed. + Fixed a bug where the desktop shutdown sound would play when hitting the escape key in your apartment. + Fixed a bug where black knights were only being summoned if all humanoids died in a level, instead of half of them. + Fixed a bug where the infested level type would sometimes only spawn 1 enemy. + Fixed a bug with the Selective Relativity ability where overlapping bubbles would annoyingly flicker. + Overhauled the way ammo types are selected for guns. It should prevent weird edge case bugs where turrets could spawn with non-lethal ammo and infinitely stun lock you. + Added 13 new skeleton bodies that I doodled in class. + Expanded the palette selector in generated missions. There should be a wider variety of colors in missions now. + Added non-transparent floor variants to generated missions. + Added some decoration spawning to generated missions, such as arches, flowers, trees, and outdoor floor tiles. I plan on adding a lot more decoration and stuff but the system is at least in the game now. + Lowered the magazine-is-empty sound by 50% I found it kind of loud and annoying during my last play test session. + Lowered the volume of rocket impacts by 30%. I need to do some sound overhaul stuff to truly fix a lot of these issues but this should make it a little less annoying to hear multiple rockets impact at once. +Added a new silenced sound effect to the Noir ability. +Defenses panel now has 2 bars instead of 3 to match a change made to the overlord long ago. + Changed the way spare magazines scales with level. Instead having a celling of level x 4 they now have a celling of level + 4. Mid-tier weapons were sometimes spawning with so many spare mags that ammo stopped being a consideration entirely, even if the spare ammo amount was considered mid-tier by the generator. That's all for now! Perks *should* be made available around the end of the month.

[ 2021-10-16 21:50:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Coming at you with a new devlog video hot off the grill. This one's about the hacking system. Enjoy! [previewyoutube=9YCVkEExlzw;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2021-10-13 20:37:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Finally got some time tonight to deliver you an extra cool update. This was supposed to contain a big overhaul for stealth, but those changes ended up making the game worse in almost every way so I scrapped them. A few little things stuck around though. Here's what changed!

• Added enemy reaction notices. A little exclamation point will pop above their head the first time they enter combat.
• Changed the way gun fire rate is determined by procedural generation system for a more diverse and varied distribution of fire rates.
• Tazer ammo has received a 50% ammo capacity and magazine capacity nerf. After scrapping the new stealth stuff, I decided to try playing through the existing content stealthily and non-lethally. It was surprisingly fun! And I had to use abilities in creative ways to make it happen. The tazer is was just too dang strong though, and allowed me to cheese past stuff even better than regular ammo. I think this nerf to capacity will make stealthy playthroughs more fun and interesting.
• Fixed a bug where tazer ammo was sometimes generating with damage. It's supposed to be non-lethal!
• Adjusted the terminal text input field so that what you're typing in matches the line above.
• Fixed yet another bug related to enemies freaking out without a reachable ammo station.

DDS is *very* close to a big development milestone! I'll have a longer post about the state of development, release date, etc. in the near future. I plan to finally add character perks in the next update, so stay tuned!

[ 2021-10-09 04:15:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Coming at you with a bite sized weekend update. This one has some meaningful impacts on gameplay! Check out what changed below.

• Some computers are destroyed when their hosts are. This includes cameras, turrets, and enemies. If you're piloting or hacked into once of these when it's destroyed, you'll get kicked out! And needless to say they won't be hackable after their destruction either. This change is meant to balance to piloting mechanic and present the player with reasons to hold off on destroying cameras and such.
• Pilotable enemies can now use ammo and health stations. This feature still lacks some support :( I'm working on a HUD change that will show what you're piloting better in the future. That might roll out next weekend.
• Pilotable enemies can now pick up guns as well!
• Rocket ammo now nerfs reserve magazine capacity by 50%
• Made some performance improvements to the network graph related to moving computers. Should run much smoother now.
• Clones spawned from the self-superschism ability are now marked as "friendly" computers, and can now be hacked for free!
• Adjusted the color of the Technician vocation so that it's easier to distinguish from Esper and Chronomancer vocations.
• 2 new tilesets added for BBS missions and Deluge arenas.
• Lots of very smol bug fixes and performance improvements across the board.

Still working on story content you don't get to see! So expect weekly updates like this one for a while moving forward. That's all for now!

[ 2021-09-26 18:17:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

AGENTS (;*_*) WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!

• The Stem Cell Injection ability now actually heals you, and has the correct particles.

Special thanks to the agent who uncovered this bug!

[ 2021-09-15 23:37:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () One more smol update to cap off the weekend. These are some changes I meant to make in the last update but forgot about!

• Fixed a bug that gave rods a 90% damage bonus instead of the intended 50%
• Buffed black knight armor by 300% per level. I think I nerfed these guys a little too much in a previous update. They should be meaty enough to tank a few shots now.
• Added a fade in effect to the grenade range marker.
• Added a new dust storm weather effect to Mission BBS and DELUGE missions.
• Fixed the grenade, rocket, and glass explosion effects so that particles don't pop out of view.
• Fixed a bug where fixer rounds weren't despawning / returning to the object pool after colliding with a wall.
• Fixed rounds now spawn with proper computer names.

That's all for now. Gotta get back to real work next week. I'm in the process of making another devlog video, this time about the design and implementation of DDS's granular hacking system. I'll try to have that done by next weekend if I have any free time this week. Keep an eye out on the youtube channel for it! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRk9dvF1tGPIGe_IngP46gg

[ 2021-09-13 03:43:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () I've been working on story content the last few weeks which you unfortunately don't get to see until release! This update has a few changes I made along the way.

• Added hackable refrigerators. Find tasty treats inside.
• Fixed the annoying blink that occurred when snapping your camera to remote computers. Snapping should now be completely seamless.
• Fixed a bug with the grapple hook that could send users through walls.
• Stun rounds now destroy cameras on impact.
• Moved the perk menu from the main screen to inside the abilities screen. Perks will be unlocked with those little ability packages so the menu should be there. There are still none in the demo but they might make their way in there with the next update.
• Fixed a bug preventing the befriending of enemy shield drones.
• Shield drones can now be piloted.
• Increased the mass of shield drones so they can push around furniture.
• Fixed a bug on the mechanical explosion effect causing particles to disappear randomly.
• Changed the name of the "Kodoku" ability to "Whiteout" Another ability is in the works which is much more fitting for this name.
• Changed the way the terminal lists lots of neighbors, the progress bar now speeds up by 5% each neighbor instead of speeding up very rapidly after 10 being listed.
• Fixed progress bars on user interface so that they would not display negative values at the moment of completion.
• The auditory hallucination ability now costs 1 ego instead of 2.
• Datastores now spawn indoors in randomly generated missions.

That's all for now! Check back in a couple weeks for an updated stealth system and some new toys to play around with.

[ 2021-09-11 04:35:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Howdy Agents () Got off work a little early so I'm taking some time off to deliver you this sweet and salty hotfix. Here are the changes.

• Grenades thrown by enemies are now hackable.
• Enemy sprites in the network graph now match their bodies in deluge mode.
• Fixed a few bugs with the grappling hook involving weird behavior when grappling to something very far away.

[ 2021-08-18 19:09:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Very small hotfix today to eliminate a little bit of jank. In the deluge update I improved the way the lighting mesh updated so that you didn't get weird gross gaps when walking away from walls. This unfortunately introduced an issue where the lighting mesh would freak out when snapping your camera to computers, allowing you to see through walls. I've *mostly* fixed this issue. There is still a small flicker when snapping to things which I am. not. happy. with ( ) Buuuuuut it's probably unnoticeable for 99.9% of players, and you no longer see through walls like before.

[ 2021-08-18 00:16:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () The D E L U G E mode previously had no music! You were meant to use your own with the in-game music player, but that's no fun >:| An anonymous donor has generously gifted a song to us! It's pretty dang good sounding too. Go play the D E L U G E mode and listen to it! Here's the list of fixes.

• Added a new song to the deluge mode.
• Fixed a bug causing player spawned auto-hackers to not hack automatically.
• Fixed an issue sometimes preventing enemies in D E L U G E from using their abilities.
• Drastically improved AI friendly fire avoidance. The AI was previously really bad about avoiding friendly fire, including allied AI which uh...yeah. Now the AI is more conservative with its weapon when friendlies are between them and their targets. The new code for handling this is approximately 87 bajillion times more efficient too! :O If you were runniing the game on an older device...say a 2017 surface tablet...this might have been causing that occasional stutter. Should be fixed now tho!
• Two enemies that played passive sounds loops now stop playing those sounds once they're dead.
• Enemies without guns equipped can now use the Gun Grave ability to spawn a turret without it breaking. The gun on the turret will be randomly generated instead of based off an equipped one.

[ 2021-08-17 02:03:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () The D E L U G E Update is finally here! It comes with a new survival mode, weapon armory, save slots, skills, enemies, level generation, performance improvements, and tons of fixes! Let us know what you think of this update in our discord, and be sure to follow me on twitter too! https://discord.gg/Jvv3kU8TKS https://twitter.com/deaddeepsim If you're having fun with the demo, be sure to spread the word! Without further adieu, here are the patch notes. Big New Features

• Added a new Practice menu to the player desktop. Here you can find
• D E L U G E: an endless survival mode against increasingly difficult enemies in a random arena. Survive waves to win chiplets! Survive long enough to meet some true horrors of the dark future. Death is guaranteed in this mode, but not punished.
• Added the Armory. Stores the last 10 weapons youve picked up. You can lock weapons to keep them from being replaced and upgrade their damage to keep them viable as the game progresses.
• Multiple Save Slots - You get 10! It seemed presumptuous of me to add more than that (especially for a demo) but if you want more lemme know. Ill prolly let yall have infinite in the full release.
• New Level Generation Algorithm. This new brute force approach is ironically faster than whatever flow-Frankenstein nonsense was being used before. Generated interiors are more diverse and more interesting to navigate. Used to generate both Mission BBS levels and D E L U G E Arenas. This code will also be way more maintainable moving forward because I actually understand how it works.
• New Mission BBS Type: Capture. Grab the flag and bring it to the helipad. Grabbing the flag reveals your location to all the enemies on the map!
• New Ammo Type: Corrector. Rounds fire, freeze, and correct their trajectory once to hit the nearest target. Damage is reduced by half after correcting.
• New Mission Modifier: Diverse Specialists. Enemies come equipped with different abilities, not the same one.
• New Mission Modifier: Wanderlust. Enemies wander the level.
• Added some new plank and ornate floor textures. These spawn about 25% of the time in generated areas. Im looking to spice up the visual detail of DDS, but just a little bit! Lemme know what you think.

New Abilities for Each Class

• Gunmeister: Spare Clips ( )- refill ur magazine instantly, even while sprinting.
• Acrobat: Grapple - throw a grappling hook and pull yourself to it.
• Medic: Trauma Team - summon some beefy bois.
• Technician: Simulacrum - spawn a dummy of yourself to distract enemies (omg he said the name of the game!)
• Chronomancer: Homura Protocol - move independently of time. (Technically arrived in the last update but whatever, eat me).
• Esper: Remote Arsenal - pick up fallen weapons with your mind and blow the entire map away. (The coolest ability in the game :O)
• Hacker: Domain - add every computer in the level to your network graph.
• Empath: Ritual of the Succ - Summon a succubus ;)
• ??????????? - ???????? - ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Bug Fixes and Tweaks

• Overlord now increases its angry boi level every 3 hops, instead of every 4.
• Changed Specialists Mission BBS mission modifier to only modify 1/3rd of enemies in the level. Fighting enemies with abilities is fun, but its not so fun when they all have them and are constantly spamming them, so only a select few get them now. The new Diverse Specialists mod works the same way.
• Added a delay and visualization to the swap ability.
• Changed the way refill stations grab you to avoid the player getting trapped on walls or furniture.
• Fixed the way the lighting mesh updates so that theres no gross gaps when moving away from walls.
• Enemies no longer wander mission BBS levels. This was inconsistent between story missions and random ones. The new Wanderlust modifier sets behavior to how it was before. Im interested in adding patrols paths with elite teams in the future as another mod so stay tuned!
• Rocket damage bonus nerfed to 3x from 4x. Rocket damage was just too heckin high, and probably still is.
• Improved computer line of sight hit boxes. You should be less likely to see the corner of a computer and yet be unable to hack it. Still needs improvement but much better than before.
• Akimbo spell renamed to Make it Double. Previous name felt booooooring.
• Added fade in effect to Secret Admirer ability, looks a little cleaner now.
• Reduced size of fangs for Dimitrescu spell. The fangs previously looked super stupid and were too hard to avoid. Now they only look kind of stupid.
• Enemy AI now conjures ammo out of thin air if no stations are available in the map because I forgot to add them.
• Changed how soundtrack and weather audio files are loaded, leads to some areas loading 80% faster!
• Improved AI target sorting. The AI is always trying to decide between targets when fighting multiple opponents. I rewrote the code that handles this to make it way more efficient.
• The mirror in your apartment now correctly reflects your accuracy visualizer.
• Accuracy visualizer is now enabled by default. I think this will help a lot of newcomers who dont understand how accuracy and weapon aiming works. If you dont like how it looks, you can turn it off in the options menu just like before ()
• The load bar for listing neighbors now speeds up 300% after listing more than 5. This should cut down on some waiting time without being too obvious.
• Added red hue to quit button in main menu.
• Changed the taser projectile model. The crazy neon lighting could break the game if too many tasers appeared on screen, and looked inconsistent against other ammo types. New look should still be distinct, but cleaner.
• Tazer rounds no longer stack the stun status-effect so stun time cant exceed 5 seconds.
• Enemies equipped with auditory hallucination ability will now cast it at random nearby locations to confuse the player. Its not just enemies making random monkey noises anymore.
• Fixed Bug causing abilities menu to not open properly on first try.
• Fixed a variety of enemy hacker bugs associated with fighting multiple factions of enemies at once.
• Placed landmines used to do *reads notes* 1 million damage. They now do damage equal to your grenade damage, or 1.5x maximum armor if no grenade is equipped.
• Allies dont get angry at you after you pilot them anymore :))
• You can hack the cyborgs and computers youve created for free now.
• Added pretty blue Made by Unity title card, got rid of the ugly brown one that was there before.

That's all for now folks. I'll still add periodic updates and fixes to the demo up till release, but I need to get back to finishing up story content!

[ 2021-08-15 16:24:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Taking a little trip this week along with a little break from development. I'm pushing a few fixes and adjustments before I do. +Buttons are no longer cliccable behind tutorial messages on your desktop. +Fixed the lil flower face on the death screen to match the others. +Nerfed sprint speed bonus from 50% to 40% Some agents found the sprint a little too quick and disorienting but I think I've hit the sweet spot now. +Nerfed Alcubierre Driver speed bonus from 250% to 200% Same reason. +Moved desktop icons back to Unity's base input system. I was constantly finding little bugs using the new input system so we're back to the basics. +Adjusted the gun position during the sprint animation so it looks more """natural""" +Added separate audio sources for click and hover events on UI elements. This should prevent those sounds from munching each other constantly. +Probably some more minor stuff I forgot to write down. As I said before, gonna try and take a little break to avoid burnout and focus on real work. The endless survival mode is very close to being done. It's super fun and I've wasted a lot of time playing it lately!

[ 2021-07-14 04:33:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello agents () I was gonna hold off on adding these features until the end of the month, but I think these changes improve the experience a lot and wanted them in ASAP! If you wanna report bugs or discuss these changes head on over to our discord https://discord.gg/Jvv3kU8TKS or hmu on twitter @deaddeepsim Here's what got added! +Added sprinting! You can hold [SPACE] to move fast. It cute! Careful though, your gun needs a little recharge after sprinting. +Enemies can sprint too! They'll sometimes do so while covering long distance or moving to cover. +Added a tip of the day program to your employee desktop. Contains useful reminders and awards $5000.00 just for checking in! +Added a nicer mirror to the apartment that reflects everything. Can't wait to put this asset to use in other levels. +Added a new mission BBS variant where enemies can use their own grenades. +Added some tutorial messages to the MissionsBBS, and Abilities programs on your desktop. These appear the first time you open them and just fill in the gaps of the tutorial. +Moved the continue game up a space to reduce chance of accidentally clicking new game (multiple profiles coming soon!) +Modified skeleton speed level scaling. Should begin slightly higher, scale slightly lower. +Fixed a visual bug that occasionally garbeled the terminal when opening the laptop. +Fixed several bugs associated with the Trace ability degrading your weapon and resetting your skin. +Modified the way weapons and skeletons are serialized (you shouldn't be able to tell). That's it! We're actually ahead of schedule for our big update next month. Check back for an armory that saves and upgrades the level of your weapons, multiple save slots, a survival mode, and other secret stuff! Hopefully I'll get that to y'all soon. Sprinting gives yet another verb to the player and can change combat a lot! Hopefully for the better since y'all kept complaining about how slow it was ( ). If you had fun with the demo be sure to spread the word! There's never been a better time to check it out.

[ 2021-07-10 18:36:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () This will be the last update for a while unless something totally broken gets discovered. Here's what you get! -Added key rebinds. these are available in the options menu. I moved DDS over to Unity's new input system to do this ,which broke every UI element in the game and required me to rewrite a lot of the movement code, in addition to rewriting all the input handling. Unfortunately, Unity's own key rebinding example doesn't even work even in an empty project for me so I ended up using some free asset that works with Unity's default input system and none of this was necessary #turningintothejoker. But we got a reworked movement system out of it! -Reworked Movement System. This should feel almost identical from the player's perspective but enemies now accelerate between velocity vectors instead of snapping to them, so their movement is a little less frustrating to play against and looks better too! -Added new ability for Chronomancer Vocation: Homura Protocol. Your agent can move independently of time dilation while this is active. This was an ability that I wanted to have in time for Steam Fest but the old movement code couldn't handle it. There is a LOT of hacky code that makes this work so let me know if you find any bugs here. -Reduced The World's time dilation effect from 1% to 2% of original speed, but doubled duration. This was done to avoid jankiness. I found a ton of stuff breaking when time was slowed this much, and I couldn't get Homura Protocol to work with it either. I don't think this change matters too much to gameplay, it should feel about the same. -Lot's of little UI adjustments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I probably will not be updating DDS for a while unless a critical problem is found. There will be a big update released sometime around the end of next month with the endless survival mode, an armory to store your past weapons, starting equipment, and a bunch of content sprinkled around. Thank again for all your support!

[ 2021-06-27 18:02:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () I'm up late tonight. So here's a dumb little update that won't matter for most of you. -Did you know that you know that you can press Alt-Enter on your keyboard to fullscreen / window almost any game? A streamer playing DDS didn't! Added dedicated fullscreen toggle button to options menu. -Made the game a little friendlier for ultrawiders. Still not a great experience in its current state, but UI windows should now stay within the confines of the screen, and some elements loaded underneath UI elements now load immediately for ultrawiders to prevent pop in jankiness. -Made a small change to how enemies call for help. They previously called for a friend IMMEDIATELY after spotting you. Now they take a whole, entire, 1.5 seconds before they radio for assistance, allowing sneaky agents using a silencer to get the drop on them without consequences. Can't call for help when ur dead! -Fixed a small bug in which players could sometimes resurrect themselves to a completed BBS mission. Don't want that! -Fixed some small typos deep in The Concierge's dialogue tree. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's all for now. I should have time this weekend to finish adding rebindable keys.

[ 2021-06-23 06:37:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents () Were gonna boot up the livestream one last time Tuesday at 8pm Central time if you wanna come hang out ()/ The end of Steam Next Fest is upon us. But dont worry! The Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum demo is here to stay. Several of you have reached out with concerns regarding this. Its been a blast showing off DDS to all of you, and your feedback has been extremely helpful! Some of you have been getting a...suspiciously large amount of play time out of it _ Did you leave the game on in the background?? Quick! Go turn it off! Id like to use the demo as a public testing ground for new features, something a little more accessible than the closed beta well eventually have. That means Ill keep updating the demo between now and release! Not everything being developed will appear there though. Here are some things that will be added to the free demo over time. --- Quality of life improvements! (such as key rebinding, ultra wide support, and multiple save slots) --- Bug fixes! --- Balance adjustments! --- New abilities for existing vocations! --- New randomly generated mission variants! --- New core features! (sprint button, new ammo types, grenade types???) --- An endless survival mode! This game mode is still in development. Itll involve defending a randomly generated playground from endless waves of increasingly difficult, and increasingly bizarre enemies! Itll offer experienced players a more challenging way to relish in the combat and hacking of DDS while testing out future features. Here are some things that will NOT be added to the demo over time. --- No new story content, character encounters, or missions! Spoilers! --- No new vocations! --- No new enemy types! [spoiler]This *might* not apply to agents who make it *very* far in the new survival mode. Youll just have to play and find out ( )[/spoiler] Im gonna be pushing out little periodic updates starting next week. Expect a big BIG update with the survival mode in the next month or so! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next, I wanna go over some of the common pieces of feedback Im hearing, and how I plan to address them. If you wanna submit your own feedback head to our subreddit and post in the pinned thread there! https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadDeepSim/comments/o06grb/deadeye_deepfake_simulacrum_feedback_thread/ Now for y'alls feedback. I got my starting gun and it sucked! Gimme a better starting gun! Gimme gimme! Its important to me that players discover weird and wacky guns, rather than build perfect boring ones! However, I dont want new players feeling frustrated right away just because they lost a dice roll. I plan to give agents a little more agency in choosing their starting gear. Stay tuned for that! I like the surrealist undertones of DDS! More weird stuff! Gimme gimme! Surreal encounters and especially strange phenomenon are pretty limited in the demo, but have received lots of positive attention regardless. There was already some weird stuff planned for the rest of the game and I now plan to lean into that direction a lot harder for the rest of development. Movement is way too slow in the beginning of the game. Gimme speed! Gimme gimme! Movement *is* slow in the beginning. Its supposed to be! I want the players speed to reflect the power they amass during their time with DDS. With slow movement speed early on, the player is forced to get a better grasp of weapon mechanics and abilities to find an edge in combat. HOWEVER, I acknowledge that situations where the player is sluggishly traversing empty territory are not fun. Im gonna introduce a sprint feature to address this. I already have a cute lil gun wobble animation ready to go. And if sprinting ruins the game, well just take it out! Where the HELL is my Mac Version???? Wheres my Linux version you goddamn son of a bitch?! GIMME. Look people, messing with Steams nightmarishly jank upload system is literally the last thing I wanna deal with right now. But dont worry! Ive put up a Mac and Linux version of the demo up on the DDS itch.io page here: https://nodayshalleraseyou.itch.io/deadeye-deepfake-simulacrum These builds havent been tested nearly as much (actually they havent been tested at all lol) so be weary of bugs! The game is too hard! Gimme an easier game! Gimme gimme gimme gimme. No. [spoiler]But I will introduce more options to reduce difficulty in the Assistance menu, just for you ()[/spoiler] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, for those of you still reading this tremendously bloated post, I wanna full disclosure some things about the timeliness of DDS development. As Ive mentioned before, game development is not a full time job for me, its just a hobby that consumes a lot of my nights and weekends. The Steam page has our release date ambiguously listed as Winter 2021 That is still the plan! But theres a lot of work to be done and hearing all your kind words makes me wanna make DDS the very bestest it can be before asking for ur hard earned money. An *extended* release date is somewhat likely at this point, so Im just warning yall about that now. Thanks again to everyone who tried out the demo! I never expected so many of you to check it out. It's been an incredible experience getting to show DDS to all of you <3 As mentioned before, I have a BIG update planned for the demo about a month from now so keep an eye out for that! Little updates will trickle down in the meantime. If you wanna support the project, spread the word! Tell friends about it, tell family, tell the people...whom you have wronged >:) Also follow me on twitter. https://twitter.com/deaddeepsim k thanks bye!

[ 2021-06-22 05:14:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents!! :O It's time for the 2nd Demo hotfix. Here's what got changed! 1. A certain individual will leave *actually* leave your shower as promised. 2. A certain gun will no longer generate with a level of >14,000 (note that the maximum obtainable firearm in the demo was supposed to be 6) 3. Enemies in a certain level no longer have a mislabeled pilot cost printed in response to helpremote command. 4. The custom musicc player now loads songs dynamically based on demand so there shouldn't be any stuttering if youve loaded a ton of songs into the game folder. When loading a large sound file you may still experience a brief stutter. Please note that there is a soft ~40ish custom song limit due to the amount of text the terminal can handle displaying at once. However the game should no longer die if you try to load 90 hours of audio into the game folder as one of you did () 5. The musicc player now lets you set a custom song specifically for your apartment! A lot of you asked for this so I've thrown it in there. Type 'musicc' into your terminal to see the new commands associated with this. Be weary of bugs when using this. I wasn't able to break it myself but I usually like to wait longer before putting out new features. 5. Fixed an issue where it was sometimes impossible to earn income from Mission BBS missions after completing the first optional mission. 6. A small number of users reported that text was not visible within the games hacking terminal. I have not been able to reproduce this bug, but Ive made adjustments to the terminal that I suspect will solve the problem. If you were experiencing this issue, please let me know in the steam discussion if this update resolved it for you! 7* Forgot this one! Previously DDS would force fullscreen after entering a level. This no longer happens and you can actually play the game in window mode. Just use the ALT-Enter shortcut to do so. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ive received a lot of questions about whether the demo will remain up once the festival has ended. It will! Youll be able to play the demo as long as you like! The demo will also receive a few exciting additions in the weeks after the festival, and periodic updates between now and the full release. Details on those exciting additions will be released with an end of festival wrap up post / live stream Tuesday at 8pm Central time. Unless something is *totally* broken there probably won't be another update until the end of next weekend at the very *very* earliest. I gotta get back to my actual job now that the weekend is over. Thanks again to all of you who reported bugs and gave feedback! ()

[ 2021-06-21 03:24:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello agents () I pushed out a small hotfix last night to address a few issues. 1. UI should no longer spill off the sides of the screen for 16:10 aspect ratios. UI should also look a little crisper for those of you who disabled the screen warp effect. Apologies to those of you playing the game in ultra-wide, DDS does not quite work with such RIDICULOUS aspect ratios :O Support for that will come soon so stay tuned. 2. Fixed several spelling mistakes. 3. Fixed a small bug in the shop where skeletons and grenades had incorrect prices listed in their details. Special thanks too all the anonymous gigachads who brought these issues to my attention! If you've encountered bugs of your own, or have some feedback you wanna give, pls let me know about it in the reddit thread below! https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadDeepSim/comments/o06grb/deadeye_deepfake_simulacrum_feedback_thread/

[ 2021-06-18 19:36:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Come join us this Friday 8pm Central at Steam Next Fest for a friendly developer stream and learn what Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum is all about! We're gonna be playing the game, and taking questions, and hacking computers, and shootin' dudes, AND listening to lofi hip hop beats, AND talking about anime.

[ 2021-06-15 19:19:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello agents () We're posting a public demo of Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum from June 16-22 next week for Steam Next Fest! You'll get the first three levels of the main story (plus some secret ones ), along with lots of abilities, weapons, and procedurally generated side content to play around with! Check out the sizzle reel for a taste of what the demo will have to offer :P [previewyoutube=TTa92w-xPvI;full][/previewyoutube] We'll also be doing a live stream of the game this Friday at 8:00pm. Find it here on the store page!

[ 2021-06-13 00:07:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Agents. Here's a quick development video about how the guns in DDS are procedurally generated, and how they operate a little differently from those in you typical top down shooter. Even though the weapons are created by an algorithm, I assure you that every one is generated with love and affection ( )( )( )( )( ) That's all for now. Stay tuned for more updates! [previewyoutube=hQt64nrruX8;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2021-04-04 18:10:42 CET ] [ Original post ]