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.