Mar 21, 2017

Death Road to Canada - Rocketcat Games

We're still working on fixing the Visual Studio driver problem affecting some people, which was a giant and unexpected timesink for us. We're in the middle of just taking out the requirement, but it will require more testing. That testing will start soon, but until then I'd like to get out some new content for BRAINSTEM.

Note that we had to move some stuff around due to the VS redistributable error taking up a bunch of time, until it spilled over into our iOS work. The new perk/trait system would have taken up too much time to test, so instead I moved in content that was originally going to be in later updates. I'll do a new post on the update plans late next week!

The big feature for the Brainstem update: Selling weapons to a new trader. This was requested a bunch. She only wants nice weapons, to discourage the hoarding I was worried about. So no picking up every bone/stick you see, she won't even buy pistols.

HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

Changes:

New Weapon Buyer feature added to the Trading Camps!

- Weapon Buyer buys weapons she considers valuable. She's picky!
- Minimum melee weapons: Roughly nightstick/sledgehammer/fire axe.
- Minimum firearms: Roughly Dolt 45/cowboy rifle/shotgun. No pistols.

- Gives about 20-25% market food value for your weapons, as a rule.
- Buyer looks at the inventory of whoever you're using to talk to her.

- Weapon Buyer shows up as often as the Gas Buyer does, but in different camps for the most part.
- Weapon Buyer shows up in the Final Trading Camp, always.
- Buying from the weapon buyer will update your food count so it counts as being in the trunk, letting you use the new food on other merchants.
- If you have no weapons she's interested in, she'll give a hint as to whether another character has something she wants, or if there's something in the trunk.

New Characters

- Common Trader: Polearm Pal. Sells Bardiche (25 food), Modern Spear (9 food), Stick Boot (6), Pitchfork (3)
- Rare Trader: Skeleton Knight. Sells Skull Hammer (25 food), Gladius (15), 5 Bomb Skulls (5 food).
- Rare Recruit: Ultimate Sports Fan.
- Skeleton Knight can also be recruited, technically.

New Weapons

- Modern Spear: Designed as a great single-target weapon for lower fitness/strength characters. Lighter than a baseball bat, while doing 50% more damage. Has the special half-fatigue trait, so it takes half the energy it should to stab things with it.
- Bardiche: A mix of Medieval Axe and Claymore. It's a cheaper endgame weapon, with the downside of it being really heavy.
- Stick Boot: The ultimate weapon????! No refunds.

- Poolcue Spear: A rare spear sometimes found near pool cues. Like a Modern Spear, but with a much higher chance to stab an extra target. Can break, but is as sturdy as a Cleaver.

- Sports Horn. More airhorn blasting than ever before, even the AI can use it. If wielding by the Ultimate Sports Fan, this will recharge at the start of each location.
- #1 Foam Hand: We're #1! The USF's secondary weapon.

- Skull Hammer: Like the Mega Maul, but better.
- Gladius: Similar to the Sturdy Machete, with higher cleave and damage and a little less weight.
- Bomb Skull: Beware the bomb skulls.

Misc Changes

- Shovel no longer breaks.

- Shotgun Peddler's shotgun price reduced from 10 -> 7

- Pubert and Puberto added to the name lists for male characters.
- Some new trader camp NPC sayings.

- Goat attack is now half-fatigue, instead of 0.1 fatigue (!)

- CHOOSE YOUR PALS WISELY tutorial guy is no longer seen by zombies until you talk to the person, like all other rescue recruits now.
- No more zombie spawning from the starting door in the tutorial (unless you wait for hours).
- Tweaks for iOS/touchscreen controls.

- Grammar/typo fixes.
- Various other bugfixes.

Mar 21, 2017

3/21 Testing Branch (All Platforms)

Death Road to Canada - Rocketcat Games

Jan 29, 2017

1/29 AORTA Update (All Platforms)

Death Road to Canada - Rocketcat Games

The big content update! Lots of changes in this. Massive list below!

The biggest features:

- Achievements! AKA "cheevos"
- New Final Trading Camp before Canada!
- New system that lets you recruit people from trader camps!
- Rare recruits system added for trader camps.
- New unique characters!
- New traders!
- New Rare Traders system! Some of them can also be recruited.
- Accessing your car trunk when in a trading camp or city. Remove or put in excess weapons!
- A few new events!
- Looking up stats in info, with expanded stat tracking.
- Weird Kickstarter rewards.
- New weapon tag that lets us prevent the AI from using certain weapons. Among other things this means they'll no longer throw grenades at you.
- Lots of tweaks and fixes.
- Lots of new weapons! Including AIR HORNS and Healing Spray!

All changes:

NEW EVENTS

- New road event: The Weegee Board. Yes, the real thing is still trademarked.
- New road event: Dog Poop. There's a box of food rations but a dog has taken a poop on it. May God have mercy on our souls.

NEW CHARACTERS

- Rare Traders added: Lab Technician/Reptiloid Alien Kip, Head Transplant Doctor, Rare Book Seller, Soothsayer/Wizard, Lynn, and the Witch from Halloween update.

- Wizard casts powerful magic spells with his Wizard Stick if recruited.
- Wizard casts magic using his Wizard Stick (sometimes it says Wizzle Stick instead, this is a bug)

- A goat can be found in the trader camp, rarely.
- Goats can be milked, if you're brave enough.
- Goats can be recruited for no food cost! They enjoy your company that much.
- Goat death sayings.
- Goat car blurbs.
- Differentiated cats and goats more, they're a separate species I guess? Who cares, seriously.
- Special text for multiple goat milking

- Added puppies, kittens, superpuppies, and young pets growing up into bigger animals. This is for Kickstarter people only (initially).
- Baby pets are now 30% slower than their adult counterparts.
- A pet that grows up gets its speed set back to the adult speed.
- Messed with pet24 spritesheet so cats are in their own section.
- Updated pet-grow to adjust to the new cat spritesheet for kittens.

- New Trader: The Blunt Master. Sells hammers of all sorts. Also sells the new MEGA MAUL. It's cheaper than a Knight Sword or Medieval Axe, and comparable.

- Lynn C. Thompson, Cold Steel CEO, is now in the game as a rare trader. He can temporarily join your team to give you a LIVE DEMO of his ultra powerful sword he's selling.
- Lynn pitches his products at random intervals.
- Special death saying for Lynn.
- Lynn can be used for one mission, like the Knight.
- Cold Steel Greatsword AKA Zweihander is now attainable.

- CARL! CARL!
- The "Woof" character now has an all new special ability type! Hint: Try having it die.
- New rare camp recruit: Maria. She's very strong.

- CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL!

- CARRRLG!
- DUANE!

- Cat Lady!
- Cat Lady summons a cat when you bring her in a mission.
- Cat Lady summons a cat whenever she takes damage.
- Cat Lady has a chance to steal enormous amounts of food for her cats whenever you camp for the night.
- Cat Lady gets her own despair event.

- Feral cats have a 2% chance to be replaced by a special cat, Oscar.
- Dog rescues have a 1% chance to be replaced by a special dog, Sam Byool.

- Oscar starts with charming, maxed composure, and is much less murderous than other cats. He can not go under 1 morale, so no berserk team-killing rampages for the most part.

- Sam Byool starts with a shotgun and max shooting + max composure, so he gets the special sniper events. He also starts with the Superdog status.

- Special thanks to the Kickstarter backers for the goat, Sam, and Oscar!

NEW SYSTEMS

- Achievements! A lot of them!
- This is the last time I will call them "achievements", from now on they were "cheevos".
- Steam integration for cheevos.
- If you have cheevos in-game but not on Steam, you should get them shortly after starting a new game.
- New game mascot: Skull that makes goblin laughter noises during cheevos.

- You can now access the car trunk by opening the back of your car! Take out or put in weapons while in a trader camp, outdoor location with car, or city.

- Stat screen in INFO, with a bunch of tracked stats.
- Tracking added for ally deaths.
- Cheevo added for not allowing a single ally to die in a run.
- Ally death total added to the stats info screen.

- Win Streak tracking added.
- Ending now displays streak information, if you're in a win streak of 2 or more.

- Changes to CYOA icons.
- Some CYOA's now show two characters that are interacting.

- Trading camp recruits in! Currently 6 recruit types and then a chance for a rare camp recruit. One will spawn when a campfire is spawned.
- Camp Recruits have $ over their heads to set themselves apart.
- Normal camp recruits take 5 food, rare ones take 10.

- Familiar Face camp recruits can now show up in trading camps
- Familiar camp recruits do not cost food.
- Familiar or rare camp recruits will default back to normal recruits if you run out.
- Familiar camp recruits have a 3/10 chance to spawn, Rare has a 1/10 chance.
- Special or Familiar modes will now force the camp recruits to be rare or familiar, respectively.

- The final camp before Canada is now a guaranteed special camp, the Last Stop.
- Last Stop has 4 traders total, guaranteed gas buyer, and a guaranteed camp recruit for now. More will be added as we add new trade camp features.
- Last Stop additionally has an extra recruitable character, special for that camp. That recruit is guaranteed one good stat, though is more expensive than normal. This should make it more possible to turn games around where you have a lot of food, but everyone's dead.

- New trader menu type that lets you go back and forth in the same windows so you can easily cancel choices.
- New trader system that lets the head-swap doctor get a list of 3 random head choices per game.

BALANCE

- Junkyard dogs now have different stats than other dogs.
- Adjustments to AI weapon swapping.
- Dogs will pick up stuff but not TOO much.
- If bandits steal no-drop weapons, the slot then gets opened up so you can at least use something for that character. This may lead to some weird cases.

- Some traders that carry really nice weapons will no longer drop them on death. Rest in Peace, molotov trader strategy.

- Buff to dogs and other animals! Animals now eat less food than humans! They always eat one food instead of two.
- Nerf to dogs and other animals! You can no longer set an animal as the solo leader of a mission. Unless they're really, really smart. Rest in Peace dog speedrun strat.

- Random recruits can now start with a fire axe, making this likely the best weapon possible for a random character.

- Cleaner Kepa check
- Changes to Kepa's in-game description

- The passed out bar character can no longer be eaten by zombies while unconscious. Sadly, no one understood my game design genius.

- Rambeux and Ninja moved from the road recruit pool to the rare camp recruit pool. Most recruits that would have taken food will show up in the camps instead of the road now, but not all.

- AI followers now only pick up a melee weapon if it's better than their current best weapon. We're thinking this may fix the infinite pickup bug, or at the very least make them less crazy for wood chunks.

- Followers now get a little "catching up" speed boost if they're far away.

- Witch's cat mews on recruitment.
- BBQ tank now has a shorter height hitbox

WEAPONS

- Flag added for the game telling the follower AI to not use certain weapons. These include: Pipebombs, grenades, molotovs, chainsaw, flamethrower, blowtorch, and the new healing spray and airhorn.

- New weapons added: Claw Hammer, Ballpeen Hammer, Rubber Mallet, Screwdriver, Scissors, Scalpel, Tire Iron, Airhorn, Tennis Racket, Oar, Ice Pick, Knitting Needle, Purse, Shiv, Fire Poker, Pool Cue, MEGAMAUL.

- Airhorn, tennis racket, and oar can now spawn in sporting goods stores and athletic supply stores.
- The above stores now generate 2-3 weapons instead of 1-3, 4-6 for the big stores' main room.
- Big sporting goods stores will always carry an airhorn, with a 30% chance for two.
- Small sporting goods or athletic supply stores in cities have a 60% chance of an airhorn.
- Airhorns have 30 charges, with 30% chance to have 50 instead.

- Screwdriver, claw hammer, ballpeen hammer, and mallet added to hardware stores and as industrial area loot.
- Chances of industrial area loot lowered to make up for more things that may spawn.
- Hardware stores now have double the weapon spawning for the "main loot" category.
- Shovel and metal pipe taken out of the hardware store's "main loot", but added to the "side loot" chances.

- Mega Maul added, the King of Sledgehammers.
- Any time a sledgehammer spawns, it has a 10% chance to instead be the Mega Maul.
- Mega Maul is comparable to a Knight Sword. About 10% less damage, massive knockback, can hit up to 3 zombies with 80% chance of each extra hit. Weight slightly heavier than Knight Sword.

- Tire irons have a chance to spawn on car wreck maps.
- If there's a functional car at the end of one of those maps, there will also be a guaranteed tire iron.
- Any map with a locked car will have a 50% chance of a tire iron.

- Pool tables added to bars.
- Pool cues added to pool tables.

- New "Weapon": Ouchie Spray. Sprays a cloud that lingers a bit until it heals one point of health. Can use on a teammate or self by running into it.
- Healing Spray damages zombies some.
- One HS found in the storage room of a hospital or clinic.
- Scalpels added to hospital/clinic.
- HS can also be very rarely found in bathrooms with a cabinet, 2% chance. HS found in here will have 1 or 2 charges instead of 3.

- Half-fatigue trait added to some of the new weapons.
- Half-fatigue will make weapons take half the stamina per swing as normal. Not to be confused with lightcooldown, which makes weapons have less of a penalty when you're exhausted.

- Forest areas can now have tree branches on the ground.
- Larger forests (over 25 trees) can have logs on the ground.
- Logs have a 10% chance to spawn as the Big Frickin' Log, BFL for short.
- Logs and BFL's have the heavycooldown trait, which makes exhaustion penalties even worse.

- Debutante AKA Mary Poppins now spawns with a purse.
- Most of the new weapons added to the chances to spawn on a rescue character.
- Most of the above weapons added to the list of those you may find in a house.
- Golf clubs and hockey sticks can now finally be found in a house.
- Rusty Machetes have a 10% chance to spawn as a Sturdy Machete, instead.
- Ice Pick added to kitchen loot weapon list. 5% chance to spawn. They're rare but that doesn't mean they're good.
- Moved cricket bat and crowbar out of the nice-meleeweapons house spawn list, because they suck.
- Added scalpel, shiv, sledge, megamaul, and firepoker to nicer-meleeweapons.
- Fire Axe can now spawn in houses, 10% chance to replace a hatchet.

GENERAL CONTENT

- New glasses (hats for your face)

- Alternate Bar that replaces the pool tables with a Love Tester machine.
- Love Tester can be interacted for an event, until someone loses their temper and smashes it.

- Special death sayings for cats, dogs, other pets instead of them gaining human speech.
- 30% chance for dying characters to say BARF!, down from 40%

FIXES

- Tweak to weapon swapping.
- Fixed a bug with weapon slot selection for AI.
- Some typo fixes
- Fix for a trader camp error
- Fixed some errors with singing characters going offscreen.
- Null tile check for tile .state! ... this fixes a bug where sometimes the mall cops wouldn't spawn, and maybe some other things.
- Axe trader has a new body.
- Menacing Figure AKA Axe Trader now is described as wearing a robe.
- Food/supplies should update in trader camps as you get/lose them.
- You can now run over skeletons.
- Fix for a smoke bomb bug.
- Cleaned up food eating logic.
- Fixed an issue with CYOA events that were making it pick an empty character.
- Updated SDL2.dll
- Fixed a trader stack error
- R#ck had a small chance to say "DUANE!" instead of "CARL!", this has been fixed.
- Possible fix for gas-for-snacks trader jumbling things up.
- Typo fix for firearms coach.
- Sound tweaks
- Blast/bullet behavior fix so that propane tanks can explode again
- You can now talk to camp chatters multiple times, to make them repeat themselves like in a proper videogame.
- Fix for incorrect loot stat reporting, such as when using up gas by driving down the road.
- AI will no longer swap a weapon for the same weapon.
- Locked no-drop weapon slots now become normal if the weapon breaks. Though, outside of debug characters you probably won't see a character with a breakable no-drop weapon.
- Fix for a wandering AI bug that made things in the ending level follow you immediately, when they shouldn't.
- Tweaks to make the wander AI behavior less exaggerated.
- Fixed "Familiar Face" characters sometimes not applying perks and traits correctly.
- Junkyard map made one tile taller, to fix an error where your car could crash into a parked van.
- Fix for Health Siege Reward making you go over max health, which was nice except it could screw up healing events.
- Fixed dying from traders not clearing your save properly.
- Fix for some AI freakout cases.
- Window resize behavior changes.
- Fixed some interaction priority with objects/pickups/characters
- Fixed empty CYOA after unlocking car and returning
- Fix detection of near zombies for finale, so they don't disappear mysteriously for reasons unknown
- Fix a case of broken name entry
- Reticle now longer shows up if something can't shoot. Tested for dogs.

- Fix for getting the Toilet Genie to accidentally make the player start floating.
- Footstep sound reduced.
- Halloween fixes and tweaks. You know, for next year. Or for people that mess with their system clock.
- Fix for Dracula talking and changing to/from bat form while dead and on fire. We shouldn't have fixed this one.

- Alvis now properly plays an exclusive special in-game song if he dies on the toilet after aging rapidly.

- Turning into a dog by lab accident now lets you keep your human intelligence or lack of intelligence.

- Changing red crosses to green crosses because I guess they're trademarked.

- BRANCHNAME finally changed to AORTA

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Well, that was a lot of changes. If you read this far and like what we're doing, tell your friends to buy the game! Also tell your favorite news sites/streamer/celebrity. More updates coming!

Jan 29, 2017

1/29 AORTA Update (All Platforms)

Death Road to Canada - Rocketcat Games