Update 25/02/2016 (To Version 1.0.33.28a)

A few new things, various fixed things and some modified things!

Side effect of this update is controller-bindings have now been reset (sorry!), as a lot of the controller input systems have been heavily modified.

• Ability to drop weapons and coins.
  
• Support default bindings for a huge number of controllers, controller support should be a lot more wide now. All controller configurations have been reset.
  
• Local hosting option to lobbies, ticked by default. Handy if you don't want to wait for dedicated server searches.
  
• Along with the above we've added additional button names / icon sets for the main controller types (ds4/ds3/xb1/xb360).
  
• Support for manual control of enemy spawning.
  
• Support for oval-paint tool in editor.
  
• Compass pips showing the position and state of other players.
  
• Various new gib types for destroyable objects.
  
• Dead tag next to player names when they are dead.

• Nerfed the floater zombies firing interval and attack radius.
  
• Increased per-round score bonus, reduced per-damage score reduction, reduced per-death score reduction, increased per-revive score bonus.
  
• Reduced gib counts for a lot of different effects, reduces visual clutter.
  
• Love pylon and turrets have far higher base health.
  
• Enemy drops and player drops now dissappear out of existance after a while, get them while you can! Time depends on drop source, usually 2 minutes.
  
• Disable various vfx processing when running as a dedicated server with a null renderer. Should reduce dedicated server CPU usage a lot.
  
• Heavily changed item drop rates so rarity is a bit more evenly spread out.
  
• Further balancing of fire damage.
  
• Actors tag/event linking is now many-to-many, lot nicer when hooking up events in maps! Shift+Click on to several objects also quick-links them.
  
• Maximum zoom out when sharing the same screen is reduced. This mainly effects campaign maps and is mainly a base for some of the future campaign maps.

• Ensure players are spawned on round change in wave modes, even when the intermission is short.
  
• Some text typo's.
  
• Country flags now correctly show up in dedicated servers on the scoreboard.
  
• Some HUD elements not desaturating when the player they refer to is dead.
  
• Prevent overshooting the pathing target of zombies when they are moving at high speed (smooths out some of the jerky behaviour at very high waves).
  
• Some indestructable weapons (namely screwdrivers) not being consumed when used.
  
• Being able to equip a few passive skills that you shouldn't be able to.
  
• Cheater achievement not unlocking correctly if user gains last level by purchasing any of the +1 level skill items.
  
• Potential negative values for challenge's time-remaining.
  
• Loss of items when going to further levels in dungeon.
  
• Crash when disposing of render targets on GPU's without framebuffer-object support.
  
• Turret damage not correctly contributing to turret challenges.
  
• Not being able to change reference values in the editor property grid.
  
• Now force fmod to emit stero format audio, rather than whatever the OS default is. Should fix some audio bugs people have had.

Have fun!

- Tim

Update 25/02/2016 (To Version 1.0.33.28a)

A few new things, various fixed things and some modified things!

Side effect of this update is controller-bindings have now been reset (sorry!), as a lot of the controller input systems have been heavily modified.

• Ability to drop weapons and coins.
  
• Support default bindings for a huge number of controllers, controller support should be a lot more wide now. All controller configurations have been reset.
  
• Local hosting option to lobbies, ticked by default. Handy if you don't want to wait for dedicated server searches.
  
• Along with the above we've added additional button names / icon sets for the main controller types (ds4/ds3/xb1/xb360).
  
• Support for manual control of enemy spawning.
  
• Support for oval-paint tool in editor.
  
• Compass pips showing the position and state of other players.
  
• Various new gib types for destroyable objects.
  
• Dead tag next to player names when they are dead.

• Nerfed the floater zombies firing interval and attack radius.
  
• Increased per-round score bonus, reduced per-damage score reduction, reduced per-death score reduction, increased per-revive score bonus.
  
• Reduced gib counts for a lot of different effects, reduces visual clutter.
  
• Love pylon and turrets have far higher base health.
  
• Enemy drops and player drops now dissappear out of existance after a while, get them while you can! Time depends on drop source, usually 2 minutes.
  
• Disable various vfx processing when running as a dedicated server with a null renderer. Should reduce dedicated server CPU usage a lot.
  
• Heavily changed item drop rates so rarity is a bit more evenly spread out.
  
• Further balancing of fire damage.
  
• Actors tag/event linking is now many-to-many, lot nicer when hooking up events in maps! Shift+Click on to several objects also quick-links them.
  
• Maximum zoom out when sharing the same screen is reduced. This mainly effects campaign maps and is mainly a base for some of the future campaign maps.

• Ensure players are spawned on round change in wave modes, even when the intermission is short.
  
• Some text typo's.
  
• Country flags now correctly show up in dedicated servers on the scoreboard.
  
• Some HUD elements not desaturating when the player they refer to is dead.
  
• Prevent overshooting the pathing target of zombies when they are moving at high speed (smooths out some of the jerky behaviour at very high waves).
  
• Some indestructable weapons (namely screwdrivers) not being consumed when used.
  
• Being able to equip a few passive skills that you shouldn't be able to.
  
• Cheater achievement not unlocking correctly if user gains last level by purchasing any of the +1 level skill items.
  
• Potential negative values for challenge's time-remaining.
  
• Loss of items when going to further levels in dungeon.
  
• Crash when disposing of render targets on GPU's without framebuffer-object support.
  
• Turret damage not correctly contributing to turret challenges.
  
• Not being able to change reference values in the editor property grid.
  
• Now force fmod to emit stero format audio, rather than whatever the OS default is. Should fix some audio bugs people have had.

Have fun!

- Tim

• Added possibility to open the game in small window mode
• Added the possibility to change the volume of the sounds and music
• Online mode: added the list of the available lobbies
• Online mode: now you can change the length of the matches and amount of matches in the game for two players
• Online mode: added a sound notification when someone joins a lobby
• Modifications: when you publish a modification to Steam Workshop, we automatically add tags which depend on what you changed in the mod. So now it will be easier for players to find modifications which suit their tastes

• Added possibility to open the game in small window mode
• Added the possibility to change the volume of the sounds and music
• Online mode: added the list of the available lobbies
• Online mode: now you can change the length of the matches and amount of matches in the game for two players
• Online mode: added a sound notification when someone joins a lobby
• Modifications: when you publish a modification to Steam Workshop, we automatically add tags which depend on what you changed in the mod. So now it will be easier for players to find modifications which suit their tastes

Hello everyone,

Before we start with our usual weekly update, we wanted to let you know that the latest pre-alpha update for We Happy Few is now live on Steam! You can read the build notes here.

This week we also made IGN’s list of most anticipated horror games of 2016! While We Happy Few is more creepy than horrific, it’s really exciting to be included with the many cool games in this list :)

Marc

Hi all, I haven't given an update for a while as for the last month I've been mostly involved in the migration to a new sound engine: Wwise. It is an excellent sound middleware used all over the industry, including by major studios. We needed to change as Unreal 4 sound engine has got some limitations (for the moment), in terms of features, workflow, and performance, and Wwise is much better suited at the moment to bring top quality audio to an extensive open world game like ours.

It meant a lot of assets changes, and a lot of code modifications to replace calls to the Unreal sound engine by calls to Wwise. You will notice some regressions in the game audio but you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

I am still fixing actively various sound issues with the help of our sound designers, but I now finally had time to start working on a variety of gameplay features. We will be introducing a lot of new items, and some of them require extensions of our gameplay and AI framework. Lots of behind the scenes work that is only impressive when it finally materialises, that's why programming is often less glamorous than art, where you can easily present your progress :)

Antoine

Hello dear people ! I’m a new addition to the We Happy Few level design team. So thrilled to be able to put my weird mind into this crazy game. The last couple of weeks, I was tasked to build and script the new bridge encounters from David (design director). We had a lot of fun seeing those things come to life and chuckling at the odd situations we’ll put you through. Conformity, joyfulness and special items will be needed to cross those now life threatening bridges. Be ready to be roughened up with a smile if you don’t meet the criterias to pass. I can’t wait to show you explicitly what those look like but for now we’ll need to keep these under top secret wraps *hush hush*.

Mike

This week I worked on a bunch of encounters that are not in the game yet… but you will see them soon enough! I made it so they appear with a specific shape of terrain, like a unique, hand-made hill for example. That way we can control how it looks and plays, while keeping it random and rogue-like ‘ish.

Adjusted a couple things related to the loot, especially in the 2nd wastes and 2nd village area. For instance, rubber ducks will now spawn in bathtubs :P

Made a bunch of adjustments and bug fixes to make sure the tutorial experience is smooth and fun!



Sarah





Marc-André  

This week I made a new grass texture that will be used for the new updated ground material, 3 grass Levels of Details (For optimisation purposes, so the grass doesn't slow the game down), and some small assets like darts and syringes. I quickly pimped up the fireplace with new buckets and wood pieces, and recycled Shawn's amazing rocks (TM) and Emmanuel's wood texture.



Vincent

Ahoy! This week, in addition to the usual secret cinematic staging and animating, I took a bit of time to make two animations for the player character. One will be giving feedback for our favourite in-game status : Food Poisoning! So yeah, it’s a vomiting animation, and I hope we’ll have great sound effect to do it honor. The second one is a ‘Shocked’ motion, that’ll play when you get struck by various electrical devices.

Can’t wait for you guys and gals to get sick and shocked! In-game, preferably.

Thank you for tuning in!

Compulsion

 

Discuss this post here

Hello everyone,

Before we start with our usual weekly update, we wanted to let you know that the latest pre-alpha update for We Happy Few is now live on Steam! You can read the build notes here.

This week we also made IGN’s list of most anticipated horror games of 2016! While We Happy Few is more creepy than horrific, it’s really exciting to be included with the many cool games in this list :)

Marc

Hi all, I haven't given an update for a while as for the last month I've been mostly involved in the migration to a new sound engine: Wwise. It is an excellent sound middleware used all over the industry, including by major studios. We needed to change as Unreal 4 sound engine has got some limitations (for the moment), in terms of features, workflow, and performance, and Wwise is much better suited at the moment to bring top quality audio to an extensive open world game like ours.

It meant a lot of assets changes, and a lot of code modifications to replace calls to the Unreal sound engine by calls to Wwise. You will notice some regressions in the game audio but you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

I am still fixing actively various sound issues with the help of our sound designers, but I now finally had time to start working on a variety of gameplay features. We will be introducing a lot of new items, and some of them require extensions of our gameplay and AI framework. Lots of behind the scenes work that is only impressive when it finally materialises, that's why programming is often less glamorous than art, where you can easily present your progress :)

Antoine

Hello dear people ! I’m a new addition to the We Happy Few level design team. So thrilled to be able to put my weird mind into this crazy game. The last couple of weeks, I was tasked to build and script the new bridge encounters from David (design director). We had a lot of fun seeing those things come to life and chuckling at the odd situations we’ll put you through. Conformity, joyfulness and special items will be needed to cross those now life threatening bridges. Be ready to be roughened up with a smile if you don’t meet the criterias to pass. I can’t wait to show you explicitly what those look like but for now we’ll need to keep these under top secret wraps *hush hush*.

Mike

This week I worked on a bunch of encounters that are not in the game yet… but you will see them soon enough! I made it so they appear with a specific shape of terrain, like a unique, hand-made hill for example. That way we can control how it looks and plays, while keeping it random and rogue-like ‘ish.

Adjusted a couple things related to the loot, especially in the 2nd wastes and 2nd village area. For instance, rubber ducks will now spawn in bathtubs :P

Made a bunch of adjustments and bug fixes to make sure the tutorial experience is smooth and fun!



Sarah





Marc-André  

This week I made a new grass texture that will be used for the new updated ground material, 3 grass Levels of Details (For optimisation purposes, so the grass doesn't slow the game down), and some small assets like darts and syringes. I quickly pimped up the fireplace with new buckets and wood pieces, and recycled Shawn's amazing rocks (TM) and Emmanuel's wood texture.



Vincent

Ahoy! This week, in addition to the usual secret cinematic staging and animating, I took a bit of time to make two animations for the player character. One will be giving feedback for our favourite in-game status : Food Poisoning! So yeah, it’s a vomiting animation, and I hope we’ll have great sound effect to do it honor. The second one is a ‘Shocked’ motion, that’ll play when you get struck by various electrical devices.

Can’t wait for you guys and gals to get sick and shocked! In-game, preferably.

Thank you for tuning in!

Compulsion

 

Discuss this post here

Hey everyone,

We are back on regular schedule with our Weekly Updates, hurray! A good part of the team has been working hard on the intro of the game but unfortunately you will have to wait until the game’s release to see it. It’s not something we want to spoil, but let us tell you that it is very cool!

Camille

After a fair amount of testing, consideration and feedback, we’ve decided to do a major change to the player menu (eg your inventory) and keep the game running while it is presented. This has quite a few repercussions, not least of which is needing to let the player be aware of their surroundings while the menu is displayed. Therefore, the menu will no longer take up the entire screen.



This, in turn, requires a decent pass at resizing and reshuffling widgets around in order to make everything fit. Thankfully, the menu had a fair amount of free space to play around with so compacting things for this new menu wasn’t overly onerous.

The difficult part is the gameplay aspects -- one of the main objectives of this switch is to get rid of the arbitrary constraints on changing equipments and using items in combat. But in order to keep things balanced, this means there needs to be some cooldowns to certain actions to avoid savvy players from quickly hopping in and out of the inventory to instantly perform actions. And those cooldowns need clear communication both on the UI and the player animation point of view.

So a few passes have been done over the last few weeks to improve this feedback and balance things. I find that the menu is much improved from this, although there is still a lot of work to be done.

Hayden

Patrol Paths, Security Systems and Barbed Wire…

This new, super-secret area of the game is on lockdown and you’ll need to keep out of sight and quiet if you want get out alive. After a lot of testing and tweaking, we are now seeing groups of NPCs patrolling more complex paths. I was also able to implement security systems that broadcast across the level and are capable of placing NPCs on high alert; coupled with game play specific lighting, geometry placement and loot, it’s an iterative process that I hope will present the player with a rich, stealth gameplay experience.

For now, enjoy the picture below…



Mike

I added a bunch of new items and crafting recipes to the game! Some of which you can see in the next build, some of which you’ll see later ;) . Keep in mind that these items are still being worked on, so they may have a wrong name / image / description at the moment. Everything is gonna fall in place in due time.



Remi

Hey everyone! I FINALLY have something to show you this time! This week I was in a sort of transition between rigging and animating the next cinematic, so I decided to take a day or two to make some gameplay animations. It’s not a lot and not super polished as well, but it’s good enough for the time I had.



And now, here is the final result. It will still need some animation work for the intro and outro of the animation, but with this animation loop, it will not be as glaring as it was before.

I then tackled some animations that our friendly level designers needed for specific encounters. The first needed animation was for a Sick Wastrel! Because when you only have rotten food to eat, there is a great chance of throwing up! The second animation was a Bobby that gestures to the player to proceed to the next step. Those are very simple and fast to make, yet they are extremely important for the player to understand what is happening and what to do next.

More on the rigging side, I was integrating Wastrellette variants! This has been requested by a lot of you, so we couldn’t wait to show you. We now have different dress colors, hairstyles and hair colors for the Female Wastrel! I received the different textures and mesh from our character artist and I was in charge of integrating them in the game. Here are some of the possibilities that we have for the Female Wastrel.



Sarah

Hi everyone! My name is Sarah, I'm new to the team, and very pleased to make your acquaintance. I've been working on fluffing up the background with 2D art and posters. I'm here to make sure the Wellies are in ship-shape and remembering to be good citizens, giving them the latest in Joy products and Happy Face glam. Over the last few weeks I've been working closely with Whitney to narrow down a painterly style that's in keeping with We Happy Few's aesthetic, and we couldn't wait to share some images with you guys.





Marc-André  

Good day everyone!

January was for me a productive month packed with a lot of learning experience. Being assigned to the task of replacing all of We Happy Few's ground foliage, I had to learn lots of new techniques allowing me to create "Oooh it's so pretty" foliage that does not bring gaming machines to their knees.







Alex

This has been a big week for recording. I’ve been prepping all week for today’s (Friday’s) session with Alex Wyndham. Guillaume likes to wait until the very last minute to deliver brilliant notes on scenes, so I’ve torn the scene up twice. Obviously the last scene, in which all is revealed, couldn’t be more important. It’s a great scene for the other voice actor, who might be a surprise for you guys, if you ever figure out who it is.

I’ve also been adding new things for Arthur to say in various gameplay situations. Meanwhile, I spent a couple of hours with Alice Kensington on Tuesday. She’s giving another voice to our wastrellette, and a lovely, rude song.


Compulsion Team

 

Discuss this post here

Hey everyone,

We are back on regular schedule with our Weekly Updates, hurray! A good part of the team has been working hard on the intro of the game but unfortunately you will have to wait until the game’s release to see it. It’s not something we want to spoil, but let us tell you that it is very cool!

Camille

After a fair amount of testing, consideration and feedback, we’ve decided to do a major change to the player menu (eg your inventory) and keep the game running while it is presented. This has quite a few repercussions, not least of which is needing to let the player be aware of their surroundings while the menu is displayed. Therefore, the menu will no longer take up the entire screen.



This, in turn, requires a decent pass at resizing and reshuffling widgets around in order to make everything fit. Thankfully, the menu had a fair amount of free space to play around with so compacting things for this new menu wasn’t overly onerous.

The difficult part is the gameplay aspects -- one of the main objectives of this switch is to get rid of the arbitrary constraints on changing equipments and using items in combat. But in order to keep things balanced, this means there needs to be some cooldowns to certain actions to avoid savvy players from quickly hopping in and out of the inventory to instantly perform actions. And those cooldowns need clear communication both on the UI and the player animation point of view.

So a few passes have been done over the last few weeks to improve this feedback and balance things. I find that the menu is much improved from this, although there is still a lot of work to be done.

Hayden

Patrol Paths, Security Systems and Barbed Wire…

This new, super-secret area of the game is on lockdown and you’ll need to keep out of sight and quiet if you want get out alive. After a lot of testing and tweaking, we are now seeing groups of NPCs patrolling more complex paths. I was also able to implement security systems that broadcast across the level and are capable of placing NPCs on high alert; coupled with game play specific lighting, geometry placement and loot, it’s an iterative process that I hope will present the player with a rich, stealth gameplay experience.

For now, enjoy the picture below…



Mike

I added a bunch of new items and crafting recipes to the game! Some of which you can see in the next build, some of which you’ll see later ;) . Keep in mind that these items are still being worked on, so they may have a wrong name / image / description at the moment. Everything is gonna fall in place in due time.



Remi

Hey everyone! I FINALLY have something to show you this time! This week I was in a sort of transition between rigging and animating the next cinematic, so I decided to take a day or two to make some gameplay animations. It’s not a lot and not super polished as well, but it’s good enough for the time I had.



And now, here is the final result. It will still need some animation work for the intro and outro of the animation, but with this animation loop, it will not be as glaring as it was before.

I then tackled some animations that our friendly level designers needed for specific encounters. The first needed animation was for a Sick Wastrel! Because when you only have rotten food to eat, there is a great chance of throwing up! The second animation was a Bobby that gestures to the player to proceed to the next step. Those are very simple and fast to make, yet they are extremely important for the player to understand what is happening and what to do next.

More on the rigging side, I was integrating Wastrellette variants! This has been requested by a lot of you, so we couldn’t wait to show you. We now have different dress colors, hairstyles and hair colors for the Female Wastrel! I received the different textures and mesh from our character artist and I was in charge of integrating them in the game. Here are some of the possibilities that we have for the Female Wastrel.



Sarah

Hi everyone! My name is Sarah, I'm new to the team, and very pleased to make your acquaintance. I've been working on fluffing up the background with 2D art and posters. I'm here to make sure the Wellies are in ship-shape and remembering to be good citizens, giving them the latest in Joy products and Happy Face glam. Over the last few weeks I've been working closely with Whitney to narrow down a painterly style that's in keeping with We Happy Few's aesthetic, and we couldn't wait to share some images with you guys.





Marc-André  

Good day everyone!

January was for me a productive month packed with a lot of learning experience. Being assigned to the task of replacing all of We Happy Few's ground foliage, I had to learn lots of new techniques allowing me to create "Oooh it's so pretty" foliage that does not bring gaming machines to their knees.







Alex

This has been a big week for recording. I’ve been prepping all week for today’s (Friday’s) session with Alex Wyndham. Guillaume likes to wait until the very last minute to deliver brilliant notes on scenes, so I’ve torn the scene up twice. Obviously the last scene, in which all is revealed, couldn’t be more important. It’s a great scene for the other voice actor, who might be a surprise for you guys, if you ever figure out who it is.

I’ve also been adding new things for Arthur to say in various gameplay situations. Meanwhile, I spent a couple of hours with Alice Kensington on Tuesday. She’s giving another voice to our wastrellette, and a lovely, rude song.


Compulsion Team

 

Discuss this post here

Steam Trading Cards have been added to the game as of today.

Thanks all for playing!

Steam Trading Cards have been added to the game as of today.

Thanks all for playing!