Much better bells. You can select a piano key in the context menu.
Infrared thermometer
Liquid outlet
Thermal vision
Vases
Wire direction snapping
Detached 30mm HEAT autocannon
Entities feel momentary pain when stunned
"Stop animation on damage" setting
"Set object temperature" context menu option
Escape key escaping things
Objects are now destroyed if they are out of bounds for over 5 seconds
"Recompile" button that is shown when a mod failed to compile. This way you don't need to restart the entire game when you are developing a mod.
Maximum mod compilation duration setting. 10 seconds by default. A mod is only allowed to take this amount of time for compiling, otherwise its terminated and ignored.
Blood decal & particle colours are now accurate to the actual liquid inside the body
Water cleans objects
Balloons now pop under pressure
Exit wounds for stabbing
Humans can get paralysed if their spine breaks
There is a chance that an injury punctures the lungs of a human, which can cause low oxygen levels and death
Organisms now have specific "vital" spots inside their body. For example, head injuries are no longer necessarily a brain injury.
Organisms can now bleed internally. Internal bleeding can cause many issues, most obviously twitching, slowness, and loss of balance (in case of a head injury). Major internal bleeding results in death.
More intense bullet metal impact sounds
If set to "Drain", the blood tank can now spill into other containers. This means you can make finally a nitroglycerin shower. It can also spill onto non-container objects, but this will not transfer the liquid effects onto that surface.
Firearms can accidentally discharge when dropped
Multiselect using shift (by default)
Toybox size is now remembered
A few optional keybinds
Unbind button in keybind menu
Changed
Humans regenerate limb integrity slowly
Lowered contraption spawn outline delay
Living tissue regenerates visual blunt damage slowly
Adjusted impact damage so that head injuries are more dangerous
Fire kills less quickly
Increased general impact damage severity
Decreased blood impact particle intensity
Decreased bleeding particle intensity
Other minor changes to humans
Disassembler is more likely to disintegrate things
Increased maximum bullet penetration iterations to 128. This will make thick, soft obstacles more penetrable.
Some firearm SFX changes
Wood impact SFX
Increased blood vessel wire transfer speed
Minor changes to liquid rules
Minor changes to the machine gun and 30mm cartridge
Joint stress sound rate
Beam rifle now heats up objects it strikes
Blaster bolts heat up objects that they reflect off of
Today I am happy to announce the SafeZoneVR and Will Codes development discord is now LIVE! You can come and hangout with other vr community members, ask me anything about development, get help with bugs and so much more! I will be responding to everyone's questions and anyone who wants feedback on their work etc! IM SO EXCITED to meet all of you and get to know my community better! Also you will be the first to hear news and updates about the game and get exclusive looks at my work (:
One of the biggest update we released, we worked a lot on AI behaviour based on feedbacks we received from the players. We canged a lot of rider animation to make it more realistic and great to ride. We also added two new tracks, Italianring and Toshana GP.
We hope you will enjoy this new feauture!
SEE YOU ON THE TRACK, SEE YOU ON TRACKDAYR!
NEW
Italianring Track
Toshana PG Track
Rider animation on bike
AI
New "EYE" System for AI riders
New check free space on track
New start system
General
change rider movement
improved performance for setting ( low and very low )
Physics
changed rider to bike transfer weight
improved stability of chain pull calculation
change check impact wheel/avatar
We will evaluate in the next days if to clear leaderboards (maybe partially)
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for November 1st, 2021, detailing all the changes that have happened since October 25th, 2021. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.
August / September 2021 Survey Results!
Thank you again to everyone who participated in our survey. We had a whopping 6,700+ responses!
As we've done in the past, the theme for October's contest is Halloween!
Feel free to interpret that how you like, whether that means making a haunted forest maze, a creepy basement, a chill Halloween party, or anything else, so long as it follows the rules and reasonably suits the theme.
The contest has been extended due to the Steam issues we were experiencing, and now will end on November 5th, 2021 at 11:59 PM CT.
We've created a forum post asking the community for suggestions on how we can improve gameplay for players with certain conditions such as colorblindness, dyslexia, or anything else that might affect a players ability to use the standard presentation and controls of the game.
If you have any ideas or suggestions, and possible solutions on how to solve a particular issue, please check out the forum post here.
Plaza
Johanna continued working on the new Appearance Store in the Plaza.
JJosh continued working on the new Plaza NPCs, working on idle animations.
Wheezwer worked on concept art for the new Event NPC.
Plaza: New Appearance Store WIP
Plaza: Event NPC Concept Art WIP
Plaza: Arcade Pizza Store NPC Idle Animation WIP
Miscellany
Caboose700 continued working with the other developers on migrating user information off of Steam.
Lifeless continued working on the Ball Race, Midori remaster.
macdguy worked on fixing some long standing bugs that have been reported on the forums.
madmijk continued working on adding MIDI support, getting the Drum Kits to work with the system, and working on the Guitar.
Sketchman continued working with other developers on migrating user information off of Steam.
Wheezwer continued working on paintings for the shooting gallery ride.
Wrap It Up
That about covers everything that happened since October 25th, 2021 at PixelTail Games.
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Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail We love awesome people like you!
In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred!
Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and weapon mods!
As with all new biomes, triangle biome themed Racing and Duel maps will be added to the lineup of maps in the game.
New Projectile System + Weapon Mods Revamp
Previously, weapons were either hitscan based (shots instantly hit targets in a straight line when fired) or projectile based (shots have a lifetime and can move with various forces like gravity). This led to a confusing split in weapon mods: some were hitscan only, some were projectile only.
Since I wanted a unified weapon mod system (where any mod could be placed on any kind of weapon, including grenades), all weapons were converted to be projectile based. With a bunch of tweaks and a completely rewritten projectile movement system, this approach actually ended up working nicely, and I was able to add a lot of new weapon mods that directly affect the movement characteristics of projectiles. This new system coupled with matching FX for each mod (projectile trails, sparks and more to help distinguish which mods are active) turned out to create some interesting results.
Since there are thousands of meaningful combinations of weapon mods and projectile types, I stumbled onto interesting and powerful synergies that had previously been unseen. This is exactly what I was hoping for when creating the weapon mod system: to let players mix and match different mods to create unique, surprising and overpowered versions of the core weapon archetypes.
Over 50 new weapon mods have been added this month, some reworked from older versions and others from the long list of ideas to add. Some examples:
Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies with a delayed explosion
Chaotic Shot: Shots fly in a chaotic pattern but deal increased damage
Homing Shot: Shots home towards nearby enemies
Piercing Shot: Shots can pierce through (and damage) enemies multiple times without exploding
Growing Shot: Shots get larger and deal more damage over time
Wide Shot: Shots are wider horizontally
Damage Aura: Shots have an AOE damage bubble around them
You can probably imagine some combinations that'd work well together from those examples already. The fun part is that the same combination of mods will look very different on each base weapon type (like the Claw Shotgun or the Coconut Launcher) so there's some strategy to work out what mix of mods will best suit your currently equipped weapon.
Some mods now have cooldowns as they are too powerful to be triggered every time a shot is fired. Cooldowns are most often seen on mods that are triggered when a shot "explodes" after hitting a surface or enemy as they usually have very powerful effects.
Some examples of mods with cooldowns:
Spinning Blade: Shots spawn spinning blades that damage nearby enemies
Shockwave: Shots spawn shockwaves that knock back nearby enemies
Black Hole: Shots spawn black holes that suck nearby enemies in
Scatter Shot: Shots multiply in the air and scatter into smaller shots
Spikes: Shots spawn spikes when hitting surfaces
Bombs: Shots spawn a bunch of rolling bombs when hitting surfaces
In addition to this, a bunch of new firing patterns have been added for weapons to fire in more interesting ways rather than just straight forward. Weapons can now fire groups of projectiles in many shapes such as arcs, circles, lines, triangles etc.
New Elimination FX
Enemies now explode into tiny crystal shards when eliminated. These examples are a bit over the top but it's fun to push the explosiveness of the effect to the max!
Duel Mode Revamp
I had never been fully happy with the gameplay loop in Duel mode: it felt a bit too basic and standard, a typical round based duel with no real interesting mechanics other than "you are a crab!".
With all of the weapon mod changes mentioned above (and the huge chunk of time it takes to properly implement and test each mod), a big change was made to the codebase to allow for weapon mods in Duel mode. With that, the rules have been changed to make the mode much more unique.
At the start of the first round, all players pick a weapon out of a random selection of 3 (all players get the same random selection).
At the start of all future rounds, players are offered a weapon mod out of a random selection of 3. This means that as the match goes on, players will become more and more powerful with a growing list of mods affecting each shot that they fire.
The losing players of each round will have their health doubled.
The players that reach the score limit first win the match!
In my early tests, this has created a much more dynamic and varied Duel experience, with no two matches turning out the same way. Players might make similar choices leading to a close fight, or completely different choices leading to chaotic battles being won or lost in sometimes unbelievable ways!
Other Changes
Tony's Evil Brother: Word has it that Tony's evil brother has stolen some of his goods and is selling them at discounted rates!
Survival Enemies Using Weapons With Mods: Thanks to the codebase changes mentioned above, Survival enemies can now make use of weapon mods: this is the perfect way to spice up late game enemies with unpredictable combinations of mods on weapons that they usually fire (stay clear of enemies firing chaotic shotguns!).
Movement Speed And Scale Tweaks The world has been scaled down with enemy size and speed also tweaked to match: teammates are now much more visible and this also makes Duel matches more fair as it's much easier to target enemies.
Hazards: Hazards now have a small chance to spawn on any Survival map, adding chaos for both you and enemies!
Resolution Quality Setting Added: This allows players to improve performance issues by lowering the quality of the game resolution. It also can be raised up to 200% for those that want it.
Target Dummies: Target dummies have been added to all shops in Survival mode for players to easily test out new build options.
Modular Weapons Idea
As the weapon mod system is probably the biggest part of the game in terms of replay value and fun, I explored many different ideas before locking down the current system for the beta release. One of these ideas was a completely modular weapon system which allowed players to mix and match various parts to build unique and interesting weapons. Players would always start with the same basic pistol but build up to a much more powerful modular weapon as the run went on. While this idea sounded great on paper, when I implemented the prototype it ended up with a few shortcomings that ended up feeling worse than what I had before, mainly that it's not fun to find weapon parts that all look similar and then have to (sometimes tediously) put them together in a game that is mainly about fast paced action. There are some things I'd love to explore more from this idea but it's more important to get this beta out, so that takes priority for now.
Dead Matter 0.7.0 is a major update, however this experimental build is not 0.7.0, it is only an experimental preview build. If you are only interested in playing a polished version of what we've spent the past year working on then this will not be a build that you will enjoy playing.
This experimental build is generally meant to serve as a living preview of what 0.7.0 will be bringing to the table, however there are still a lot of missing features, bugs, issues with performance as well as a variety of features that have yet to be recreated or fully implemented.
To give a background of what 0.7.0 is, we started the entire project over from scratch in March of this year. We made the difficult decision to hit the reset button because we needed a stable foundation for the future and we felt that 0.6.0 represented not only a barrier to future progress with hitching issues we spent months trying to pin down with limited success but also a departure from the original vision for the project.
While some code elements, UI elements and 3d art assets have been ported from the previous iteration of the game 0.7.0 is a major overhaul with more than 60% of the codebase being entirely rewritten.
We have mainly been focusing a lot of our time on building a strong technical foundation. We do not feel that we have a strong foundation for gameplay yet, we consider the 0.7.0 experimental launch to be the first build that we can comfortably start iterating on our core gameplay systems with the assistance of our backers. This is part of the reason why we are launching this experimental build so early, it is so we can set expectations and involve our community in the iterative process.
