Mar 5, 2023

Dungeon Looter - Wappen

This is content update pushing toward full release.
0.12.1518 or simply "1518"

New Stuffs

New class: Rogue

A class specialized in daggers and can even dual-wield them!
- They have a 6-combo attack! Backstab for maximum damage!

Who needs guarding? Dodge roll FOR THE WIN!
- Rogue's guard action is replaced by a dodge roll which completely nullifies damage! But there's a catch though.

And 3 skills to help rogue dodge the dodgy situations!
- Sonic Slash: A fast long reach 8-hit attack. Since dagger's reach is short, this extra range offer is very much welcome.

- Smoke Bomb: Got dozen of enemies on hot pursuit? This ninja tech is the way to go.

- Place Decoy: Let the folks become busy, open your way out or an opportunity to backstab.

New theme: Sewer

The new dungeon coordinate points you to this monster-infested stinking water territory!

Water area will slow you down
Not a great place to start a brawl...

Something might be lurking underwater
Beware the new enemies who will ambush!

The new boss awaits
No spoiler, but make sure to have a weapon or AoE skill that can deal with multiple targets!

Fixes and Tuning

Database: Make some existing elite enemies and boss a bit stronger
Database: Tune LP shop item listing because item offered there was too OP
Database: Tune later floor to have more enemy credit, early floor stays the same
Final Boss: Fix object error that could happen in final boss minigame room such as teleport pad that was not cleaned up
Final Boss: Each wave of "stun wave" (where you deal enough damage to the boss) will increase in number each time
Item: Fix glove should not reduce its durability on using throwing knives
System: Fix hot join player which receive initial starting level, to get to pick their perk right on that floor instead of having to play next floor without perk then pick the perk
System: Fix client does not offer to reconnect to the the same lobby if player was disconnected

Dev Talk Corner

- What took this update so long?
The new class (rogue) really added a lot of new stuff in technical aspect, like dual weapons system or dodge roll. Including several new mechanism in new theme like water terrain. There was a lot going on in the code level for these.

- A bit of fun fact: I took liberty to compose all dungeon theme song by myself
I happened to compose the very first one (prison theme) on the whim because I did not want to use stock music and it's now become my self-imposed challenge to do all of them since. It was nothing to brag as I'm not from music background but if you did not noticed that it sucked that's already a compliment to me!

- I was really reluctant about difficulty tuning in the previous release
For the fear that it will turn people off (exactly this happened in very first demo pre-release), like imagine being gang-up and dying in the first floor, that would be instant frustration. (plus the control was still kinda bad back then)

It result in Dungeon Looter was tuned to be easier than intended, this decision had also backfired a bit that some power players can just finish it on their very first run, so it will be like "Huh? was that all of it?" Compare to similar genre like in 'Risk of Rain', 'Heroes of Hammerwatch', 'Gunfire Reborn' or alike where you are less likely to finish a first zero-upgraded run, so that's not a good design in my view. So I decided to ramp up difficulty in the late floor a bit in this update.

- Dungeon Looter had sold 500 copies! (as of Jan 2023)
Thank you everyone for the warm support, very much welcome.
As my first release on Steam and since then I have learned more about visibility mechanism behind Steam.

I do have regrets though, participating in Steam event is very good way to boost said visibility, but sadly Dungeon Looter did not have a chance to do any, one was my fault, the Steam NEXT fest where they show upcoming games's demo, but I failed to submit in time. Another was bigger BASHBASH event (Nov 2022) featuring action games which I'm positive that Dungeon Looter could fit for its theme but was denied boarding at discretion from event staff.

To rub salt to the wound, on actual day, there were many games similar to mine that allowed to participate, even unrelated genre like freaking typing game! I was stupefied but no use in crying over spilled milk, let's move on...

Next plan

Since this update is content update which add a new class and a new theme. Next update will be alternate to feature update.
- I'm expecting to add HARD MODE (finally!) to the game since current content is very limited of what can be done after beating normal mode. This will also unlock more town upgrades which tied to new rewards dropped in hard mode.
- I want to revisit item modifier and perk, since current system is very monotonous, you see good perk you select it, etc, etc. Maybe adding new variants or some twist to it.

For the ETA of this update, since HARD mode alone will be a big addition, like adding extra type of enemy to EVERY themes, even add new moves to EVERY existing bosses or some enemies. On very rough ETA I'd expected to be around August+.

State of the Early Access

Currently I would evaluate it to be around at 20% progress toward full release.
As of this update Dungeon Looter now have:
- 4 player classes, out of 5 planned.
- 5 dungeon theme, out of 7 planned.
- only 1 game mode, out of ?
There are more essential feature that I planned to add into the game along the way such as
(sorted from most important)
- AI players (BOT)
- Late game mechanism (after all difficulties are done)
- Achievement
- Language localization

-----------------------------------------------

That's all for now,
If you found any bugs, please report them in the forum!
ːsteamhappyː

Mar 5, 2023

Devlog #5 (February)

SCP: The Paranormal - KarloSCPbanana

INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone! Welcome back! Get ready for the February devlog! This devlog (unlike most recent devlogs) actually has a lot of interesting things to talk about and show you. We've been planning on working a lot more on the game and trying to make devlogs have as much content as possible, so from now on devlogs should have a lot more content. This month has more content relating to the game's promotion and showcase rather than actual in-game features but that's okay as hopefully this will be as interesting to you guys as the in-game content. But there still is some in-game content here. Anyway let's begin!

TRELLO ROADMAP

If you are a member of our discord server, then you probably already know about this, and if you saw the steam announcement. But we made a trello roadmap. A few weeks ago, our team got the idea to make a trello roadmap. And after some thinking, we decided that we will make one! We got a few members of the team to make Trello accounts and we started working on the roadmap. After a while, we got a small prototype working and showed it to our discord members.

The community seemed to like it, so we decided that we would continue making the roadmap. Making it was quite boring, the worst part was writing the card descriptions, it was extremely boring. We had to write an extremely in-depth description of every feature that will be in the game, we even wrote descriptions for stuff already implemented. That took a while, but with help of the team it was even shorter. For some stuff, we didn't know what to write, so we just left them blank. Then we added some pictures. And after a while, we finally completed the roadmap. And now, it's yours to enjoy! Here's the link: https://trello.com/b/QrpZsTQd

Of course we will make more changes to the roadmap later on, but for now this is it. Anyway let's move on..

PLANS FOR WEBSITE
Our team has decided that we should probably make our own Altus Interactive website. Every other indie game studio has a website, so why wouldn't we? The only problem we came across was coding it. We have absolutely zero experience coding a website and we don't really have time to learn. So we decided that we will be using a website called Webnode. Webnode is a website where you can create your own website easily and free, so we decided we will be using it. And after doing some research, we also realised that Affray Studios and HST Studios also use webnode for their websites, so that wouldn't make us the only SCP game company that uses webnode.

We haven't started making the website yet, but we do have some plans for it. For now, we think the website should have pages each related to their own theme. For example, there could be an "about" page where all the info related to Altus is. There could be an "SCP: THE PARANORMAL" page where all the info about the game is. And more.. So that's our plans for the website so far, as mentioned earlier, we still haven't started working on the website yet. And will likely start working on it next month. So expect more news relating to the website next month.

Now we get to the in-game stuff.

FACTION VEHICLES (& VEHICLE WRECKS IN ZABRODNIK)
Ah, now we finally get to this! This is arguably my favorite part of this devlog, so I can’t wait to begin writing about this, but enough of me telling this useless as shit information so let’s get right into this.

You know, we always looked at the streets of Zabrodnik, and we saw absolutely 0 cars/car wrecks. Because at the time, we didn’t have any car models so we couldn’t make car wrecks. But, this month that changed. A few days ago, we bought a military vehicle model pack from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. We decided that we could use these vehicles for Zabrodnik car wrecks because in the asset pack, there was also a version of the models that were destroyed/wrecked. So we decided that we will be using those vehicles in Zabrodnik. We also had another idea, we could maybe take these models, and then take a faction from the game (for example: The Z.P.D, SCP Foundation, etc.) and then take the logo of the faction and put it on the model’s texture. That way we can have a vehicle model for every faction in the game, so we did that. We ‘’made’’ a truck model for every faction in the game. Those factions being: The Z.P.D and The SCP Foundation. So we took the Z.P.D trucks and put them all over the Z.P.D and the Zabrodnik streets. We also put some SCP Foundation trucks in the facility. Here’s how it looks:

Anyway that should be all for the vehicles and shit.

REMOVAL OF SCP-1004
Now, this will be a short one to talk about. But I just had to mention it. So we have finally removed SCP-1004, if you guys remember, A LOT of people were extremely mad because we included a small joke easter egg related to SCP-1004, and well if you know what 1004 is, then you could probably guess why people were mad lol. But it’s basically just a joke p*rn SCP. We thought it would be fun to include it into the game as a little easter egg (but ofc no actual p*rn tho) and well people didn’t like that. That caused a lot of controversy so we had to remove the easter egg. It was fun watching content creators and streamers react to it tho.

BULLET HOLES

This is something we didn’t have in the demo, so we wanted to make it for this next update. But basically, bullet holes. In the demo when you shoot at a wall or anything solid, there were no bullet holes when the bullet hit the material. And that isn’t realistic so we made bullet holes when shooting your pistol. I’m going to be honest, it was actually pretty complicated to make. Our team had struggles making it as we didn’t make anything similar in the past. But after watching a few tutorials, we managed to succeed in making the bullet holes. Here are some pics:

OUTRO
Phew, now this was a long one! Told you guys devlogs will be long now! Anyway yeah, this is it for February of this year. Like I said, next month we will have a lot more content relating to our new website. There will also be content related to the new SCP-4231 mission so stay tuned! Take care! Peace!

-Altus Interactive