Sep 18, 2023

The Weekly Round Up 18/9/23 - Vibe goes BRRRRT!

Shady Lewd Kart - Shades

Its been a huge two weeks! We didnt update last week due to it being a sensitive day for some and wanted to wait till you were all ready. So here is some banger updates from your team here at Shady Corner! As always if you wanna support swing by patreon(DOTCOM)/datgame

Onyx has been modeled for Kart! I LOVE her hairstyle!! Really brings a flair to Shady Lewd Kart! The punk look of her design really models well into our 3D chibi design.

Its great to see her at long last. Joining the ranks of Shady Lewd Kart as our next Pit Girl! With this we can start testing her stats and see what fits her personality and what is Kart lacking.

Speaking of style, we now have colored menus you can pick from! They are all in the game! It took some tweeking but Im safe to say you can now pick from a stack of cool colors we showcased over the past few weeks.

The blue really pops! Like what a change from the standard colors. Now again to access this in the future it will be found in the options menu.

Also the options menus have been changed too! What a night and day contrast thanks to Sed's hard work. We have been able to bring him aboard to give Kart the polish it needs.

The collection menu is currently under construction as we are awaiting a few more things before the coding can begin. I will have to say this is my favorite room so far. It looks like Silvie would live in here!

Waifu Pillow menu has now got a closet for you to scroll through with the number of pillows you can get. This one took longer than it should as we had a few issues seperating all the menus like this.

Same with the resolution and extras. We had to go in and change every single menu to be seperate rather than being all in one list. But we hope this builds character for the game.

Speaking of Character, Ducky has finished artwork of Onyx wearing the Cop outfit from Pure Onyx. This will be unlockable as we mentioned before. Holy crap look at her rocking this outfit! What a crime!

Unlock art is also done for the costume too....wait till you see the full piece. Some of the most stunning art we have got so far. The new guest artist knows his stuff!

Lovense control is being worked on! Thats right if you have a sex toy from Lovense your game will sync with Kart! We have started the process but its being tested at the moment. A lot of factors such as what counts as a vibration come into effect. Plus....well Il need to TEST it....

Last bit of news for Shady Lewd Kart is we launched another image pack! A HD pack of the mascots Silvie & Detour! This is just the first of many! All HD and with over 30 images for your own personal use how can you miss out? https://www.patreon(DOTCOM)/posts/hd-image-pack-2-88869627

Sep 18, 2023

The Sounds of Horror

Ad Infinitum - RDCTD

Crafting an immersive game world requires captivating audiovisuals that envelop players within a virtual realm. If you’re successful with this, players can then enter a "magic circle," where the boundaries of real-world time and space gradually fade away, allowing them to fully immerse into the game's experience. Audio plays a pivotal role in building and upholding this experience.

This is particularly crucial in horror games, where players should remain at the edge of their seats, while still maintaining a well-paced build up and release of tension and emotions throughout the game.

Ad Infinitum isn't just a horror game – it's also a timeless story of human suffering and the struggle of overcoming the shadows from the past.

Sound-Design:

In many game productions, stock sounds from selected sound archives are used for audio production. This is not the case for Ad Infinitum. Over the course of the last four years, hundreds of hours of sound recording has been created our game: In field trips lasting several days, we visited numerous locations in and around Berlin, ranging from old churches to abandoned factory sites, as well as a botanical garden with greenhouses just to mention a few.

Armed with our Stereo/Ambisonic microphone set and telescope pole, we defied thunderstorms, downpours, and heavy storms going as far as recording the roaring thunders of a nighttime storm on a rooftop (don’t do it at home!).

Whether outside or in our cozy and sound-proof studio, we always strived to capture even the most delicate nuances. Findings from attics, such as an old pair of leather shoes with wooden soles, allowed us to record consistent footstep sounds for the player: for over 14 surface types, we recorded ourselves walking and running. This way, players always have the feeling of consistency, regardless of whether they are wading through knee-deep water and crawling through mud in the trenches, or wandering through the Schmitt family's mansion with its creaking parquet floors, dusty carpets, and elegant marble tiles. For the tools, we purchased, for example, a replica of a gas mask 17 of the German Imperial Army, one time we scavenged old wooden pallets, which we then shattered with a pickaxe in the studio.

After all that record, we had to put ourselves to work - sound Design Projects can become very big: some of our Cutscenes have up to 600 layers with automated Sound-Design.

Music:

We created 39 tracks for Ad Infinitum, in addition to the cutscenes and jumpscares that are not included on the soundtrack. Music is one of the most important tools in Ad Infinitum to support the storytelling, but also to affect the players emotions.

While some tracks are linear in their progression, many tracks are designed to be adaptive. This means that the music changes according to the game's progress. When the protagonist (Paul) first finds himself in the von Schmitt family mansion, the music has 8 separate stages that change as the player progresses, such as when it has solved a particular puzzle.

The game is built into three main chapters and for each, we established a musical arc that builds itself up gradually but also thematically and drives the story and tension forward. Various leitmotifs are gradually introduced throughout the game and further developed: The Despair motif, for example, which first appears in the mansion during the séance, is then tentatively resumed in the destroyed village establishing a feeling of hopelessness, finally unleashes itself in fury in the Trauma Domain as an epic showdown with the Greater Horror.

The same motifs can be seen throughout the game, the music evolving with the player’s discoveries and relations with his family, each character owning its own leitmotiv and showing their state of mind, from a fragile quiet almost discordant violin, later combined with flutes that take on an almost fluttery, to rattling metallic percussion instruments, that have an almost barbwire like character.

But not only do characters tell their story through leitmotiv and orchestration, and are reflections of certain intimate emotional worlds that the written narrative can only mirror superficially.
Locations receive these qualities, thus the home ("Heimat") motif is already built up in the first chapter while walking through the quiet corridors of the von Schmitt's residence while telling a story of nostalgia and stagnation. This motif is later reintroduced in the trenches, as the front becomes the new home for Paul.

Some of the music pieces were also recorded with live musicians and vocalists. For “Schatten so Süß, in addition to live musicians (cello and piano), we also recorded with a Baritone who sang a German rendition of the original Latin text. Another example is the Lied vom Schatten (Song of the Shadow), which lyrics were adapted after a poem by Leo Sternberg and performed by Achim Buch. Leo Sternberg was a poet who experienced the First World War in all its horrors as a soldier, but who is almost forgotten today. We are proud and happy to be able to immortalize his timeless poetry in our game.

Lukas Deuschel - Song of Shadow (Credits)

Voice Recordings & Design:

Voice recordings play a pivotal role in video games, especially in story-centric ones like Ad Infinitum. The game places a strong emphasis on credible and effective voice recordings, using speech for various purposes within the game's context:

We started thinking about the voice recordings very early on. As the Audio Director of the project, I was in close collaboration with our author Matthias Kempke. A casting was planned and carried out for each language, the goal of which was to find the perfect voice for each character. In addition to acting skills, timbre and the age of the speakers also played a role.

Several voice actors were cast for the main characters of the plot, and in some cases, due to their excellent performances, the actors had a close head-to-head race and it was very difficult for us to make the final decision.
We started with German voice recordings. As with all languages, over the course of several days, Matthias and I directed the performances and made sure that every line was perfectly voiced and reflected the underlying significance of what was being said.
Some of the performances touched the very substance of the actors, for example, to adequately convey the psychotic grief of Magdalena von Schmitt, or the torment that Johannes has to endure.

Significant effort was dedicated to voicing the main character Paul von Schmitt. Despite limited spoken lines. In doing so, my vocal cords (and psyche) were often pushed to their limits, from wild screams while being crushed by Rage or mangled by Hungers, confused groans while standing up, choking coughs, surprised gasps, desperate whimpers, and wails.

Last but not least, one of the most important aspects of the game: the creatures.
While Hunger used a lot of creative sound design (sonar-like teeth clicking coupled with tons of creatively distorted animal sounds), all the other creatures were voiced by some of the team members & myself.
For Mayhem, a lot of liquid was drunk and spat out, and at the same time, very painful manic screaming and vocal outbursts were demanded.
For the Greater Horror of Corruption, it was more suffocating, wheezing noises, which were enhanced by creative sound design (IR sound characteristics of tubes and gas canisters, paired with hissing out gaseous static noises).
We are also particularly proud of Rage - for this, we recorded very special, sometimes very hilarious voice performances (cow-like mooing, gurgling, snoring, etc.) in very high quality, which eventually awoke to the hellish beast through extreme time-stretching and a lot of creative sound design.

We had a lot of fun during the recording, despite the serious nature of our game. Also, we had the feeling that all voice actors were able to passionately express their acting talent. This also manifested itself in spontaneous musical performances of World War I songs, personal anecdotes about the war, or the surprising family connection of one of the voice actors to Kaiser Wilhelm II.

We especially remember the fantastic performance of the now sadly passed away Herbert Tennigkeit (famous for his role as Skeletor in He-man), who despite being well over 80 years old impressed us with his acting skills and vocal performances in the East Prussian dialect.

Lukas Deuschel - Audio Director & Co-founder - Hekate

Sep 18, 2023

Developer Update | September 2023

Dead by Daylight - dance_BHVR

Spooky season is officially underway, and we’re getting in the spirit with a hefty Developer Update covering everything coming to the game within the next month. This time, we have news to share about new features, Killer updates, and various Perk & map changes.

Anti Face-Camping

You probably don’t want to find yourself on the hook in the first place, but it can quickly become frustrating if the Killer decides to wait nearby, preventing all but the most coordinated of teams from rescuing you. Camping has long been a contentious topic: While there are times where camping is the smart thing for the Killer to do (if there are Survivors nearby, for example), there’s not much the Survivor being camped can do. To help in the most extreme cases, we are introducing a new feature which may give you a second chance.

Going forward, you’ll notice a new meter appears whenever you are on the hook. This meter will gradually fill whenever the Killer is near you. The closer the Killer is, the faster the meter will build. Once it is full, you’ll gain the ability to unhook yourself with a 100% chance of success, even during the second hook phase. Unhooking yourself in this way will grant you all the usual benefits such as Endurance and Haste.

To ensure that this cannot be abused by aggressive Survivors, the rate at which the meter fills will decrease – or potentially even stop entirely – when other Survivors are nearby. Additionally, once the exit gates are powered, this feature is disabled entirely. This is because at this point in the match, the Killer needs to do whatever they can to secure one last kill, so we can’t expect them to graciously leave the hook.

This new mechanic is intended to address the most egregious camping scenarios, discouraging Killers from standing too close to a hooked Survivor for an extended period and creating opportunities for the other Survivors to make the save.

The Skull Merchant

It’s been a while since the sound of drones first filled The Entity’s Realm. Since then, The Skull Merchant’s Eyes in the Sky have largely been used as “eyes on the generators”, leading to some very long matches. In this update, we are overhauling The Skull Merchant’s drones to reduce their effectiveness in defending generators while improving their strength in a chase.

Lock On

Active zones – being the main culprit behind The Skull Merchant’s ability to defend generators – are no more. On top of making Survivors exposed, these zones provided The Skull Merchant with too much information on the Survivors within them, allowing the Killer to quickly react and chase them away.

With active zones removed, The Skull Merchant’s drones need a new way to lock onto Survivors. Now, whenever a Survivor is scanned by a drone’s beams, they will receive one stack of Lock On. Upon reaching three stacks of Lock On, the Survivor will immediately receive a Claw Trap.

However, avoiding a drone’s scanners won’t be easy thanks to the introduction of two new modes.

Two Modes

Eyes in the Sky will now have two modes: Stealth Mode, and Scouting Mode.

In Stealth Mode: The drone’s spinning beams will be invisible, and the drone will be much quieter. Survivors will want to watch closely for the lights on the drone itself to tell where the beams are so they can sneak up and disable it.

In Scouting Mode: The drone’s scan lines will be visible and rotate much faster, making them more difficult to approach or run by undetected.

In either mode, the drone’s scan lines will not detect a Survivor who is stationary, effectively preventing them from being used to guard generators. A Survivor can interact with a drone in either state to disable it for 45 seconds, after which they will return to Stealth Mode.

Claw Traps

Survivors who end up with a Claw Trap will find themselves on the receiving end of the following effects:

If they are healthy, they will be instantly injured.
If they are injured, they will receive Deep Wounds. This will not grant the Survivor a speed boost.
The Survivor suffers from the Broken Status Effect until the trap is removed.
Their location will be revealed on the Killer’s scanner for a short duration.

Additionally, Survivors with a Claw Trap who are scanned by one of the Killer’s drones:

Receive a 10% movement speed penalty for 6 seconds.
Are revealed to the Killer with Killer Instinct on their location for 3 seconds.

The Claw Trap’s battery will expire, and the trap will be removed automatically after 45 seconds.

Quality of Life

We have also made many adjustments across many aspects of The Skull Merchant to improve the way it feels to play as and against her:

The Skull Merchant now has 6 drones available (was 4).
The Skull Merchant will now immediately become Undetectable for 8 seconds after deploying a drone.
The minimum distance between drones is now 16m (was 22m).
The Killer’s movement speed is no longer decreased when checking the scanner.
Lock On progress no longer decays.
Drones can no longer be manually reactivated.
Drones can now be placed above or below other drones deployed on different floors.
Failing to hack a drone will now grant one stack of Lock On instead of instantly Locking On.
The Skull Merchant’s footsteps are now quieter, making her harder to track behind walls.
We have updated The Skull Merchant’s chase music.
We have reviewed The Skull Merchant’s Add-ons, adjusting some and giving new effects to others.

Combined, these changes push The Skull Merchant’s drones in a more chase-oriented direction, giving them more immediate consequences when they are triggered rather than slowly building over time. At the same time, her ability to defend generators for excessive lengths of time has also been reduced substantially. We will be keeping a close eye on these changes and making further adjustments as needed.

The Shattered Square

This update will feature a gameplay update to the Shattered Square map. When reviewing feedback for this map, we identified a few points of feedback we wanted to address.

Low Obstacles

It was possible to bump into some small objects, such as piles of hay or carcasses. Since these obstacles were so small, it was possible that you could bump into them without even seeing them, leading to some frustrating moments. We have done a pass on these sorts of objects to ensure that anything which might block your path is clearly visible, in most cases making them taller so they are easier to see.

Size & Layout

The Shattered Square is among the largest maps in the game, and contrary to its name, it isn’t even a square. It’s actually a rectangle! 🤯

The size of this map can make patrolling a little difficult. To help with this, we have reduced the size of the map (turning it into a proper square in the process). The positions of some tiles have been readjusted as a result.

Line of Sight

Most obstacles in the map tended to be fairly low, making it quite easy for Killers to spot Survivors at long ranges, and difficult for stealthy Killers to sneak up on Survivors. To break up these long sight lines, we have rearranged some tiles to limit how far you are able to see from any given point.

Navigation

Last but not least, we have made various changes to make the map easier to navigate. This includes making it clearer which objects can be walked on and which will block your path.

The MacMillan Estate

Our work on maps doesn’t stop there, the entire MacMillan Estate Realm is being expanded. Each map in this Realm has received a second alternate version.

What does this mean? The next time you load into Suffocation Pit, for example, things might be a little different. The trademark mineshaft will still be there, but it may be in a different spot. The shape and layout of the map might also be slightly different.

The goal with these variants is to add more variety to existing maps without changing the unique properties that sets them apart, such as their size, a bottleneck or chokepoint that separates either side of the map, and so on.

Perks

Next up, we have a few small tweaks for a handful of Perks.

Furtive Chase

Furtive Chase is one of the lesser used Killer Perks, providing a way to switch Obsessions throughout the match and reduce your Terror Radius during a chase. To give this Perk a slight boost, we are increasing the Terror Radius reduction for each token to 5 meters (was 4 meters) for a maximum of 20 meters.

Background Player

This Perk allows you to sprint very quickly when the Killer picks up another Survivor, creating an opportunity to get into position for a save. Not only is this Perk highly situational, but it leaves you Exhausted, which could hinder you if you’re chased shortly after. To make sure this Perk is meaningful when it activates, we are increasing the duration of the speed boost to 5 seconds (was 4 seconds).

Killer Tweaks

To cap things off, we also have a short list of adjustments for a few different Killers. As usual, these are smaller scale tweaks that we manage to squeeze into various updates.

The Trapper

The Trapper fills a very unique role in Dead by Daylight. Since he is all over the cover and is unlocked right away, he ends up being a lot of people’s first experience playing as Killer. Because of this, we try to keep him as simple and straightforward as possible: See a trap, set a trap. Among newer players, The Trapper already performs fairly well, and we don’t to throw off that balance too much. That said, in higher end matches, The Trapper can struggle to keep up. To assist in those cases, we have made a few changes:

8 Bear-Traps will now spawn on the map (was 6).
The Trapper will receive a 7.5% Haste effect after setting a Bear-Trap.

We expect these changes to have a minimal impact in lower skill matches where The Trapper is already performing well but provide a nice boost to higher end players who know how to take advantage of them. Additional Bear-Traps will help ensure that you have an adequate supply particularly on larger maps, and the added Haste effect can help close the gap in case Survivors catch on and begin running away while you set them.

The Huntress & The Trickster

For both these Killers, reloading your projectiles at a locker is a must. However, doing so gives Survivors a big head start to run away and gain some distance. For this reason, many Huntress & Trickster players will run Add-ons or Perks like Iron Maiden to reduce their reload time. To improve quality of life and reduce reliance on these Perks & Add-ons, we have reduced the reload time for each Killer to 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).

The Deathslinger

Speaking of reloads, The Deathslinger will also find himself reloading very frequently. Because of this, Add-ons which reduce his reload time see a lot of use. To make these Add-ons less essential, we have taken part of the effect of the Warden’s Keys Add-on and incorporated it into the base kit and adjusted this Add-on accordingly. The Deathslinger now reloads in 2.6 seconds by default (was 2.75).

Second, we have increased the movement speed bonuses while aiming down sights for both the Jaw Smasher and Wanted Poster Add-ons to 1.5% and 3% respectively (was 1% and 2.5%) to make them more interesting choices to consider.

The Legion

Lastly, we’ve adjusted The Legion’s BFFs Add-on. This Add-on granted a 4% movement speed increase when the gates were powered so long as the Killer managed to land enough Feral Frenzy strikes during the match. Since this effect needed to be earned and is only active during the very end of the match, we are increasing this movement speed bonus to 6% to make it more impactful.

With that, we’ve reached the end of this month’s Developer Update. Each of the features and adjustments mentioned in this post will be available to try on the Public Test Build starting this week, with the full update going live on all platforms at a later date.

For the first time, join us tomorrow at 10am ET in the Dead by Daylight Discord server as our designers run through the full patch notes early. As always, be sure to let us know what you think after you’ve gotten your hands on them!

Until next time…

The Dead by Daylight team