A lot has gone in over the past couple weeks, and have managed to get a couple milestones from a business standpoint out of the way too. Finally have a bank account open for the business, so next up will be the Steam Store page. I think I'm pretty close to having a solid demo that I am happy to allow more people to take a kick at the can. There are a few big items I still need to address, animations need some work, but it is really outside of my wheel house, so I'll see what I can do with the cycles I have. I also need to rework the main menu, it's all stand in right now, but the general vibe of what I want. A small intro sequence needs to go in as well. I have the assets, it will be very reminiscent of an old Origin or Sierra intro from the 90's.
I've managed to get in a bunch of new audio, all the levels are more based on atmospheric sounds, and music has been limited to the menus and boss fights. I've added in a small narrative element that pushes you a bit to save more captives, as well those captives have end of level upgrades tied to them, so if you don't rescue you might not get something! I've managed to get the occlusion on geo that hides you working to a point I'm happy with, walls now generally occlude as a unit.
New cards have been added to the level end screen, along with what I'm just calling Mug Shots for your kills, and icons along with colour representation have been added to that sequence as well. Just looks a lot better, and more informative than the previous all text, all at once system that was there.
So the big things, the main menu, the intro sequence, animation tweaking and I'm very on the fence about redoing the wall and floor textures, another thing that is very outside of the wheel house. The final big wish item, which very much is in my wheel house, is redoing some of the effects in Houdini, and then bringing those in as sprite sheets. I'm mostly thinking of the portals, the fire vent that is on the floor and the steam vent on the walls. But we will see, I can definitely leave things as they are while I put the demo out to garner interest and wishlists, and go from there. I suppose that is also what early access is for? Who knows, it's all an adventure right now!
