Author Topic: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video  (Read 18067 times)

Styg

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Hi guys,

As a lot of you know, the expansion has been in closed alpha for a while now. This helped us weed out a lot of bugs from the available content (which doesn't include the last dungeon) and we would like to thank our dedicated alpha testers for their time. Without them it would take much much longer to get the DLC to run properly and smoothly and we surely would not have found as many bugs. This is not the end of alpha, though, as it will remain in place (likely) to the very release.

Speaking of release, we have the store pages up now (Steam; GOG) with a brand new trailer, so check it out. You can't pre-purchase it, but you can wishlist it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dnKxV5tpuM
 
In preparation for the eventual release (it will happen) I'm pushing the version on the experimental branch. In regards to the original game, this update has a bit of everything, including fixes for some old persistent bugs, but also this is the code that runs the current build of Expedition and I want to make sure it doesn't break anything in the base game before we finally release the DLC. Here is the list of changes:

Engine
  • Replaced the black window with a cosmetic loading bar when loading up the game
Items
  • When being sold by the player, items will now be valued at 50% on hard and 25% on dominating difficulty
  • CAU armor will now also increase the damage of Cooked Shot by 20%
  • Added brown worker suit as an armor item
  • Added the previously default model's shirt and pants as an armor item
  • Cost of food increase by an order of magnitude
  • Doctor's Coat and Biotechnician Suit can now degrade, be repaired and recycled
  • AKX is now indestructible (it won't take damage from use) and has been moved from the train hijacker to Kokoschka
  • Added new foods
Mechanics
  • Special attack damage bonus no longer works with "unconditional" special attacks, which are special attacks that do not have a cooldown or require special conditions to trigger. So far these are: burst, shotgun burst, heavy punch, and double shot
  • Immobilizing status effects will now also set your effective dodge stat to 0 (just like evasion)
  • Damage from standing in fire will now remove incapacitation and also remove "chilled", "frozen" and other cold based status effects
  • Animals and other low-intelligence enemies can now pass through curtain doors. Good luck.
  • Cameras will now report on you when you steal stuff
  • Ground fire percentual burning damage capped to 16-40 (based on fire level).
  • Net throw will now displace success chance during targeting
  • Burning and exothermic aura status effects, as well as some other direct fire exposures, will now also remove webbed status effect
Feats
  • Changed Quick Tinkering: Cooldown changed to 5 turns (up from 2)
  • Added Versatility: Your effective Guns, Crossbows and Melee skill value is brought up to 60% of the effective value of the highest of those skills.
Tweaks
  • Players wearing no armor will appear in their underwear instead in the default outfit
  • Explosive barrels will now ignore 40% of target's resistance and threshold (same as HE grenades)
  • New models and portraits for Kokoschka and Dude
UI
  • You can now copy current dialog text to clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C.
Bugs
  • Fixed the keybinding for the global map
  • Fixed the bug that caused patrol waypoint delay to end on save/load
  • Hopefully fixed the bug that caused the window to lose focus when starting the game in full screen mode on some computers
  • Fixed (or at least) improved the mechanics concerning turn-based combat and area (blue) transitions. Player will now retain his combat turn while transitioning to a different area (section) within the same zone and NPCs will not bug out as much when attempting to follow him
  • Fixed the bug that caused the crafting UI to swallow up items in some rare instances
  • Activating exothermic aura will now also remove any burning effects the invoker has
  • Fixed the weird weapon rules in Fort Apogee Consulate
  • Fixed the bug that caused certain NPCs to respond to noise in turn-based mode, but not in real-time mode; there might be more instances of this
  • Commando feat will now properly trigger from kills caused by on-hit damage from special ammo
  • Using special attacks in real-time mode will no longer automatically be followed by a single regular attack
  • Hunchback mutants will now use proper yell sound
  • Bear traps, cryoliquid blob traps and throwing knives will no longer ignore immunity to critical hits
  • You can no longer add a silencer to a weapon alongside another muzzle device
  • Fixed the bug that caused the player to receive the strange feeling debuff after saving the game and staying still even though he should be safe from it
  • Shoot Dreadnought rocket ability now has actual tooltip text
  • Pseudo-spatial Projection will now work against throwing knives; also throwing knives will report misses in combat log now
  • Fixed the minor bugs with word emphasis in dialogs through bolding.
  • Fixed some issues with Grover's quest not being set to completed in the quest notes
  • Fixed an issue with a trapdoor in a certain bunker in Foundry not being properly unlocked in some instances
  • Fixed an issue with Azif sometimes not wanting to leave his starting zone
  • Fixed the Zone Rats not being hostile to mutants
  • Fixed the wounded man from a certain random event dying even if the player has healed him.
  • Fixed not being able to finish Gorsky's final mission in certain instances
  • Fixed an unclickable item in the abandoned sofa random encounter
  • Fixed invisible attackers during the Core City warehouse invasion
  • Fixed being able to talk to Daniel Arda in a situation where that shouldn't be possible
  • Minor dialog/map and scripting fixes


To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

And finally, in regards to DLC development, the final dungeon is just about done. Though the dungeon is very small, we developed a lot of custom content for it specifically, so it took longer than expected (per usual). After we're done with the final dungeon we'll need some time to wrap things up and do some final testing and then the game is good to go.

That's it for now. Let us know what you thought of the trailer and the new experimental version. Enjoy the holidays and hopefully take some break from work like we will.

Merry Christmas! Christ is born!
« Last Edit: December 20, 2018, 10:21:16 pm by Styg »

Zebrazilla

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2018, 11:41:23 am »
Absolutely fantastic, so looking forward to this! By all means take your time and squash those bugs good. And take a break during Christmas, looks like you guys definitely deserve it.

drealmer7

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2018, 01:51:16 pm »
Looking and sounding good!  I've only played up through a portion of the Junkyard and have been waiting for the expansion to start over and play all the way through, since replaying it is not likely something I will be doing any time soon after I play it once.

Is there an average hour amount determined on this yet?  If the basegame is 100 hrs, Expedition is ___ ?

Ploluap

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2018, 02:40:18 pm »
Nice trailer, will buy as soon as available.
I'm Potoldski on discord

harperfan7

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2018, 03:09:27 pm »
Looking really damn good, Styggy. 
*eurobeat intensifies*

Hazard

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2018, 04:36:15 pm »
Great news. The new patch looks interesting, as well. However...

  • Special attack damage bonus no longer works with "unconditional" special attacks, which are special attacks that do not have a cooldown or require special conditions to trigger. So far these are: burst, shotgun burst, heavy punch, and double shot
This is an absolutely gigantic nerf to burst fire builds. I always thought the effects from Smart Goggles and Modules really shouldn't stack and so mostly used the Goggles only, but the loss of that smaller bonus alone still represents a significant reduction in damage output. Maybe there's something I don't know, but this seems like an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach. :S

harperfan7

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2018, 04:57:58 pm »
Bursts are still a very strong option.  Heavy AR gunner is usually the go-to newbie recommendation.
*eurobeat intensifies*

Hazard

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2018, 05:20:50 pm »
Bursts are still a very strong option.  Heavy AR gunner is usually the go-to newbie recommendation.

Yeah, before this nerf it was. We'll see if it remains so; it probably depends a lot on what the new feats, veteran feats and specializations do for burst fire builds.

Altos

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2018, 05:28:16 pm »
Well this is a welcome surprise! And boy are these some huge changes! An assault rifle that doesn't degrade? It's a shame you have to kill (or pickpocket??) Kokoschka to get it, though. Maybe you could implement an optional quest for Free Drones members that rewards you with the AKX, so you don't have to betray your faction to get it?

Also, that value decrease is going to make Dominating even more difficult than it already is, and not in a positive way, I fear. All the more reason to spec Mercantile, I suppose. Looks like you're going to need to take Mercantile if you want to stand any chance of completing a Dominating playthrough now. :-\

The same goes for the Quick Tinkering nerf, but I think we all saw that coming. I just hope that the number of Death Stalkers in the game is suitably reduced to account for the primary method of dealing with them now being noticeably weakened.

(Seriously, tone down on the Death Stalkers. In my entire Dominating playthrough, I only ever encountered one regular Crawler. All the rest were Death Stalkers. I know it's called Dominating for a reason, but 7 in one zone? In the Upper Caves? That's too far.)


  • Special attack damage bonus no longer works with "unconditional" special attacks, which are special attacks that do not have a cooldown or require special conditions to trigger. So far these are: burst, shotgun burst, heavy punch, and double shot
This is an absolutely gigantic nerf to burst fire builds. I always thought the effects from Smart Goggles and Modules really shouldn't stack and so mostly used the Goggles only, but the loss of that smaller bonus alone still represents a significant reduction in damage output. Maybe there's something I don't know, but this seems like an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach. :S

I have to agree with Hazard. I know that burst builds were some of the strongest in the game, but if you're going to nerf burst builds so hard, what about all the other OP builds in the game? (*cough*Locus Builds*cough*) It doesn't seem like psi builds are being nerfed at all, for that matter. Oh well. We'll just have to see how the new feats and specializations change things. That Versatility feat certainly seems like a good one to take! Free skill points! It almost sounds too good to be true. :P

As somebody who used an SMG special attack burst build w/ Quick Tinkering and w/o Mercantile to get through Dominating (barely), this patch has single-handedly wrecked my entire build. :P I don't really mind, because I'll still be more than strong enough to get through Expedition; I just think it's funny how significantly this one patch has impacted my whole build. xD

My whiny complaining aside, I'm still very excited to play Expedition when I have the time. You guys have worked incredibly hard on this thing for years, and I can't wait to see how it all turns out! I know it'll make this masterpiece of a game even more incredible. :)

Keep up the great work, you guys. Merry Christmas! :)

(Digging the new logo, by the way.)

Yonaiker

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #9 on: December 20, 2018, 11:54:37 pm »
Not playing for like 2 months and half, considering to start a new game and now this trailer shows up, it was so great I've decided to wait until Expedition comes out, I can't wait to try the naval arsenal at our disposal.

Only have a insignificant question, do we have a chance to name our jet skis?
« Last Edit: December 20, 2018, 11:59:45 pm by Yonaiker »

Arclight

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2018, 12:59:32 am »
Nice Birthday present!

Bruno

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2018, 04:28:09 pm »
Great!
Finally much-needed adjustment of formerly too powerful Burst fire and Quick Tinkering. Now we can see the hit chance of throwing nets, that is good.

Versatility seems very interesting, but skill gains from Versatility will likely not enable option to take other feats?
(Like if you got 100 skill in Xbow, you get 60 skill in guns/melee, but you cant take any nice guns/melee feats w/o investing hard points?)
So the usefulness is perhaps limited, we shall see.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!

HammaHTime

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2018, 07:30:36 pm »
I noticed that the feat specialization points are added from level 15 and onwards. If i already have a chracter at lvl 25 with the expansion drops, will he still get those 10 specialization points? Also the expansion looks like a lot of fun.

Tygrende

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2018, 08:06:08 pm »
If i already have a chracter at lvl 25 with the expansion drops, will he still get those 10 specialization points?
Yes, you will get 11 points at once on your next level up to 26.

sthalik

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Re: Dev Log #60: New Experimental Version (1.0.4.15) and Trailer Video
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2018, 10:32:15 pm »
Great!
Finally much-needed adjustment of formerly too powerful Burst fire and Quick Tinkering. Now we can see the hit chance of throwing nets, that is good.

Maybe it needed an adjustment of some sort. But doing slightly above 50% of the old damage I'd hardly call an "adjustment".