Hello IndieDB!
If you haven't seen already, we are now (finally..) offering a 4-pack for sale! It has taken us slightly longer than expected due to the way these things are processed through Steam, but everything is good, ready and we're happy and hopefully so are you! Please go ahead and indulge yourselves!
In other news, we are nearing the release of v0.2! Which has also been a while coming, but we have lots of new content, features and tweaks to unleash upon you all in the near future. We have mentioned that it will be available end of January, which is still hopefully the case, but it may be slightly later in the event that something doesn't go 100% right.
On a side note, updates after v0.2 will be smaller but more regular.
Since my last post on what to expect from v0.2, we have added a number of other features. One of the biggest has been the re-vamping of our jungles.. Which as you can imagine, is quite a big task. Jungles shouldn't be much different to how they were before from a player perspective but from a technical point they are now optimised a lot better and are much (much, much, much) easier to place which basically means we can make bigger jungles - quicker.
For anyone interested, we have switched from our own system to UE4's foliage tool which uses much more complex systems for dealing with large jungles.
"Why didn't you do that in the first place!?" - I hear virtually nobody ask, but the simple answer is that we suffered some compatibility issues between our game and the tool, which has since been fixed by upgrading to a later version of UE4. It has also meant a re-shuffling of our collision logic which is reasonably time-consuming, but now done.
So how's the rest of v0.2? We have increased the resolution of our lightmaps, so the shadows from everything should be a little more defined. Quite a small change but makes a surprising amount of difference...
This, plus the addition of atmospheric fog (in later levels..) has meant the world is definitely more immersive. Although now demons run at you from dark, foggy shadows instead of just shadows.. Which I think is rather nice for the nerves.
We have also finished integrating a system to allow us different game modes. The first game mode to be released (in v0.2) will be titled 'Defense' and the current game mode is now titled 'Objective'. We have streamlined the Objective gamemode / map which should now make it more obvious what to do.
We have basically stripped out all the fixable radio stations and replaced them with crates. We later intend to tie those areas into Steam Achievements to award the explorers among you.
We felt that a lot of people were getting confused at what those radio stations did and thought they were vital to the main objective, but actually they were just there to give you bonuses such as more items, spotting and giving you waypoint markers.
All those 'bonuses' have now been put within items instead. So for example, when you fix the transformer box by the radio mast - waypoints show up on screen. This no longer happens, but waypoints are now a feature tied into the new item - GPS Tracker which can be found dotted in areas that appear more inhabited by humans.
The Defense game mode is slightly more simple. You and your team mates must defend one of these radio station points against an ever increasing onslaught of demons. It's a simple horde-style game mode but items, weapons and supplies must still be scavenged from the depths of the jungle. You and your team have to balance supply-gathering with maintaining the radio.
Another very big addition to v0.2 is the introduction of our new demon type.. Loosely named a Scamp. These demons are smaller and quicker but cannot physically kill you, instead they will swarm you, knock you to the ground and allow their bigger cousins to come in and finish the job while you are most vulnerable.
I was going to show you all a screen grab, but I thought I'd not show it and leave it so that your first introduction is when it starts running at you (with its friends...).
I hope you're all looking forward to v0.2 and if you have enjoyed Congo so far, then please leave us a review on our Steam Page as we love to hear what you think!
We apologise for the lack of players online currently. This is due to not having a particularly large player-base currently but it is constantly increasing and with our new updates, continued development and the gradual transition to Full Release, this issue should hopefully be resolved. Thank you for your patience! :)
See you in the jungle!
