Hi everyone,
the new Escape the Pacific version 'Alpha 14' is now available.
For this update we were mainly focusing on Animal AI. There is a new animal debuting. Some UI elements were refined and we were also able to fix some issues too.
The Animal AI has gotten some new features: Crabs aren't traveling on their sides and when they "see" the player approaching from the front they try to escape. This feature provides an interesting experience, now that crabs are easier to catch from behind. The turning mechanic has been also upgraded a little so it is less possible that they walk in place and try to push some heavy object behind them - they rather turn over and walk away. The next interesting feature of the AI is that the crabs are wandering based on the Suns altitude - on the mornings and evenings they are walking more away from the water and near noon they are staying mostly in the water.
We have added a new animal - the Loggerhead turtle. Those make use of the same AI the crabs use but they will learn how to swim, how to eat underwater weeds. There will be implementations for useful turtle parts continually (shell for catching water, teeth for various tools, ...).
We have added an animated progresbar to the startup screen with game logo and also the Help screen texts were checked and corrected for errors.
We have fixed a very serious issue when the player was in swimming mode standing on his raft after loading the game. The issue with chopped down palm trees which were missing their parts/trunks after loading was also solved.
Changelog:
Animals:
01. Added: Animals (Crabs and so on) are now correctly following the terrain relief and aren't travelling on their sides
02. Added: Loggerhead turtle
03. Added: Turtle basic movement
04. Added: Crabs don't try to push objects and rather turn over and walk away
05. Added: Sun altitude influences crabs wandering
06. Added: When Crabs see the player approaching from the front they try to escape
General:
01. Added: Animated LogoScreen ProgressBar
02. Fixed: Checked english Help screen texts
03. Added: Multilanguage support for the Help Screen
04. Added: Spanish Help screen texts
05. Added: German Help screen texts
06. Added: Chopped palm trees don't lose their parts/trunks after loading
07. Tweak: "Force Single Instance" option turned off
08. Fixed: Low Stamina influences Hit/Craft/Build options functioning well now
09. Fixed: The first chopped trunk from a very tall palm is correctly saved
10. Fixed: The player character is no more locked in swim mode when standing on the raft after loading
We will continue with general rechecking of all of the game features and will fix issues as they appear. The sailing system will also need some tweaking and tuning. We plan to work on further improving the Crabs AI and make the Turtles AI capable of swimming.
There will also be some new gameplay elements, models and functionality added as fixing the remaining issues will allow us, which we'll take care of based on their severity.
Thank you for your patience and for your constructive feedbacks helping us to get rid of the issues as fast as is possible.
Please be aware that during early access phase game code could change as much as affecting gameplay when loading/saving savegames from earlier versions. To always be on the safe side make sure to start a new game with each update. Thank you!
G4GTeam.
