Gidday, last time I promised y'all a nice little update with some new content in the demo for being so patient with the upcoming release. So that's what I've decided to do, along with the help from some incredible community members in the Discord.
Check out the new trailer:
I said maybe a new weapon, well it's been a minute so here's two weapons. Also a new enemy type, status effects for weapons and some fixes/improvements.
Two things I had to include in this update is the drag and drop feature, something I'm still working out how to best strategise with myself. It's quite a handy tool when you want to drag a vapor.exe away from the Defrag Collector that would be really useful to use right after, or putting a couple lemwire.exe's next to one another to process them at the same time. I'm really curious to see how this gets used by you lot.
The other big thing is localisation. Something that's not only been highly requested, but also lots of you have expressed interest in contributing help with translating the game to your beautiful languages. So with the help of a few friendly folk in the Discord we've already got Croatian, Russian and Indonesian translations in this build. We've extensively tested it so every part imaginable can be translated, support for additional languages like Chinese, Korean and Japanese should be doable, and not only that - anyone can try their hand at it and easily mod any language in by simply adding a new file. Below will be more details on how this all works.
With that said, below is the changelog for this update, at least, the things I remember changing.
New Weapons
Bubbles - a floating bubbles screensaver that damages over time and adds stacks of Infect to enemies.
Paint - draws circles and fills them in that damage over time and add stacks of Lag to enemies.
Heat, Lag, and Infect are stackable status effects on enemies. Every half second they affect the enemy and reduce by 20% until stacks have depleted.
Heat damages the enemy.
Lag slows the enemy, with enough stacks freezing them in place.
Infect damages the enemy at half the amount of Heat but also weakens them so any incoming damage is increased.
Weapon Power stat replaces Repel stat - increases the amount of stacks weapons apply for Heat, Lag, and Infect. Boosts how hard Repel (knockback) hits.
Repel isn't useless anymore. Default values should hit hard enough to push enemies back and increasing Power will push them even harder. Some weapons hit harder than others - Pinball hits the hardest, AVD the least.
Firewall now applies Heat.
AVSN Messenger Buddy - a near stationary ranged enemy. Watch out for the smileys they shoot at you, they'll knock you back a little too.
Virry is now animated and full of character.
Redesigned level up screen with an SH Docs theme to it.
Stats Manager got a spreadsheet makeover and can be accessed in the level up screen.
Minimap has fog of war and different colour blocks to differentiate file types better. Fog of war helps to see where you've been on the map already.
New Defrag Collector window.
Taskbar stays on screen during runs (visible when playing at -1 zoom).
You can now drag files around the map one at a time. Files already in use like a zip file or lemwire can't be moved. You can move the Safe Folder too, or even the files in the Safe Folders.
First proper localisation pass - English, Indonesian, Russian, and Croatian are supported already with a hope for more to come.
Language picker on the main menu and settings.
Community translations supported via custom .po files (see TRANSLATING.txt in your appdata folder)
CJK support for a wider range of languages.
Keygen files spawn a key you need to pick up now.
Safe Folders spawn closer to you, 30 second timer. No more impossible spawns across the other side of the map.
Pickups like EXP blocks, Coin etc now pop back away from the player first before pulling towards the player. Helps with opening files like .dlls and having the reward instantly disappear on collection.
Coin pickup animation is smoother.
Bluescreen can be sped up on command like the bootup sequence.
Lots of performance work especially to do with object pooling. You should have better performance if you were struggling with waves in the final rounds of a game on lower end hardware.
Some stability fixes, things like crashing on return to main menu etc. shouldn't happen now. Protocol completions should now save properly if they weren't before.
And that's the main juice right there!
This project has been a solo-development through and through but this update introduces some external help I simply couldn't refuse and couldn't do on my own.
Firstly, Virry, who would just stare at you blankly is now animated, cute and full of life thanks to the incredible talent of grace (Block 618). What was thrown in the SHBS discord as a "proof of concept" immediately became a need to implement as everyone agreed it was perfect. Attention to detail was spot on and these animations fit like a glove with the rest of the game.
Secondly, localisation. Never a small task and while it's something I've had experience with before, I can't just translate everything myself. So with some help from jstnck, JHFBBN and MondySpartan (another talented artist) we already have Russian, Croatian and Indonesian in-game. Along with the testing they provided to find any spots where I didn't leave enough space, missed completely or a font wasn't supported.
If you want your language in the game and want to help with these efforts - there's a TRANSLATING.txt file located here:
- Windows: %APPDATA%\\AntivirusSurvivors\\locales\\
- macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/AntivirusSurvivors/locales/
- Linux: ~/.local/share/AntivirusSurvivors/locales/
(if you can't find it, search your system for a folder called AntivirusSurvivors)
This will have all instructions needed to get up and running. If discord isn't a viable option for you to get in contact with me, send a DM though any of the other socials or email [email protected].
Also a big thank you to baron in the discord for always being my level-headed go-to dude on balancing issues with the game.
That's kind of it for now. This is very very likely the last update the demo will receive before release apart from adding more languages. But not to worry, below is a teaser for some more weapons that are already a ton of fun and I'll be sure to update here with some more insight on new features and content coming to the full game.
As always stay followed, wishlisted and connected through socials for more teasers and info.
Thank you all so much,
Shaun
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