At long last, an update to the game that changes some of the game's more annoying aspects!
First, a bit of background. Originally, my post-launch plans for WASTED were to provide small bugfixes to the game in the months following the game's launch, while secretly working on a larger scale expansion that took wasters into some of the settlements that didn't make it past the cutting room floor. My secondary goal there was to simultaneously try to rework some of the game's more, shall I say, controversial (and perhaps review tanking) aspects in a bigger, free update -- not necessarily to neuter the game at all, but rather to make sure the game "feels" fun, and that players don't fall victim to "cheap" deaths.
The bad news is that due to scheduling and budget, the talks to get a larger-scale expansion to the game kind of got shelved by my publisher -- so barring a significant change in circumstances, Vague Ass will probably have to remain shrouded in vagueness.
The good news, however, is that a lot of these changes I had been waiting on holding off on are now things I can just introduce to the game at my own pace.
So, beyond a fix for a fairly major bug, the brunt of this patch is aimed at revising the game's mechanics, and to better signal to the player when certain, shall we say, near-catastrophic events are to happen.
The first of these changes is one that I'd been going back and forth on in my head for awhile -- allowing players to attack while knocked back. A big principle behind my game's design was that enemies and players should be on a level playing field -- that game mechanics should affect all characters equally. What I ended up finding, however, was that while this did in fact encourage more careful play, it also kind of reduced a lot of the combat to "whoever strikes first wins." It also caused a lot of super frustrating moments where players were juggled in the air by powerful attacks and were helpless to do anything but watch the health slowly drain out of their poor little bodies, which was, unsurprisingly, Not Very Fun. As such, I've changed it so that player characters (and player characters alone) can use their weapons while being knocked back. You still lose control of movement, which retains the dynamism of being knocked into traps and such, but allowing players to try to strike back while they're blasted into the air ended up being a great compromise that still penalizes players for sloppy play, while stripping the game of that brand of frustrating death.
The second change was to the S.O.B. Purifier -- not necessarily to how it acts, but how its presented to the player. Previously, a first time player was dropped into the Cooler, was probably playing the game like Fallout and scrounging every clipboard and pencil for whatever weird reason, only to be blindsided by a message that someone was really mad at them and was coming from somewhere to try to kill them, which is fine for longtime players, but obviously frustrating for people who haven't yet come to terms with how the game is played.
Therefore, I've telegraphed the S.O.B.'s arrival a lot clearer -- you get reminders at the 1 minute, 30 second, and 10 second mark that the S.O.B. is approaching. I've also added a timer to the minimap that shows exactly how long you've got until the Purifier comes to party, and as an added bonus, the S.O.B. is now marked on the minimap, so that you can make better calls as to what path to take to avoid them. Essentially, these challenges make it easier for new players to deal with the S.O.B. on their first few encounters, while veteran Wasters who already know how to game the system can, well, continue to do that as easily as they did anyways.
Anyways, sorry for the long ramble! Please let me know what you think of these changes -- I know nobody likes when a game is EZ-moded, but I've honestly made these changes in the interest of making the game more fun without compromising the extreme challenge that comes from avoiding traps and expertly handling the game's death-inducing obstacles.
Bye-bye for now!
- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee
king bore haha
Changelog for build 990:
- Players can now attack while being knocked back, and reduced the duration/amount of radial blur that occurs when damaged. The tutorial's also been slightly reworded to reflect this change.
- The S.O.B.'s minigun no longer deals knockback. The knockback value was negligible before anyways, so I figured why have it at all.
- Added an on-screen countdown to indicate how much time the player has before the S.O.B. Purifier appears so you know exactly how long you have left in this world.
- Added new warning messages that appear as the Purifier's arrival approaches, in case the blinking red countdown was a bit unclear. (Also reworded some of the tutorials so that they pretty much tell you to Get Out once the Purifier Gets In.)
- Added an indicator on the minimap that displays the position of the S.O.B. Purifier.
- The S.O.B. Purifier has also granted you 30 more seconds to mess around before he comes to ruin your day.
- Reworded the CHIMPS loading screen hint.
- NG+ now properly carries house upgrades from previous NG+ house upgrades (for instance, if you're rolling over to your third playthrough, your upgrades from your first playthrough will now carry over properly)
- Fixed a major bug where buffs were being applied improperly, causing some hangovers, such as Heady Undeady to be prematurely filtered out and rendered useless (Thanks king bore haha!)
- Added instagib to the Turret race so that it no longer ragdolls and no longer can be looted.
- Fixed projectile-based explosions not properly setting the source weapon when calculating their explosion radius, causing the Pew Boom to be useless if fired from a gun that is no longer equipped. (Another thanks to king bore haha!)
- Mod manager now caches off loaded asset bundles rather than loading and unloading them for each loaded asset. This should drastically reduce loadtimes for modded assets.
