Hellish Quart News

NEW:
- Story Mode, Jacek's side quest: new chapter released

FIX:
- "Anti-ragdoll explode" bug fix tweak: the level will reset only when the ragdoll is 5m from where it should be, instead of 3m, to avoid false-positive results (which should not be even possible in the first place, but some players report it happens)
- Story Mode, Jacek's side quest: some minor animation tweaks in cutscenes
- Jacek: fixed a bug where a followup attack would not play before the whole Taunt animation finished
- Gedeon, Alexander, Kalkstein: active ragdoll tweaks
- History Buff: no picture will be shown twice across multiple play sessions, until the game runs out of pictures. Then the list will reset (currently 128 pictures).

Known issues: When you pause during a fight and go to Free Camera Mode, ragdolls still retain some movement, despite the time being frozen. This can result in characters being in different place after unpausing, sometimes even "stuck" in a wall.

Note: Thank you for all the bug reports. Those will be handled after Jacek's Side Story is done.

IMPORTANT: As always, please verify the integrity of the Steam files after the update, to make sure there are no bugs resulting from potentially corrupted files:

1. Load Steam
2. From the Library tab, right-click on the game and select Properties from the menu
3. Select the Local files tab and click Verify integrity of game files...
4. Steam will verify the game's files

FIX:
- Kalkstein: matched his actual reach to the length of his sword
- Boss fight arena: brighter lighting
- Alexander: fixed the kontusz skin Cloth component
- Gedeon: fixed some internal errors caused by Engine migration, that could have caused bugs
- Cutscene and adventure gameplay music now respond to Music volume slider in Options
- Samuel: corrected the Death March special move input
- Jacek: Move List pass; added some missing attacks, fixed wrong inputs
- Jacek's Story: fixed a bug where the Pause would not work during the first round of the Father Blashey fight

TWEAK:
- Gedeon: a bit more muscle power for better sword trajectories
- Alexander: some attacks are 5% faster
- Marta: thicker "weak" blade portion detector to ensure it works properly
- Jacek: Translated the Movelist with ChatGPT4o rather than Google Translate. It may still be wrong, but I hope less wrong than before. (there is no point in hiring localization companies for respective languages, since the texts change all the time and new ones are added almost every day; we'll do that, if it's still needed, after the content is all done and locked).
- Samuel: some attacks are a bit faster

Hellish Quart pre-alpha v.2024.06.10.0

FIX:
- Interactive Tutorial: Moved the UI a bit to the right, so it doesn't get cut off by Steam Deck's screen aspect ratio
- Interactive Tutorial: fixed Attacked Canceling section
- Jacek's Story, River: fixed a bug where some text is still visible during cutscene fade-outs
- Jacek's Story, Courtyard: fixed a bug where Bandages tutorial launched again after cutting practice minigame
- fixed some instances where Jan was still called Jacek in Character Selection Menu
- fixed a bug where Auto-distance option appeared in Survival mode (in survival it's disabled)
- added yet another failsafe to prevent potential "ragdolls exploding into space" bug on spawn (level should restart immediately if that happens, and then there's another, different check which should do the same, and then every 0.1s there is yet another check)

TWEAK:
- the default Graphics Quality is now "High" instead of "Medium"
- moved character spawn points 5cm above the ground in Watermill, Gallows and Bossfight arena to prevent potential "ragdoll exploding into space" on spawn
- rebaked lighting and occlusion in those arenas as well as optimized enviro collisions
- converted all Terrains to GPU instanced for better optimization

TWEAK:
- Changed Physics update from Fixed Update to Update. This makes the physics simulation dependent on the framerate, but fixed issues with stuttering Cloth and makes the sword collisions to process in sync with the visuals. It seems to work well if the framerate is stable, with no obvious downsides. It may however cause some unpredicted consequences in the future - if so, it will be reverted.
- The "Start Battle" drum sound volume was moved from general to fight music volume slider and lowered to 50%.
- Jacek's Story: 2 more Bandages can be found in the Manor. If all 3 Bandages are collected, Jacek should have 4 lives during the fight with the Bandits (if none are collected he has his usual 1 life for the entire battle).
- Story Mode: if you start the story from a chapter other than the first one, the game treats your save as if you have collected all the Buffs in the previous chapter
- Jacek: tweaked attack startup phase timings, to allow better canceling

NEW:
- A tutorial pop-up about the Bandages was added to the section on the Manor courtyard
- Story Mode: Bandages UI icons were added during fights

FIX:
- Survival: fixed a bug where Marta's top score would go to Marie's account
- fixed a bug where Jan was still named Jacek in the Player vs Player Character Select screen

Update: Story Mode is live!


Hello everyone,

We decided to release the more polished half of the first Story Mode quest – Jacek Dydynski's side story. You can play it right now. As a bonus, we made an interactive tutorial that should teach you the basics of fencing. The playthrough should take roughly 30 minutes – it's not much yet, but all the ingredients for making more story chapters (mechanics, models, systems, cutscene pipeline, animatics, voice recordings) are ready, so we'll keep adding more chapters frequently.



The second half of Jacek's Story is in the final stage of production, so keep an eye out for new chapters. Right after Jacek' Story is complete, we'll start the Main Quest, which Jacek's Story will connect to.



So why did it take 3 years for us to start adding the Story Mode?

Story Mode is a cinematic adventure that consists of characters, cutscenes, adventure gameplay mechanics, fighting mechanics, voiceovers, UI, etc. All those elements needed to be made before starting to combine them into a story. Without the fully developed combat system, characters, adventure game systems, storyboards, mocaps, voices – we would not have any ingredients to build the story with. Those elements needed to be designed and made first, and it took 3 years.

The Early Access period of the game is longer than initially planned because Hellish Quart is bigger than planned on the Early Access premiere. This is what the game features now. Many of those features were not planned - we just made them because they made sense and seemed cool.

• 14 characters (of promised 12); 9 new ones were added
  
• Immensely improved fighting system as a whole, with new features: taunts, blade binding, weapon pulling, working boss armor, axe combat, better physics
  
• Greatly expanded move sets - initial characters had around 200 animations each, and now most of the fencers have more than 350 animations each. Those 9 characters add up to more than 3,000 mocap combat animations.
  
• 8 game modes – story, quick fight, survival, arcade, training, long sparring, history buff, AI vs AI
  
• Added 2 additional ways of resolving double kills: +1 and ROW
  
• Added customization system for characters – skins and unlock system for arenas
  
• 21 arenas: Added 13 more arenas
  
• Added FPP mode
  
• Added Free Camera Mode (pausing and looking at the freeze-frame from any angle in 3d)
  
• 6 AI modes (added 3)
  
• Added modern HEMA weapons and HEMA skins
  
• Added mod support and a modding kit that doesn't require any coding skills
  
• Added game currency (ducats) and unlocks systems for skins and arenas
  
• Redone the character selection menu
  
• Added axes and armor fighting features
  
• Added VR support
  
• Added localization to 7 languages (computer translation for now)
  
• Added AMD FSR support for more FPS
  
• Produced and released an original soundtrack that consists of more than 30 minutes of live instrument music
  
• Added a robust Right of Way ruleset
  
• Expanded gameplay options for customizing your preferred combat rules
  
• Added Xbox and PSX controller glyph support
  
• Ensured Steam Deck compatibility
  
• Added Steam achievements and trading cards
  

Note that some of the features from this list are not finished, as this is still an Early Access.

Three years seems like an unimaginably long time to make a video game, but in game development, three to five years is a normal time for a team of two people to make a small video game. There is no way around that – these things take time, and the bigger the game, the smaller the team, the more time is needed.

With the Story Mode finally taking its shape, we are heading straight for the full release of Hellish Quart.

Enjoy and keep an eye out for new chapters of the story!