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Hellish Quart News

Almost there with the update!

Almost there, finishing up!

To sum up the work on the update done so far and get you an overview of what to expect:

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Upcoming update - not yet in the game, it's just for information:

TWEAKS:
- Marie: disabled aiming system in the sword hand wrist
- Marie: rapier has now more inertia
- Gedeon: Adjusted damage counting to better reflect momentum and swing vector (downward cuts deal more damage)
- Laszlo: Bind Attack Right Sidestep 3 deals more apropriate damage
- Kalkstein: Some attacks play 5% slower to better represent his heavy weapon
- Kalkstein: Gaurds animations are 30% slower to better represent his heavy weapon
- Kalkstein: Sword has now more more inertia
- Kalkstein: Upwards cuts and short cuts deal less damage; downwards cuts and big swings deal more damage
- The force needed to cut off hands is now reduced (easier) across the board
- Linking attacks rate (some characters can link certain single attakcs in a chain combo - for example Gedeon, Laszlo, Isabella) now depends on animations (before it was a fixed rate) - new attack can be launched only after active phase of previous attack has ended
- All characters: attack animations recovery phase after getting blocked is now longer across the board
- Stamina now affects damage - tired fencers will deal less damage gradually, full damage only with full stamina
- Stamina now slightly affects attacking and movement speed (the more tired you are, the slower the animations)
- Beginning an attack takes less stamina
- Recovery after a whiff (attack in air, that didn't hit or wasn't blocked) takes additional stamina
- Recovery phase of all attacks of all characters had an adjustment pass
- Successful block takes less stamina
- Cutting Damage is now counted in hybrid method - arbitrary amount per attack times weapon tip acceleration times stamina percentage

- When you press another attack to make a cutting combo before first attack hits, then potential damage from the first attack is reduced by 70% (because it becomes a not fully commited cut). If you press to make a combo after the first attack hits, there is no damage reduction - but the next attack will be delayed by 0.2s (because your hand was stopped before you made a decision to redirect the attack to a combo)
- Right after your attack gets blocked, there is now a 0.2s cooldown period when you can't launch another attack (but you can move and autoguard works normally). If you press another attack during that period, the attack animation will be delayed until this 0.2s cooldown passes. However, if you press another attack to make a combo *before* first attack of the combo hits enemy's block, there is no cooldown (but damage of the first attack is reduced by 70%)

- Cuts with heavy swords that manage to bash through oppponent's guard now deal -70% damage
- Dodging backwards and sideways takes Stamina now (but forward doesn't)
- Dodging when limping is not possible now
- All characters: most regular attacks (except thrusts) are homing even in active phase, not only on startup
- Marie: Better Guard stances
- Isabella: Better Guard stances

NEW:
- New character: Father Zera
- New intro movie: Father Zera

- New Stamina and Endurance system:
a) Stamina degrades fast and regenerates fast
b) Endurance degrades slowly and regenerates slowly
c) Stamina can't be higher than Endurance
d) Every time Endurance drops too much, its maximum level will be permanently lowered by apropriate %

- New optional mode: Right Of Way (it's basically a method of scoring double kills instead of calling a draw, it heavily discourages "wiggling" your sword out of range - more on that in upcoming tutorials)

- When Stamina is low, character's side of the screen will discretly pulsate (cosmetic posprocess)
- Marie: two new stances with their own special attacks: lowered blade and long guard (stance changing like with Isabella)
- Marie: Guards now blend near-far, depending on distance
- Isabella: Guards now blend near-far, depending on distance
- Isabella: In-place attacks now don't move the character forward if less than 1.5m from opponent
- AI vs AI mode (although AI needs a huge refator, for now those duels are not that spectacular)
- All characters can now assume "retract blade" stance (useful if you want your opponent to whiff instead of get blocked)

More coming - full list will be released on update day, along with new video tutorials about the new mechanics.
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On top of all this, we spend an entire month 3d scanning new 17th century clothes for customization. The new clothes will not be the part of this update though, since we still need time to implement them into the game and fit them to character's bodies, configure cloth physics etc.

Thank you for your patience!

Father Żera Teaser Video

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Father Żera, formerly known as Pan Michal Dobrzanski. Years of hiding in the old church and battling his fears using wine took a heavy toll on his sanity.

A new character for Hellish Quart, Father Żera, will be available to play soon. He fights with a longsword, which requires hundreds of animations for two stances (left foot forward and right foot forward) multiplied by 3 sword positions - low, middle and high.

Development Update

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This is a short update to inform what we are doing right now.

In short:

- Father Zera, the new character is coming soon
- We are making NPC's and more characters for the story mode and experimenting with adventure gameplay mechanics
- First story will be about Jacek
- The short story by Jacek Komuda happening in the universe of Hellish Quart is ready and translated -will be released along the first single player story

Thank you for your patience! :)
Jakub

Hellish Quart's Jacek is getting a TV series! (trailer)

Great news! Jacek Komuda, our writer for Hellish Quart is making a live action TV series. The show is set in the same fictional universe as the game and novels and Hellish Quart's Jacek Dydyński is the main hero of the show! The characters of the show are of course based on real historical people.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Currently, in this stage of Early Access, Hellish Quart is focusing on creating new characters and polishing the combat mechanics, but we are also working on motion capture for the first story episode - which is also written Jacek Komuda, so we hope it will fit right in, as a part of this fantastic universe.

Update 2021.07.26.0 - Customization

Hellish Quart pre-alpha v. 2021.07.26.0

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

NEW:
- Added Customization menu (WIP)
- Added Jacek customization (WIP)
- Added Isabella customization (WIP)
- Level select: random Button
- Added an option to unlock cursor during fights (in Options\Gameplay)
- Some new History Buff cards
- Choice of sharp or wooden weapons in whole Fight section
- Added Mouse button rebinding
- Deformable snow in Snowy Hut level

TWEAK:
- Level camera postprocessing adjustment pass
- "Empty" level is now "Brick Floor" level (still relatively empty for low PC resources consumption)
- Wooden weapon sparring moved from Fight to Training section
- When you press F3 during fight, Stamina Bar now stays visible until you exit the game or press F3 again (temporary feature)
- Loading process refactor to lower memory demands
- minor optimization pass (normalized max texture resolutions) to lower memory demand to be under 4 GB RAM
- What's New panel now shows all history of updates

FIX:
- fixed: Bug where some History Buff cards wouldn't render text

Known issues:
- Blood decals still have shape of original clothes, ignoring customization
- When hit in the head or chopped off head original hat falls off, ignoring the customization
- Sharp weapons drop instead of wooden on defeat with wooden weapons


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Hello,

this update adds foundations for customization. We are adding the code base now, and then we'll keep systematically creating new character skins in future updates. Currently just Isabella and Jacek have customization options, but soon everyone will have a lot of skins to choose from.