1. Valley of Shadow
  2. News
  3. Major Demo update: v0.5

Major Demo update: v0.5

This update to the demo brings it to a new level of polish and performance that we're very excited about. Things should look and feel a lot less janky than before.

Here are the itemized notes for this update:

[h2]New Features & Changes[/h2]
  • You can now cancel your spell cast! If you've already placed a perfectly-positioned Light, and you accidentally right-click, press escape to cancel the cast (while right-click is still held down).
  • New "Real Memory" post-processing effect for when certain scenes play out, such as the Pup-Pup scene on the back porch.
  • You can no longer jump in the Home. We decided to remove it because it didn't add anything interesting to the scenes, and only served to uncover & exploit collision bugs.
  • Add Poetry Plaques to the Temple. Written entirely in the rune language, deciphering these plaques adds an extra layer of depth to the story.
  • Diskettes now move to the bottom corner of the screen to dissolve. This doesn't have a major impact on the Demo, but has been put in place for future content starting in Chapter 2.
  • The staff animates out of the way when inspecting something. This is really just a workaround for some weird transparency issue with VHS tapes.
  • In-game menu now shows your current framerate.


[h2]Improvements[/h2]
  • The beginning of the demo has been completely polished, with a better-looking UI and therapy hallway.
  • Cover up many imperfections in the Temple, primarily where snow mounds intersect with other objects. The intersections should be much less noticeable now.
  • "Song of Innocence" is now more obvious and dissolves when inspected. This is a relatively important aspect of the story that a lot of players were missing.
  • Footstep System has been entirely rewritten, and it should bug out less often. The new system requires significantly less manual setup compared to the old system.
  • Player breath now looks more realistic.
  • Game posters stick to the wall more believably, and are anchored by their scotch tape now. Previously they were anchored semi-randomly, and looked a bit wonky as a result.
  • VHS tapes now slide into a sleeve before they dissolve. Similar to the staff animation issue above, this is also to get around a weird transparency issue with the tapes themselves.
  • Improve performance in Home scenes. Many thanks to the latest version of Unity for newly-added terrain features that made these improvements possible!
  • Slightly shrink the default reticle. It was just ever so slightly too big for our liking.


[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
  • Shadow Creatures now properly render on top of (and underneath) other transparent things.
  • Objects that dissolve look much more realistic now; they were previously not correctly normal-mapped.
  • The Subtitle setting actually does something now, and defaults to Off.
  • Fix bug that caused Quality to show as "Low" even though it wasn't.
  • Fix bug that caused therapy door to sometimes not close.
  • Fix animation bug when staff un-hides (after teleporting to each next floor in the Temple)