Squirrelmageddon! News

[h2]MERCHANTS UPDATE[/h2]
Over the last week I've added the ability to reset soldier skills and suit mods. You can now retrain and reconfigure soldiers to suit your play style and mission zone strategies.



- NEW FEATURE: uninstall all suit mods and receive a full refund
- NEW FEATURE: reset and retrain all soldier skills
- MERCHANT UPDATES: adding dialogue to all merchants.

[h2]MAP WORK[/h2]
I am starting to rework all the base maps and missions to suit different types of builds, gameplay styles and high score strategies.



- MAP UPDATE: Squirrel Town is now the fist top-side mission zone. This size map appears to be the sweet spot for tight, contained and more intense gameplay. Smaller maps will also give me more time to really 'craft' the mission experience.

[h2]WEAPON UPDATES[/h2]

Weapons have had more work on the ADS and Projectile sub-systems. The focus was on satisfying play and pacing rather than 'accurate weapon simulation'.



- WEAPON UPDATE: plasma grenade explosion effect
- WEAPON UPDATE: ADS camera positioning tuning most weapons
- WEAPONS UPDATE: added the Burst Rifle and Heavy AR weapons to starting weapons inventory

[h2]BUGFIXES[/h2]
- FIXED: rare crash related to squirrel spawning where no matching spawns found



[h2]MISC UPDATES[/h2]
- PLAYER HUD: re-added 1st Person cross-hairs (soz, my bad!)
- UI GENERAL: interface colour revert
- UI LOADOUT: some tweaks / replaced left right arrow seletors
- LOBBY: mission name added to mission brief panel
- LOBBY AVATAR UPDATE: single player avatar always spawns in the middle slot

Still working on customisable controls. I have to integrate the saved changed into all UI elements and hint text before deploy.

Stay squirrely, have fun and see you top-side!

Dev plays and talks about the latest release and future plans for new stuff!

- URGENT FIXED: projectiles colliding with / not spawning inside some trigger zones
- FIXED: exploding barrel inner radius (squirrels too close to barrel would sometimes escape damage)
- FIXED: training and suit max level checks
- UPDATED: UI loading hint + weapon level up

Soooo... I've increased the max number of squirrels spawned at once to 150 in single player. Multiplayer is yet to be tested with this many squirrels...

[h2]Bringing back the day / night...[/h2]
The random tIme of day + fog systems have been re-activated!



[h2]Huge Weapons Update:[/h2]
- REPLACED: scope system (still working on it!)
- UPDATED: all weapons now use projectiles... needs some tuning but seriously satisfying
- UPDATED: First Person HUD remove hip fire cross-hairs.

Shooting from the hip in 1st person no longer has cross-hairs visible. This opened up the awareness factor of one's surroundings while keeping immersion and realism. 3rd person gameplay perspective is not affected.



[h2]RECENT UPDATES:[/h2]
- FIXED: level up for character UI
- FIXED: level up for weapons odd array of bugs
- FIXED: game over high score UI pop up
- FIXED: and added missing map leaderboards
- FIXED: squirrel sounds sometimes not firing on attack
- FIXED: 1st person narrow space collisions (e.g. windows and some narrow doorways)
- FIXED: shop and training UI bugs
- NEW ENEMY: Brethren squirrels now spawn on all maps.
- GAMEPLAY: Brethren squirrels drop QUAD power ups
- GAMEPLAY: squirrelmadillos now drop carcass + ammo
- GAMEPLAY: mega squirrels now drop carcass + health
- GAMEPLAY: ultra drops carcass + ammo + health
- UI: character select poser updated with more lighting
- UI: character select grid order updated (most popular 1st)
- UI: weapon skill level shown on player HUD
- UI: characters with skill points to spend are tagged with a Green Up Arrow



[h2]12 months worth of new features / updates![/h2]
Here's a quick looking back at the custom systems I've coded since launch almost 12 months ago:

- ADS / Ironsights system 1st Person Camera
- Moveable Objects with Persistence (moveable objects and physics props stay where they last were at mission end)
- New object pickup and interaction system
- Hive Merchants
- Inventory system
- Shop system
- Character XP + Levels
- PTSD (post traumatic squirrel disorder)
- Difficulty levels
- Soldier permadeath
- Playable squirrels
- Character skill training system
- Squirrel missions
- Suit Mods Upgrades
- Weapon Leveling
- Squirrel Bait game mode
- Destructible barriers and crates
- Persistent Inventory
- Persistent placed and physics moved objects
- Tons of pickups
- Moveable turrets
- Fan Traps
- New Enemy: Brethren squirrel
- Maps: 2 special events maps added (Halloween / Xmas)
- lots of UI and QOL improvements



HOPEFULLY SOMETIME SOON:
- customisable action keys
- electrified Brethren squirrels
- vampire squirrels
- cut scenes

My dev rig is:
AMD Ryzen 3 - 3100 Quad core dual thread 3.56 Ghz
AMD Radeon RX 580
32 GB RAM

As always, thanks for playing! Hope you are having some fun and more than a few laughs. Keep an eye on those squirrels... they do some really weird $@#! sometimes!

See you top-side!

Projectile collision fixes
- windows
- doorways