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DD#36 Steam Next Festival?

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another week's Developer's Diary.

The Steam Next Festival will start in a few hours. The game will sneak in and participate. However, as I mentioned last week, marketing will never take higher priority compared to the development of this game. Thus, nothing special will be done just to please the market. Otherwise, many "politically incorrect contents" and many contents that are considered against the "socialist core values" of China will not even exist in the game, to begin with. It's one of the benefits of making an indie game.

Now let's go down to something that's much cooler than spending time on marketing.
1, Headshot!

We have the FPS mode in the combat system. However, to those who aim and shot at the weak spots of the enemy, it shall be a much more rewarding experience. When a headshot success, the bullet can cause greater damage and penetrate the armor of the target that a normal shot cannot.
For example, It's shown on the image above that an M1911 pistol usually can't penetrate the armor of a combat robot, resulting in only 1 point of damage. But, when a headshot landed, it does cause a lot more damage. You can still mow everything down with an AK-47 or machine gun. But now, a snipe-rifle may just do even more damage than that if used by a skilled sharpshooter.
The "head" area of each type of enemy can be easily modded visually in photoshop or other graphics processing tools so that mods can easily add new types of enemies and define different parts of those enemies.
It seems this feature is quite rare in a game made with RPG Maker. Maybe, we are just so special like that.

2, The Maze Generator.

It's still in a very early stage of its development. However, it can already serve as a small mini-game in the Foundation Site-Demeter as a part of "Evacuation Simulation" in which you can try to escape those procedurally generated mazes and gain rewards.

Other updates of this week include new furniture to decorate your home and block enemies, a new area to explore, a new item drop list on vampiric researchers, and more polish in Site Demeter. That's for this week. Steam Next Festival or not, it's just another normal week in the long history of the game.

Today's changelog:
English
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Added a drop list to the vampiric researcher. The list includes photos of loved ones, magic pens, Foundation lv3 keycards, generic shirts/boots/pants. In addition to that, vampire dust may also drop.
The supply boxes in Site Demeter may now contain bandages.
New area: Beggar Gangs Camp (Located in Liu's Sewer. Can fish.)
Some medicines in the hospital of Liu have their price slightly increased to test a new modifier.
#########System#####################
Added a localized item price modifier to be able to customize item prices further without causing any database problems.
#########DEBUG######################
Fixed a bug that a certain type of zombie does not drop "A Helping Hand" even when the blood/gore setting is on Max.

Public Beta Version 20210929


English
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Added a security terminal in Site Demeter with a little information about what's going on there.
Added some non-aggressive rats in one of the secret rooms in Site Demeter.
Added another secret room in Site Demeter
Added a new mini-game: Evacuation Simulator V1.0 (Escape from a small procedurally generated maze and get a little reward. It can start in one of the terminals in the security room of Site Demeter)
简体中文
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前哨基地-德米特加入了一台保安终端提供少量关于里面发生的事情的信息。
在前哨基地-德米特的一个秘密房间内加入了一些不会主动攻击的老鼠。
在前哨基地-德米特增加了另一个秘密房间
新的小游戏:基地逃生模拟器V1.0 (从一个随机生成的迷宫中逃离并获得少量报酬。可以从前哨基地-德米特安保室的一台终端上开始。)

Public Beta Version 20210927

English
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A secret room in Site Demeter is now accessible.
New furniture: Bookshelf (Can make a 1*3 size blookage. Can be used to reread all documents previously found.)
简体中文
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前哨基地-德米特的一个秘密房间可以进入。
新的家具:书架(可以封锁1*3大小的道路。可以用于重新阅读此前找到的文档。)

Public Beta Version 20210926


English
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New game mechanic: Headshot! (You can now headshot enemies in FPS mode by aim and shot at their heads if they have one. It can cause massive damage, penetrating armors that a normal gunshot cannot.)
Added 65 characters' head information in PNG format, easily moddable. (If you want to cheat, check "sp\MOD\Graphics\Battlers" folder and paint all the headshot information images red.)
It's also quite easy to add the head information to those enemies I didn't add, following the naming conversion. (For example, you can define the head of a tree if you want.)
#########System#####################
Slowed down all target's moving speed in FPS mode.
Optimized the booby trap's detection algorithm to use event coordinate cache so that a few dozens of booby traps a player planted will not cause too many lags.
简体中文
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新游戏机制:爆头! (你现在可以在第一人称射击模式下通过瞄准敌人的头部射击造成爆头,这将导致大幅的伤害奖励提升,甚至对某些有较高子弹抗性的敌人造成穿透其护甲造成伤害的效果。)
加入了65种角色的头部信息保存于PNG文件中,可以被轻易修改或用于制作MOD。(如果你想作弊的话可以将位于"sp\MOD\Graphics\Battlers" 文件夹下的这些图片全部涂成红色。)
同时,依据命名规则你可以轻易加入我没有加入头部信息的角色的头部信息。(比如你可以定义一棵树什么位置是头部。)
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所有敌人在第一人称射击模式下的移动速度降低。
优化了诡雷的碰撞检测算法,使用了事件坐标缓存,现在在同一张地图上存在几十个玩家部署的诡雷也不会造成太大的延迟了。

DD# 35 The Dark Side of Moon.

Welcome! I hope everyone had a nice Moon Festival.
It's another Friday night. That means another developer's diary is here.

When the Illuminati is bleeding itself in popular culture to hide their agendas, putting their logos everywhere, another secret society that is directly involved in the incident of Queensmouth also found its way to hide in plain sight.

The Foundation.

When mentioning the name of this organization, people may think of some science fiction novels or SCP, that effectively makes this Foundation off the radar when people get direct away from them by misinformation. It's just like the moon. You can see it in the sky. But, you can almost never see its dark side from the earth.

In this week's update, with the right key to the right location, you can find one of their sites located right inside Queensmouth. Although it's not SCP Foundation, unfortunately, it also has its own containment branch thanks to all the current events in Queensmouth. As the Foundation discovered a certain threat earlier than other organizations, they are working on their own projects to counter it except things went wrong.

Base on the site's name, it does not take much genius to discover this is one of the problems:

Do the dwellers of night howl at the moon or does a black moon itself howl?

This is just part of the story we can see from the surface for now. With the sadistic prefix added onto weapons and combat robot modules this week, we may go even deeper into the sorrow underneath this facility till a secret is uncovered and her story is told.

The description in this DD is vague as the story updates of this week may easily be spoiled if not careful.
But, please feel free to take a bite to see it by yourself.


That's for this week.

Next Friday, we will participate in the "Steam Next Fest."
However, there will be no active marketing efforts to be made as I'd rather spend time in development.
The life cycle of the game's update will be extreme compared to many other games while a fest is merely a glimpse. Even it may bring some good marketing numbers in the short term if I redirect my weekly update efforts onto it, I don't think it will matter too much in the long run. Meanwhile, a game about a secret world doing some additional marketing can be quite an irony. Thus, I'd enjoy the peace and solitude on the dark side of the moon.


Today's changelog:
English
#########Content#####################
You can now find a keycard in Kristin's room in Ardham Hotel.
Added a new dialogue option for Kristin after you get the keycard.
New area: Site Demeter (The Foundation site underneath the Ardham Hotel.)
New side story: Containment Breach (Automatically start when you enter the Foundation site. Just a part of it. It's still in development.)
New enemy type: Vampiric Researcher (Can not be turned into pets for now.)
New crafting material: Vampire Dust. (Dropped by vampires of course.)
#########DEBUG######################
Some passable bugs are fixed in the "Facility" tileset.