Quality of Life Update
[p]Hello Ghoul Hunters,[/p][p][/p][p]Hope you had a great Easter weekend and you found all of the easter eggs in the game :)[/p][p][/p][p]I'm releasing this Quality of Life update to address a recurring complaint from players: too much backtracking and walking around.[/p][p][/p][p]The game has recently received a lot of emotionally charged negative reviews which left me scratching my head: what did I do wrong? [/p][p][/p][p]After some reflection, it seems like there is some disconnect between my vision of the game and players looking for a quick adrenaline rush. To be honest, I grew up with old school games where nothing was handed to me on a platter. One wrong decision means restarting the whole level, and without proper preparation, planning, and critical thinking, I would be running in circles for hours until I figure out the hidden mechanics, and it was always a great feeling when I did. Therefore I incorporate the same design philosophy in my own game. [/p][p][/p][p]That being said, I do understand that today there are a ton of games out there competing for player's time, and few people have the luxury of spending lots of effort figuring out hidden mechanics while they could use the time to enjoy more games. So I decided to streamline some of the more time-consuming quests and make fast travel more available. [/p][p][/p][p]Two major changes in this update:
- The motorcycle will be accessible much earlier. As soon as you complete Sidor's first 3 quests, he will reward you with the motorcycle key, and you will be able to fast travel back to the train station after repairing and refueling the motorcycle. It does make the railroad cart less useful at this stage, but the cart can still act as a mobile stash and it requires no fuel/repairs.[/p][p][/p][p]- Once you get to Railroad Worker Camp, and pick up the "collect 18 ingredients" mandatory quest from Filip, he'll give you 400 rubles for expenditure, and allows you to choose between two options: either pay for a guide and fast travel back to Zernaskaya church to hunt the ghouls, or go to Station 11 and do the hunting there. This should reduce the time spent on traveling back and forth. The downside is that in order to protect the flow of main quest, I have to implement a "magic door" that is locked until the plot is ready.[/p][p][/p][p]Also, in this update I made a small change in how Vsync ratio is calculated. Unfortunately I don't have a high refresh rate (>120Hz) monitor to test, so if you notice any frame rate problem please let me know. Basically, with this update, when you enable Vsync, the game will try to respect the "Frame Rate Cap" that you set in the game by finding the closest integer divider for your monitor. For example, let's say your monitor has 120Hz refresh rate, and you want the frame rate cap at 60 FPS, then the game will set a vsync ratio of "2" - meaning "sync every other frame" - so that your frame rate is capped at 120 / 2 = 60 (this is how vsync works). [/p]
- The motorcycle will be accessible much earlier. As soon as you complete Sidor's first 3 quests, he will reward you with the motorcycle key, and you will be able to fast travel back to the train station after repairing and refueling the motorcycle. It does make the railroad cart less useful at this stage, but the cart can still act as a mobile stash and it requires no fuel/repairs.[/p][p][/p][p]- Once you get to Railroad Worker Camp, and pick up the "collect 18 ingredients" mandatory quest from Filip, he'll give you 400 rubles for expenditure, and allows you to choose between two options: either pay for a guide and fast travel back to Zernaskaya church to hunt the ghouls, or go to Station 11 and do the hunting there. This should reduce the time spent on traveling back and forth. The downside is that in order to protect the flow of main quest, I have to implement a "magic door" that is locked until the plot is ready.[/p][p][/p][p]Also, in this update I made a small change in how Vsync ratio is calculated. Unfortunately I don't have a high refresh rate (>120Hz) monitor to test, so if you notice any frame rate problem please let me know. Basically, with this update, when you enable Vsync, the game will try to respect the "Frame Rate Cap" that you set in the game by finding the closest integer divider for your monitor. For example, let's say your monitor has 120Hz refresh rate, and you want the frame rate cap at 60 FPS, then the game will set a vsync ratio of "2" - meaning "sync every other frame" - so that your frame rate is capped at 120 / 2 = 60 (this is how vsync works). [/p]