CULTIC News

The beta for Custom Difficulty is finally here! It took a bit longer than expected but the randomizer was some seriously hard work. Getting it to play nicely with the quicksave system took much more convincing than I was expecting. Due to the magnitude of changes in this update, and the many many options available in the Custom Difficulty mode, I'm releasing this update to the beta branch first to test the waters before releasing it to the main branch.

If you're not familiar with accessing beta branches, it's simple and easy!

1. Go to your Steam Library
   
2. Right-click on CULTIC
   
3. Click on Properties
   
4. Go to the BETAS tab
   
5. Select "beta" from the drop-down list
   
6. Allow CULTIC to update
   

So what's new in this update?

[h2]Custom Difficulty[/h2]

A new difficulty mode has been added that allows you to deeply customize your play experience. Choose from a handful of modifiers to mix up enemy behaviors, damage, speed, adjust game rules, and even randomize enemy placements!

You can also save presets and load them back in for quick setups! If you want to share presets with other players, they can be located in:

steamapps\common\CULTIC\CULTIC_Data\Presets

The .cdiff file is a simple text file type that can be easily copy/pasted between devices.
A handful of presets come with the update!

• Instagib - One shot and it's over - for you and your enemies!
  
• One Punch Man - Your fists and feet are unmatched in power
  
• Extreme Plus - Extreme, but even harder! Extra enemy damage, speed, and accuracy, and no health regen.
  
• Hardly Extreme - Extreme enemy placements and behaviors, Hard damage/HP values
  
• Bullet Hell - Enemies dish out large quantities of slow-moving bullets vs. a speedy player
  

This update also comes with a fairly substantial amount of changes. More on those below - thanks for your support of CULTIC, and I hope you enjoy the update!

Please report any bugs and feedback in the proper channels on the Steam Discussions forum!

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• A catch was put in place so that corrupted saves/preference files should no longer soft-lock the menus
  
• Map Start/Checkpoints should no longer get overwritten when loading a checkpoint from the main menu
  
• Infected corpses now properly get an explosive damage multiplier as soft targets
  
• Scene Select should properly reflect not having a max kill count for boss maps
  
• Press-and-hold interaction prompts will now show up even when Interaction Markers are disabled
  
• Some easy-to-access OOB areas were blocked off
  
• Render scale should now properly honor native resolutions for those using >1080p resolutions
  
• A potential fix was implemented to alleviate some visual movement stuttering
  
• Lantern is no longer held inside the player's body which should help with throw trajectories
  
• Grabbable props now properly receive impulses from damage sources
  
• Thrown hatchets should more reliably set off bear traps
  
• Incinerator tank leak audio now properly mixed
  
• Pistol cultists now properly check for line-of-sight from their pistol height, rather than hip-height
  
• China Lake removed from E1M6 Scene Select loadout
  
• TNT Plunger skip in E1M5 fixed
  
• Player Run Toggle setting persistent across scenes
  
• Fixed some spots where the player could get stuck on map geo
  

[h2]Additions / Changes[/h2]

• Weapon swapping now accepts input buffers
  
• A weapon swap that was buffered before a shotgun reload starts will cancel the reload
  
• Lever-action reloads can be interrupted with a weapon swap
  
• The FG42's Full Auto upgrade can now be toggled with Tertiary Fire (MMB by default)
  
• There should now be a pickup for all main weapons in all maps, making pistol-start runs more feasible
  
• LAR ammo pickups were increased in quantity
  
• Additional LOS blockers added to mine camp in E1M2
  
• A proper death barrier was added below map geo so players that fall out of bounds are not soft-locked
  
• Burn damage against larger enemies has been nerfed, making it a bit more difficult to ignite them
  
• Maps in Scene Select are unlocked when the map is started, rather than cleared
  
• All difficulties below the highest completed can be accessed in Scene Select
  
• An option to disable music slowdown added to Options > Sound
  
• Backup Map Start saves are created by default to prevent players from losing progress if they forget to create a manual save. These can be disabled from Options > Gameplay
  
• Checkboxes in options are now all left-aligned, for consistency
  

It's been a month since I pushed the big green button to release CULTIC to the world - and what a month it has been!

Thank you all for 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews and a truckload of kind words! Who ever thought I'd be making an accolades trailer?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What a crazy last week and change it has been!

First things first: An absolutely massive shoutout to the community for helping CULTIC reach Overwhelmingly Positive in just two days! I was absolutely floored to see the reviews pour in, and the incredibly kind words and support coming in from the community. CULTIC is currently sitting at 99% positive scores - something I never thought I'd see. So thank you all for that!

Additionally, I want to thank those that were so patient and cooperative with providing crash/player logs to me to help diagnose and crush some nasty bugs that were affecting a small amount of users.

Now that Chapter One is out, the big question is - what's next for CULTIC?

[h3]A Break[/h3]
Full disclosure - the first thing on my list is to rest and take a step away from CULTIC for a little bit. The weeks leading up to launch were incredibly stressful, and launch doubly so! As exciting as the launch was, and as thrilled as I am with how positively it was received, I am fully burnt out at the moment, and need a bit of a break to get back on my feet. I'm planning to catch up on my backlog of games I missed during development, and also catch up on some housework I've been putting off!

I hope to be back at it after Halloween! Speaking of...

[h3]Steam Scream Fest[/h3]
CULTIC is a bit of a spooky game, so I am participating in Steam Scream Fest! You might see CULTIC pop up here and there during the event.

[h3]Localization[/h3]
The next big task I plan to jump on is localization. I'm getting things ready to get translations for CULTIC underway. While I greatly appreciate all of the generous offers from the community to help translate CULTIC, I have already secured those services. There are some significant changes to the UI that need to happen to support additional languages, so I'm going to get working on that and hope to have updates on it soon.

[h3]GOG Release[/h3]
I had been intending to hold off on a GOG Release until much closer to Chapter Two's launch, because I really don't want to manage updates/patches on two separate platforms. As a one-man team, it's much easier to just maintain a single platform. However, interest from the community in a GOG version has been pretty significant, so I'm looking into options for maybe making that happen sooner.

[h3]Chapter Two[/h3]
I don't have any concrete info to share on Chapter Two at this time. I'm a bit tapped out on creativity at the moment to be honest, so I'm going to take some time to focus on some tasks that are more code-oriented (such as localization) before diving in to Chapter Two.

In closing, thanks again for everyone who has supported CULTIC, and more importantly, supported me through this game dev journey! Until next time!

Hello everyone!

v102 of CULTIC is finally out on the main branch. This build included some pretty major changes that needed to be tested a bit more extensively than my smaller patches. Full details below!

This is a fairly lofty patch, so as always, if there are any issues or feedback, drop me a thread in the forums!

[h2]System Changes[/h2]

• Unity version updated to address a crash happening with the particle engine
  
• XML culture invariance introduced to help prevent issues with save files
  

[h2]E1M6 Balancing[/h2]
E1M6's encounter was a major pain point to the community, While this encounter is intended to be difficult, I do understand that replaying the entire mission was tedious, and not the kind of challenge I wanted for the players. Due to this, the following changes have been made:

• Checkpoint introduced between third wave of cultists and the boss entrance
  
• An additional supply cache is made available when the boss appears
  
• The boss now has an additional attack
  
• Smaller amount of cultists in wave 1
  
• Cultist spawns after the boss' arrival are now limited to low-rank cultists
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Various audio sources properly hooked up to audio mixer
  
• Textures with unintended shininess were toned down
  
• A fence in E1M9 that was solid can now be shot through
  
• Burning enemies now properly drop loot pickups
  
• Confirm action (left mouse) now properly opens the main menu on the title screen
  
• Player can no longer grow a third arm while throwing hatchets and using the lighter
  
• Intro cutscene music should now properly adhere to music volume preferences
  
• Fixed a bug where player controls would get reset to defaults if they opened the controls menu from the main menu and then cancelled out of it without making changes
  

[h2]Other Changes[/h2]

• Progress menu reworked into a Scene Select menu. Allows any map that has been previously completed to be replayed, with choice of two loadouts
  
• Brightness in E1M1/M2 caves was lowered
  
• Small pistol ammo drops now give 10 rounds (down from 20). A deeper audit into ammo availability is planned to look into ammo surpluses and deficits
  
• Debug console key is now bindable
  
• A sequence break in E1M3 was made inaccessible as it was a bit too easy to access casually
  

Hello all!

A new experimental build of CULTIC has dropped on the beta branch, which -should- address the issue users were having with busted save files, where items just wouldn't spawn into the map properly.

Basically, the issue boiled down to a number parsing issue. Some systems use commas instead of decimals to represent float values, so the positions of items and enemies in save files was being loaded in incorrectly, resulting in wildly incorrect position and rotation values.

This was a major oversight on my part, and explains why it was impossible to replicate on my system.

Regardless, it should be fixed in this build.

[h3]IMPORTANT:[/h3]

If you have a Map Start save file for the affected session, you may be able to load this map and play normally. HOWEVER - unfortunately, due to the nature of this issue, if you have created a quicksave or manual save in the map, that save file is most likely still going to have items missing. Items that fall egregiously outside of map bounds are destroyed, so if you have loaded a save (which would break item positions), and then saved again (after the items had gone out of bounds and been destroyed), that save file would still reflect the items having been destroyed.

I will be working some more bug fixes into this patch and releasing on the main branch later today, after I've had a chance to test more thoroughly.