Heartless & Dreadful : Return By 72 Hours News

A small patch. Things are a little goofy right now in my life. So I am taking a little break.
Don't worry, if there's something that bricks the game I'll come back and fix it immidiately. Just let me know. That is the important part. Can't fix what I don't know about.
Rework of the enemies is still ongoing. I just won't be updating for a little while until I feel a bit better.

- General - Improved general visibility in Mission 9 and 10. It was too much on the eyes and compressed poorly on the videos to be honest.
- General - Enemies received additional particle work similar to player's.
- General - Cremators have been re-animated.
- General - Fixed an issue where a different enemy would spawn in the training room when you tried to spawn a knight mob.
- General - Fixed explosions cutting off too early.
- General - Fixed an issue where the enemies would slide towards the player on spawn in the training mode.
- General - Fixed an issue related to the headless enemies in the last mission, where they didn't call the visual mesh change properly when attacking after the rework, because of that their hitbox just didn't work, everything else did though. Code magic.

Known issues -
You can check them below, you can also check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list as well.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail ([email protected]), or on the stinky Discord server.

For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

You can also check the funny cross app if you have any questions or issues. My DMs are open.
https://x.com/KirillianAmu

(I don't post anything political over there, just game dev slop and occasional garbage i enjoy. If you like that kinda stuff, consider a follow.)

This is Part 2 of the enemy rework stuff. It seems to me there'll be quite a few parts in there as the updated balance gets... balanced. I push these in chunks because yeah, bug fixes. Yay.

- General - Added some of the missing catch up animations to the enemies that use that system.
- General - Added some of the missing falling in the air animations to the enemies.
- General - Fixed the console command debug_hbox, it will show you hitboxes properly now as requested by a few players. As a general reminder, "demons smell" activates the cheats in console. PageDown can be used to slow the game down, page up to speed up, home to return to normal speed. This is mostly used for debugging, but yeah. Whoever wants it - gets it.
- General - More enemy changes. Assassins will throw shurikens at the player now, will back off when player is too close, got increased attack range. Marionette master's healing range has been increased, additional aoe attack has been added. This should make the master a higher priority target than before, where it could've been easily ignored.
- General - Reduced enemy HP scaling per difficulty. Now that they are more aggressive, this is pointless. There's a lot going on on higher difficulties as is with more moves it gets... genuinely overwhelming. So... suffer, but suffer less. I should consider re-balancing the spawns of enemies for each difficulty after the rework for the enemies will be completed.
- General - Added an additional check for enemy's gravity to prevent rare possible soft locks, technically shouldn't happen, but you never know when something will go wrong.
- Mission 03 - A small adjustment to level geometry to ensure enemies don't get stuck in an awkward position.

Known issues -
You can check them below, you can also check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list as well.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail ([email protected]), or on the stinky Discord server.

For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

You can also check the funny cross app if you have any questions or issues. My DMs are open.
https://x.com/KirillianAmu
(I don't post anything political over there, just game dev slop and occasional garbage i enjoy. If you like that kinda stuff, consider a follow.)

This is Part 1 of the enemy rework. How many parts will there be? Dunno. Up to feedback on the updates, plus however many enemies I have left to change.

The purpose of this rework is to give enemies priority in which they are supposed to be taken down naturally.
It's not a full on rework to make enemies super difficult or anything, no. Difficulty options exist for a reason after all.
It is just to give them more reactive moves and make them feel a bit smarter, also AOE attacks to keep the player on their feet. (HAHA FEET)

Anyway. Changes like these are the most difficult ones because even though I tested through the whole game, side modes, tutorial, etc, etc. There still could be something broken that I didn't notice. If that's the case, please report it to me using any of the contact thingies at the end of this announcement.

- General - Enemies are now properly grounded when spawned.
- General - Fixed missing tutorial locale.
- General - Enemies have been reworked to utilize a base prefab (Except for bosses). That took a while, and replacing them all in each scene was annoying, but it's working... I think. As far as I tested, it all works from start to finish. Anyway, this change allows me to make some enemy related changes easier.
- General - Enemies now can catch up to the player if the player is too far away. That is if it's not the heavy enemy type.
- General - Enemies now can utilize navmesh in order to avoid obstacles. This activates if the player is too far away and tries to cheese them by making them all walk into the walls. This however only works if the player is also on the navmesh otherwise it uses old navigation. Too bad!
- General - First boss fight has a small cinematic adjustment to it. Don't mind it. Code from the new prototype allows me to do those easily, joy of shared source code.
- General - Fixed an issue where archers would stop shooting at all unless they are attacked if they are stationary.
- General - Fixed minor graphical glitches and LOD models sometimes being invisible.
- General - Fixing particles from the updated statue model clipping through floors.
- General - Minor graphical changes to some of the levels to give them a tad more detail visually.
- General - Minor loading screen timing adjustments.
- General - Reoptimized places with remote cameras so they don't cause performance drops.
- General - SDK Has also been updated to add the new reworked enemy prefabs. Level updates are not needed.
- General - Sniper enemies now shoot from their origin point, meaning if player reflects their projectile, it should shoot back at them properly and kill/damage them as expected.
- General - Some of the enemies have been reworked, mainly Siis grunts, Siis Archers, Siis Steeres (Big tanky guys) to be a bit more interesting in a fight. I am looking into reworking other enemies as well, but I am pushing it out gradually as there are some bugs that need to be fixed.
- Huntress - Fixed Shotgun's right click not shooting correctly. It shot many bullets, but only one hit. No good.
- Shamir - Fixed Sinner gauge and Guard mode's gauge not showing up properly and not updating unless their representative styles were selected.
- Kair - Added a dodge up move. Yes, he technically could use his earth magic to go through the stages, but this is a bit more convenient.

Known issues -
You can check them below, you can also check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list as well.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail ([email protected]), or on the stinky Discord server.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

You can also check the funny cross app if you have any questions or issues. My DMs are open.
https://x.com/KirillianAmu
(I don't post anything political over there, just game dev slop and occasional garbage i enjoy. If you like that kinda stuff, consider a follow.)

its coming in an hour. sorry, i am REDACTED

edit: the fix is pushed.
I've made a script to make sure logging is turned off on each build now. wont happen again

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Kair is in, as per usual if you've beat the credits he should be available from the get go.

Kair was a bit of a weird character to make.
He has less moves than others, but despite that he took MORE effort to make due to his summons. I consider him an experimental character mostly for fun, thus he doesn't have any unlocks, all moves are available from the beginning. I may add more depending on the reception.

In a way, if we count his attacks with his summon disabled, that doubles the amount of moves that he has... If we don't, the number is quite low.

Still, he's quite fun to play and offers a different experience than the other characters. And a different experience than playing a summoner character in another Demon Could Weep game, that's for sure.
He's still overpowered, but I am sure you can have fun with his movement and moveset.

General - Kair. Kair has been released, Kair's gameplay includes using his own summons to fight, as well as fighting himself in the melee range. He can utilize a variety of Magiqa skills on top of his physical prowess.
General - Fixed an issue where the sound was a bit off balance in some of the levels. (so no, weird sound was not your headphones.)
General - Shamir's swing sounds have been made a bit louder.
General - Further optimizations for the CPU. At that point, LDK-esque difficulty might be possible without major performance drops. Might. No guarantees for anything.
I was able to get 20-30 more frames than usual in a very special debugging map that some may be familiar with, and that map has like... 200 enemies active based on the distance on the get go and 500 enemies total. With more activating as you approach them.
General - Removed the ability to jump into the void in the final mission to prevent an issue where LDJ could teleport under the arena, whoops.

So now what? As I prototype another thingie, I am going to be doing enemy rework for the game in order to make them a bit more aggressive and more fun to play against. I am not sure if that update will be coming soon or not, but I have a few general ideas on how to make them fights more fun. After that, I'll take a look at bosses and will do my best to address all the feedback that has been provided to me about them.

Known issues -
You can check them below, you can also check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list as well.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail, or on the stinky Discord server.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep. Whichever works best.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

You can also check the funny cross app if you have any questions or issues. My DMs are open.
https://x.com/KirillianAmu
(I don't post anything political over there, just game dev slop and occasional garbage i enjoy.)