Only Lead Can Stop Them News

Attention, Soldiers!

The clock is ticking, and the voting for Indie of the Year 2024 on IndieDB is coming to an end! This is the final call to support Only Lead Can Stop Them and help us secure a spot in the Top 100. You don’t even need to register - just visit a link and vote for Only Lead Can Stop Them.

If you’ve enjoyed blasting through trenches, castles, and battlefields, now’s your chance to show some love for our retro FPS. Every vote counts, and your support means the world to us!

As you cast your vote, here’s a small detail from the game’s development that we wanted to share - secret levels. These unique maps gave our designers the chance to experiment with layouts and create something different from the main campaign.



Have you ever awoken from a deep slumber and wondered whether all those things you just experienced were real or not? That's the kind of fever dreams Only Lead's secret levels were based on. Sticking out quite a bit from the more grounded levels in each episode, the secret levels crank the supernatural and weird up to 11. When they were designed, they were intentionally made to divert from the rest of the episode. A map where the level designer could go a bit crazy with the structures and layouts and experiment with the assets. A place where the players would ask themselves afterwards; "Did that really happen?". The player's fever dream. Unbelievable structures and dungeons hiding just out of sight for the average freedom fighter. Some are reachable directly, if you know the path. Other hidden carefully, only found by the most perceptive minds.



The citadel walls have an old poem carved in stone that reads:
"To view the darkness, blood red must be turned to light. When all is prepared, you may descend into eternal night. Three clicks to reveal what's hidden, one to break the spell. When the woman dances to the heavens, down you shall go to hell."

Hello everyone,
The entire team at Warcry Interactive are grateful for everyone that have provided feedback and commented on the first version of the full game. We have been hard at work to address all the issues that have been made known to us in recent time from the community and we will continue this endeavor to make improvements and add features that may increase the gaming experience.

We hope you all have enjoyed playing the game so far. We would greatly appreciate a review of the game or recommend it to friends to help the game grow.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Several issues regarding the saving and loading of games has been fixed which has increased the stability. The saving system will now work fine and has been tested thoroughly. Some issues that are hard to reproduce will continue to be monitored in case they remain.
  
• Fixed an issue with loading of level placing wrong type of pickups
  
• Some players experienced the game to feel “Choppy” when turning and tilting. The players camera rotation has been improved for a better experience on high screen refresh rates. The player should experience a much smoother tilting and rotation.
  
• Many of the games Steam Achievements have been fixed so that they work:
  • Fixed achievements related to finding all secrets in an episode and finding secret level.
    
  • Fixed achievements related to completion of an episode for a difficulty level
    
  • Fixed achievement for burning in lava being triggered on regular death
    
  • Fixed Squeeze tight Compañero achievement not triggering
    
  • Fixed Eva auf wiedersehen achievement not triggering
    

[h3]High Priority Issues We're Working On:[/h3]

• Issues regarding faulty enemy pathfinding
  
• Issue with dogs getting stuck sometimes when traversing door opening.
  
• Improved support for different aspect ratios
  
• Improvement of performance on larger levels.
  
• Fixing of visual level glitches.
  
• Fixing of boss battle glitches.

Hello everyone, welcome back to a post-launch devlog! It’s been exciting to see the response
and reviews for the game. Especially that Only Lead Can Stop Them was nominated for the Indie of the Year at IndieDB, so please help us by voting here.

As for today – let’s talk about the soundtrack!

During early development, the plan was to go for a musical style that included marching music
and mostly non-modern instruments, no electric guitars or basses. That was before I played any
of the current levels. I quickly realised that my plan would fall apart, and went back to planning.
Although, some of the very early concepts are still in the game, more specifically the start of
E2M1 and the victory fanfare.

Since we were working on a demo, some tracks need to be in it. The main menu, an intermission for the map, and of course stage music. The demo songs are strongly based on the concept ”Less is more!”, as old-school shooters depend on older software and hardware (I’ll talk more about that later on). At some point I felt that ”Less is more” might be... ”Less is less”. No offense against old soundtracks, those are a legacy and foundation to a bunch of boomer shooter games. I wanted to add some of my personal flair, and my main inspirations. Players will notice a stylistic change starting in E2. More melodic and occasionally partially chaotic, even an exploration of several genres ranging from house music to 70’s progressive rock. I wanted the music to take a 180o turn at some point. I do hope it enhances the experience.

I’d like to make some shoutouts to my main inspirations. As some have already pointed out, I’ve
taken inspiration from Rise of the Triad with music by Bobby Prince and Lee Jackson. Other
inspirational soundtracks are from games such as Golden Sun (Motoi Sakuraba) and the
Castlevania series (Michiru Yamane).

Before moving on to some more technical aspects, I should mention that there are a few
recurring musical melodies in the game. There should be 4 of them, try to recognise them all!



Let’s start off by showing this synth solo from E2M4. It looks like a bunch of data rather than
music. Well, that is the case. This is showing the MIDI-language which is short for Musical
Instrument Digital Interface. Without making it too complicated, MIDI tells the computer about
the pitch, lenght and volume of a tone.



This has to be done either manually, or with a keyboard (the music instrument) connected to the
computer. I used both methods, mainly playing the solos and chords. Even the drums have their
own key bindings. The finer details such as volume and note length had to be adjusted manually.

I mentioned hardware and software earlier. The music from DOS games usually used a sound
card, Sound Blaster being the standard model. The Sound Blaster had the function of using FM
synthesis, easier explained as waveforms. Id Software used their own audio format called IMF
which stands for either ”id music file” or "id's music format". That’s a very brief explanation.

There’s a lot of technical aspects regarding DOS-music, which definitely still has me confused.
For Only Lead Can Stop Them, I simply wanted to make it sound similar. Fortunately, composers and music producers aren’t limited to the old standards. Yet, I wanted to limit myself with two types of software. First one was the Roland Sound Canvas VA, a virtual version of a sound card.

Unfortunately, this software has been discontinued as of September 2024. The second program
was Sforzando created by Plogue. It has the ability to load SoundFonts. SoundFont is in fact a
brand, but is generally the word used for a bank with music samples. This software allowed me
to use sampled instruments from the 90’s. A lot of technical talk in the end, well done making it
through to the end.





If you’re still here - thank you for taking the time to read, and thanks for playing Only Lead Can
Stop Them!

Best regards, keep shootin’
Johan Bergström, music production

Greetings, Soldiers!

We’re incredibly proud that Only Lead Can Stop Them is in the running for Indie of the Year at IndieDB! If you’ve been enjoying the game, we’d appreciate your support - vote for us here. It’s quick and easy - no registration needed.
But we’re not here to just ask for your votes. Today, we want to share an explosive story from the game’s development.

Introducing: Flamethrower

In a game with plenty of weapons some will naturally be more straight forward than others. When a trigger is pulled on a machinegun or a rifle only the guy at the other end of the barrel might take damage. Some weapons however require a bit of trial and error to get the hang of not getting yourself accidentally killed. Most notorious of these are the flamethrower that teaches the player that flames hurt you just as much as the enemy if you run into the flame.



When developing the game, we considered plenty of ways that this weapon could function. We did first and foremost feel that the weapon could be really cool if we got it right. What I liked about the weapon is the idea that it requires a different way of moving and attacking since it can easily backfire.
Also, that huge amount of flames creates an instant hellscape of any environment. Some games that have flamethrowers suffer from the fact that the flames have a long delay of taking effect giving the enemy plenty of time to fire back. We went the other way, having enemies being killed almost instantaneously. We added some amount of delay before the flames would hurt the player making traversing the area easier without taking a hit. The result was a weapon that was plenty of fun but a bit challenging to use.



After all, it's hard to resist playing with fire even though you might get burned.
Try not to set yourself on fire, and don’t forget to vote for Only Lead Can Stop Them! 🔥

Militias!

The IndieDB Indie of the Year 2024 Awards are here, and we’re excited to share that Only Lead Can Stop Them has been nominated in the First Person Shooter category!

This is a fantastic opportunity for the game to shine, and we need your help to make it happen. Voting is quick and easy, and every vote helps us move closer to victory!

👉Vote for Only Lead Can Stop Them here: IndieDB Voting Page (No signup or email required - just one click and you’re done. Don’t forget to tell your friends!)

The nomination round ends on December 21, so don’t wait! With your support, we can secure a spot in the Top 100 and move one step closer to the ultimate Top 10.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Whether it's through your vote, spreading the word, your support means everything. Let’s make it happen!