Escape From Mandrillia News

This is another update that started as a small one and ended having a hefty amount of changes. Most of it is again doing the polishing pass on the Mandrillians and trying to reduce player frustration when playing as them. Also, Merry Christmas!

• Robot's cloak (from the VR player's perspective) now has an actual transparent shader instead of being a glowy blue hue
  
  
  
  
• Robot's cloak now has a subtle "distortion" effect instead of being fully invisible
  
• Mandrillians no longer appear on the motion sensor when they use the sneaking walk
  
• Mandrillians appear less often on the motion sensor when walking at normal speed (not sprinting)
  
  
• Added a little dodge improvement for the Mandrillians that give a bit more flexibility to the dodging direction (taking the camera direction into account while looking forwards)
  
• 3-point attack now holds for 3 seconds longer when charging it
  
• When charging an attack while having less than 3 stamina points, the full charge will hold for a shorter time
  
  
• Massive price reduction to Mandrillian upgrades:
  
• Plasma Gun: from 400 to 300
  
• Healer: from 600 to 400
  
• Self-Destruct: from 750 to 500
  
• Armor: from 800 to 600
  
  
• Price multiplier match setting top value increased from 2x to 4x
  
  
• After opening the elevator gate, if the Robot leaves the exit zone for longer than 10-15 seconds (it builds up), the gate will close, forcing the Robot to do the gate-opening minigame again. The timer won't go up if there are Mandrillians camping inside the elevator
  
  
• Increased Mandrillian scent tracking lingering effect by 10 seconds
  
• Decreased slow, medium and fast scent tracking recharge speed by 5 seconds each, making them a neat 25, 50, 75 seconds
  
• Default weakpoint type is now "critical only" (damage dealt on the head/critically injured limbs deal 2x damage) instead of "critical + brain" (theres also a tiny hitbox around the eyes with its own HP that kills the Mandrillian if hit)
  
  
• Fixed Mandrillians being more nimble at higher framerates. As a side-effect, Mandrillians are now like 0.01% more nimble
  
  
• Fixed bug that was causing Mandrillian's armor to not be as effective as intended against armor piercing rounds
  
  
• Fixed right hand pose for the Menu's Multitool not applying
  
• Fixed Robot's gibs not applying the Defusal Unit skin
  

Little adjustment making Mandrillians appear way less on the Multitool's Motion Sensor while they're moving stealthily.

The HMG was overperforming a bit and was one of the most frustrating weapons to go against as a Mandrillian. These changes makes it a bit harder to control and more forgiving for PC players while still feeling powerful and satisfying to use for the VR player:

• Slightly decreased HMG rate of fire (from 8 shots per second -480 rpm- to 6,25 shots per seond -375 rpm-)
  
• HMG damage reduced from 50 armor piercing to 45 armor piercing (this makes 1-shot kills harder to pull off)
  
• HMG recoil substantially increased
  
• HMG magazine capacity reduced from 50 to 41, just enough to overheat as you shoot the last shot like the minigun does (overheating becoming a thing to worry about in infinite ammo modes)
  
  
• Fixed a sneaky bug in the armor code that was causing armor to not be as effective as intended against armor piercing rounds
  
  
• Fixed SMG laser sight not turning back on pickup after holsterin it with an active laser sight
  

Hello! Short PSA here. As you might have noticed, Valve is doing some Remote Play tweaking that has caused some widespread issues, both for VR and non-VR local games. If you are getting no sound on the client or are getting the "host busy" message, this should fix it.

As with everything related to Remote Play Together, remember you can check on the official Steam Discussions to see if other users also have similar problems, and of course you can send Valve a support ticket if you have an easy to reproduce bug report. I've been dealing with Remote Play being a pain in the behind for a bunch of years now, so you can also join the Escape from Mandrillia Discord and we might help you troubleshoot.

CLIENT IS GETTING NO SOUND: Fixed by host going into Steam Client Beta (Steam > Settings > Interface > Beta Client Participation). The fact that this is fixed on the beta means that this will be probably fixed for everyone soon on the main branch.

CLIENT IS GETTING "HOST IS BUSY" MESSAGE, CAN'T CONTROL THE GAME: Fixed by making sure Steam Overlay is enabled (Steam > Settings > In Game > Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game).

Finally, this is a long-running one, but I'm throwing this here just in case:

CLIENT WANTS TO USE KEYBOARD AND MOUSE: This one Valve is aware of, and seems to be caused by the fact they might be in the process of unify Big Screen, Steam Deck, and Steam VR dashboard UI. When playing with someone over Remote Play in VR, the host does not get the "assign controller" window, and remote play defaults to controller, so if the client wants to use keyboard they're out of luck. TEMPORARY FIX: activate Big Screen, then go to the "Quick Access Menu" (Ctrl + 2), and the control assign will be present there. I want to think that Valve intends to have the quick access menu be a thing inside the VR dashboard at some point in the future.

That's all for now! As a little sneak peek, here's how the new, chunky Item Spawner looks like in the upcoming Firing Range scene:

After a very annoying week, here's a little weapon-related update while I work on the firing range:

• Added a laser pointer to the SMG; activated with the front grip like with the Carbine and Plasma Rifle
  
• Both HMG and Minigun now have to be two-handed if you want to properly use them: if you shoot them one-handed they will fly out of your hand
  
• Very, very slightly increased minigun rate of fire
  
• Changed the minigun firing sound to a more BRRT-y one