Death Trash News

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to our fifth regular monthly update.

For this update we worked on new content (tower location, second Oracle encounter), made gameplay and usability improvements and also fixed a number of bugs again.

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

[h3]Content[/h3]

- updated second encounter with Oracle (work in progress)
- added more content to tower area (work in progress)
- added Flashbang grenade
- updated world map for future content
- new sounds: some doors, lockpicking, using high tech skill

[h3]Combat[/h3]

- changed default weapon triggering to differ between automatic and non-automatic weapons; added user setting for old behaviour
- updated salvo shots of enemies so some of them have mini pauses inbetween each shot to give the player a chance of avoiding the damage
- make neutral NPCs use same combat behaviours as enemies

[h3]General Improvements[/h3]

- generated areas: made anomaly zones a bit smaller
- generated areas: made path broader to prevent impassable situations
- generated areas: small visual adjustments
- updated throwable items trajectory to include drag
- added min skill value for rocket launcher and made rockets stackable
- list unknown lore items as ???
- list unlearned crafting recipes as ???
- updated some art assets

[h3]Usability Improvements[/h3]

- allow equipping Block through action selection screens and action bar, updated key binding
- added NPC character name to first speech item they have in any dialogue
- added specific keyboard and controller shortcut for using the puke ability
- added input buffer for shooting and reloading (e.g. to immediately perform after rolling)
- added user option to disable reload getting triggered when trying to shoot and magazine is empty
- make action wheel, action selection screen and inventories use same item sorting order
- updated weapon descriptions
- fixed user feedback issues on some equipment actions
- fixed not being able to move character with keyboard while map is open when last input before was point and click command
- fixed a few issues when assigning custom button assigments for controller
- fixed "leave combat" input action unintentionally being assigned on left stick press on controller

[h3]Performance[/h3]

- fixed a few memory leaks

[h3]General Bug Fixes[/h3]

- fixed sound from energy balls persisting
- fixed not being able to deconstruct some energy weapons
- fixed shootable buttons not working with energy weapons
- fixed scene fade in affected by action wheel slowdown etc.
- fixed throwable items using wrong target offset in some cases
- fixed health bar drawn behind action wheel and other screens
- fixed some equipment UI not getting updated when using 'Next Ability' and 'Previous Ability' actions
- fixed animation issue with Deconstructor
- fixed tutorial about switching back to melee lingering longer than needed
- fixed visual UI glitch when entering the world map
- fixed lockable container not saving their hasBeenSearched state
- fixed minor issues with NPC behaviours
- additional UI bug fixes
- Mac OS: fixed debug console commands not opening a directory in Finder when they should
- fixed small issues with feedback form
- additional small bug fixes and framework improvements

[h2]Thoughts[/h2]

It would be a vast overestimation if I said that content creation is in full swing, but, as was foretold, the Death Trash foundation (framework, tools, workflow etc.) is becoming more solid with every passing week and we have more time to take care of the game itself. Meaning both the game world itself with its locations and characters but also the gameplay, the interaction with this world.
I remain hopeful that we well transform our work into a steady stream of growth in size and quality for Death Trash.

[h2]Feedback Tools[/h2]

As always, we appreciate any feedback on the changes we made to the game. Best way to give feedback is through the F1 in-game tool as it adds a bit of game context to every feedback item sent.
We recently added a convenient shortcut if you just want to take a quick look at different things: Open the in-game console with Shift+F10 and enter Playtest to get a list of jump points to the existing content. This won't interfere with your existing save games.

Thank you for your continued interest in Death Trash.

Have a nice week!

- Stephan

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to our fourth regular monthly update.

This update mostly improves existing elements. We spent a substantial amount of time on updating our internal tools (benefitting us as well as hopefully other people in the future), and the remaining time was spent on solving a few long-standing issues with NPC behaviours and pathfinding, for example.

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

[h3]Content[/h3]

- improvements to mountain path and tower location
- updated a few sound events
- updated visuals for locked doors
- updated some other scene assets
- fixed some dialogue

[h3]Combat[/h3]

- updated combat behaviors for standard human and mutant enemies, trying to fix them attacking all at the same time when fighting groups and them straight line walking towards enemy
- updated melee targeting so targets immediately in front of the character to the left and right are included, too
- added different melee hit visuals when hitting a target vs hitting none or multiple
- changed how command driven characters try to melee attack big static characters like the Fleshkraken
- prevent NPCs standing on spot and hitting with melee without pausing after a few hits
- fixed potential issue with the order of Flesh Vermin actions
- updated dog combat behavior

[h3]General Improvements[/h3]

- refactored character commands and actions to fix any frame delay between NPC commands
- allow stealth attacking animals
- make idle NPCs not leave their current room when walking around a bit (fixes a few NPC issues)
- added another move state inbetween walk and run for NPCs
- added "kneel and use" animation for standard NPCs
- changed getting damage while reloading etc.: rewind up to max 2 times, but after that follow through

[h3]Usability Improvements[/h3]

- reordered inventory tabs
- adjusted tutorial display to make it more obvious
- show stealth attack not being possible on machines, e.g. turrets
- fixed guards in Puke Bar not triggering weapon mode notification when warning player; and made weapon mode notification more obvious
- fixed character look direction potentially influenced by getting pushed around
- pathfinding: fixed failing on mini distances
- pathfinding: fixed occasional fail directly after actions like dialogue
- pathfinding: fixed struggling with using a moving object behind obstacles (e.g. Fleshworm with Animalism)
- pathfinding: fixed a few player character commands not immediately triggering pathfinding
- fixed some point and click melee attacks with movement failing around obstacles or room corners
- made number 7 in default font more distinguishable from number 1
- non-standard mouse input setting for combat: make camera offset in melee targeting behave similar to the ranged camera
- non-standard mouse input setting for combat: fixed occasional wrong player character weapon display
- fixed some scenarios of point and click hovered scene object visuals remaining when switching to state without point and click
- made action bar more obvious visually

[h3]Performance[/h3]

- fixed some memory leaks
- general performance improvements
- additional performance improvements on world map
- fixed some cursor hover mess-ups, possibly resulting in UI lag in inventory etc.
- reduced memory usage on character commands

[h3]Framework Update[/h3]

- large internal data changes to levels, dialogue, quests and behavior trees to support future features

[h3]General Bug Fixes[/h3]

- fixed robots potentially cursing like humans
- fixed a few rare crashes
- fixed a few moments where it was possible to save but should not
- fixed some issues with neutral NPCs reacting to player targeting them
- fixed NPCs glitching out at locked doors when wanting to talk to other NPC
- fixed spawned minions of Titans dropping loot
- fixed item drop issues with boss character in tower location
- fixed potential errors with faction assignment on dynamically spawned characters
- fixed sound issue with new energy weapons
- fixed some potential sound glitches on NPCs using weapons
- fixed some sound events not getting interrupted when character gets interrupted
- fixed some UI issues in inventory
- fixed UI scaling issues at high resolution (regression in 0.8.2)
- fixed a few other UI issues, mostly related to changes in the last months
- co-op: fixed a few issues with camera and UI effects on shared screen
- co-op: fixed issue that could make invulnerability be stuck on player character
- fixed some visual glitches with the flamethrower
- reduced or removed ground blood splashing for some weapons
- fixed some possible input issues depending on mouse combat mode and input bindings
- fixed a few issues related to being spawned as another character in another world
- fixed mines getting triggered by slow flowing energy balls
- fixed Deconstructor not having correct death animation depending on having claw or not
- fixed a pixelart gap issue in the brown indoor tileset
- fixed other small issues with some scene assets
- fixed error handler not being interactable when error occurs during loading phase
- additional small bug fixes and framework improvements

[h2]Thoughts[/h2]

Indie game development is not a straight forward process. The plan for this month (work on content, get a smaller update out fast) was different to what actually happened. The reasons for short-term plan changes like that are manifold, but here it came down to: It's more productive to continue in the current workflow, e.g. programming, when similar tasks get added to the list. And the general goals for the game remain the same, but invidual tasks on how to reach these goals are still very dynamic. Thus the list of tasks changes sometimes. Partly due to incoming feedback, but mostly I think because it's the very nature of design work: The final design of the game is not fully known to us. We know parts of it, but the other parts we have to discover and work towards discovering them. This is not only true for the gameplay and story design but also, in parts, for the technical side of the game, as it's the carrier and interconnected with the whole experience of the game.
It will be interesting to see how much this process will differ on future games we develop. If the process is more planned if building on an existing template instead of creating a new one.

Regarding the NPC combat behaviours: We need to put in more work on making enemies more interesting. Specifically in enemy variety. But I hope that these latest changes already make fighting against groups of enemies more feasible and make individual encounters more interesting by not making melee enemies walk towards the player character in a frontal path.

[h2]Feedback Tools[/h2]

As always, we appreciate any feedback on the changes we made to the game. Best way to give feedback is through the F1 in-game tool as it adds a bit of game context to every feedback item sent.
We recently added a convenient shortcut if you just want to take a quick look at different things: Open the in-game console with Shift+F10 and enter Playtest to get a list of jump points to the existing content. This won't interfere with your existing save games.

Thank you for your continued interest in Death Trash.

Have a nice week!

- Stephan

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to our third regular monthly update.

We worked on new content but we also took care of the core game experience through lots of small improvements.

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

[h3]Content[/h3]

- added tower location (work in progress)
- added mountain path location (work in progress)
- added new energy weapons
- improved Aksa's dialogue
- allow getting quest item for Aksa before starting her quest
- added some stairs visuals throughout the game
- updated a few sprites and added more art assets
- small level design fixes and improvements throughout the game
- new level up sound

[h3]Combat Improvements[/h3]

- reduced angle for getting targets for melee attacks
- updated melee attack visuals to better fit range and angle of melee attacks
- added cursor visuals for a few combat related actions
- added some blood effects to the ground after each hit
- improved animation for unarmed combat
- updated ranged weapon pointer of enemies so max range is clearer
- drastically reduced critical hit damage influence on the game
- fixed wrong calculation of critical hit damage bonus through items
- make NPCs potentially cancel ranged shooting when target moves behind obstacle
- exaggerated mutant melee attack for readability
- hard difficulty: apply hitstun to player, same as NPCs (experimental)
- added smaller movement pushback on getting hit even if resisting the hitstun
- fixed spider throwing their web against walls
- fixed NPCs being passive in combat when at the edge of the world
- fixed some other minor issues with NPC behaviors
- added range info to weapon descriptions

[h3]General Improvements[/h3]

- enable showing holstered weapon for player character
- disabled player character commenting on killing someone
- added more cases of player raising attention of NPCs and enemies, including puking

[h3]Usability Improvements[/h3]

- added slight camera movement when switching floors
- updated camera lerp on death and other fade out actions
- when consuming item from action selection screen, stop slow motion (improves using multiple consumables)
- added user interface option for enforcing handheld mode (e.g. when game doesn't recognize it's being played on Steam Deck)
- moved weapon scroll display to corner position
- improved short travel marker UI
- readded 'Next Ability' and 'Previous Ability' to keybindings
- small feedback improvements for triggering abilities
- added Playtest entry to debug console as a quickstart for some scenarios

[h3]Technical Improvements[/h3]

- fixed some memory leaks
- decreased memory usage of the application
- various performance improvements
- updated Unity Engine to 2020.3.32f
- updated Controller plugins

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

- co-op: fixed some camera issues
- improved collider around spikes
- fixed a few potential errors happening on Fleshworms crawling from player corpse
- fixed continuously melee attacking when holding attack override key and mouse button instead of only executing melee once
- controller: fixed issues with item comparison functionality
- fixed issue with standard input profile
- fixed a case of overlapping damage numbers
- fixed some issues with area exits
- fixed errors with the boss fight in Flesh Crater
- fixed a few rare crashes
- fixed potential issue with sounds being interrupted
- fixed not being able to deconstruct knife
- additional small bug fixes and improvements

[h2]Thoughts[/h2]

Creating new content is a slow process for us still, but our tools get better, our workflow gets improved and we're also gaining experience in building this game. (Thanks to everyone who gives us feedback on what we're building.) And while there are still lots of tasks ahead concerning the gameplay and quality of the existing content, the core game experience feels good enough and the game is also in a good technical state so that we have noticably more time to work on content.

The new locations are still raw. The tower needs a lot of fixes still, and the mountain path is for now just a combat area to test the new energy weapons. I'm also personally working on updating the second encounter with the Oracle, but that was too raw still to include it now.
Still, feels good to work on locations and gameplay now on a daily basis. The game will grow and blossom.

I don't think the additions are worth yet to have another playthrough if you played the game already. But we added a convenient shortcut if you just want to take a quick look at different things: Open the in-game console with Shift+F10 and enter Playtest to get a list of jump points to the existing content. This won't interfere with your existing save games.

[h2]Next Update[/h2]

The next monthly update will happen very soon, actually. We'll try to break the pattern of releasing the monthly updates at the very end of the month, so the next one will be released sometime at the beginning of May. That one will be a smaller one, of course.

Sneak peak at some artwork for the next update:


Thank you for your continued interest in Death Trash.

Have a nice week!

- Stephan

0.8.1.1
- fixed script error from latest update

0.8.1.2
- allow drag and drop of abilities into action bar from body inventory
- improved action bar visibility on action selection screen
- fixed a few issues with updating ability values in the action bar
- fixed DPad conflict between navigation and quests and crafting shortcut in merchant and loot view
- fixed characters like Mortus having a boss health bar
- fixed accidental trial watermark in recent update

0.8.1.3
- fixed issues with the action bar

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to our second regular monthly update.

We spent half of our time in March on performance, balancing and other improvements, and half of our time on new content. Unfortunately, the new content is not ready at this moment.

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

[h3]Combat improvements[/h3]

- updated melee timings, making some weapons a bit faster
- melee weapons have different ranges now
- updated damage of some enemies
- increase damage portion on secondary targets when hitting multiple targets
- compressed player health over later levels
- removed general range randomization on bullets (but kept the indiviual 'scatter' value)
- decreased damage reduction by resistance values
- updated general damage balancing
- made ranged targeting characters take movement of target into account (standard and hard difficulty)
- relaxed difficulty: increased player damage, especially against bosses
- updated energy weapons effect visuals and values
- reduced scatter for some weapons
- reduced recoil pushback for some weapons
- faster attack speed for the knife
- added rocket launcher audio
- updated robot enemy visuals, damage and health
- fixed a few enemy types not being set to aggressive combat behavior

[h3]Performance[/h3]

- improved loading times
- fixed memory allocation due to exploring area map; fixes some random frame spikes due to garbage collector slowdowns
- fixed a few memory leaks
- improved performance while in stealth mode
- general performance improvements on combat actions
- small per frame performance improvements
- fixed a few per frame memory allocations
- additional small performance improvements for various objects

[h3]Fixes and Improvements[/h3]

- updated audio plugin: fixes not having audio on some PC configurations
- small content improvements
- fixed not being able to switch weapons (for afterwards) while attacking
- improved action wheel UI
- increased font size of some UI elements
- minor dialogue UI improvements
- fixed and improved lots of small UI issues
- close map on a few input events like weapon scrolling
- make enemies walk instead of run when walking away after killing player
- fixed fade in from black on entering levels sometimes getting cut short
- fixed world map exits in New Delphi not triggering automatically
- fixed character walk from exit on fade out even if blocked by collider
- fixed some enemy salvo shots abruptly ending
- fixed issues with feedback form
- fixed item description when weapon was modified
- fixed player dodging all damage through rolling for some cases it was not intended for
- fixed worms and worm spawner in Flesh Crater boss fight not being clickable
- controller: when picking automatic target by melee without having direction input, prefer enemy characters over destructibles
- controller: apply optional targeting help to using directional abilities, too
- controller: on large UI, use tooltip UI instead of bottom descriptions
- controller: fixed skill modifier missing in character creation
- fixed some potential script errors
- fixed an issue that could make a bullet potentially hit the same target twice
- fixed a few tutorial issues
- fixed a few issues with the debug console
- fixed Agira walking into the house when trying to distance from player character
- fixed an aggro issue when NPCs accidentally hit characters from other faction
- fixed being able to try entering stealth again when at 0 energy for it
- fixed a few issues with new energy weapons
- fixed not being shown Continue button in some cases despite having existing savegames
- simplified main menu
- updated camera scale for some resolutions
- allow bold text usage for localization mods
- added key binding for quest window
- additional bug fixes and small improvements

[h2]Details[/h2]

We touched a lot of combat-related values in this update.
The goal here was to make the combat more tight as well as keeping it intense enough especially in later levels. Previously, there was a big drop off in difficulty in later levels.
We will continue making changes to the combat in the following months. I would like to get rid of some moments where enemies take way too many hits before going down.
Any combat-related feedback is appreciated and it's best to send it via the in-game feedback form with the game data attached, so we can look at your current stats and equipment as context to your feedback about a combat situation.

We also improved the performance of the game. Loading times for each level have been decreased, and we also fixed some memory leaks, which lead to a creeping increase of time spent on the loading screen the longer the game was running.
Previously there were also some low frame spikes happening randomly, which were caused by the dynamic memory management of the game engine triggering a "garbage collection" at that point. We fixed a lot of cases where memory was allocated temporarily during gameplay time, so these moments should either be gone now or a lot less frequent.
One problematic area regarding performance on less powerful systems is the stealth mode, due to the method the visual cones of enemies are generated. We improved this now, but it will require additional future work to bring it closer to the performance of standard gameplay.

As I mentioned before, we also spent half of our time in March on new content. Sadly it wasn't enough time to get it to a good shape.

[h2]Next Update[/h2]

The next update will happen in April. Don't know yet when and what it will actually contain, and this time I'm not making any predictions.
What I can promise is that we continue to work on the game to the best of our abilities and as motivated as ever.

Thank you for your continued interest in Death Trash.

Have a nice week!

- Stephan