Death Trash News

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to our first monthly update. It's a substantial improvement of Death Trash, even if we couldn't add everything that we had planned for it.

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

[h3]Major changes[/h3]
- input changes: have one shared use button for abilities and items
- controller: improved action wheel UI and game feel
- use slow motion when using action wheel or action selection screen in singleplayer
- mouse and keyboard: added optional action bar
- added new optional mouse input combat mode 'half-automatic'; updated descriptions for other modes
- added weapon scroll display (default DPad left and right, or mouse wheel)
- allow rolling while reloading by pausing reloading
- updated energy guns: visuals, sounds, and gameplay stats
- make friendly world map encounters spawn player and NPCs next to each other
- updated handling area exits: trigger immediately when touching with direct movement and make character walk towards exit
- updated threat values: make NPC stop following earlier, have melee create more threat than ranged
- reset NPC health when they leave combat
- Steam Deck improvements

[h3]Minor changes[/h3]
- updated small firearms: visuals and sounds
- make puking cleanse all infection points
- make mute puke sound option also affect the drop item sound
- fixed characters losing weapons on death potentially spawning them behind a wall
- fixed issues with characters investigating doors opened by player
- fixed some reused objects not getting tracked for highlight all functionality
- fixed situations where an item would be shown through opaque house roofs
- fixed a softlock in Titans Guts
- small level design fixes throughout the game
- updated melee mouse cursor
- updated tutorials and default bindings for the mentioned input changes
- updated dialogue UI settings
- fixed a few other UI issues
- fixed equipped ability display or quick item display occasionally ending up at wrong position
- fixed issues with overlapping player messages, location messages and quest messages
- move quest messages to lower half of screen when in dialogue to prevent dialogue text overlap
- fixed question mark above NPCs not following their movement
- allow using block ability outside combat mode
- co-op: fixed some abilities hurting or otherwise affecting other player when they should not
- fixed some sounds not being affected by distance
- fixed UI sorting issue with messages
- fixed speaker color of some unique NPCs changing on returning to them
- updated audio plugin and improved error handling
- updated Steam API version
- fixed Linux version crashing on exit
- fixed a few rare crashes
- additional bug fixes and framework improvements

[h2]Details[/h2]

We made a few steps forward in figuring out the input "puzzle". Selecting abilities and items as well as throwing items should be much more comfortable now on the controller. And for those on mouse / keyboard who want to use a traditional action bar, there's that option now. The slow motion during action wheel or the selection screen on mouse / keyboard should make things easier, too.
I'm unhappy still with the block ability, which we'll hopefully have time to look at for the next update.

There's a whole lot of bug fixes and small gameplay improvements in this update, which are mostly based on getting feedback from you. Thank you for sending us your thoughts as well as bug reports.

We wanted to add more content in this update (new energy weapons, updating second encounter with Oracle, new dungeon and other locations) but it's only half-finished right now, so we're moving all of that to the March Update. I'm sorry about that. This delay is partly due to unforeseen circumstances, but also due to me misplanning this.
If you already played through the current content and are waiting for an update to replay the game, better wait for next month's update.

[h2]Steam Deck[/h2]

The Steam Deck got released and it's a great way to play Death Trash. The game was compatible right from the start but we also made a few improvements with this update.
We're planning to improve it further with the upcoming updates, including adding more input options.

[h2]Next Update[/h2]

The next update will happen in March. Don't know yet when and what it will actually contain, but, as mentioned before, probably / hopefully new energy weapons, new locations and some main quest update.

Thank you for your continued interest in Death Trash and all your support so far.

Have a nice week!

- Stephan

Hey!

We have a small announcement regarding our workflow.

[h2]Game Updates[/h2]

So far we have updated the game about once per week since release. This fast rhythm was really helpful in improving the quality of the core game.
We're focusing on new content though, which often means bigger chunks of work, and the remaining bugs are less of an immediate nature. Therefore an update rhythm with longer intervals seems to be more fitting to the development tasks in front of us.

From now on we'll plan for monthly updates on the public branch, and we'll keep the inbetween updates to a beta testing branch. These will probably continue to be on a weekly basis, but we'll be less rigid with it. And when the monthly update is ready, we keep it a few more days on the beta branch for further testing until we know it's solid enough for a public release.

For anyone playing the game for the first time we'll recommend to just stick to the default branch. But if you played the game already and are returning to check out ongoing changes and want to help out with feedback and reporting bugs, please switch to the beta branch.

Here's how you can switch:
Rightclick on the game in the Steam library, click Properties, click Beta. There select the "beta" branch. Steam should update or queue an update for the game now. If you want to return to the public branch, select "None" in the BETAS window.

For the content update in February we're planning new locations, new energy weapons, gameplay improvements, and more.

Thank you. That's all. Hope you'll have a nice week. :)

- Stephan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/941460/Death_Trash/

Update Notes

- fixed input delay on beginning targeting with throwable items
- show visual display for blip range while targeting
- adjusted blip range
- added numbers to visual character creation
- co-op: fixed a cursor issue showing skill check values etc. from other player
- show UI message when enemy avoided a stun
- fixed tutorial message for throwing items ending prematurely
- UI refinements for dialogue
- fixed some sounds being heard irregardless of distance to them
- fixed a few achievement issues when continuing savegame from demo
- fixed some exits in lower dungeon shown as "to world map" on map overview
- fixes button heights in settings menu on high resolution display
- fixed quest update message potentially being shown when already dead
- made lever for leaving Mine 19 more obvious
- fixed a player character head
- fixed some text
- reduced graphics memory usage
- fixed some memory leaks
- additional bug fixes and framework improvements

Fully back at work again this week.
Also got some concept work done for the second third of the game, but safe to say the technical tasks got the upper hand again.

Now that the core game is stable and most pressing bugs have been fixed, I'm thinking about changing our rhythm to less frequent but larger updates, and use the beta branch for the inbetween steps. (The beta branch exists already, by the way, but it's only used during the update process and carries the identical version as the public branch most of the time.)

- Stephan

Update Notes

- fixed Fleshworms getting spawned multiple times on reloading levels
- fixed a cause for multiple potential crashes when entering other worlds
- co-op: improved checking for and removing items from inventory during dialogue
- small UI and usability improvements
- added feedback button (F1) to key bindings

Just a small update this week as we took a few days off, too.

Happy New Year! We have an incredibly busy year behind us, and next year looks like it's gonna be very busy, too. I wish you all the best for this coming year, and I hope we're gonna see Death Trash grow into the best possible experience, live up to its potential.

Thank you so much, everyone, for supporting us so far.

- Stephan

[h2]Update Notes[/h2]

- added more player character portraits
- updated some dialogue
- fixed effects from infection potentially permanently stuck on player character
- added some props for the target practicing bots in Godhunters Prison and fixed some visual issues with the bots
- fixed a few situations of logic triggers potentially not getting executed, and specifically for unlocking world map progress on Crossroads and The Maw
- fixed a few bugs when switching UI while equip or unequip of implants is in progress
- fixed not naming specific inventory on being full when looting from container
- updated UI for player messages
- fixed a few UI actions (e.g. looting) triggering multiple sounds

[h2]What we're working on...[/h2]

Partial victory this week: I still had to take care of lots of technical issues, but I began working on the dialogue of the game. I think I made progress in understanding where some of the current dialogue falls short and how it can be improved.

Chris is working on new enemy types. They'll need some testing, visuals and audio, too, so not sure yet when they will make it into the current game.

As usual, a few bug fixes. Specifically switching to another inventory window in the short timeframe when an implant is equipped seems to have caused a few problems in the past that were reported but where I couldn't identify the root cause. This is one of those bugs that feels really good to fix.

[h2]Happy Holidays! (if that applies to you)[/h2]

Death Trash is on sale, by the way, until January 5th:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/941460/Death_Trash/

And if you played the game already, consider sharing your opinion by writing a Steam review. It's helpful for us, reading them, but it also helps a lot in giving this game more visibility towards other people on Steam.

Have a nice weekend!
And if you're celebrating seasonal holidays: Happy Holidays! :)

I'll have some days off, but I'll probably here again with a new update next week.

- Stephan