Death Trash News

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

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/