January 2024 | Major Gameplay Overhaul
This is the final overhaul of the game. It brings many changes, additions, and fixes.
Over the last few months there has been an update once a month to fix, change, and generally remaster a game that I have had on my mind for the last 4 years. Over those last 4 years, the world has changed dramatically, and with it my life and trajectory.
A lot of my time with the game has been escapism from my actual life. From people who I would think to trust being worthless petty people, to my world view shifting, being overwhelmed by things I have no control over, and dealing with the consequences of being alive in the life I live growing up around people I happened to. It's been a mess, and this project, and some others, have been my distraction.
During development I have been in and out of the military, moved to the opposite side of the country from where I used to live, met many people, been in and out of school, dealt with death threats, moved a few times within the area I live now and plan to leave soon, and have generally just dealt with a lot of nonsense.
I have sat on this game, released a few builds a month in some periods, sometimes dozens, while other periods nothing has come for a month or two because I have a life outside of the internet. Sometimes I was given help, but 99 percent of everything in this game is all me. I've spent a lot of time with this project. I am moving on, at least for the most part.
There will be updates past this point, but mainly focused on fixing anything that I broke by accident, or bugs that are found. A map may come out once a month, or maybe never again. I do plan to add more options. Mainly censorship options, visual options, and more accessibility features but again I am only one dude. There may be more music, I am unsure.
Future wise, I will be working on a VR title. It is the project I have been meaning to make for a while, it'll probably disrupt the way people see VR as a whole and the potential for it. I have to redo the design document (which will not take too long but I will be putting time into) and then start the development. I will be using a new engine on top of that meaning learning a whole new world of development. 3D is a lot easier than 2D. 2D I had to make each asset, animation, and move the UI pixel by pixel in weird but creative ways. 3D is just collisions. 2D is just collisions, but in a very different, more annoying way. Again, this will take me some time so...
Besides the VR title that will take a decent chunk of time, I have 2 other 2D games that I have been working on. One, started this year is a Sandbox game, and the other, started in mid 2023 is a beat-em-up project. These should see the light of day this year, more updates on those will come as time passes by. Keep an eye out for these posts.
The reason DEAD 2 never came out is that I put everything I was going to put into DEAD 2 into this game instead with the recent updates. Why make a new game when you can fix, or upgrade what was already there? Very much a Valve approach. The only thing left to do is to add the map 'Pit' which you can find in the "Betas" section under the games properties tab in Steam.
DEAD+ will be either totally removed at some point, or be turned into a map pack similar to older call of duty titles as well as include a downloadable version of the soundtrack. Totally removing is not my objective, people bought it and I want to improve it.
This update took about 120 hours of my time, and 40 hours of play time maybe more. It's a soft estimate. This was all in December.
Thanks to my girlfriend for always being there to test my games, and give me feedback.
Anyways, here is all the stuff I did for this final revamp update (give or take):
Updates/Additions:
*Added Various Beta Channels so players can play each version of the game that has been released. (This maybe changed to find better builds)
*Leaderboard now shows your score, friends scores, and top 30 score instead of just top 30.
*Weapon Reloading, Sounds, Additions, and Upgrades.
*Hundreds of Sounds.
*Entire game Visual Overhaul.
*4 Round-Based Levels, with more to come.
*New Enemies.
*New Blood Interactions.
*Better collisions.
Fixes/Tweaks/Optimizations/Changes
*Steam SDK Version Change.
*Level images being too big and invisible, so you would select all levels at once in some instances.
*Hedge spawns changed due to problems. Hedges now lighter. Hedge still sucks as a level.
*Main Menu track.
*Game Breaking kill 500.
*Bombers and Big Boys not pausing.
*"Start Game" Text.
*Teleport hover messing up GUI layer.
*Changes to Steam Store descriptions and summary.
*Clearer Magnet Visual.
*Bullet, and Money Icon.
*Buy Station Images
*What you buy and prices.
*removed the throwing knife.
*Changed weapon upgrades from being terrible, and/or not working.
*Fixed some wall collisions.
*Removed SPD "upgrade" because it was way too game breaking.
*Changed hard-save data to local instead of app.
*Steam Overlay being horrible.
*Changed collision distances.
*Cleaned up the FONT!
*Better Controller Support.
*controller lock-on option for people who do not want to aim because it is difficult.
*Removed a few hundred lines of not needed code/made stuff more efficient because I know more now.
Stuff that will come sooner than later, probably the next post:
*More Steam support (Cloud, etc.)
*Some other stuff I do not want to promise but will do in due time.
*Proper ambient music for the 4 round based levels. Right now it is silence, which means fart noises.
*PIT as level 5 for round based gameplay.
*More options: Keybindings, Sensitive Content Warning Disable/Enable, Auto reload (idk if i want to).
*Weapon Modding
*1 New Enemy
*Grenade reintroduction (requires keybinding update)
*More power pickups.
*Start Splash screens for Quality of life reasons.
*Probably one more achievement, as well as more achievements per map.
*New trailer, and Steam Store art (this is super annoying and tedious so if anyone wants to help hmu lol)
Special Thanks to Flaming Potato, and Trash for helping report a few glaring bugs.
Also, just as a note, this update has been out since the 29th or something... from then till now has been constant updating to make sure it was all proper before it was announced.
If you read this far, give the post a like :)
Over the last few months there has been an update once a month to fix, change, and generally remaster a game that I have had on my mind for the last 4 years. Over those last 4 years, the world has changed dramatically, and with it my life and trajectory.
A lot of my time with the game has been escapism from my actual life. From people who I would think to trust being worthless petty people, to my world view shifting, being overwhelmed by things I have no control over, and dealing with the consequences of being alive in the life I live growing up around people I happened to. It's been a mess, and this project, and some others, have been my distraction.
During development I have been in and out of the military, moved to the opposite side of the country from where I used to live, met many people, been in and out of school, dealt with death threats, moved a few times within the area I live now and plan to leave soon, and have generally just dealt with a lot of nonsense.
I have sat on this game, released a few builds a month in some periods, sometimes dozens, while other periods nothing has come for a month or two because I have a life outside of the internet. Sometimes I was given help, but 99 percent of everything in this game is all me. I've spent a lot of time with this project. I am moving on, at least for the most part.
There will be updates past this point, but mainly focused on fixing anything that I broke by accident, or bugs that are found. A map may come out once a month, or maybe never again. I do plan to add more options. Mainly censorship options, visual options, and more accessibility features but again I am only one dude. There may be more music, I am unsure.
Future wise, I will be working on a VR title. It is the project I have been meaning to make for a while, it'll probably disrupt the way people see VR as a whole and the potential for it. I have to redo the design document (which will not take too long but I will be putting time into) and then start the development. I will be using a new engine on top of that meaning learning a whole new world of development. 3D is a lot easier than 2D. 2D I had to make each asset, animation, and move the UI pixel by pixel in weird but creative ways. 3D is just collisions. 2D is just collisions, but in a very different, more annoying way. Again, this will take me some time so...
Besides the VR title that will take a decent chunk of time, I have 2 other 2D games that I have been working on. One, started this year is a Sandbox game, and the other, started in mid 2023 is a beat-em-up project. These should see the light of day this year, more updates on those will come as time passes by. Keep an eye out for these posts.
The reason DEAD 2 never came out is that I put everything I was going to put into DEAD 2 into this game instead with the recent updates. Why make a new game when you can fix, or upgrade what was already there? Very much a Valve approach. The only thing left to do is to add the map 'Pit' which you can find in the "Betas" section under the games properties tab in Steam.
DEAD+ will be either totally removed at some point, or be turned into a map pack similar to older call of duty titles as well as include a downloadable version of the soundtrack. Totally removing is not my objective, people bought it and I want to improve it.
This update took about 120 hours of my time, and 40 hours of play time maybe more. It's a soft estimate. This was all in December.
Thanks to my girlfriend for always being there to test my games, and give me feedback.
Anyways, here is all the stuff I did for this final revamp update (give or take):
Updates/Additions:
*Added Various Beta Channels so players can play each version of the game that has been released. (This maybe changed to find better builds)
*Leaderboard now shows your score, friends scores, and top 30 score instead of just top 30.
*Weapon Reloading, Sounds, Additions, and Upgrades.
*Hundreds of Sounds.
*Entire game Visual Overhaul.
*4 Round-Based Levels, with more to come.
*New Enemies.
*New Blood Interactions.
*Better collisions.
Fixes/Tweaks/Optimizations/Changes
*Steam SDK Version Change.
*Level images being too big and invisible, so you would select all levels at once in some instances.
*Hedge spawns changed due to problems. Hedges now lighter. Hedge still sucks as a level.
*Main Menu track.
*Game Breaking kill 500.
*Bombers and Big Boys not pausing.
*"Start Game" Text.
*Teleport hover messing up GUI layer.
*Changes to Steam Store descriptions and summary.
*Clearer Magnet Visual.
*Bullet, and Money Icon.
*Buy Station Images
*What you buy and prices.
*removed the throwing knife.
*Changed weapon upgrades from being terrible, and/or not working.
*Fixed some wall collisions.
*Removed SPD "upgrade" because it was way too game breaking.
*Changed hard-save data to local instead of app.
*Steam Overlay being horrible.
*Changed collision distances.
*Cleaned up the FONT!
*Better Controller Support.
*controller lock-on option for people who do not want to aim because it is difficult.
*Removed a few hundred lines of not needed code/made stuff more efficient because I know more now.
Stuff that will come sooner than later, probably the next post:
*More Steam support (Cloud, etc.)
*Some other stuff I do not want to promise but will do in due time.
*Proper ambient music for the 4 round based levels. Right now it is silence, which means fart noises.
*PIT as level 5 for round based gameplay.
*More options: Keybindings, Sensitive Content Warning Disable/Enable, Auto reload (idk if i want to).
*Weapon Modding
*1 New Enemy
*Grenade reintroduction (requires keybinding update)
*More power pickups.
*Start Splash screens for Quality of life reasons.
*Probably one more achievement, as well as more achievements per map.
*New trailer, and Steam Store art (this is super annoying and tedious so if anyone wants to help hmu lol)
Special Thanks to Flaming Potato, and Trash for helping report a few glaring bugs.
Also, just as a note, this update has been out since the 29th or something... from then till now has been constant updating to make sure it was all proper before it was announced.
If you read this far, give the post a like :)