Hidden Deep News

[p]Greetings explorers,
[/p][p]Sincere apologies for the long waiting time. There is no sugarcoating and no real excuse able to somehow justify this long silence - But what is the most important: At no point came it to my mind to quit or abandon the project, though I have to admit that while the time flew by there were days that felt worse than others. Being a solo Developer comes with a lot of benefits, but as well all of the burdens - I'm sorry that in the end it was a very long run for all of you without any substantial updates or content. So I thank the Hidden Deep community, my friends and family for their patience.

But let me explain what happened:[/p][p]As you already voiced very loudly, Multiplayer is one of the most asked for features and I really wanted to make it work - It looked feasible, it looked even relatively easy - until I actually hit the first roadblocks. There was no other way than reworking the game up from the very ground. Now I’ll have the tools at hand to not just fulfill your biggest feature-wish but to increase my output for future updates as well.
[/p][p]Luckily all of this brain-breaking, depression-inducing groundwork comes to an end now, since with this update I’m releasing today, we now have a foundation for more stable and more frequent updates. Again, as stated, I'm very sorry it took me way longer to get rid of the old codebase that kept the game down, but now we’re in for a bright future… as far as that’s possible down in the caves.[/p][p]
Please believe me that “only” delivering the foundation now bothers me deeply - there are still so many things on my checklist I want(ed) to get done before pushing this update live - but hearing your outcries for something, some sign of life, needed to be acted on - again, sorry that it took so long for that to happen:
[/p][p]This update contains:[/p]

• [p]Stable and native two player multiplayer (still in beta, but that’s rather referring to the features, number of players and content still to come).[/p]
• [p]Two levels/game modes for the multiplayer: coop mission and survival mode.[/p]
• [p]Monster behaviour code massively improved and streamlined for easy adaptiliy.[/p]
• [p]Advanced pathfinding: ground-bound monsters can now chase you from the other side of the map, while jumping from wall to wall! .  [/p]
• [p]Advanced visual effects like “breathing” sprites.[/p]
• [p]Advanced multi layered guts rendering after shooting the monsters.[/p]
• [p]Nice smooth turn-around animations.[/p]
• [p]Convulsions: flying monster can have convulsions before ultimate death[/p]
• [p]New complex hit detection based on model bones and custom hitboxes![/p]
• [p]New varied weapon hit effects depending on range, calibre and target material. [/p]
• [p]New weapon Nitro .700 - super powerful and fun to watch :)[/p]
• [p]New sounds for some of weapons[/p]
• [p]Spider boss is now a true boss - you can’t just empty the mag into it![/p]
• [p]100+ bugs found and corrected[/p]

[p][/p][p]While your game progress will be preserved, savegames inside a level won’t work anymore, so in the worst case scenario you’ll have to restart the latest level you were in. But we’ll also move the current version over to the legacy branch so no progress will be completely lost.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Thanks again and all the best[/p][p]Wookie[/p]

Hello everyone!

I'm happy to announce that Multiplayer for Hidden Deep is here!

I have to admit that the last month has been the craziest coding marathon of my life.
I told myself I couldn’t let you down again, and I was determined to deliver on time this time - before end of 2024. That meant working at a ridiculous pace, and unfortunately, I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. I got so close to the goal I’d planned, but time is merciless, and you just can’t stretch it no matter how hard you try.

With just a few hours left until Christmas, family dinners waiting, and no more time to spare, I’m giving you what I’ve got. So, here’s where we’re at:

- The game is playable but can be quirky from time to time.
- The netcode has issues - I'm aware of them and already have ideas on how to fix them, but I ran out of time.
- Because of this, I’m releasing the build under the EXPERIMENTAL-PUBLIC branch. Anyway it is still be Alpha version even if working very well. It is new beginning for Hidden Deep.
- I had to disable some things that didn’t work well enough, so there’s only one map for now with only old monsters. New ones are too quirky at the moment.
- I'm going back onto this right after New Year Eve so expect a big update in January.

This is a very emotional moment for me. There were so many times I thought I wouldn’t make it, but here we are. Thank you all for your patience. I promise I will fix all the bugs :D

I would be grateful for suggestions as I generally play single player games and the co-op world is not very familiar to me.


PS. If you are not familiar with betas in the Steam application go to the Hidden Deep page, click properties->Beta and select Experimental-public. The game should update automatically.

--Luke

Hello everyone,

I’ve seen the comments and messages, and I just want to say - Hidden Deep is NOT abandoned. I’m still here, working on it every single day. This game is my baby, and there’s no way I’m giving up on it.

That said, I owe you an apology. I know it’s been a while since the last update, and I get why some of you are frustrated. The truth is, working on multiplayer has been... a beast. There were moments where I felt totally stuck, like maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew. But I kept going, slowly but surely.

Honestly, I’m not great at keeping everyone in the loop while I’m deep in the code. You deserve better communication from me, and that’s something I’m going to work on. I really appreciate everyone who’s stuck around and kept believing in the game - it means a lot to me.

More updates are coming the first one will be before Christmas.

Thank you for your patience and support.

--Luke

This fix will hopefully address the game crashes on Directx 11 that some users have reported. Unfortunately, neither I nor my testers were able to replicate this error but I did found possible problematic spots in the code.

PS. Multiplayer news soon.

Greetings explorers!

I have a long-awaited fix for you: UI scaling to high resolutions. All main UI elements have been redrawn to achieve a high level of detail.

Additionally, the patch includes:
- performance optimization for DirectX 11
- fixed problem with key assignment, especially on AZERTY keyboards where there was a problem with the Z key
- fixed loss of stability when playing on a gamepad
- some minor fixes

ALSO I have one more little bonus this time only on the EXPERIMENTAL branch:

- In Survivors mode, I added an anti-fall jet engine. When you start falling, you can press the space bar and the engine will turn on and run for a maximum of 7 seconds. The next use of the engine will be possible after 1 minute (the icon in the window at the bottom will light up)
- This gadget has not been sufficiently tested yet, so it is in experimental branch
- You can select branch in Game properties->Beta (in Steam)