Neckbreak News

The 8th Early Access update for Project Downfall is now live.

PLEASE NOTE! It is higly recommended to start a new game for a few reasons:

-a lot of new content, tweaks and ajustments have been made to the initial 30-40 minutes of the game.

-new branching paths added

-old save might be incompatible and result in conflicts in the player hub/apartment (this can show itself in varoius ways: ie visual glitches, floating arms, buggy movement). In this case only a new game will resolve this issue.



Back to the roadmap: Within 1-2 major updates all major plot related content and level ought to be in the game including the remaining 6 endings. Along with this further improvements to AI, remaining promised features (ie special moves) and refinement of existing content.

The next update will most likely show up either late December, early January 2020.

Now, onto the haute du jour:



NEW FEATURES:

-New intro along with train ride to work with dedicated events and tune

-New third stage to Genesis level added. You arrived at cloudbreak station from the ill-fated train ride. Your first branching path available, but the solution to opening the other blocked gate won't be that obvious;) You will be able to either proceed via the old route to the Les Autres bar or take a shortcut through the arcade parlour. to unlock the gate to funnygames level you will need to destroy the window next to the elevator at the end of the last genesis stage. After that you need to hit the large glowing orange button via throw. If done correctly, the button will stop glowing and you will hear gates sliding open

-Funny games level with its own dedicated tune: Fight through the arcade parlour and exit through the back of cloubreak station to take a cab home.

-The old Capitol with train intro: Accessible if certain conditions are made (spoiler overheard the 2 skinheads in passing through and picked up the scribbles) via the train station in the final stage of going places. Vist a bleak vision of central Warsaw, where the present City Centre is beneath skylevel. Visit the Rotunda as well as the Domy Towarowe Centrum passage along with the Plaza and underground passage leading from the Metro Centrum station.

-Lucos. Descend into the bowels of hell in this freak oriented club in the Old Capitol

-Key Remapping. Still work in progress, ie highlighted text on screen wont include your changes but should work for the most part

-Desctructible envorinment elements. Thanks to the new Player controller from last month which resolved collision issues, old destructibles have now been re-activated as well as many new ones have been added. Don't expect a thin wall to provide cover for long! This will be continuosly updated from now until v.1.0.

-Various Graphical filters! Inspired by retro visuals and named aptly: VGA 256, AMIGA, C64. Can be combined with the varios screen filters (scanline/CRT) for the vibe which suits you best. Still work in progress, with more to come. In the final game they will be unlockables, but now during Early Access you can enjoy all the available ones from the getgo!


GENERAL UPDATES:

-large update to the AI system Besides overal AI refinement now enemies will differ depending on class. Certain units will be able to walk and shoot at the same time and this will also vary depeding on units skill (ie spec-op units like the Kyoncha will be more organised and deadly than the regular Slavic thugs).

-Enemy reload animation and logic> after running out of bullets, you will have an opening, for enemies will reload their firearms.

-completely remade Assault Rifle graphics/animations (inspired by Hardcore Henry style)

-New smoke post shot effect added to precision rifle and other weapons

-new shotgun (pum-master) animation for shooting and reload.

-updated certain bullet tracers with smoke trail effect

-large update to initial stages/levels with mulitple new details and/or events/assets (Trains in genesis, street in journeyman with lots of new details), floating litter in street, kickable soda cans etc etc

-new enemy helmet bumpkin

-new npc Alisaitr now has own graphic and animation instead of sharing generic cop idle animatio

-Ali has been remade in the initial meeting with new lighting and animation. Let us know what you think- old or new?

-Lungs stamina animation and changed layout.

-Press space to skip tutorial hint activity or fast forward one chat dialog element.

-Implement effect presets and applying it to player camera.

-Add invert run to settings.


GENERAL FIXES AND TWEAKS

-Simplify AI move to position. Should work better than before and movement should not be possible to interrupt (which would have resulted in exploitable AI in this case).

-update score font

-cleanup shotgun alpha pixels

-update subhub door event first

-update tut train restaurant wagon and added throw cinematic hint event

-temp diabled throw event for witness

-fixed condition for cab not unlocking exit (teddy was active)

-Fix stopping nav mesh agent (Seek doesn’t always stop it).

-Fix Double OnGameStart call.

-Hide resolution dialog at startup. We might turn this back on once gamepad controls for it are implemented.

-Fix AI footsteps by adding events to animation.

-Implement melee attack in parallel with walking. Due to the new AI system, certain elements didnt work as well as before, ie melee enemies could be avoided too easily and hardly posed a threat, especially minibossess, since they would stand in place when attacking. This made their attacks too easy to avoid. Now melee attacks work as before: you can still escape strikes but it will be more of a challenge, whereas with minibossess, if you let them get to close, that's pretty much it;)

-Add independent stun deceleration.

-Press space to skip tutorial hint activity or fast forward one chat dialog element.

-Add input formatting to localized text in tutorial.

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So that's it for now. We will be back soon with the next major update (and possibly some smaller flash updates in between). Thanks for stopping by!

The Downfall Team,

Mike, Dawid

Happy to say we are putting the finishing touches on the 8th major update. ETA should be round 27th-29th November.



A short rundown:

-further updates and fixes to the AI. Expect them to be more crafty. Now, with the reactivated destructible environments, you will have to make quick thinking count. Inspired a bit by the scene in the Dredd reboot where he gets shot with armour piercing rounds in the drug lab, if an enemy notices you, hiding behind certain cover will only be a temporary solution, for your foe will slowly chip away at it, destroying it piece by piece.

-new content, including a more cinemtic intro, heavily updated / cleanup of initial stages. New effects, assets, events...quite a lot actually.

-new retro inspired graphical filters (such as C64, VGA256 and more). In the final game these will be unlockables, but for Early Access they will be available from the getgo.

-update to destructible environments: thanks to the new player controller, we could re-activate desctructible objects, since they will no longer have collision issues with the player.

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So that's that in a nuthsell. As usual, more detailed notes will drop together with the update.

Thanks for sticking by!


The Downfall Team,

Mike, Dawid

UPDATE EDIT part2. 29th October: a quick fix update 0.9.7.1B. New AI system had issues with AI footstep system. This has been fixed and 3d audio enemy foosteps ought to be working again. Also slightly lowered Assault Rifle recoil.

UPDATE EDIT: Just added another update(these changes will be highlighted in bold) and also happy to say the Halloween sale is now on. The game will be available at a 40% discount till the 1st of November. Original anouncement is below:

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First off a shoutout to Yura from Sad Cat Studios for the recoil idea. Speaking of which I really recommend you check out their game Replaced: it's shaping up to be an awesome game and ought to scratch that "Last Night" itch.

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As promised a quick update with a few new features. More to come soon. Halloween sale will start soon and Project Downfall will be avialable at a 40% discount for a limited time.

Currently melee minibosses are still not working as well as with the previous player controller, but nonetheles should be fixed soon.

Also, a smaller update might drop later today/tomorrow with a few tweaks/fixes (in example the exit collider to the first journeyman stage)

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So as for what's new:

-game ver 0.9.7.0->0.9.7.1.

-Added weapons recoil (First version, will be updated and tweaked from now on)

-Make melee weapon sphere cast little bigger (meaning hitting with melee should require less precision and be slightly easier)

-enemy AI fix: Stop aiming when stunned. Don't deal damage with melee weapons when stunned or dead.

-thrown weapons collider slightly adjusted to make them less likely to get stuck on walls (still WIP)

-updated animation for Ali in station start hub

-added interactable stove to apartment

--added shutter open event after leaderboard hint home

-multiple updates to station hub / cleanup / details including but not limited to: new lighting, new details to second platform, new props ie arcade machines, airconditioners, added cosy corner with interactable microwave and more...)

-Updated cloudbreak station first visit with new assets, visibility indicating azur plaza exit etc.

-updated train tutorial clouds bg and details. added Work in Progress restaurant section in train, updated enemies to avoid conflict with Bruger King NPC

-updated collider for oxi booth

-fixed issues with camera vertical rotation in new player controller

-fixed rain event so it would rain when walking under passage in final jounreyman stage

-updated AI moveto pattern. One of the early mobster in final journeyman stage will now not start at street level to avoid getting hit with stray bullet from initial corrupt cops encounter and hence calling too much aggro. Now fixed by event triggereing AI to move to his original prior position from second bar, after cop encounter

-Fixed journeyman exit stage collider

-added new enemies(svoloch geezer and biker) to genesis second stage to avoid conflict with Bruger king NPC

-removed unwanted cab navmesh from cab intermission

-fixed missing enemy footsteps audio

-lowered AR recoil


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That's it for now. Let us know what you think and in case of any issues, please let us know!


Cheers,

The Downfall Team,

Mike, Dawid

The 7th Early Access update is now live! Please excuse the delay: due to some pretty significant changes and upgrades, additional testings, tweaks and fixes were needed.



First off a note regarding the available languages: to avoid misunderstandings only English will now be shown as the available language on the Steam store. We recently received a review which hurt the games overal rating, with the biggest crit being lack of Chinese, whereas on the Store the game only has(up until this writing) „interface” listed to be in Chinese (which to my understanding would not be the game itself but only GUI /settings/etc), with the other options (full voice & subtitles) not being available. Despite this, the review indicated the game was expected to be fully translated into Chinese, hence to avoid similar situations in the future, only English is going to be displayed as the playable language. New languages will only be added to the Store description when they are complete 100% (which in Project Downfall's case would be „interface” and „subtitles”).

We will most likely be dropping a few updates between the next major 8th update. Due to the new, rewritten core systems this build will be a case of 3 steps forward, one step back. For example, the rewritten AI logic ought to greatly improve AI in nearly all aspects, besdies a few instances(ie shotgun wielding enemies wont have a reload animation or melee enemies will attack without moving), but generally the positives outwiegh the negatives by a huge margin. We will be addressing theses smaller issues within the above-mentioned smaller updates.

Last weekend we recently showed a Work In Progress build of the 7th Update at Poznań Game Arena and gathered valuable info/feedback/observations. Unfortunately, most likely due to the new, rewritten systems, we noticed a few new issues

Known issues:

-The station after the Genesis mission would sometimes crash. Possibly this has already been fixed with todays tweaks, but please let us know if this would happen to you and at what point.

-The start of the „Another Day at the Office” mission would either black out or have serious visual issues when close to the first self-medication hint popup. This was most likley due to the PC running on stock GPU drivers. Once updated on the following day, the bug did not reoccur. If you would, happen to experience this issue, please let us know where/when.

-Melee wielding enemies are a bit easier to avoid now, especially minibossess due to the melee attack working a bit differently. This will be addressed soon with one of the smaller updates.

-New player controller doesnt work well with oxiprofen booth. It is still usable but the headest will clip through player(as if the player could walk into it). This will be tweaked/adjusted soon.

-Once again, unfortunately, due to non linear logic expansion (especially after the witness level), old saves might act out and make the home apartment extremely buggy. A new game would be recommended in this case. To avoid further similar issues, currently the project has been adjusted for remaining non-linear logic including remaining 6 endings/endgames(1 is currently available). So now we will be focusing on tweaking and adding the remaining content as well as further improvements/tactics/behaviours to the AI, special moves, crouching, improving GUI and so on.

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Now on to the fun part, with what's new!



NEW FEATURES:

-Completely rewritten First Person Controller: significantly improves player movement and fluiditiy and collisions. This will open up further possibilities for some cool adjustments (ie hopefully we will be able to soon re add the post-death physics to dead bodies similar to DarkSould/Bloodborne which we had to disable before the release wince with the old conroller, it would lead to level breaking moments, effectively blocking the players movement). This was also mandatory for implementing crouching and leaning, which can now be worked on.TLDR: this was a long overdue and much needed update.

-Rewritten AI logic: this is another big one. Although still quite a way from perfect, this one ought to prove a significant improvement over the last itteration. Now AI will no longer have the aim loop

-New levels with dedicated dynamic audio tracks:

-Cab (post Witness branching stage): one of the first examples of effects of your choices in the game. If you crossed the pill threshold and vomitted all over Olgierd's bar, he won't call a cab for you so you will be forced to take the longer route home via the small overpass to the maintenance tunnels leading to Cloudbreak Heights...home.

-Shortcut. Directly connected after the Cab level. Travel through the manitenance tunnels to get back home from the initial night out where it all started. Can be initiated by corssing the self-medication threshold when reaching the bar (the barman Olgierd will be angry with the player for vomitting all over his place and will order him to leave).

-Pleasure dome hub: You will be able to access the pleasuredome entrance hub connected with your apartment. If you would like to proceed to the Pleasuredome from this entrance, you will need to discover and finish th Blowhard level.

-Benefactors: Another brnaching level, this one is after The Exchange. In the final game, once completed it will be only possible to progress to the Benefactors level if the player picks up a level2 clearance at the police station level (i'll be back). This is currently WIP, so as of now, both the exit back home and to the Benefactors level is available

Multiple new languages! Still Work In Progress, but for the most part the game ought to be fully playable in Italian, Portugese (Br), Spanish (latin American & European), French. Japanese has most of the initial ciritical game text added should be playable until completing the witness level. Polish has a bit more translated but less chronologically. These translations will be contiuosly worked on and new languages added with time

-Footsteps surface audio: Now depending on the type of surface footstep sounds will vary. This is done manually and selectively so will still take some time but ought to work in most places in initial levels.

-The throw. A crucial element to combat is now ready to be fully used. We encourage you to try it out! :)

GENERAL UPDATES:

-increment game ver 0.9.6.0->0.9.7.0

-added new bg ads anim

-General update to initial levels/stages. Including but not limited to :

*new interactables at apartment, including flushable toitlet and shutters
*witness details and props
*updated level select hub to extend to pleasure dome with logic
*added surface type sounds to mulitple levels
*another dya at the office added mutliple smaller details ie camera that tracks player, signs, layout etc
*station lighting optimisation
*detail to interior of train in genesis level and updated layout an AI tweaks
*and more more more

-new chats/interactions (ie in shortcut level, blowhard etc)

-Add akimbo to combo system

-Updated combo system both in visual and audio

-added posterize shaders with variations (not implemented yet. Will be added soon. Final game will have this as an extra/unlockable)

-added BurgerKing death/show conditions

-updated weapon throw logic

-multiple adjustments to AI logic

-multiple adjustments to new First Person Controller

-Update enemy animator. Reorganize ai behaviour trees.

-created animator overrides for all selective idle anims

-updated enemy conrtollers with animator overrides

-updated newsfeed in tv news anim

-added Call to Action dilaogue after 4hours of gameplay.



GENERAL FIXES AND TWEAKS


-Remove old PlayerController and related source code.

-updated DMR pickup positon in slumlow

-Fix AI Walking Distance condition abort.

-Fix weapon range measuring.

-Updated Score font

-station tweaks (ie hint event toggle off to avoid constant repeat on triger enter, lighting optimisations, visual tweaks ie train bg, sound ground update etc)

-kc lobby added exit to benefactors without level2 keycard (to be re-adjusted when lev2 keycard pickup active at police station)

-updated kick and fist range-updated hub post volume brain chat fade

-blowhard sniper ammo amount fix

-cod final music switch on end event

-bar remove chick pipe-added throw hint to witness event

-multiple fixes in cab (exit home cab not working, fix fallthorugh map start, sounds etc)

-removed pipe BK in tunnel to avoid chat bug/exploit at chav chat trigger

-fixed nut shot combo registration

-fixed petrol first gate mass/physics

-Make state machine observing easier and more generic. Fix AI stop after aiming start.

-Fix combo kill observer null pointer.

-Fix bug with wrong projectile spawn position.

-Fix COD problem with shooting through doors.

-Change AI line of sight check logic.

-Fix combo notification NullPointerException.

-Don't count combo points from kills made by other enemy.

-Fix enemy melee attack and missing ranged sound.

-Fix starnge weapon reloading after switching to weapon.

-Change mele seek distance from weapon range to min attack distance.

-Fix default AI speed.

-Ignore thrown pickup collisions with projectiles.

-Fix weapon throw position.

-tweaks to intro brain introduce event

-updated combo bar layout

-font selective change for point not possible (overrided by loc-kit reference)

-added new combo activation sound

-Fix combo system injection.

-updated train tutorial sounds 3d and footsteps sound

-passingthrough height stiarwell fixed, otherwise player would get stuck with new controller

-level select hub updated with passage tu pleasure dome details

-Fix menu and tutorial dependencies.

-updated pipe attack anim to avoid clipping

-journeyman 2 surface update

-updated bonus highlight audio/visual

-extended combo time to 2

-Add throw to input hints.

-Optymize AI target finding.

-Add shape sprites. Fix bullet time bar.

-Fix AI corner shots.

-updated conditions for witness first branch

-updated connections between levels





So that's more or less it for now. Hope you enjoy and let us know what you think! Thank you for your patience and your support,



Till the next one!

The Downfall Team,

Mike, Dawid

Good day Everyone,

UPDATE 18.OCtober.2019: There will be a small delay with uploading the update. A pretty significant change/overhaul to the AI has been made which ought to be a huge improvement over the previous version. However we will need a few days to test/verify everything is in order. So please give us a few more days. The update ought to be ready by the 21st October. This is on us, since we usually avoid adding last minute changes and fixes, but we decided this one is important enough to make an exception but believe the extra wait will be worth it. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for understanding!


Currently finalising the 7th Early Access update which should be available for download between 14th-17th October.



Besides the regular new content, tweaks and fixes, major new features include:

-Completely new, rewritten First Person controller. This will address quite a bit of issues, ranging from improving reaction of AI towards player, to significantly improved movement (both in terms of fluidity and collision). This was also mandatory for the planned crouch/lean system and well as special moves. This will be continuously worked on and improved from now on.

-Multiple new (WIP) languages. The game ought to be fully playable in Itialian, Spanish (latin American and European), Portugese (Brasilian) and French. With these languages only a very small amount of text is not translated.

Japanese and Polish on the other hand will have the critical initial game text translated up until returning back to the apartment for the first time and the majority of untranslated text will be missing from here on, so it would be recommended to switch to one of the other languages from this point.

Translation of exisiting and new languages will continuosly be worked on and added with progress.

-There's also quite a bit of other cool stuff. The more detailed breakdown will drop here together with the update.

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So that's that in a nutshell, time to get back to the dev,

Thanks for tuning in,

The Downfall Team,


Mike & Dawid