As promised in the previous post, I have finished this new update before the end of August. Here's what's new:

New swimming mechanics

Until now, water was only a type of floor whose purpose was only to slow down both players and NPCs. Now, they've been given a whole new game mechanic, that adds a bit of variety to the regular gameplay. If you walk into pool of water, you won't be able to crouch in it unfortunately. However, if you enter a deep pool of water and if you try to crouch in it, you'll dive in the water!

When swimming in water, the controls are a bit different. You still use WSAD keys and Space Bar to move around, but there are few differences. W and S keys move you forward and backwards accordingly, but relative to your looking direction, and space makes you swim up. You can't sprint or crouch under water obviously. Your swimming speed is not the same as your walking speed, and is not affected by the same conditions that your walking speed is. 

Being under water is pretty dangerous, and there are few things that you should keep in mind before you take a dive.  The most important thing to keep in mind is the amount of oxygen you have. Without any equipment, you have 30 seconds worth of oxygen, and if you run out of it while still under water, you'll begin to lose health rapidly! Aside from that, you should know that the deeper you go, the darker it'll get, ambient colors will turn from cyan to navy blue, music will get quieter, seeing distance will get shorter. Until, you'll be in a silent, dark, murky water... all by yourself... with God knows what terrors lurks at the bottom... So make sure to get a flashlight!

Swimming comes in pretty useful in a few situations:

• Map generation has been upgraded with new locations that are under water, which contain rare and useful items, and you can access them only by swimming. 
• Since the swimming speed isn't the same nor affected the same way as the walking speed, you can use swimming to move faster. That's pretty useful if you have broken your legs, and are on the Sea biome.
• NPCs, can't swim, so that makes it a perfect way to escape and hide from foes that you don't wanna fight. Keep in mind though, attacking foes above water, while being under water yourself, won't work. Melee attacks don't have a long enough range to allow for successful attacks without swimming out of the water, and majority of ranged weapons, just don't work under water in general.

Improved Sea

While playing the previous versions, I've noticed that the Sea biome, was a real pain to play. Because of it being covered in water, wetness debuff being a bit overpowered, and there not being much stuff to do over there, the biome was completely useless and annoying. That is a thing of the past, since the biome was improved to be more interesting. The main changes and additions are:

• Replacement of the standard village houses, with the more fitting wooden cabins and new palm trees
• Implementation of underwater structures such as the sunken ship, or an ancient tomb
• Reworking of the wetness debuff. Now, being wet won't slow you down if you're in water, in fact it'll speed you up by a bit. You also won't get cold from being wet, but the combination of both of these debuffs will make you lose health

It's not much, but it makes a huge difference in-game.

New equipment system

The way equippable items are actually equipped has been reworked. Now they are not treated as some kind of consumable items that instantly change your statistics and instantly vanish when used. When an item is worn or equipped, it will be moved from your inventory, to your equipment, where it's effects will work for as long as they are located in your equipment.

There are few limitations to that system however. You cannot equip more than 4 items at once, you can't equip two identical items or items which serve similar function (eg.: you can't wear a fanny pack when you have a military backpack on you), and effects of some items might counteract effects of the other items (eg.: wearing sport shoes won't speed you up much if you have a military vest on yourself).

But with the limitations, there are also a few advantages that you can get with this system. You can unequip your items at any given moment, items like night vision goggles and hazmat suits no longer take up room in your inventory, and much like with the limitations, effects of some items might also stack with the effects of other items (eg.: wearing backpack and military vest, will give you way more inventory space than with just one of them).

This system won't really benefit nor ruin your gameplay experience, but it does add a new layer of strategy and depth to the gameplay.

Reworked map and minimap

The two main huds that tell your position, as well as what's around you, has been improved by a bit.

Visually, there's a new image for the undiscovered parts of the map that look good in all resolutions, unlike the old one that looked like a low-res mess on resolutions lower then the standard HD.

There's also now a way to mark positions on a map. Clicking on a map in the information menu will place an X mark at your cursor's position. When clicking on the marks themselves, left mouse button will change their color, and right mouse button will erase them. It's a good way to mark your points of interest that are not automatically marked on the map, though marks are not saved, thus leaving maps or restarting levels will erase them.

Because of those marks, as well as the previously mentioned equipment system, entering the infomations menu (the one under TAB button), will unlock your cursor, keep that in mind when playing on browser!

As a bonus addition, flares will also be marked on map. For now though it's just a gimmick, since it doesn't serve really any specific function. They were meant to signal different stuff, but due to lack of time that was not implemented.

And also, minimaps will be disabled during night time, with instead displaying text "It's too dark...".

Ragdolls

Need I say more?

They will replace standard dying animations on the quality levels higher than Low. They are broken, not working properly, and that makes them so good.

Tweaks and changes to the game and engine

Aside from the major additions mentioned above, there are also notable changes to the way the game is played, and the way engine handles the game.

One of the changes to both engine and game itself, is how hit detection is handled. Previously, NPCs had one invisible capsule collider, which had to be hit in order to hit the NPCs themselves. Although that capsule collider is still there, humanoid NPCs have been given new colliders for each body part. If you want to damage NPCs, you have to actually hit their models, and not that one collider which covers their entire body. I've also added a neat little addition thanks to that new hit detection system: damage will vary depending on which body part you've hit. Head shots will deal twice as much damage, but limb shots will only deal half of the potential damage. Attacking NPCs when they're not angered/curious/panicked, will count as a surprise attack, and will deal twice as much damage.

Other addition, is a new gameplay mechanic, which allows you to heal yourself by eating food when you're full. The amount of health points returned depends on how much the hunger level is decreased, as well as on what difficulty level you are playing. This healing mechanic however won't work on very hard and hardcore levels. It's also not the most efficient way to gain your lost health, but it does the job when you don't have healing items.

The WebGL version of this game also have had a few tweaks to help the optimization. Unfortunately, these changes mean there will be less NPCs wandering on the map, and the maximum amount of mutants at once in the horde mode is set to 10. The difference isn't that noticeable, but if you want to have the regular amount of NPCs in your game, you need to download it

I have also enabled expectation handling, which means that the game will not crash, should some code error appear. They say that will make the game work slower, but honestly, I've tested it and the performance is the same. Though all the print() functions I used in this game will be displayed in your browser's console (don't worry, there aren't a lot of these, you won't get spammed ).

Hints

This addition was made to slightly help new players. Hints are triggered at different times and situations, and their purpose is to explain what caused them and what is happening. They appear in a form of small white text at the centre bottom of the hud, and are visible for few seconds depending on how long they are. Some hints occur just once, some multiple times, but after playing for like an hour, there won't be any hints.

Other additions and changes

• Fixed few bugs and typos
• Fixed few bugs regarding NPC A.I
• Guards will now take longer time before switching their positions
• Maps and survivors can now tell you positions of monuments
• Magazines now can be loaded to their fullest
• Regular mutants no longer drop invisible items, but normal loot instead
• Added 8 new utility items
• Added 8 new weapons
• Added 8 new food items
• Buffed Saphire Spear statistics
• Lowered cardboard box's durability
• Player no longer gibs from getting nuked
• Removed throw button, in order to throw, you now need to hold the drop button
• You no longer get hot from deserts at night
• Increased NPCs panic chance
• Player now explodes upon giving up
• Increased maximum FOV from 80 to 100
• Flares and glowsticks are now multicolored
• Buffed lockpicks
• Optimized scripts by switching if statements to switch cases

Donate?

Since I couldn't find myself a summer job, and since the projects I was working on during June and July have failed, I though that I might as well earn a few cents from this game. The game is still completely free to play, but if you want to, you can donate by paying when downloading the game. 

It's optional, and you can still play the full game for free without any limitations.

Well that's all for now. The summer break for me is over, and that means the development on this game might slow down a bit. But as mentioned in the previous post, I'll try to work on a anniversary update for this game. I'm not sure if there will be any updates withing the next 3 months, or what the previously mentioned update will look like, but I'll try to deliver something good before Christmas.

Thank you for reading this post!