Since last time I wrote an article here, I’ve been quite occupied with moving. Me and my spouse built a house that was finished in the end of November so we’ve had our hands full so to speak.

Never the less, I’ve still managed to do some progress on LBKR’s development- although, I’ve not quite managed to document the progress very well so this article might end up a little unspecific compared to the usual updates.

Game Introduction

I’ve come to realise that LBKR didn’t really provide the user with a very involving introduction scene, the player was basicly lead in a straight line toward the first chapter, with very little interactions (and introduction for that matter…) so the intro-map has received a complete overhaul.

I’ve ensured that a minimum of 1 armor piece and 1 weapon are dropped before the first monster(s) appear so that the player won’t stand helpless at that moment, more tutorials/hints have been implemented, and all hints have been given more detailed info.

Also average play-time has been extended, mainly due to the map beeing more spread out and the first mission has been changed slightly to make sure the player have to walk around the first map and try out different controls and game mechanics before progressing to the first chapter of the main story.

UI improvements

As mentioned in the previous article I wrote, the game’s UI was updated, all in-game hint pop ups have changed slightly, covering everything from mission updates to data device collections and contract completions.

The message board now render every second message with a darker background to allow the player to more easily separate them from each other, also some bugs related to ‘message stay time’, and content-pooling have been resolved.

New Post Processing Framework

A new post processing framework came available in the latter batches of the Unity Engine 5.x series, I’ve been meaning to upgrade to the new framework for a while now but it’s been delayed alot as I’ve prioritized other things instead. I finally got to it though and apart from improving already in-use post processing effects in LBKR it also added a few new ones, and also have less impact on the frame-rate.

New effects that are available to toggle on (by checking the Options menu)
-Vignette Mask
-Color Correction
-Depth of Field
-Ambient Occlusion

Gameplay - Portal Device

As some maps in the game do not allow the player to use his/hers portal device I’ve now added a UI message that appear in the message board, explaining that the device is offline or malfunctioning. Also, to give some visual feedback to when the player character is using the portal device a particle system now emit particles from the player’s hands and the character has received an animation in which he/she fiddles with the particles emitted.

AI & Traps

Alot of monsters have been balanced, more info regarding this will be available in the release log by the release of v2.28
In game versions prior to 2.28 alot of traps in the earlier chapters of the game appear to have been set to either none or an invalid damage type. This issue has been fixed so all traps now inflict the correct damage type of their specific trap type.

Furthermore a new trap has been added: Gas Leak, it’s a red fog that flow out from pipes, if the trap receive fire damage the gas ignites, creating a flamethrower out of the pipe.

I’ve also optimized world colliders in all instances of chapter 6(Wildlands) and chapter 7(Caverns) as I still experienced some performance-related issues when playing those maps.