Changelog v23-11-11

The main attractions of the update are completely reworked character models and the first taste of the OST being created by Pteam Pterodactyl. I intended for this to be mostly a refactoring and polishing pass - you know, the kinda stuff that takes a huge amount of work with very little to actually show for it by the end. But there are some notable gameplay changes thrown in there, particularly the Focus system.

By far, the vast majority of the work that went into this update was devoted to the new models, animations, and animation system. The animations have been completely remade from scratch, but they aren't an apparent improvement. The original character animations were all from the free library of Mixamo, which are based on motion-capture performances. As a result, I was restricted to only what was available in that library - which wasn't a huge problem yet, but the available animations weren't ideal for what I want. Similarly, there are some technical qualities that I want from the animations, and it would be cumbersome to change Mixamo's animations to fit those requirements. It was always my intention to eventually replace them with bespoke animations. However, I am not a skilled animator, and due to the volume of animations required, my benchmark for when an animation was "finished" for this update was when it was good enough to get the point across - so as a result, these animations are simultaneously better (specifically suited to the in-game actions and technical needs) and much worse (hastily hand-animated by a novice). So although the animations will be rougher, they integrate better with the new character animation system, which comes with many benefits. Thankfully, the camera distance and angle affords a lot of grace for animation details. I intend to continue refining the animations in future updates.

Mid-stage saves from the previous version may be incompatible; to be on the safe side, restart the stage from stage select instead of continuing.

Units

• Added option to allow NPCs to overlap their movement (enabled by default). When enabled, NPCs will decide where they want to go once the previous unit begins moving (rather than waiting until they've finished moving), drastically reducing the duration of the NPC movement phase. However, this results in occasional situations where behavior may be affected by hardware performance, meaning that rewinding & immediately ending your turn may not always yield the same result.
• Fixed rare instances of NPCs not seeing things that they're looking at
• Fixed NPCs not reacting to a kill if the killed person was in concealment at the moment of their death (concealment still hides bodies, just not while they're being killed)
• Fixed instances of NPCs not properly continuing their patrol
• NPC identities no longer change (they are still procedurally generated, but the seed is fixed)
• Omen's navigation line is now properly drawn as she moves
• Omen's Entity Ring no longer appears during story stages
• Omen's navigation line now has a circle at the end, indicating the final position of her Entity Ring if she makes the previewed move
• Minor tweaks to certain NPCs' positioning
• Slightly reduced melee thug MOV Suppression range to 3.0 (previously 3.5)
• Enemies will more consistently move to within range of the ability they intend to use
• Enemies who are investigating or searching are now strongly disinclined to stand still
• The Metro sword thug now drops a datapad that you have to pick up in order to satisfy the ending condition for the level (previously you just had to kill the sword thug)
• Completely remade all character models, textures, and animations
• Added animations for shooting pistols and rifles
• Tweaked the sheath and hand points of equipment models to accommodate the new character models
• Enemy appearance is now more varied
• Completely reworked the character animation system
  • Animations blend into each other more seamlessly
  • Weapon poses persist across multiple states; for example, you'll continue to hold your pistol in front of you while moving, crouched, or hurt
  • Animations for being hurt and dying will dynamically change depending on the direction of incoming damage
  • Animations for being hurt are now added to casting animations, rather than being overridden by them

Items & Abilities

• Hotkeys such as crouching can no longer be used during the enemy turn
• Using the hotkey for crouching will now properly cancel your current action; this fixes several buggy interactions
• You will now automatically crouch during enemy turns if not stance-locked; this can be disabled in the settings
• Stab and Strangle are now two separate abilities - I'm not sure why you'd want to strangle someone when you could stab them, but hey, it's your op
• Gun beams now come approximately out of the muzzle of the gun (they previously originated in the shooter's chest)
• Beams received some slight visual tweaks
• Reworked the ability bar
  • Ability buttons are now just small icons; they're grouped first by category (as before) and then by loadout item
  • By default, all abilities are displayed on the ability bar; this can be changed in the settings and toggled with a keypress (default V) to revert to the previous behavior of showing only one category at a time
  • When no ability is selected, hovering over an ability button will display its info popup
  • Hotkeys are displayed on ability buttons (currently just Reselect Previous Ability and Toggle Crouch); these can be hidden in the settings
  • Abilities have been slightly reorganized, introducing Unarmed and Melee categories and removing Muscle and Finesse
• The left portion of the loadout menu now has a dark red background
• Fixed instances of loadouts resetting unexpectedly, such as when restarting a level
• Loadout fallbacks will no longer be applied to slots that you have intentionally unequipped
• Fixed a very specific condition in which your loadout fallbacks could result in having the remote mine equipped in both extra slots
• Exposed loadout fallbacks as a toggleable option (disabled by default)
• Added options to increase/reduce your base MOV and increase/reduce incoming MOV Suppression
• [New System] Focus
  • You have 8 points to freely distribute among Omen's trained abilities; unspent points each provide +1 HP
  • Current abilities are TK Shove, TK Spin, TK Subdue, Provoke, Hook Punch, Throat Punch, and Ground Pound
  • Removed Thunder Gloves and Improved TK loadout items
  • Omen's base HP has been reduced to 10 (previously 12)
  • Option to allow for negative focus, effectively negating the system
• Bastion Shotgun
  • Reduced magazine size to 2 (previously 4)
  • The tubular magazine on the model has been shortened
  • Rack and Shoot now tell you the magazine's contents in their descriptions
• Vindicator Laser Pistol
  • The beam will now alert people towards the bounce that hit them (previously alerted them to your position)
  • Replaced sound with one created by Pteam Pterodactyl
• Remodeled the Bulwark Rifle completely, along with its loadout image
• Dropped items (like remote mines, LENCs, thrown knives, etc) will now attempt to avoid being dropped inside of cover/walls
• Fix dropped items behaving incorrectly during knockback, e.g. by telekinesis
• Fixed abilities rarely saying you have insufficient MOV when you're at 0 MOV, even though the abilities don't require MOV

Misc

• Added 5 original music tracks by Pteam Pterodactyl
• Reworked the game's music system so that songs are tied to specific levels and should transition more gracefully
• Selecting your current stage on the stage select menu will now give you the option to restart the stage without having to load into it first
• Changed some default settings values
  • Entity ring HP bars are toggled on
  • Busy UI Delay increased to 0.1s (previously 0.05s)
  • Added HOME as a key for centering the camera on the player character (in addition to F)
• Fixed non-tutorial levels ignoring rewind limits
• Fixed some catastrophic rewind failures, e.g. an enemy becoming alerted after rewinding to a point when they weren't alerted (effectively making them permanently alerted)
• Fixed player navigation sometimes not updating after casting an ability
• Fixed "HOSTILE ACTIVITY" text fading out if you end your turn before the "YOUR TURN" text has disappeared
• Most of the Metro tiles should now tile together more nicely
• Adjusted the Metro booth to make sneaking around back there slightly less annoying
• Several textures now take up significantly less VRAM without quality loss, though your hardware would probably need to be approximately 25 years old to feel the difference
• Loading is more stable, but may be slightly longer
• Loading screens are now decorated, so you're not just looking at a black screen with "Loading..." on it
• Sounds play at the beginning and end of radio conversations
• Updated all conversation character portraits
• Adjusted the background color for tooltip popups and added a border
• Changed the background of the main menu
• Upgraded to Godot v4.1.2
• A particularly huge amount of behind-the-scenes refactoring