This week was partially spent polishing various aspects of the game but most prominently was used to prepare the tools used for the creation of the levels for the last scheduled update of the current content. Following the feedback received from the players, I decided to enhance the number of details and specificity of each area of the current levels. This won’t be fast as the 12 levels of the game are… quite big and updating each level is quite a delicate and long task, but I’m almost halfway through it! Here are some screenshots to compare the work in progress with the actual content.

Current:
WIP:
Current:
WIP:

Bug Fixing:
UI elements with wrong behaviour
Modified behaviour of global and local map (minor change)
A couple of invisible walls created to prevent the player from falling were not working as expected
Rework of the UI of the load screen, to make it more responsive.
Fixed scrolling issue in the codex section


Balancing
The SMG has been reworked to differentiate its use. It now longer shoots a perfect row of bullets but a little deviation is assigned to each bullet. Un-upgraded number of bullets has been increased to 3, lowering the damage of each bullet.
The SMG now has a different powerup. The headshot multiplier was replaced by a powerup that makes the recoil predictable and compensable with mouse aim.
Minor adjustment to enemies health.


Map changes:
A couple of locations were reworked to be more evocative. These changes will continue in future updates.

Autosave:
Autosave is now a thing in Palladium. Each save point will activate only once and will be easily spotted through all saved games.


Visual improvements.
Post processing and colour balancing has been completely reworked with this update.
Lights were modified and recalculated in a few instances.
Added visual effects for light elements.
Enemies can now be gibbed only partially, leaving mutilated remains.
Also all enemies have dedicated gibs and animations for various parts of the body.

Bunny hopping has been introduced to help traverse areas previously explored and to give a significant edge to the player over the enemies.


Most of the messages in the tutorial level have been rephrased to make them more clear.

Hello! This week I worked on new gibbing effects, new environmental effects and general balancing. All these features will now undergo a testing process, and you are more than welcome to try them through the beta (to get access to it dm me on the official discord)!
Also a couple of locations have been reworked and I will continue this “architectural redesign” of some areas in the following week.

Colours and general feeling of these zones.

Lower body gibbing

Upper body gibbing

I'm also experimenting with my level design techniques and workflow. Notice that the following image is just an experiment and won’t necessarily end up in the game (as is).
This week was also spent fixing UI and map geometry bugs.
That’s all for this week!
Cheers!

This week was a crazy ride for sure. Next week will be more challenging!. In fact I'm gathering various feedback from the players and besides balancing and fixing various issues, I am planning to work on the graphical aspect and visuals of the game, before moving more consistently to the development of the next area (whose design is quite fixed by now). So I'm here to share some work in progress (you will not find this in the demo nor in the current build nor in the beta).


I will be working on an early version of dismemberment system.


I'm also working on the general atmosphere of Palladium.

for reference, here is a screenshot of the current build.

Let me know what you think, share your opinion with me through Discord, Steam or Twitter!
Cheers!

The last update was important and arrived pretty fast. For this reason some hotfixes are necessary.

The following changes were made to rebalance some fights:

• added difficulty level and shifted normal to hard.
  
• changed shooting algorithm of NPCs.
  
• changed behaviour on some NPCs, making their bullets more distinguishable.

The following changes were made to reduce motion sickness that some players experienced

• smoothed movement
  
• adjustable size and opacity of crosshair
  
• slightly adjusted height of the player

The following bugs were fixed:

• smoothed movement
  
• adjustable size and opacity of crosshair
  
• slightly adjusted height of the player
  
• movement of the camera of the camera

This update features new gory effects to offer better feedback to the player when hitting an enemy (and is also cool).

A small issue related to animations on lower-end PCs has been fixed. The update is very light, as such I don't feel guilty to make an update for this issue.

Don't forget to report any issue or bug or unexpected behaviour through Steam or the official Discord!

The demo features the tutorial level of Palladium. You will be able to try some of the different weapons that you will find along the full game and try different power ups and how they enhance and change the effectiveness of the weapons.

The progress you make in the demo will be carried over in the full game, so that you don’t have to repeat the tutorial when the game is released.

Don’t forget to leave feedback on your experience! Use Steam or the official Discord to let me know what you think about the game.

Sprites are gone. Almost. The representation of enemies is now designed to keep the feeling of the retro games, but with smoother animations for better readability of the situation and of the particular state of each enemy. Also, is now much easier to modify enemies to correct and improve the gameplay, giving to the player colour and shape clues to suggest the behaviour of each enemy. Moreover, it is now easier to modify them and correct… unwise colour choices.
The switch to models also allowed me to make various variants of the NPC types with a reasonable effort.
Finally, dismemberment is now a possibility and not only a dream and it MAY be included in future builds.