Hey all! First I would like to thank everyone for their continued and awesome support through this rough development period. I'm happy to announce that Mark and I are now back full time on development, with Wordclock returning to produce more awesome audio for us. Noct has taken it in the teeth quite a bit here, and rightfully so. Development is messy, and I won't bore you with the gritty details of it all or a life story. I'm just going to cut right to the good news. Noct is going to be releasing a single huge update, and the new version of the game is #*&$ing rad. Not only that, but it will hit here October 27th, just in time for Halloween. Final release will depend on how things go, but we suspect Q4 2016 if everything goes smoothly.

What has changed?

In short... Everything. In more detail? See below: Game performance: We spent a lot of time overhauling the game's foundation under Unity 4. Unhappy with the performance of the past and current Noct builds, we made the decision to rebuild and streamline the visuals of Noct in order to gain huge performance leaps on much lower end systems. I am happy to report that because of our efforts, we have not only met our performance goals, we exceeded them. Noct will basically run on a potato now, without significant sacrifice to Noct's visuals. That's right. Bust out those low end laptop video cards (or lack thereof) and enjoy your high frame rates. Core Game Mechanics: As previously mentioned, we have thrown out the anti-fun "walking simulator" model, and have shifted focus more to wasteland level type frantic gameplay. As such we are refining Noct's core game mechanics from the ground up to construct a superior and more enjoyable gameplay experience, all while keeping all the cool aspects of Noct's creepy atmosphere. Now when players enter the game (SP or MP) they will be presented with an end of the world timer. This timer basically represents a gameplay round of about 15 or so minutes until the world ends. Players will have this small window of time in which they set out to ensure their survival for the next day/round. This begins with the construction of a fallout shelter/bunker. Once your bunker has been secured, players can now venture out into the wasteland to scavenge and explore for supplies and other items of interest which they can bring back to their bunker to further their progression. As the end of the world timer counts down, The Noct wasteland becomes increasingly hostile, different monsters and bosses begin to emerge, from which special items, upgrades, and other tokens can be harvested/collected for advancing your overall progression. Upon completion of the game, players will be able to pick a reward/achievement based on their overall score, which will carry over to their future playthroughs of Noct's progression system, kinda like leveling up through replays. A few things worth mentioning about the new gameplay mechanics: 1. Bunkers can be invaded by enemy players if left open. 2. Lower tier monsters do not one hit kill the player anymore. 3. If you are killed, you lose all non reward/achievement based progression. 4. Larger boss monsters are now rare, and will possess their own unique fighting/puzzle AI mechanics, defeating them will be ridiculously challenging and fun, and will yield excellent rewards. Players can expect to see at least one boss per round/end of the world. Items collected from these are required for long term progression. 5. Tokens and other special items can still be collected via game world exploration if players prefer to flight from combat situations instead of fighting. 6. PVP is completely optional. Working together is greatly rewarded. Obviously there will be a lot of questions now. I'm going to try my best to answer them all over the weekend. Mark and I will also be doing weekly live chats here to keep everyone constantly updated on this massive patch and our progress over the next 9 weeks of development. I'll have more details of each mechanic weekly. Thanks again for sticking it out with us all! -c3sk

[ 2016-08-26 23:05:57 CET ] [ Original post ]