Delaying third playtest (31.7)

Hello there!!

Before I'll get to the meat of the topic, I would like to thank everyone who has participated in previous playtests. Without your feedback we would have still been in a very early prototype phase.

Now back to the topic. 

There are a couple of reasons why we are delaying the release. 

1. One of our members has joined mandatory military service (Daniel Meerson) which meant inactivity from his part. However, the good news is that once the worst period ends, he will have more time to work on the game.
2. In addition, me and Benjamin Bertz have been experiencing our own issues in life that caused slow progression with the game.

Is there at least something new to show?

Definitely!! The most exciting thing is that the layout of a level called Cave of Fallen is now done. There are obviously still things that need to be tweaked and pretty soon we need to playtest the level with enemies.

Now that I mentioned enemies, I also have been working on a wave based system. The essential idea is that when player enters a room, some amount of enemies spawn in random locations inside a box volume per wave (To some extent this works the same way like in Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal). Currently it works fine but it still needs some tweaking.

Other changes/additions are:

• From input settings, you can invert mouse horizontally, vertically or both.
• Working on a Jump-pad 3D model.
• First sketch of a player character. 
• Unreal Engine has been bumped up to 4.25.2 for bug fixes.
• In settings you can now enable screen space global illumination for better lighting effects. 
• The first soundtrack should be ready soon. 

Will these delays happen again? 

Absolutely. There's school, work, final exams and for me incoming military service(But I will join it either next year or year after it). We'll try to mitigate the impact of future delays but if they happen, you will know why. 

Thank you for reading this and hopefully you stay excited for the next playtest. If you'd like to hear the soundtrack once it's done then subscribe to our youtube channel.

Stay safe and see you soon.

From Alexander Streng, Benjamin Bertz, Daniel Meerson.

Here are some screenshots to look at while you wait. 

Player sketch

Jump-pad blockout

Portal concept art

Cave of Fallen