First Playable (Update)

Hi!

Here's an update related to the "first playable" dev build.

The main goal of this upcoming dev build is to have somewhat uninterrupted gameplay test which combines most of the new commercial branch elements.

Uninterrupted in this context means that you won't get stuck in colliders, game doesn't crash, everything looks visually consistent, performance is solid and in general it should feel like "this is all starting to come together".

I have pretty much this goal already achieved with the Apartments map which is going to be the test map for this dev build but I have few issues:

Issue 1: Loot
- When I did the UI overhaul, that decision meant that I needed to convert all the ~200 items from a single-cell format to a multi-cell "tetris" format. This process basically means new updated icons and few other visual things in order to support that new interface.

- There are still a lot of items that have those obsolete single-cell formats in their data, in other words I haven't yet rendered the new icons for every item in the game. This task is super simple to do, but it's just time consuming and repetitive job.

- If I turn on the physical and container based loot generation for the Apartments map, there's a high change that those obsolete single-cell format items will get spawned on the map and they will cause all kinds of issues and most likely crash the game / interface.

- Currently I don't want to spend any development time on upgrading all those obsolete items to support the new interface (since I'm quite busy with all the new features and contractor stuff) and I also don't make some sort of placeholder loot tables for this first playable test (with the items that have already been converted).

- I'm planning to convert all those obsolete items "tetris-compatible" somewhere around the summer, so for this first playable test I will probably need to turn off the loot generation and just hand you some sort of the "starting kit" of items that have already been converted to play around with the new interface etc.

Issue 2: Magazines
- The new magazine system is already fully game-ready (code-wise) and showcased in the previous YT-video but I have this animation bottleneck, since I have only one contractor for animations and currently I have to prioritize this contractor for other important features (that need animations), so there's bunch of weapons in the commercial branch that are missing specific magazine animations.

- This issues is kind of similar like the first one, so if you happened to find or access certain weapons (from loot or from AI) that don't have those specific magazine animations it would block the weapon system etc.

- The most simple solutions for this problem is to rollback the old ammo based reloading (I stored that for this specific reason) for the weapons until this animation bottleneck gets cleared and I have those missing animations. With this approach, I don't have to worry about any conflicting reload issues etc.

So since I have this first playable dev build already pretty much ready, I just have to avoid these two issues and then it's pretty much good to go for testing.

In terms of timelines, I have to deal with bunch of outsourcing stuff this weekend (mostly voice acting related) and on Monday I will do some final playtests myself and maybe leave one extra day for potential bug fixing (related to that "uninterrupted" goal), so then on Wednesday I should be ready to share you that dev build.

So that's the goal for the first playable and after the Wednesday I continue to the next development topics (like boss mechanics) and start building the second early access map etc.

- Antti (Developer)