Shelf Life Patch Notes — November 19, 2024
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Although progress has been slow, we want to thank you for your continued support :)
We know we said this last time, but THIS is the final update before the game is finally finished, and it includes numerous improvements and fixes across the game as a whole.
Baton
We thought the buildup in the first few levels was lacklustre, because you are immediately given a gun, killing much suspense and tension. Now instead of getting a gun first thing, you get a baton, which is not only slower than the pistol's melee attack, but does less damage. You now get the gun in the Eggs HQ level. Hopefully this makes the first level more of a challenge.
Cables
Our art guy found a plugin which lets him create really good looking cables with minimal performance hit, and he kind of went nuts with it. These cables are scattered like webbing throughout the server rooms, really making it fun to look at. Below are some highlights.
Performance
Previously, the game would need to run at quarter resolution, using TSR as an upscaler to hit 60fps on most systems, after this update, the game runs significantly better and can reach full resolution.
- Previously, the game used unreal engine's virtual shadowmaps, which had an extreme impact on performance. Now the game uses standard shadow maps by default.
- We have optimised the lighting on levels, removing all overlapping stationary lights we could find, which means more of the shadowmaps are baked, instead of being calculated dynamically, every frame.
- We changed the post processing and lumen settings to be much faster.
Menu
The menu has been improved, and is easier to see on white or black backgrounds.
- Added FOV settings
- Added the option to enable motion blur
- Added option to reset individual options to default values, instead of every setting
BUGS
- Lizard eyes were absurdly bright in dark areas, changed the eye shader to glow less, this is more of an art thing but its too small to put anywhere else lol
- There was a bug with turrets, making them tank the games performance when destroyed with an explosive. this is no longer a problem
- Lizards no longer get stuck after spitting
Again, we are sorry for the pace at which updates are coming out, but we've brainstormed some really cool ideas for the final boss fight within Ron's mind, thinking about of all of the cool stuff we would be able to do that wouldn't be possible inside a realistic setting.
We're feeling confident that the final boss fight will make you laugh, cry and possibly get Bongwater Productions sued for defamation. You'll dive into the mind of this totally made up CEO (who is not representative of any particular billionaire you may have seen on the news lately) and unravel his ego like a cat with a ball of yarn. This is our first big project as a team, and we know that there's a lot that we can improve on in the future but we have a good feeling you'll be entertained by the finale.
Happy smoking,
Bongwater team.