Urban Strife August 2023 DevBlog
Long time no see. It has been a long hot summer and a busy one. We had planned initially to release the game in July, but by the time Q2 ended it became obvious the game was not where we wanted it to be and we'll be releasing it in a very noisy marketplace, with a lot of games competing for attention. So we decided to reassess the development timeline since it was clear we will be postponing the release and look for a new window, later this year. The extra development time was and will be put to good use - and here's a list of features and QoL improvements that have already made it into the game since the NextFest demo.
New Smoke Spreading Mechanic
Our dynamic fire system has been unanimously appreciated so we're adding now a new one that will pleasantly tingle your inner tactician senses: dynamic smoke/gas. The cloud will grow and decrease over time and - most important - it will spread through open spaces only. That means a closed room will contain the smoke while breaking windows and opening doors will dissipate it. The uses for the smoke/gas will be plenty and will come in the shape of new grenades (starting with the most obvious, a smoke grenade that will break LOS).
Refined NightOps Mechanics
Night ops will now benefit from a refined light system, with each individual game tile having its own light intensity, instead of a generic light setting that affects the entire map. What this improvement brings is the ability to implement light generating gadgets (flares and all other illumination devices) that will make night combat quite interesting.
The LOS mechanic has been overhauled too and we added an option to manually finetune the ranges. We found out that the old automatic system was generating ridiculously small visual detection distances when the player was using stealth at night. Speaking of detection ranges, we added much needed UI helpers for zombie spawners so you will no longer bump inadvertently into one.
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