We are back with another big content Update for Late For Work. Just in time for the spooooookiest time of the year. This is actually one of our biggest updates yet, a lot has changed under the hood. Let’s dive in!
New Art
Everything is new! Well not quite everything but we’ve finally been working with professional artists to not only set a clear direction but rebuild all our 3d models and texture to fit with the overall 50s low-poly style we are aiming for. Improvements includes:
New Humans! Now with a multitude of facial expressions, skin colors and clothes! Hundreds of beautiful variations. No more programmer-art humans.
New Cars with a new, slick design that fits our 50s theme waaaay more
New Buildings! Having 300% more colors and details!
New Enemy Tanks & Planes! Looking more realistic and threatening.
and much more. We updated the look of almost every object in the game and can honestly say that we love the new look of the game. We hope you do too.
We also streamlined our pipeline and processes for updating our art assets, so expect further visual improvements over the next few updates.
New Halloween Content
It’s the spookiest time of the year and we couldn’t help but have a little bit of fun with it. We’ve implemented a bunch of truly horrifying Halloween content. We’ve added spooky lighting. We’ve messed the humans and zombified / vampirified / mummified / skeletonified them. We’ve also scattered a bunch of jack o’ lanterns and other special items across the game. The gorilla dressed up for the occasion and witches may or may not abduct some cows.
These features will be around for the whole scary season, just like our Christmas special. We hope they won’t spook you too much.
New Game Mode - The Bodyguard
Adding a new game mode was on our wishlist for this Update. Our latest addition to the roster is “Bodyguard” (in a nod to our favorite Kevin Costner movie). The flat players take control of regular-looking humans and have to kill a handful of VIPs that the gorilla in turn is trying to protect. It’s their job to blend into the crowd and assassinate the VIPs without detection, while the gorilla has to keep a close eye on the targets to identify who is friend and who is foe.
This game mode idea originated directly from conversations with fans in our Discord channel. Thank you to @Pontus for some great feedback. We hope you’ll also join our Discord and help us make the best possible VR party game.
We’ve tested this game mode in-house for a while and found it to be very fun. It still needs some balancing, especially for very high or very low player numbers, but it is quite enjoyable. Let us know what you think! We’ve got lots of little ideas on how to enhance it, little modifiers like smoke bombs or one-time weapons but we want to hear from you.
And that concludes our Halloween Update. We’d love to hear your opinion on the game and the new changes. To reach us directly and get special insider infos on upcoming updates, make sure to join our Discord.
Cheers, Salmi Games
Changelog - Build 545
Improvements
Gameplay: balanced UFO game mode based on the number of flat players. Time limit and kill target are dynamically adjusted.
Gameplay: new game mode “Bodyguard”. VR player defends VIPs, flat players must kill them without being noticed
Gameplay: new “vehicle” control type: human mode
Gameplay: in the tutorial, flat players can now respawn after they die
Gameplay: re-balance the time limits of Last Man Standing and Hide n Seek based on the number of opponents. Army wave timing also change based on number of opponents
AI: improved cow pathfinding
AI: improve AI hiding behavior in Last Man Standing
Art: implement new models for humans, with different body parts that can be easily swapped out, dynamically generated
Art: implemented new models and textures for all houses and buildings with a new system to dynamically mix and match house combinations for a different look on each playthrough
UI: improved helper text and tips for how to use freelook camera for various vehicles
UI: show multiplayer menu first instead of single player
Physics: reworked grabbing objects, collision system, throwing system for more stability and more accurate controls (for example, you can now reliably stack objects or grab compound objects without breaking them)
Physics: improved vehicle flipping (after they’ve been knocked over). Should work much more reliably both for flat players and AI
Physics: prevent gorilla’s head from entering solid objects like the mountains. If gorilla’s head makes contact with such solid objects, movement is stopped.
Architecture: reworked all our game mode management to make it easier to add new game modes (and new game types)
Architecture: reworked out entire build process to make it easier to build and upload new builds of various games
Architecture: improved our localization system to catch and report missing localization strings during the build process. Also made it much easier to add new strings on the fly while building up content.
Architecture: general performance improvements across the board, on physics, on script updates
Visuals: improve the snow map to make it look less yellow-brown in certain lighting and to make the snowmen stick out more
Debug: added internal mode to reduce framerate in order to easily reproduce framerate related physics bugs
Language: added Korean language support (thank you Nat and Gina!)
Halloween: added event highlights in the menu
Halloween: spooky lighting and fog settings
Halloween: generate halloween characters (zombies, vampires, mummies, ghosts, skeletons, witches) during halloween instead of the normal humans