Hey everyone, so this update took a bit longer than I had hoped, and it’s not that big either. I apologize for this, but I haven’t had much time lately to work on CINIS, because of other things going on in my life. Most of this clears up a bit now, so hopefully the next update releases fairly soon!

Focus on this one was fixing some issues that had plagued the game technically since release (or before). This includes bugs and performance issues, but also code scalability. The enemies had been set up very poorly from the start, as they all had to be implemented in less than a week. This caused annoying issues such as the Zombie not sharing much code / logic with any other enemies. So if I fixed a bug in how the Gunner died for example, that logic wouldn’t apply to any other enemies. This also made it impossible to create more modular AI’s, capable of easily being modified or multiple enemies sharing AI logic.

Now, all of that is fixed! This allows for more enemies made more efficiently and with more consistency. The work needed to create new enemies should be reduced drastically, as they’ll no longer need to be worked on from the bottom up, but only new or unique abilities need to be coded.

I am a bit sad over this update not containing more new and exciting features, especially as that was the plan initially, but you gotta have a good foundation to build a house... Or rather create scalable and optimized code to easily create new features... Whichever one you prefer.

I haven’t scoped out all of the next update, but randomized levels, new / overhauled levels, new enemies, have all been in consideration, so we’ll just see.

Anyways, here’s the detailed changelog:

NEW FEATURES

- Added dismemberment:

If the killing hit is to either the hand, arm, or head, that limb will be removed from the enemy. The reason legs and torso isn’t affected by this is because of zombies being able to rise from the dead, and as such, it would need its legs.

- Random enemies are now spawned into levels with a random chance:

Previously all enemies were static. I placed them in a level, and they’d always be there. Now, they have a percentage chance to spawn in a certain place, and the type of enemy is also random-ish. A category of enemy is chosen to be spawned in or not, and zombies do not spawn into levels. So only Knights or Gunners, as of right now, will spawn into levels.

- Rebuilt AI:

AI was rebuilt from the bottom up, for better performance and stability. This is also preparation for new enemy types to come soon :^)

- Rebuilt Melee:

Previously all melee weapons, and the player melee, were kinda janky to work with. It worked fine for gameplay, but the melee weapons were actually a gun and the player’s melee was independent from that. This caused some pain to work with and around, and has therefore been unified, and made much easier. This also fixes a few bugs.

- General performance enhancements:

Changed some UE5 settings, such as changing lumen mode from detail tracing to global tracing, which causes some artifacts, but generally it still looks good, and keeps the same atmosphere, while increasing performance drastically. The other major change was changing the Anti-alias option from TSR to NONE. Yes, it has actually been disabled for now. I don’t feel like it alters the experience too much, and I might add it back as an option later. In any case, performance is greater. Some maps were also further optimized, however, they are far from perfect. This will be resolved later.

ADJUSTED

- Ammo consumption for weapons has been raised:

The ammo upgrade used to be useless on most weapons, and the player almost always had full ammo. Hence, all ammo costs have been raised with 2-5 ammo per shot.

- Ammo received from ammo packs has been doubled:

Due to full-auto weapons especially draining ammo much faster, the amount of ammo given to the player has also been increased. Now the player doesn’t have a full amount of ammo at all times, but ammo is also replenished fairly. Ammo probably will still see further balancing in the future.

FIXED

- Weapon upgrades breaking weapons:

Sometimes weapons wouldn’t save their upgrade levels correctly, and therefore it would only be possible to shoot one shot which would deal 0.1 damage. This has been fixed, and should work fine now.

- Misc. AI bugs:

Mainly AI navigation bugs, damage bugs, and so on.

- Some objects not being removed upon level clearing:

Runes, steel, and some weapons wouldn’t be removed upon level clearing, but now do.