MERRY CHRISTMAS

 Here is a message (in english and spanish) from Mr. Versus X.

BIOASSHARD ARENA Ver. 0.6.438

**UPDATE 2!!!** A new version is out. Please download it again and delete the old one.

UPDATE!!! If you're experiencing no-sound problems please, be patient we're aware of that and we're investigating it.

Ok everyone, time for the Release.

As always, I’ll talk a bit about it then I’ll let you with the download links.

 

The version number is 0.6.438. There’s indeed a high number of stuffs changed, fixed and added. For this version quite a few additions necessaries for finishing the Arena have been added. There’s a few more to add. But we’re getting there.

Now let’s talk about the stuff that’s in it:

 

Partial Changelog (to see an expanded version, take a look at CONTROLS & CHANGELOG.txt in the RAR File)

Mission 7

Well, you know, with every new release there’s at least one new mission and this release wasn’t the exception. This mission plays a lot with mainly one of the new additions, so please, before starting to curse us (XD) about it behind hard or _put whatever word you can think of_ take it easy. It can take around 30-40 minutes without knowing what to do -and a lot less when you know your way around, like less than 10 mins, but that’s not the point-. I mean, it’s better to take it easy and enjoy it than making to the end fast and then starting to wait for a new release.

 

Fantasy Cards that allow Julia to have different kind of pubes

Yeah, this was requested a few times and since there wasn’t any new visual addition like outfits and such, we decided to add this in. Keep in mind that this is based on Fantasy Card Input, so there’s no option in the Character Customization Screen to change it. Its usage it’s fairly simple, you get the code and input it to turn on one “style” then if you want to change it, just input another one. If you happen to get tired of it, then input the card code to shave it and that’s that, you’re done. The styles for now are just textures with one that uses fibers, so watch out when using this one since the resource consuming will grow because it may be a little high in polygon count (not too much but still wanted to warn about it).

 

Configuration options have been added to change the FOV, Bloom strength and turning Motion Blur ON and OFF

New features that were requested. They’re basically untested because I just made sure they do what they have to do but I play it with default values, so use it under your own responsibility it may result in unwanted behaviors during specific parts like Sexttacks, aiming/shotting (this is probably something to look for when changing the FOV). The FOV option has been added for those of you playing with ultra-wide monitors, since we don’t have those, we couldn’t test it.

 

Input Remapping System

This was a highly requested feature that we wanted to implement since a long ago but never managed to, giving priority to other stuff. Keep this in mind though, it’s a basic one, I didn’t want to go too deep with stuff like allowing you to set an already used key to another control and erasing its previous use, etc. Why you ask? Well because as of now on Unreal Engine 5.1, the standard input system has been deprecated and it’s now using a new one called Enhanced Input System. So, I didn’t want to making an in-depth system that won’t have any use once we migrate to UE5. As I mentioned when I talked about this addition in that Dev Report, we didn’t find any bugs, but obviously as a two-men only, there’s so much we can test.

 

Item Box

Yes! You now have access to the classic Item Box, where you can store a lot more items than in your inventory, along with Key items as well. To make this new addition more relevant (for the game it will be A LOT relevant but for the Arena…) we made some changes, like we limited the number of important items you can have at the same time, we added an extra inventory slot for the knife so you can put it on the Item Box as well, we also changed the location of unlocked weapons and they’re now inside the Item Box, so make sure to look for it on every level.

 

You can now read documents!

Yeah, another fundamental feature to make it a true-to-its-roots-parody are documents. There’re no story elements on them as of yet as you can guess since this is the Arena, but still make sure you find and read them all 😊.

 

Help added to almost every menu, including controls and behaviors

Yep, something to make it easier for you (and hopefully to prevent having to answer more questions about it xD).

 

Damage visual representation on enemies

This is a new system, that adds more “realism” to it and I like it a lot. It’s more gore than before. If you have a lot of free time and ammo to spare you can see the new wounds you can make on the Infected, even when they’re dead. And this reminds me of another change and that is that we got rid of the effect of enemies’ disintegration. We decided to leave the corpses there for a longer time and add a blood pool below them to give it a more classical spirit.

 

There's a Blue Herb on the Mission 4 now

A lot of you asked to have a Blue Herb in this action-oriented mission and now you have it ^^

 

You can now evade at any time, pressing the Interact button a bit longer when there's nothing to interact with

Ok, so this one is a Temporal Addition, just in case you find it a bad move or don’t like how it’s implemented. You can now hold the F key (or the one you configure as the Interact key in the IRS) for about 0.2 seconds and when releasing it, Julia will roll in the pressed direction. Keep in mind one thing though, you lose more stamina doing it this way than in the average one waiting for the prompt to evade, BUT you can now even evade enemies trying to grab. As I said, I want to hear your input about this because I don’t know if this is worth or not.

 

Removed the WIP IK system for Enemies, since it brought more problems than solutions

Yeah, since we updated the engine version, it started to freak out, so we decided to remove that all along. Let’s hope when the migration to UE5 is made, we can take advantage of the Control rig system to implement a better IK for enemies.

 

Added a new "stat" for items/key items which is their materials like metallic, plastic, etc.

As it sounds, you can’t see them “material” but you can guess them as it’s pretty obvious. Its usage? Well, you’ll find out soon enough xD.

 

Average Infected are now slower but more dangerous

Yeah, as part of the “remaking” of the AI to fix some error, we added some changes, like most of the Infected are now slower and you can clearly notice when they’re trying to grab because they rise arms, but not in that “fast” way they did previously… I don’t know how to explain, so you’ll see what I mean when you play it. But watch out when they’re trying to grab, do not give them your back or they’ll destroy Julia’s clothes at once… you’ve been warned XD.

 

When using a gamepad, aiming the knife acts wrongly making Julia to aim then stop and then back to aiming again

I’ve never seen this one reported, but since I made some test with a gamepad this time to see the IRS and the Engine upgrade worked, I found this little annoying glitch and fixed it.

 

Using gamepad, the Zoom-in/out during Sexttacks is not working

Another one that I’m very surprised nobody reported yet. But yeah, that’s now working too.

 

 

An enemy trying to grab while Julia is getting hit or finishing another action will cause a soft-lock

This error, was probably in there for a long time now, since, maybe version 0.1 (where the Grab+Sexttack system was implemented) but it wasn’t until the Boss fight that it started happening more noticeably, since it’s pretty common enemies will try to grab while others are attacking. I move the entire process of the enemy grabbing to a “place” where it shouldn’t execute unless it really has to. I’d say this is fixed, but as always, I may have missed something and I’ll count on you to report it in such case.

 

The average Infected goes crazy directions -instead of where Julia is- when trying to grab Julia

One of the weirdest “additions” in the previous release was this nasty thing I really don’t know where it came from. I say it’s gone for good, but who knows, again I’ll wait for you to say it’s totally gone.

 

Other Things to Mention

There’s a couple more improvement I wanted to mention. One is the new compression algorithm, which drastically reduced the size to around half. But not for the RAR file -really weird- this one’s size a bit above the previous release one, but once uncompressed you’ll notice the difference (well, that is if you usually take a look at the releases’ size and not just the RAR but its content XD).

 

Another addition is a change in how files are cooked, making this release the faster to load so far, at least in my testing. The difference using an HDD -not even an SDD- is huge from previous releases. The reduction in the first loading time, from the moment you double-click the icon until it appears on screen is where I found the major difference. I hope you all notice it too and make it a better experience overall.

 

And last but not least, we’re now making a new written walkthrough for the Arena. It’s in very early stages yet, but you can already find many interesting things like the Unlockables List (along with their requirements) and the Fantasy Card List (along with how to find them). So, please make sure to take a look at it to don’t miss a thing!

The Bioasshard Arena Guide is for Supporters / Patrons / PPR Patrons!

 

Download

And now what you’ve been waiting for, after all this text (my hands hurt XD). Here you have your link:

MEGA

We downloaded with no problems, no limit reached, etc. But we always download big files using the FREE download manager J-Downloader 2. So, just wanted to put it here, in case you experience any problem when downloading, use that download manager.

 

And that’s that. Only thing left to do is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a more than happy playing. We really hope you enjoy this release while enjoying this time of holidays for the ones who can have them :P.

 

Much love <3 everyone!

 

-Versus X Studio team (Mr.VersusX and Meguido)

 

Ho, ho, ho!

 Merry Christmas <3

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SCREENSHOT SATURDAY #72

 Screenshot Saturday is back! ;)

(Almost) Every Saturday new screencaps of what we are working on.

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PROJECT LIST UPDATED

 Hi

As the title says we've made an update to the Project List LINK.

Here is a list of changes:

• Removed the Project Status tab: We always forget to update that so it's better to delete it XD
• Revamped the Active Projects tab: now it has an image of the project itself and a small description for the already active projects.
• Roadmap updated: not much to say here.

See you soon, have a nice day <3

BIOASSHARD ARENA Version 0.5.328-Rev.1

 Hello everyone!

Time for the Revision 1 release!

Read this, to get a clear idea what’s in for this Revision:

Changelog:

+New+ Performance pass applied to everything, adding validation checks everywhere to avoid empty pointers left in memory and trying to read from them

I’ve seen some people having fatal errors. This can be caused by many things (hardware incompatibility, software lacking, usage of conflicting software, engine internal errors, memory leaks, etc.) but what I can take care of the ones related to my code and that can cause memory leaks, like trying to access invalid pointers in memory. This is why I added validation checks to every line of code that is trying to write or read a pointer in memory (like UObjects references, For Loops, etc.). This way I can be (almost) sure that the errors are no longer related to a code problem.

+Change+ Got rid of the checking to prevent Julia from aiming when looking at wall, so no more places where she can't aim

This was added a few versions ago, just to avoid that “ugly” visual effect of Julia’s arms going through walls when aiming against one. But looks like that with this release, lots of you started finding troubles with it, so yeah, gameplay comes first that small visual imperfections. This means, the system is now off, so it shouldn’t give any more problems with Julia aiming.

+Change+ The wall behind Julia during a Sexttack against the wall won't get affected by the invisible effect when the camera is not through it

First improvement to this new system, the wall behind Julia during a Sexttack was taken as an object in the middle of the “action” so it was turned invisible when unnecessary. This has now changed.

+Change+ The Boss room has been lightened up a bit

I completely forgot that my screen is different to the rest of the world xD and it’s always a lot brighter by default, so I tweaked the lighting in the Boss room a bit to make it easier to see. I think it’s good now, but you’ll have to test it out by yourself and let me know.

+Change+ RHI set to default instead of forcing DirectX 11

This could cause problems to some GPUs, so I got it back to its default value.

+Fix+ Interacting with closed doors sometimes cause a hard-lock

Yes! I think I finally tracked down this old error that I never managed to replicate. All I can say about this is just play it and give me good news _^

+Fix+ The custom camera when using a lever is not working

This glitch appeared with this release and it’s now solved, so it’s back to normal

+Fix+ Some enemies (mainly the Cerberus) are moving in place on Mission 5

Something really weird I never noticed before, but with this fix I think that the random enemies not moving in areas like the Exterior on Mission 2, should be gone as well

+Fix+ Sucking against walls animation is too slow no matter the random speed value

+Fix+ Julia's melee attacks fail on affecting multiple enemies at once when it hits one of them

+Fix+ Julia's shoulders are acting weird during some Sexttack animations as well as in the final part of the Sequence on Mission 6

+Fix+ Something is forcing Julia to look down during the Sequence on Mission 6

+Fix+ Enemies get stuck during a jump over and just stay forever in that place Another old-as-hell-bug that I managed to track down for this Revision

+Fix+ The rain in Mission 3 is taken as an "Object" to apply the invisibility effect during a Sexttack

+Fix+ The equipped weapon appears on top of the handgun during the Sequence on Mission 6

+Fix+ Julia will soft-lock when quick-knifing if you keep pressing the T button

Known Bugs (read them to avoid reporting stuff we already know it’s in there):

• Some Julia outfits may show many zones of clipping through (this is being worked on little by little, so please bear with us while we fix them) Yes, I always focus on more important things and tend to forget about this one, sorry.

• Enemies will try to grab to directions where Julia is not I’m pretty sure this is caused by the WIP IK system (but I have yet to investigate it further). I think we’ll have it fixed for the next version.

• Enemies' movement (animations) are a bit awkward I need to smooth the IK transitions and reduce the foot sliding, but that takes time ’.

• Sometimes enemies will get up from floor right after falling on it (this is a temporal fix to avoid enemies from remaining on floor bugged after being hit) This is a problem I thought to have fixed when remade the Enemy Entity, but looks like I missed a check in some part of the code and because finding it right now would take me a bit of time, I decided to implement a temporary fix to avoid the enemies to “deactivate” randomly when falling to floor, but that caused this behavior. It should be totally fixed for the next version.

Download:

BIOASSHARD ARENA Version 0.5.328-Rev.1

I hope you enjoy this new Revision with fixed stuff.

See ya soon everyone!

-Meguido

BIOASSHARD ARENA Version 0.5.328

 Hello everyone!

So, finally this time has come.

There’re some things I want to talk about but I’ll let the main ones for a post after the release. This one is to make some things as clear as possible.

So, please, make sure you read them before proceeding to download it.

As you can see below the Changelog it’s a bit smaller than usual and more considering the long time it took (this log is a reduced version, there’s more on the one included within the RAR file, but still smaller) and that’s because apart from the Boss, the very first +New+ tasks are the ones that took the majority of time. And they’re the ones I want to mention.

Let’s get to it:

1) Do the Fantasy Cards work?

Yes! they all work. They’ve all been tested and proved working, so if you have any problem, make sure you’re writing them correctly and also take a look at the FAQ to know more about them and the possible ‘errors’ you may encounter. Because they’re working and we’re mentioning it here, even before you download it, we won’t answer any question regarding “the codes aren’t working”. Thanks for your understanding.

2) +New+ Total rework of Enemy Entity (+more than 170 subtasks on this)

This hell of a task, took me more than half a year to complete. It’s better in terms of optimization and internally for development since BTs are better structured than regular code, but for the player? Well, all you gotta notice is that they’re now more retarded than before. Why is this? Well, I wanted to make them more zombie like smart, meaning being sillier, but not to this extent. But it happened that I really don’t know why yet, they’re acting a lot sillier in the build but not in the editor. So, for now, just try to enjoy their retardness until I make them smarter. Good thing though is that the Boss is not that retarded.

3) +New+ Total rework of Sexttack System (lots of subtasks goes on here as well)

Because of how the Boss is and thinking on the future and the possibility of having more than one enemy making a Sexttack, I have to rethink how to make this system work for those matters. The way it was working before was a bit cheaty and the reason why sometimes you got Julia carrying a T-Pose or Idle pose enemy along with her, because I was making a copy of the enemy trying to grab and making it appear as part of Julia “Actor” but that method was useless for the Boss for example. This new one required a lot of work and redesign. But in the end, the player won’t notice a difference, or shouldn’t, because in visual/gameplay terms they’re working practically the same (while internally they’re totally different and now it’s a lot better to work with and a very good template for future expansions)

4) +New+ Total rework of Camera System (same)

Exactly as before. They’re internal changes that reflect for the player in almost no visible changes. This one may have noticeable small differences like when using the lever in Mission 5. where the previous close-up camera showing the lever moving it’s not present and it’s added as *known bug* in the “CONTROLS & CHANGELOG.txt” file. But overall should be working pretty similar externally (and again totally different and smother internally)

5) +New+ 22 Sexttack animations

Nothing important to mention here, just to confirm that yeah, there are 22 new Sexttack animations, not grabbing, attacking, idling, etc. animations counted in this 22 number. For those other tasks for the Boss, a lot more animations were made (not including the new “state” for dismembered average Infected that also required a few more animations). Just to clarify, 6 of those 22 new Sexttack animations are for the average Infected while the other 16 are for the Boss.

6) +New+ Very WIP IK system for Enemies -very glitchy causing some weird behaviors in build- (to be replaced with Ctrl RIG if possible)

This one drove me mad, but I couldn’t help but leave it in. This is one and the main reason you’ll find the enemies are more retarded now than before. But I couldn’t get rid of it now, because that’s how the Animation Layer work and it’s only happening on the Build version of the Arena, NOT in the editor and that’s why I didn’t noticed about this problem until it was too late to go back and remake it. The main silly behavior that this will cause and you’ll notice is that the enemy will often try to grab the air even if they’ve been attacking you already. I don’t really get why in the build they decide that Julia is in a random position other than the one she’s in and try to grab in there.

7)  +New+ WIP Drop Needed Item System (Don't know how to call it, but it's basically the system that control if you need a kind of item when killing an enemy to 'help' drop it) (only on the new mission for now)

Yeah, similar to what happens on RE5, where enemies drop items with more chances depending on your current status like, healing items when you’re on low health and have no healing items in the inventory and the same for the ammo. But is still a WIP, and there’s an important thing I want to mention, for now you can’t do that trick used in RE5 where if you didn’t want ammo for a specific weapon, you would just discard it forcing the game to only give you drops of ammo for the weapon you wanna use. I’ll add that mechanic later. To put it simple, if you want to get no ammo for the Assault Rifle -for example- you discard it and get at least one slot of ammo for it on the inventory, otherwise you’ll be getting drops of that ammo. Sorry about that, but that’s how it’s working right now (I have to admit that I just forgot about that check on my testings because I didn’t have more weapons unlocked in my editor savegame version xD).

8) +Change+ Tweaked Julia Physics a bit

Yeah, I did some changes, because in the past release I noticed that her meat wasn’t acting too realistic. So, I decided to add some checks here and there and tweaked some values to get her move more happily (especially naked).

9) +Change+ Randomly decide the Sexttack speed (so that never two Sexttack are the same anymore)

This adds a lot of variety to the Sexttacks, but -yeah, there’s always a “but” xD- since it’s random, I couldn’t test all the possible speeds and some animations may be too fast or too slow, so I rely on your reports on how you find them. In the case you find one that it’s playing too fast or too slow, please take a screenshot of it and report it back to us so we know exactly what animation it is and thus we can change the min/max values for such animations.

10) The Boss

Well, I mentioned this in a post not too long ago. It’s the first Boss ever in the Arena, but it’s not acting as if it were the first Boss in the game, so don’t expect it to be an easy fight (or so I think, maybe it’s too easy for you xD). The thing is, that I tested it multiple times until I was able to beat it using just the pistol and the knife, so it’s more than beatable XD. But as you can see there’s no video-walkthrough of it. The reason is pretty simple, you all have been waiting for too long to just fight this Boss, that I find it would ruin the experience of fighting against him and using your brain to find the best tactic to face him if I just go and post a video fighting it. That’s why we won’t be helping on how to fight him at first for at least some time (please don’t hate us for that XD), to give everyone time to fight their way up to the result screen. This said, my only advice will be, pay attention to everything and keep your ears open.

And I think that’s all I wanted to mention for now, so without anything else to add, here’s your download link. Also, you can check below for the Changelog or just read the TXT file included with the download (which is a better option since you can find the controls in there as well xD)

DOWNLOAD

CHECK HERE FOR REVISION 1

- Changelog v0.5.328 -

 +New+ Total rework of Enemy Entity (+more than 170 subtasks on this)

 +New+ Total rework of Sexttack System (lots of subtasks goes on here as well)

 +New+ Total rework of Camera System (same)

 +New+ 22 Sexttack animations

 +New+ Very WIP IK system for Enemies -very glitchy causing some weird behaviors in build- (to be replaced with Ctrl RIG if possible)

 +New+ Enemies now get tired of chasing a target

 +New+ Type of Sexttack (for the Boss)

 +New+ WIP Julia's skin shader (hopefully this one is the definitive)

 +New+ You can now dismember enemy's legs too

 +New+ Enemy Types (Mission 6)

 +New+ WIP Drop Needed Item System (Don't know how to call it, but it's basically the system that control if you need a kind of item when killing an enemy to 'help' drop it) (only on the new mission for now)

 +New+ Saccade Movement for Julia's eyes

 +New+ A LOT of new animations for the new enemy states and for the new enemy (Boss)

 +New+ More LODs added for the enemies

 +New+ Art Picture for the result screen background for the new Mission

 +New+ Fantasy Cards and codes

 +New+ Engine version used

 +Change+ Tweaked Julia Physics a bit

 +Change+ Redesign of Interactable Entities to make them children of a Parent one to reunite common code

 +Change+ Pivot for the Viewpoint of the Cerberus to make it easier for him to detect targets

 +Change+ Julia's longer damage animations (belly hurting, etc.) will now happen less times and is linked to the damage received, the bigger the damage received the more probability to play those animations

 +Change+ Randomly decide the Sexttack speed (so that never two Sexttack are the same anymore)

 +Change+ Highest LOD for enemies now only shows during grapples and Sexttacks to free a lot of GPU load

 +Fix+ All the UI animations were broken, after upgrading the Engine

 +Fix+ Unused Tags are causing a Fatal Error

 +Fix+ "Scripted" animations for some enemies are allowing them to get back to normal before dying (Mission 4)

 +Fix+ After jumping over, if the enemy is pushed over, it may cause him to remain uncollisonable, therefore causing him to stay on place and being unkillable

 +Fix+ Prevent Julia from going to Idle poses during a sequence

 +Fix+ Got rid of enemies outside level boundaries

 +Fix+ Camera gets reset after "Giving Up" to Game Over Sexttacks (Big Guy)

 +Fix+ Grappling input value never resets making only the first one enemy hard to get free from

 +Fix+ Prevent Julia from crossing a door before it's opened

 +Fix+ Door Cameras aren't working

 +Fix+ Julia rotations when getting an item will cause camera pops

 +Fix+ Audio Configuration aren't working at all, only "Master Volume" and it's only affecting one type of audio

... and a lot, a LOT more.

-Meguido

It's Coming!