Hey everyone! The new update is finally here and as always there's a lot to talk about.

This time it's been a long wait; the new maps are huge and more complex and the rest of the time has been spent polishing what was there, and adding new or quality-of-life features.

That's not to say the game doesn't have issues, the bigger the game gets the more little things that turn up. It's still early access so please bear with those. I recommend you read at least the first half ofthe Known Issues below, as some of the game's quirks might require a specific response. 


Changelog

- 2 new outdoors maps.
- 1 new tesla weapon.
- 5 new enemy types, 1 new boss.
- 3 new music tracks and all of the rest have been revamped. New, less extreme music for the main menu.
- Several dozens of new voice lines by Jake "TheVoice" Parr and a few dozens by Connor Coghlan, ZH Gallagher, Ellis Knight and Jess Walter Stafford.
- Key rebinding.
- New graphic options (still short but will improve).
- Other small improvements to the overall UI and bigger improvements to the settings menus.
- The stutters throughout the game are for the most part now smaller and some are gone.
- Your power up (Homicidal Rant) now has a scoring minigame within, where you get increasing points for every kill up to 10.
- Challenge mode now has stats and trophies.
- New stamina bar. The kick now does serious damage, but it takes stamina to use it, so as not to be exploited.
- The power up bar is now blue, as red had it confused for health. It now flashes white so it's more obvious when you've reached 25 headshots.
- Player can now hide from explosions behind walls.
- Fixed or improved some of the bugs and performance issues in maps 6, 7 and 8.
- Improved the level selection phase, to give players a chance to change their choice.
- Many quality of life additions and other smaller changes or improvements.


Known Issues:

- Some enemies, specially the valkyries, have a tendency to get stuck in their path. When this happens the performance tanks pretty bad. Solution: Find the offending enemy and shoot them.
- Rarely when loading a challenge mode map the player will spawn with no weapon. Solution: restart the game.
- The bigger new enemy can still harm you with his head when dead. Solution: stay away or gib him. To be fixed soon.
- In some of the dialogue moments, you will come out with the weapon lowered and can't see to get it back. Solution: switch weapons.
- Due to the new key rebinding feature, when pressing Activate the game sometimes fails to recognize the button press. Solution: smash Activate a few times as the norm.
- Bolts might get stuck to the player camera in rare occasions. This is due to a fix to a much greater issue but hopefully will be fixed for the next update.
- Snipers and panzerers have a tendency towards epilepsy, and the former sometimes have trouble shooting from high spots.
- The skull weapon is now a little worse feeling. This is also a fix to a greater issue (crash), and hopefully will be addressed soon. Possible weapon functionality change.
- End map counts are sometimes wacky. The player's counts are accurate, but the totals sometimes aren't. This requires a thorough search through the code and likely won't be fixed until 1.0.
- A lot of the time the player takes little damage from explosions. This is a bug and might change drastically.
- Some loading screens don't show up. Solution: wait for the map to load :D
- Many more little issues.


The future

In the last months I've reached a deal with Dolores Entertainment, a local publishing company, that will port the game to all consoles!
The game will remain free for PC, and we have agreed that the ports will have a low port price (below 10$) for consoles.
Of course, the game will also stay free of stores, passes, pay to play and all such garbage in all versions of the game.

This will be the last version of the game in this page, except for updates made to fix bugs that appear on this version.
The final version will be available for free as a new game here and on Steam.
Wishlist the game there or follow me here if you like it to get notified when it releases.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195910/Darkenstein_3D/

There is still no release date, but if nothing too big happens it should be out before the end of the year.


Graphics

The new maps are optimized for the new shadow distance feature. Raising the distance to almost double for whatever preset you're using should improve the visuals while still offering ok performance. The max value will offer the best visuals everywhere but might be a bit much for the GPU.

More options will be added to the graphics menu, hopefully before this build gets canned.


Thanks

Thanks to all who have played and all of you who are going to play it soon.
If you do so, and you record your gameplay, and you want to send it to me or put it up online (public or private) for me to watch, I'll like you a lot. :D

In this last phase of development I need feedback more than ever so don't hesitate to give me your thoughts or send me that footage.


Lastly, I would like to give special thanks to Jake "The Voice" Parr which has been helping a lot with the project, finding voice actors and helping with promotion, aside from his great acting performance.


Have a blast everyone.
See you soon!