February Dev Diary

Hi! The Haunted Space dev team is here.

We would like to share our first dev diary with you to tell you about the most important additions we have developed for the new game build. We have been working on several things, including issues and bugs, but there are some exciting new features to the game world that we have been focusing on and we want to tell you about them!

Voices
We have added the voices of several characters. We started by focusing on our main character Homerus, played by the great Matt Curtis. We also tried combining his acting with AI-generated speeches to give you the feeling of what we are after. While some of the voice acting is still a work in progress, we’re excited to share the voices of our characters with you. At the moment, we have only included voice acting for the first part of the game, not including the new area. The idea is to add the voices gradually.

Enemies
We noticed that enemies sometimes behaved a little strangely and were not a real challenge for the player. So we started by implementing some new features in the way the AI is behaving, followed by an overall rebalance of the enemies’ toughness and speed. This is a significant first step towards a larger refactoring that we have planned to make your fighting all the more exciting and fun! In the future, we plan to look into better balancing of combat and enemy abilities, as well as a more thorough review of Haunted Space’s entire AI system.

A New Game Area
After the release of Limbo and The Core, this new update introduces a whole new area of the Galaxy of Neterun: The Hole. The Hole is a dangerous place, a hunting ground for the two guilds that dominate it, the Iron Guild and the Gold Guild, who are in perpetual war with each other. Unlike the previous areas, where the narrative and exploration were the true focus of the gameplay, The Hole is all about dogfighting. So, ready up your weapons! With the introduction of The Hole, we have added three new mechanics, which we will discuss in the following paragraphs.

The Events
The first new mechanic is the “Events”, which are specific events that are triggered when the player arrives in a certain area of the map. In The Hole, we used this mechanic for the “Station Conquest” events: when you enter an enemy base, the event will be triggered. Follow the instructions, and you will conquer the station on behalf of your guild. Although this mechanic is currently only used for the Hole Stations, we plan to implement other types of Events throughout the game world, such as random encounters with NPCs or collecting specific materials.

Factions
Factions are the second mechanic introduced in the new update. We will be able to choose which side we are on through our actions, whether we are friends with the Iron Guild or the Gold Guild, by earning Faction Points for each Station we conquer or by completing certain quests for one guild or the other. In the future, we plan to expand this mechanic by adding ship modules specific to each Faction, which you will only be able to purchase once you have earned a good reputation.

Scanner
The final new mechanic is the Scanner. We have equipped the ship with a system that allows you to search the game world for items or areas that would otherwise be difficult to find. For example, you can use the Scanner to find a mining area more easily, or to search within Guild Stations for items to activate or destroy to complete a Conquest Event. Again, our intention is to increase the number of areas where you can use the scanner to find valuable loot or quest items.

And much more!
But the rest you will have to figure out for yourself!

Bugfixes Notes

Fixed errors in the ship asset display when the player exits and enters the ship inventory menu.

Fixed errors in displaying the station interface when trying to reload the ship’s ammunition.

Fixed minor bugs in some side quests that prevented them from being completed, such as event update errors.

Fixed VFX that was not displaying correctly, such as cage nodes and enemy contrails.

Fixed some quest marker display bugs that prevented players from correctly navigating from one task to the next.

Fixed some anomalous behavior of raid bosses spawning late or in the wrong places in the spawn area.

Fixed minor cutscene bugs, such as some ship functions remaining active instead of being completely disabled.

Fixed gate operation bug causing blockages when traveling between map areas

Fixed minor dialog update errors

Fixed errors in the display of the amount of ionic coal collected, which prevented it from updating correctly on the consumables wheel.

Fixed errors in displaying quest widgets that were caused by dialog updates and prevented the player from viewing quest tasks correctly.

Fixed minor bugs related to destruction/interaction of objects around the map

Fixed display of enemy wave markers

Fixed a post savegame dialog playback bug that caused widget display to freeze after a player loaded a game.

Fixed assembly errors in a ship module (fixer)

Fixed incorrect dialog/character pairings

Fix music triggering during combat

Fixed a sonic matter counter update bug that prevented the amount of sonic matter collected during a main quest from being displayed correctly.

Fixed some ship inventory bugs after a loadgame that returned the wrong ship asset to the player compared to the one before the save

Fixed some quest checkpoint errors after a loadgame