Hello there! It's yet again your favourite weekly update blog post coming to you live on this lovely Saturday! This week there's quite a bit of graphical and light upgrades along with a couple of new gameplay features. So let's cut the chase and get right to it!

Gun Updates

First up, there's a new mechanic with guns. In the past, guns had perfect precision. So you're guaranteed to hit a target if your aim is on point.

It made it hard to add additional types of guns. Why would you get a rifle when your 9mm is just as precise?

So I decided to add a precision mechanic to most firearms. In essence, there now a possibility to miss your shot. Each type of gun has its precision. Also, The better the weapon's quality is, the more precise it gets.

As of now, there's only one type of firearm (the 9mm gun), but I'm planning on adding more as I see fit. This new precision mechanic will make it easier to add a varied ranged of firearm weapons.

Of course, the mechanic is still up for balancing (as for everything else). I'm not too sure of also adding the mechanic for bow, but we'll see.

Special Room updates

Next up, the meat of the post! Previously I've started to rectify some 3D models, lighting and many other details like that.

I've also stated that there is a couple of new stuff in special rooms too. This week, there's even more new stuff for most of these rooms, including new lighting, better textures/UV maps and even new props and better composition.

There are three rooms, in particular, that got quite the update. There's the casino room, blood malls and also generic malls.

Casinos

This room is by far the one with the most updates. Casinos used to look quite incomplete: slots were floating mid-air, and some lights existed without any source too.

Now, aside from better lighting, there are also a bunch of new kinds of stuff.

First, there's now a proper slot machine. It's a pretty big one. It takes about 30% of the whole room and is quite beefy.

Because of the sheer size of it, there were a couple of existing props that need rearranging. I think that it looks better like that.

With the new slot machine, I was able to gain a bit of frame back by disabling the slot's collisions and changing their rendering setting just a bit.

There's also proper wallpaper on the walls. It's a small but welcome addition, especially since it fits with the casino theme.

The carpet also got a small upgrade. It got a lovely checker pattern to it, making it much more Vaporwave than before.

Another noticable addition is proper lights above the tables. It used to be a simple spotlight without any proper source. Not it got a proper hanging light with a proper lightbulb

Next, there's something much more subtle change. The casino's floor got re-textured. The floor looked flat previously. Now there's a new fancy bump map that adds a bit of detail to that otherwise plain-looking floor.

While normally unnoticeable, with the correct angle, you can notice the bumps.

And finally, another subtle change. Previously, most of the lights in special rooms were consistently white (either cold or warm but white nevertheless). Now, most light will follow the level's palette. It's usually unnoticeable on most levels, but on some levels, it's quite noticable.

If you look closely, you might notice some slight variation in the casino room too.

Blood Malls

Blood malls were, in my opinion, the most unfinished of the malls. There were little to no props what-so-ever. It hardly felt like a proper shop.

Now they got quite a bit of new stock and even got shelves filled with weapon-themed props.

On pretty much every wall there are a plethora of weapons. From blades to firearm, this store got them all.

They even got new gun displays showing generic rifles. These also come with lights, thus making blood malls feel unique.

Generic Malls

Along with Blood Malls, Generic Malls were also quite baren compared to Clothes malls.

Now, with the new Blood Mall props, there are a little bit more props adding quite a bit of detail to it.

First up, you can see there's a bit of weapon on the walls just like Blood malls.

There are also boxes and other products on the mall's shelves. There's even a nice little can display going on too.

And finally, there are also many boxes laying around the back, thus hammering down the store theme.

And that's about it for special rooms. There are numerous other changes to most of the rooms, which I'll go more into detail later.

Minor Updates

• Updated special rooms
  • Changed most special room floors' material;
    • Added better details to most of these floor models.
      • Some even have baked-in shades, among other things.
    • The lower floor of SuperShoppes now has checkered floors;
  • Changed the temple's models to use tri-colour maps instead of convoluted geometries that would needlessly tank the performance;
  • Optimized the spa geometries to reduce the triangle count;
  • Realigned some UV maps;
  • Added better lights to the Diner room:
    • We're reusing the casino table light fixtures for diner tables too.
  • Refactored some redundant props into prefabs.
  • Fixed prefab links to previously broken redundant game objects
  • Optimized some physics collisions:
    • I've removed superfluous colliders that tanked performance:
      • Thus, player movements are much more fluid.
• Made lights follow the current level's palette:
  • The light's material will also match their current light colour.
• Fixed a harmless bug that would pollute the console, thus tanking the performance.
• Mall signs are now more optimized and each type of malls have different kinds of signs

Next Week

So next week is the same thing. I'm going to be focusing on lights, models and the overall look of the game.

After that's done, I need to rectify some AI behaviour once again and get them ready for this month's Monthly Build. After that's done it's public demo time.

And that's about it for this week! I hope you had fun reading through! So stay safe and remember to grab a coat, it's getting chilly outside!

See you next week!