Hi there!

Welcome to this month's dev log! I've been hard at work over the last month wrapping up update 0.3, which i have completed, but as it includes the new 'Last Stop' map, which uses lots and lots of photoscanned, high quality assets, I need to wait for Itch.io to approve the update and allow me to host larger files. Fingers crossed I get a quick response! I put about 30h into the project this month, a number that i'm happy with considering I had exams :D

But what did i work on?

Mostly, I worked intensively on AI, bringing the AI up to a standard that I feel is acceptable for the project. 0.3 is the last 'Feature Update,' by which I mean that it's the last update that features major overhauls to core systems, at least that's the plan ;D. Alpha 0.3.1 should drop later this month, featuring some slight bug fixes and some stuff that didn't make it into 0.3, and after that there will be no more public updates. 0.3 also features the introduction of Friendly AI. It's currently not used in any of the playable levels, but will be added in 0.3.1 (due to some small bugs that need ironing out). 

Optimization was also another important point of 0.3, and something i worked on extensively. From dropping my reliance on eventtick, to cleaner, more optimized code, there's a lot that went in to making Fall Blau play well, and there were also changes made so that mechanics don't break at lower framerates (in particular, the lean mechanic, which exhebited very odd, eratic shaking when the framerate dropped below 30fps in 0.1/0.2).

In fact, throughout the development of 0.3, i've rewritten about half of Fall Blau's source code, updating and refactoring it to be cleaner, faster, and overall better.

I'll publish the full change log for 0.3 when the update launches later this week, but you can see some of the changes here: https://twitter.com/lukas_kelemen/status/1236387281163952133?s=20

There's just one more thing I want to say in this dev log, and that's that the future versions of Fall Blau will not be public. It's been an awesome journey so far, but with development on the story and levels starting, the next alpha's will only be shared with a small, closed group of Alpha testers. If you want to apply, head over to our discord server here: https://discord.gg/svb5TSq

Thanks for reading, i'll see you later this week for 0.3 :D

Lukas