Just in case you missed it, we dropped a second teaser last week. Check it out!
We are going to be remaining very tight-lipped about the content in the above trailer for now, as we're not willing to show it off until it is completely ready. We are sure you're gonna love what we're doing. It's awesome! Lots of work is being done on this super secret bit right now. We're all putting in the work to get it done.
Now, here's some cool stuff I CAN tell you about!
Antlion butts and the eyes of Combine soldiers now give off a nice soft glow. We've used sprites to achieve this. It's simple and effective. Take a look:
1upD and Blixibon have been hard at working implementing a new response system for the player. It's super cool and we will be showing it off in a stream sometime soon. Bad Cop now comments on... just about anything. Getting shot, getting hit by Antlions or Zombies, getting hit by flying physics objects, taking fall damage, electric damage or being burnt, killing things, killing his friends, commanding his friends... He has become very vocal.
All of these implementations have been added at code-level. We can 'gag' Bad Cop in Hammer if we need to so he doesn't speak over himself during conversations with other characters. This is a very simple explanation - we'll be sorting out some sort of proper writeup of all of these changes after release.
Introducing - the Rebel Brute!
Much like the Combine shotgunners in the Half-Life 2 Episodes, we've bought in some shotgun heavies for the rebels. These guys are braver than the average rebel and they'll get right up in your grill. Currently they sport a variety of welding masks. They look super cool - and are fun to fight. I've already had some pants-shitting moments with these guys. Props to Kralich for the model and to 1upD for the AI.
Quick tangent - a word on bravery. 1upD has written in a bravery system for rebels. Rebels can become scared during combat, and will retreat to heal, hide or reload. For example, just having Bad Cop aiming down his sights at a rebel will cause the targeted rebel to lose bravery. If they lose too much, they become scared.
Rebels are also now investigating noises in the world. This leads to some really cool and unexpected behaviour. Firing your weapons will warrant investigation from nearby rebel squads.
I can't go into technical details regarding these changes - because I don't have them! But we will outline all of this later on during development.
Thought I'd throw in a bit about the SLAM and the SMG2. We're working on both of these weapons. The SMG2 is getting a complete re-work. Model and anims courtesy of Kralich and Sprite Cranberry. Code - you guessed it - 1upD.
The SMG2 will have a three-round burst. It'll be a lot better than the legacy code we're using at the moment.
With the SLAM we're planning on having the player being able to choose between tripmine mode and satchel mode. This means you could place triggered explosives on walls rather than having them set off by the tripmine laser.
That's all I've got for you this week. We won't be streaming this week due to busy personal schedules. Catch us next week for a big catch-up!