NetherWorld December Devblog news - NetherWorld: Drugs, Sex and Pixels

What has happened since our last April-May devblog? A LOT.

If you’re cold, don’t worry… We are back to heat up everybody with some cool stuff!

First of all, let’s talk about graphic improvements.

While developing the demo, we saw some problems with the boss fire particles. We were using the same particles for decorative purposes (the demo boss is made of metal and blue fire) and for the fire attacks and explosions.

What happened? Our disgraced protagonist, Medoo, was really confused because sometimes he wasn’t aware of being damaged… Okay, it’s funny to see Medoo’s suffering, but if you’re playing Medoo, dying without knowing why sucks.

Luckily, this was easy to fix. We designed two different particles:

The “Ouch!” fire particle explosion (right), and the “Look-How-Badass-I-am” decorative one (left).

Is… Is she hitting you with a fetus?

Well… Yes, but that’s a long story. Look at the laser sight. If you’ve ever worked with Unity, you’ll know how useful the “LineRenderer” tool is for things like this. The problem lies in having a cool HD red laser... in a (cool) pixel art game.

Hmmm... Something’s wrong here, right? Most of the feedback we received indicated that too. So... let’s fix it.

Thanks to the rasterization algorithm by our beloved friend Jack Elton Bresenham, we got a cute and fully integrated laser sight for NetherWorld firearms. In this particular case, a dusty Thompson.

Laser sight was an appearance improvement, but this hasn’t been the only change we’ve made in weapons. We’ve spent time and effort to assure you the best experience in the game, especially during boss combats.

A jellyfish shooting a Thompson is probably one of the best ideas we could ever have. At the beginning, it sounded fantastic to program a realistic recoil for an automatic rifle. However, we didn’t take into account that there's a bit difference between two human hands holding a Thompson and several slippery tentacles doing it... so the recoil was horrible. Being aware of that, we reduced the recoil parameters to avoid frustration, despair and suicide among the players while trying to shoot a target.

Here’s a Before / After gif to show the recoil evolution (Guess which is the bad and the good one):

In the April-May Devblog you saw a prototype of how would the Weapons UI be. Well, since then our Weapon Selector has been upgraded and debugged for the demo.

We haven’t posted an article since May… OF COURSE the news are not over. We’re gonna make a quick list of SOME of the stuff we haven’t shown you yet on IndieDB:

>> UI Gamepad Builder Tool

If you want to play the game for Nintendo Switch... You’ll need a controller. We’ve created a terrific tool to make the "switch" (sorry) from keyboard UI to controller UI the easiest way possible.

>> Picking Objects System

As in every rich world and story, NetherWorld deserves cool objects with weird descriptions and a great way to pick them up. We’ve improved NetherWorld Picking Objects System adding new functionalities, like “Take this note from the wall”, or “Pick this gun from the ground and add it to the inventory”.

>> Menu

This is how NetherWorld menu looks like, at least in the demo… Hope you could listen to it ;)

>> Online Features

Wait... Is NetherWorld an online game? Are we gonna play a Battle Royale? WTF, OF COURSE NOT! NetherWorld is still a single-player game, but we wanted to add some cool online features, like worldwide leaderboards and what we call... The Intruders System.

Imagine that you and 200 other players are, at the same time but in your own games, getting drunk in the town’s bar. Wouldn’t it be cool that you could see them as a creepy spirit, or even as your wife memories recalling how disgraced you are?

NetherWorld Intruders System is still in alpha tests, but is basically a dynamic NPC position based on where player character is in the game. You won’t be able to interact with other players, but you’ll see them in a funny (or creepy) way.

As you may know, developing a game is much more than programming. It entails boring stuff like paperwork, but also other fulfilling things like having a cool website. We’re glad to introduce you our NEW NETHERWORLD SITE! From there you’ll be able to visit our Steam page too.

Oh... Did you arrive here? To show our gratitude we’ll give you (FOR FREE!) some ways to be the first to know about NetherWorld development!

Twitter: @NetherWorldGame

Mail: info@netherworldgame.com

…and don’t forget to visit our new website: netherworldgame.com

Thanks again for your support and see you soon!

NetherWorld Team