Development Update #5

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the fifth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. In this update I will go over how Map 7 is shaping up, and as I mentioned in the last announcement (The Long Road Ahead), this one will be a fun one.

Before I show off what the map looks like, let's address the elephant in the room from Development Update #4 - specifically, that train I made last month. Some of you probably worked out where Map 7 will take place from that image, but for those who haven't read the last development update, Map 7 will take place at Osowiec's station.

We can see where this lies in relation to the other levels using this handy map (which I've shown before):


We can clearly see a railway going past Fort I (the location of Map 8), and the layout of the tracks served as a starting point for the design of the map. Here are some screenshots to show that:








That's cool and all, but what about the train - how does that fit in to the level? Well, I prepared something special to show that off - a short video.


As you can see, the trains will be both a help and a hindrance. If you're careful, you can use it to crush your enemies for you, but don't get crushed yourself.

As an aside, I would like to say that I do now have a YouTube channel. I've known for a while that it is hard to demonstrate new maps and enemies with just screenshots alone, so from now on I will aim to have a preview video alongside screenshots when covering major features. In the next few days I will also upload the trailers for the game to this channel. Let me know what you think of this change!

Now, back to the game. Crushing enemies isn't the only thing the train will do. Part of the level will also involve boarding the train to find a key - and this means stopping it first.

The beast has been tamed

Now, to finish this development update off, I'd like to go over how I've incorporated the feedback I've had so far into the design of the level. Thanks to the Next Fest event, I got a lot of useful feedback, so here's some common criticism people had and how I've addressed it.

I'm stuck/lost/I don't know where to go

This came up quite a lot. Interestingly, I found the solution in a development blog for another boomer shooter, Ion Fury. In that blog post, the developer talked about the same problem, and the solution they had was to place smaller items along the intended path like a trail of breadcrumbs. Here's an example of this:


In this screenshot, I've just entered the level and killed the first few enemies. Now where do I go - straight on through the door, or left up the stairs? Well, up the stairs is a dead end for now, as the door at the top is locked. This means the way forward is straight on, through the door. This is telegraphed through the health and armour bonuses, which you'll probably want now as this initial area can be a bit hectic. Most of the rest of the level is like this, with smaller health and armour items (and sometimes ammo) which guide you.

I keep running out of ammo and end up resorting to the rifle

This one came as a surprise to me, as I'd always thought I put too much ammo in the levels. This one can be tricky to balance, but at this mid-point through the game, all the weapons have been unlocked and so I need to place ammo around for all of them anyway. Additionally, on the harder difficulties there are always more enemies, which means plenty of weapon and ammo drops from those enemies.

One thing I have done differently to address this, is test it a little differently. I always balance the hardest difficulty first, as this is the difficulty I play on (what can I say, I find it too easy!). I consider this difficulty balanced if I can beat the level without dying, while the "Pistol Start" option is enabled (in the gameplay menu). This means there must be enough items for me to be able to complete it from a fresh start, with just the Luger and no health or armour carried over from the previous level. What I now did differently, is I went back through the level and noted any items I didn't pick up, then looked at my final health, armour and ammo counts.

I finished the level in a decent shape, despite taking a beating in the final fight. I have some leftover rounds for the Revolver, but what isn't shown is that I have a lot of spare MG ammo. I could probably disable some of the MG ammo pickups on Feldmarschall difficulty, but won't tweak the health or armour anymore.

With that in mind, I can adjust how many items are available for the harder difficulties, and then leave the rest for the easier ones as there are less enemies to deal with on easier difficulties.

I sometimes flip switches that reveal secrets but don't know where they are

This is a simple one to resolve, and comes down to telegraphing of secret locations. In the demo levels, secrets are usually near to the switches that open them, however the actual locations don't look any different to the surrounding environment. This one was easy to fix - the secret doors in Map 7 have slightly different textures. They still blend in, but at least they can be spotted with a keen eye.

Additionally, some secrets are actually visible from other secret areas. An example of this is below:


Here, I am standing in a hard-to-reach area, and I can see items on the roof through the window. Now I just need to figure out how to get there. Of course, this example works both ways - if I get the items on the roof first, I'll still see the other secret from the other side of the window.

I didn't like the enemy placement

OK, I admit this one is quite vague. I can guess one problem with the enemy placement though - there is rarely a quiet moment in the demo levels. For the most part, the enemies are placed in large groups, with the odd one or two scattered between them. This is especially a problem on Map 3. What this means is that it is difficult to deal with one group of enemies, without triggering another and having to immediately deal with that group. Then when you are dealing with the next one, you get distracted by some scattered enemies which leads to another group, and so on. This means there is often very little time after a fight to take a breather and explore for items.

I survived this fight by the skin of my teeth. Time to find some health.

The solution for this is easy - move the previously-scattered enemies into other groups, so that there are bigger gaps between groups of enemies. This is something that was easy to do in Map 7 as its overall layout meant I could divide it up into different sections with lots of enemies in them, and separate these sections with items and secrets.


All that was just a handful of points, and there is a lot more feedback I can address later. Hopefully it's enough to prove that I do pay attention to the feedback you give, so don't be afraid to say what you think about the game!

Anyway, this has been a long development update, so it's time to end it. Join me next month where (hopefully) I can show off the next map that is planned, Map 6...

Thanks for reading!