The Miscellaneous Changes in the All’s Eye Update

Let's talk about the “and more” portion of the new trailer.

Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project

I normally put out these dev blogs on the first of each month, but that didn't happen this time because I was wrapping up work on The Future Project's 1.1 update, titled the All's Eye update. I talked about it in last month's dev blog, but in a nutshell I introduced a brand new boss fight into the game as well as a new difficulty mode. You can check out the updated game on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and as of this writing I'm currently discounting the game for 40% off as a sort of celebration promotion. You could almost call it the “challenge update” as the content within it is centered on endgame challenges and new ways for experienced players to play the game. It's definitely an update for a certain kind of audience, that being the completionists and those who look to get everything they can out of a game. But, that's not to say that's all the update had. I also included lots of smaller changes, whether that be bug fixes, balance adjustments, and perhaps most importantly, changes to pre-existing content. It's that last item, the miscellaneous changes, that I'll be focusing on today. I'll go down the patch notes and talk about the slightly more substantial items listed, and why I did it.

The first major item somewhat ties into the meat of the content update, but it actually extends into the game's finale too. Included in the All's Eye boss fight is a special variation of All's Eye that can be fought if you're battling the boss on Master Mode. The player has severely reduced damage output on Master Mode thanks to both reduced player damage and fewer maximum missiles to work with. Something I found was that endgame bosses were borderline impossible to do on Master Mode because of the changes and their high health. While Master Mode is meant to be extremely difficult, this was drifting into “not fun” territory, so I decided to make Master Mode variants of both All's Eye and the base game's final boss. These variants have a couple changes to make them more fair to fight in Master Mode while still being appropriate for the difficulty. All's Eye's Master Mode variant has it performing its From Dust attack constantly during the entire battle, forcing the player to always be on the move and severely reduces the amount of breathing room the player has. The final boss, meanwhile, has a Master Mode variant that allows it to attack more frequently, and the Deletion Timer exclusive to the final boss counts down twice as fast. The aim was to make versions of battles that would accommodate the drastic reduction in player damage output, but make up for it by being harder in other areas. Again, it's Master Mode, the hardest difficulty. I want these things to be a challenge, but I also want it to be interesting, thus the change.

In terms of changes to boss fights, these are definitely the more substantial updates but they are not the only bosses with updates. The Saboteur, our main antagonist, also got a big change. In the game, whenever you battle the Saboteur they use abilities based off what the player has acquired at the time. For example, if you were to face the Saboteur before getting the ice element power, then the Saboteur will never use ice attacks. When you face them again with the ice ability acquired, they'll begin to use their own ice attacks. This does a lot already to help the Saboteur feel like they're evolving with you, but I thought I could do more. So, I added some additional rules. For every two hundred maximum health the player has, the Saboteur gains an additional three hundred and fifty added on to their base health for whichever Saboteur battle you're on. Additionally, the missile barrage attack they do can only be done once the player has over forty maximum missiles, and their flamethrower attack requires the player has over two hundred maximum fire ammo. Depending on how you play The Future Project, it may admittedly be hard to spot the difference. Those who like to collect everything before progressing may not feel the changes the way someone doing a minimum percent run would. My hope, however, is that replays of the game will make the ways a Saboteur battle can change more apparent. Among other things I did want the game to be replayable, which is why I did the Saboteur the way I did. Adding these new rules will add further variance to different playthroughs, and perhaps entice players to try different strategies in their runs.

Next up, we have changes to all the different worlds in the game. These changes can really run the gamut, but probably the most significant of them would have to be...water. That seems really weird when written out like that, so allow me to elaborate. In case you've not yet played The Future Project and seen this for yourself, one of the things you can do in the game is use the ice ability to shoot an ice projectile into a body of water, creating a platform on the water. In other words, you can make your own little ice bridge to cross large bodies of water. The Future Project has a lot of mechanics in it but this one is honestly one of my favorites, and one that I felt went a bit under utilized in the original 1.0 release. But with this new update, some more water bodies have been added to various parts of the game allowing the mechanic to be used a bit more. Distant Sibling got the bulk of the water, with much of it being placed in Floor -1. Originally, all you really needed to get through Floor -1 was the fall suppression (required to gain access at all), double jump, and the earth ability. Now you also need the ice ability to make it through. The reason for this change was simple – I just wanted the player to use more of their abilities, and this was a simple way to do it without dramatically changing the rest of the map. This same logic applies to the additional water added to Jeweled Tundra and Alien Remnant. Alien Remnant in particular felt like the right call because nowhere else in that world is water a variable. That said, Alien Remnant also only got one water body, in the northern part of the outside area (Floor 0 in-game). But I think that works well in the context of the rest of the world, plus winds up making that area far more unique and memorable. Even so, I may still keep an eye out for other areas to include water in Alien Remnant. Given the lore of the world, I'm sure we can justify its citadel having a leak somewhere...

Other world changes amount to the changing of some locks and adding restoration stations to various places. Once again, Distant Sibling got the lion's share of these changes, with it getting several new save, element, and missile restoration stations on Floor 1 in particular. During development of the All's Eye update I had noticed that the north portion of Floor 1 was oddly barren of restoration or even save stations. In fairness, it's an entirely optional area that you never need set foot in if you don't want to, but it was still odd to me that there wasn't even a save station in the area. Some of the rooms there are large too, so it's not like there isn't space. Thus, I added them in. As for the lock changes, that was done because the upgrade you'd find right next to that lock wouldn't match the lock type, which I realized was a bit odd. Imagine if you pick up an earth upgrade, restoring your earth ammo, but then need to leave the room with a missile, which you are out of. That would be no fun at all! It made more sense to tie the lock to the recently acquired upgrade, so that's what I did. Tempest is the other world with major changes, but even then it's not a lot compared to Distant Sibling. Mostly adding in some restoration stations to Floor 3. That one felt like an even more necessary change because, in contrast to the other worlds, Tempest is fairly linear. You'll probably see the whole world save for one key area on your first visit. And yet, there was no readily accessible save station on Floor 3? That first visit could end up feeling a bit rough then, huh? It felt like an oversight on my part, so I added a save station as well as a couple other restoration stations to help balance things out. All of this was done in the name of making a smoother overall experience for the player. A little pushback from the game is fine, and indeed welcomed in many cases, but you have to balance difficulty with convenience and fun.

All the other changes are small things, most definitely the sorts of items that could be in any old patch. But we'll quickly run down them. The King's Assassin, the second part in a two part boss battle in Alien Remnant, got hit with the nerf hammer. From day zero he (she? They? It?) had always been one of the harder bosses of the game, made even more difficult on higher difficulties and especially on minimum percent runs. In the 1.0 version of the game it would be fair to say that King's Assassin was something of a run killer in speedrunning. Yet again, difficulty is fine but it must be carefully balanced with fun, and I think it was during playtesting of the All's Eye update that I started to think King's Assassin's difficulty just wasn't fun. So, I dropped how much health it has and slowed down the frequency of attacks, which combined makes for a pretty substantial nerf in The Future Project. But I did make its standard projectile a bit faster, because frankly it was supposed to be anyway and I'm not really sure why it took me so long to notice how slow it was. As far as enemy buffs go, the Strider of Distant Sibling actually got a small buff, but I do mean small. Just a single point increase in the damage it does, but don't forget that on higher difficulties that can quickly add up. Also, the damage the player receives from burns is increased, effectively buffing the likes of the Lava Tentacle from Hand of the Water and Saboteur. With some exceptions, enemies get eight damage per second while burned with the ability to stack those burns. The player, on the other hand, was only taking four damage per second. I suspect my original thinking was to nerf the Lava Tentacle in particular since it was the primary burning enemy, but after some more playtesting it felt right for player burns to deal more damage. It's still not the same as enemies, at only six damage per second, but get burned enough in succession and that can add up.

Beyond that, there's your usual bug fixes that I won't waste your time with. I did make patch notes after all. If you're truly that curious you can always head over to Steam and check them out. Bug fixes don't really need explaining or breakdown, they're just issues with the game that straight up shouldn't be there. And while I would like to tell you that the All's Eye update got rid of every single bug in the game, I've found that that's far from the truth. Further playtesting towards the end of the update's development revealed some new bugs that will have to be addressed in a later patch, but thankfully they're extremely minor and a bit on the rare side to encounter. I make it a point to not ship broken games, and if I do say so myself I've got a pretty good track record so far. This is kind of a long way of saying that there's still the odd patch here and there in the near future but what's currently for sale should work great for the average user. Alongside everything there's also the game's soundtrack available for purchase on Steam, containing every musical piece used in the game including the new All's Eye theme. As a bonus, I also included the trailer version of the Distant Sibling theme I used in one of the game's early trailers. Altogether it comes out to twenty seven tracks and about an hour and a half of musical content. I've talked about it before, but I enjoy writing music for my games and I had a lot of fun making the soundtrack for The Future Project. The All's Eye theme in particular might be my most involved work ever, incorporating me actually singing in latin to complete the work. Hopefully I didn't butcher the language too bad. I apply some audio effects to make it less obviously my voice, but yes, if you play the All's Eye trailer linked above and listen to the singing, that is indeed me. Definitely a first for me and my music making work. Might be worth dedicating a dev blog just to that, honestly.

And with that, that's everything in the All's Eye update! I told you in the last dev blog that I wanted to earn that increment in the version number, and I think between the new boss, difficulty mode, and everything I just listed, I accomplished that. While I was happy with the original 1.0 release, this 1.1 version is definitely the superior version of the game. It makes the overall package more complete with the new boss fight, plus makes several changes to improve the overall experience of the game. And isn't that what version updates and patches are all about? Time will tell how much more updating The Future Project will receive, but I'm quite happy with its current state and hope you will be too. We're close to the end of the year now, which means next month's dev blog (which will actually be published on the first of December like my dev blogs are supposed to be) will likely be a reflection on the year's work. You look at the past year's entries and you'll find that a lot's happened, so I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about next month.

Until next time!

-Lance T.