Persistence layer might be not as exciting as other things. Nor open world. And among outstanding issues, there was one that was kinda breaking the experience. I noticed that many people struggle to push enemies off the ledge. That was happening due to soft collisions. Fixing that was an easy task.

But then I thought that maybe I could add hand-to-hand combat. And that's what took most of the time last week (other than kids). There are some minor issues I wrote down and that will be fixed eventually but the initial pass is done. It works and you can complete a whole level using your fists only (although sometimes it might be a bit hard).

There are two important things that will be covered in a tutorial but I wanted to mention them here.

1. Punching other objects is not free in Tea For God. You pay with either your health or the main equipment's energy (this depends on EXMs). In a normal game, you may choose to not improve your shell's (avatar's) hand-to-hand capabilities as you would be using that rarely. But if you want to use only your fists to solve problems on the way, you may want to use all EXMs (or a new preset called "bruiser"). For those who like to fiddle with stuff, I encourage to swap attractor with hand shield. It's more useful than deflector in some cases.

2. Swinging arms won't work, you have to punch straight on and be quick. Slow punches won't work either. Very fast punches do more damage but it doesn't scale with speed. It's just either normal or fast/strong (unless you use "Steady Hit" EXM that changes all punches into fast/strong).

One more thing was added in this build. When exiting an in-game menu or terminal, you may need to be placed where you were previously. Up to now, there were just arrows and text. In this version, a top view was introduced that shows where you should be and where you are making it easier to get into the right place.

The number of EXMs is quite big and will grow more. Tutorials will help on using them. Persistence should help to make it easier to introduce to EXMs as well. And that's what I want to do next.

update: #203 fixes a crash for SteamVR when using terminal or in-game menu and getting back to the game.