While working on this update I was adding new content but the vast amount of the time was spent fixing outstanding things and improving performance.

First, the new stuff.

There's an interlude section added (train station) and a bit of the following chapter "full throttle". Starting with now, new levels will be available in preview builds but should no longer end in the demo. This doesn't mean that there won't be anything new being added to the demo.

I plan to add a few "cutscenes" to the levels that are in the demo. As well as new weapon parts, EXM nodes, items/robots. New enemies are highly unlikely to be added here.

Speaking of weapon parts, there are two new sights added: 3 dots and holographic sight. The latter is extremely useful when aiming at distant robots. There are also a few new weapon nodes added - they do not introduce any new abilities and are more useful for tweaking guns. They increase damage in various ways but also make the gun slower to reload. This can be offset by the "charging bypass" node or the "instant reload" EXM (which requires a tiny bit of skill to perform).

And while we're here, pure weapon stats don't really tell much about what's inside the gun. Looking at each node is not that easy too. That's why there's now part list visible when you look at a gun, next to the stats. The parts are unsigned but once you learn them, it proves useful when deciding which weapon to keep (to use at a weapon mixer) and which to discard.

I introduced a few changes to the guidance as well. The first one, and most important is that in the starting level, door directions are at eye level. What's more is that when you start the level, you enter a room that has two exit doors, one with blinking door directions, the other with blank.  To make sure that the player sees them, they are at a significant distance. For larger play areas, it's just a big room. But for smaller ones you use a moving platform to get to the other side of the room. This way I want to make sure, the player will look at the door directions and will be able to figure out what they are/mean.

But to make sure, people won't end up travelling infinitely, I introduced one more feature. Note that this one is only in arcade mode. After a while, the map starts to block pathways that don't lead towards the objective. This doesn't happen immediately and is to force people to move forward. Also, when you run into a few dead ends and may think you're lost, you may start to pay more attention to the blinking door directions.

The worst comes, I may add explicit information on what to do if someone gets stuck in a single cell without a clue what to do.

Also, the levels themselves changed a bit, their pacing. Enemies are introduced earlier but there are fewer of them. The "pineapple" robot works now as a mini-boss at the end of the level.

There are also new activities introduced to the game. Two very simple puzzles that may change in the future into something more VR-y. There's also a section that works similarly to "a hole in the wall" with you standing on a moving platform and a wall appearing in front of you. There are two twists to that, though. The first is that the wall may change (although I changed that to be rather unlikely) and the second is that being well-equipped makes this extremely easy (you stand on the platform and wait for it to reach the other end). I'll let people to figure out how to do it. And finally, there's a turret section. It introduces the concept of taking over machines/other bodies. This should be explored further in the game.

There were also a few changes to HUD and menu. HUD can now be locked to the head (it's also possible to make it always locked to head, check options/gameplay).

The menu is now rendered at 1-2 meters. It feels a bit better but also may make it easier for people with sight-related issues to read the menu.  I still have no good idea about subtitles (other than make them bigger, which most likely will happen) and the HUD (although this one is also placed in the world, so you may move toward something you want to read.

The "be at right place" feature that had a screen with your play area overview and a red cone coming at where you should be now has also rings on the ground. They appear only if you are away from the cone and/or not looking at it.

Another, partially comfort option, is ability to lock day-night cycle at a specific time. You don't want night? Make it so. The moving stars make you dizzy? Set the time, they won't move. By the way, the day-night cycle is slowed down. The in-game day lasts for 30 minutes.

One new big feature is "1-bit" aeshethics mode. This is experimental, ie. gameplay is not adjusted to it, things are significantly sacrificed, no colours, hard to read some of the stuff, performance drops at times. It's more about experiencing 1-bit in VR and I recommend playing it without any hostiles.

Other changes are related mostly to performance. I sit down for a few days, developed tools that make it possible to store hitch frames on Quest and inspect them on PC and started to go through various hitches that are present in the game. I haven't sorted out all of them yet. But managed to fix a few that were annoying me the most. With the death sequence being the worst offender.

When you disintegrated a robot, there were puffs of black smoke coming out of it and the robot was disappearing. The puffs were hard on GPU. Lots of overdraw, especially when the robot was standing close to us. As I wrote in the previous dev log entry (and I will also get into some details in the dev log entry about performance) I changed that. Now the disintegrating robots glow up and are blown into dust.

There were also many other performance improvements - they will be covered in a separate entry.

What now? New content! I plan to switch solely to adding actual content to the game. I reorganised level list to first work on the levels that are really, really required. Some are a bit optional and they are left for later. I hope that have them for the final release. If not, they shall be added in the first updates. One of them is something I really want to have in the game and it's on the top of the list.

I still want to add two weapon types, lots of nodes and EXMs (the first EXM I want to add right now is "inspector" that allows to examine robots, their weak points, to show their health bars, how much damage you do etc). These should be added along the way. As well as tips while loading and pop up information about gained experience (these are now visible in the HUD, in top-left corner).

What may be pushed for later updates? Two-handed weapons and melee weapons. While I'd love to have them, if there's not enough time, they will be left for the updates. There are tons of features I'd like to have in the game, but I don't want to keep adding stuff without finishing the game. I'd prefer to first finish the game and then add more things.