Development Update #19

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the nineteenth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men.  This month has again been interesting - a couple of maps have had some much needed polish, but most surprisingly (both to me and, as I suspect, to you, if you read the last update), Map 13 is progressing very nicely! Before you have a chance to fully process that sentence, let's get straight into it!

The March to Hell

Wait, where the hell (pardon the pun) did that come from?  Haven't I just spent weeks, months even, talking about how much of a pain this damn map was, and that I was very clearly trying to put it off and off and off again, until it ended up being the very last thing to get added to the game?  What gives?

Well, it is absolutely true that this map was proving to be a massive headache for me... up until sometime earlier this month, when the idea abruptly popped into my head.  This level, with such a name as The March to Hell, had to be about hell in some form or another.  I had some vague desires to make a level that looked a bit like Doom's third episode, Inferno, but with little more than that to go on I just couldn't picture it.  I was then made aware of another Inferno (why is everything about hell called Inferno...), this one being a poem about hell by a 14th century Italian named Dante.  Specifically, it was a more modern re-imagining of the poem, but using the same idea at its core - that being the Nine Circles of Hell.

And so, here we have it - Map 13 at last...

This map will consist of a series of trials of increasing difficulty, each of which taking place across nine floors.  Each floor has a different layout but adheres to one of three themes, starting with a continuation of Map 12's more industrial-style graphics, then descending into a more medieval look (reusing assets from Maps 4 and 5), and finally finishing off with some real hell-like environments that are very much inspired by Doom.

So, why does the game have a hell level now?  And more importantly, did it actually need one?  Well, personally I wanted at least one level where I could really test my creativity.  Most of the levels in the game are based on Osowiec Fortress itself, and while I did take some creative liberty with the design of each level, at the end of the day ten of the fifteen levels in the game are directly based on maps and reference photos of the place.  These maps also try to be (mostly) period-accurate, with the kind of backdrops you'd expect from a World War One game.  Starting with Map 12, things deviate a lot from this design, but having only one level like this could feel a bit jarring.  Having another, wackier level allows me to expand on some of the ideas and mechanics that were developed for Map 12.

Enjoy some spooky areas...

...Or outright dangerous ones!  Make sure you don't blow yourself up in here

Map 13 is easily the most linear map in the game, but hopefully with the variety of environments and the challenging traps it will still prove a fun and memorable one.  There's still a bit more left to do for it before I can really show it off in a video - my current estimate is that it will be finished in just a couple more weeks.  Once done, I will go back to polishing a few more of the existing levels (Maps 5 and 8), and with all of that done, I will make two new videos for the next development update - one for Map 13, and a slightly longer one showcasing Maps 5 through 8 in more detail.

Speaking of polish, let's move on to what I've been up to in that regard.

Revisiting Maps 6 and 7

These maps were both "finished" over a year ago, however at that time a map couldn't really be finished as such.  With the game still heavily in-development, both were lacking when it comes to the bits of scenery - simply put, a lot of the assets that are in the game now just didn't exist back then.  Now, with nearly all the extra assets in place, it was a good time to revisit these maps and add those missing pieces.

The view of Fort III that you can now enjoy at the start of Map 6

An interesting plane crash through a window at the train yard

There's a bit more going on inside the station in Map 7 now...

...And a few extra assets to make the outside feel more like a real station

I had too much fun placing some of these corpses!

Gameplay-wise little has changed here.  This polish was all about bringing these two maps up-to-par with some of the latest additions (such as Map 10, and the more thoroughly refined demo levels).

There's not a whole lot more to say here, so before I bring this update to a close I will just briefly mention something about the roadmap.  Now that Map 13 has definitely not taken six weeks as I thought it would, the previously-announced release date of 6th August 2024 is looking a lot more certain!  However, it is looking likely that I will have a very busy June and so I will be losing out on some development time I thought I would have when I last updated the roadmap.  On the plus-side, I forgot to account for the two bank holiday weekends in May that we have here in the UK so that might make up some of the difference.  Of course, none of this accounts for unforeseen circumstances that may crop up between now and August so nothing can be set in stone just yet.  I thought this was good news overall in the end though!

That's it for this update.  You can look forward to a few more gameplay videos next month, including a proper reveal of Map 13 in all its glory!

Thanks for reading!