So it's been couple of days now since the alpha demo was released. People had time to play it and provide lots of feedback. So now is a good time to start addressing that feedback.

I'm happy to say that the impressions were very positive overall, but there are certain aspects that a lot of people felt could use some improvement. Here I will try to summarize the commonly recurring complaints that I gathered from forums (the official one and some others), direct feedback and from just watching other people play live and on the internet.

Technical problems:

• Game crashes on starting a new game - The problem here is that during the development it was easier for me to just store the save games and other user data in the working directory of the game. This is bad practice because of the User Account Control feature of the newer operating systems prevents you from writing in the Program Files unless you explicitly run the application as an administrator. I completely missed this because every computer I tested it prior to the release had UAC disabled. I will definitely change this so that the future builds use My Games folder or whatever is the appropriate location on the three operating systems I'll be supporting (XP, Vista, 7). Currently, the workaround is to just run the game with explicit administrator rights.
• Sometimes game would crash on transitions in the lake area - This is a semi-rare bug that can be fixed by applying this patch - http://www.indiedb.com/games/underrail/downloads/underrail-alpha-demo-v0141-patch.

There's probably more stuff that I can't remember right now, but it'll pop up eventually, don't worry.

*  *  *  *  *

Another thing I wanted to briefly touch on is the prospect of the game being crowd-funded. Some may remember that back in June when the demo video was released, and after being pleasantly surprised by the amount of positive feedback it received I said that a crowd-funding campaign is likely to follow the playable demo release. Unfortunately, things got a bit complicated. Because of where I live, a lot of crowd-funding features are not available to me which limits the kind of campaign I'm able to launch.

I'm currently looking into other forms of crowd-funding, such as alpha funding on Desura.

No need to freak out, though, Underrail is still due to be released in the second half of 2013. even if I have to self-fund it all the way. It's just the matter that being able to secure some form of funding at this stage would really help me make the game as big and as diverse as I would like;and I guess that's something that a lot of you would like as well.

In any case, I'll get back to you guys soon to let you know how it all worked out.

First let me just remind everyone who hasn't seen it yet that Underrail is up on Steam Greenlight now. So if you'd like to see it released on Steam eventually please hop over there and up vote and favorite the game.

These last couple of days I made a number of changes to the game, based on the feedback and my own observations. This is not the definite list of changes, though, but these are all the changes that will eventually get into the updated demo release, whenever that may be. Unless I uncover some critical game breaking bug I won't be updating the demo build beyond this. And of course there will be no additional content added to it. So here are the changes:

• Tweaks
  • Buying prices are much higher than selling prices now so you won't be able to get rich quickly anymore; this also make mercantile more useful
  • Ammunition and some other resources are more expensive and scarce now
  • You cannot start combat immediately after transitioning into another area (5 second cooldown added); this should prevent most of the transition exploits
  • Critical hits are better distinguished in the scrolling combat text
  • Batteries now restore more energy, but are also more expensive
  • When attacking a passive object in real time the attack will stop after a single hit (no more auto-attacking)
  • Added more blueprints as static (non-random) merchant inventory
  • Improved some quest text to be more specific (number of outposts, barracks location, shooting practice)
  • Player movement speed slightly increased
  • Grenade damage increased
  • Flashbang duration increased to 2 turns
  • Enemy remains are now visible through walls at all times (don't have to hold down TAB or Z); this should also prevent them from being stuck behind a door or other usables
  • Added inventory sorting (merchant inventories are sorted now as well)
  • Added more item filtering categories
  • Items are unbound from action bar when they are all used up, dropped and such
  • Help option will now blink until you open it (so many people missed it completely)
  • Dragging items/ability off the action bar is made a bit less sensitive now so you shouldn't have that much trouble clicking abilities while the action is unlocked
  • A number of abilities are automatically bound to your action bar at the start of the game
  • When you mouse over an equippable item in your inventory it will highlight the slots in which the item can be equipped (this should help with the special bolts confusion among other things)
  • You can double click items to equip them / put them into the trading window
  • When mousing over an item you wish to purchase it will show the purchase value instead of the nominal value
  • Only currency will be used during auto trading
  • Auto trading will no longer try to trade currency for currency
• Bug fixes
  • Saves and user configuration are now stored in Documents\My Games\Underrail so the game will no longer require admin privileges to run
  • Saving while transitioning out of SGS into the caves will no longer get you stuck between the two gates
  • Killing the sentry near the Mushroom Cove will no longer mess up the factions
  • Attacking SGS sentry bots will no longer mess up the faction and turn your own electroshock sledgehammer against you (it was dealing electrical damage on hit to you as well)
  • You no longer remain in stealth after attacking a camera or other passive object
  • Item duplication bug fixed
  • Rathound Alphas should now properly use their Rend ability
  • Lockpicking is no longer instant with Burglar feat, but this feat has been improved to reduce lockpicking and hacking times by 75% (up from 50%)
  • You can now power up outposts in the caves after turning in the quests
  • You can no longer acquire the Sprint ability without picking the feat
  • Reloading from quick reload bar will now load up the weapon with as much ammo as you have regardless of how it's split in the inventory
  • No more blue flashes on saving the game
  • Removed "computer skill" references
  • Path estimation in turn-based combat should now be drawn properly in all cases
  • Minor AI bugs
  • Other minor map bugs

I've hinted earlier that I'm considering alpha funding for Underrail and now I've officially made up my mind. I originally planned on launching a crowd-funding campaign but that turned out to have too many limitations based on where I was located, so I decided alpha funding is a better option.

The game will be available for purchase in its alpha stage on a couple of digital distribution websites, and who ever purchases alpha version will, of course, receive the final game at no additional cost when it's done. Also, I plan on releasing regular content updates throughout the game's development.

I'm currently working on the next major update that will be the first purchasable version of the game. It will include a major new quest hub (sneak peek above), a new "dungeon" area, more weapons, utilities and other items, new character skill, some updated game mechanics, and more.

I'm expecting the update to be ready sometime in October. Stay tuned for more info on the new stuff.

Also, check out this cool Underrail title screen fan alternative by Jason Seow:

Originally I planned to add traps to the alpha demo but ended up postponing that to get the demo out earlier. They're in now, though.

There are currently three types of land mines you can rig up: frag, high-explosive and EMP. When they're triggered they have same effects as their grenade counterparts. You can also craft these yourself if you have high enough chemistry/electronics. There will be more traps in the future and not all of them will be mines.

Except rigging up the area before a battle and luring your foolish enemies into minefields, I figure trapping will also be very useful in eliminating patrolling enemies. At least those not skillful enough to spot and/or disarm your traps.

Speaking of NPC behavior, I've also introduced a new concept to the game called zone control.

I was thinking of how the game should handle player criminal behavior such as murdering people through various means. And more specifically, I thought about how NPCs should react to you placing traps everywhere and turning their private quarters into mine fields.

I want to prevent exploits such as carpeting an area with traps and killing off high level non-hostile NPCs in the middle of their home base without triggering hostilities and then promptly looting their kickass gear. But on the other hand I want to sometimes allow player to use traps as an assassination mechanism where it's actually appropriate as I think that can be a lot of fun. Ideally the NPCs would be very smart and once a trap has been set off they'd start an investigation and look for a culprit, etc. However, Underrail is not a simulation game and that kind of AI programming is way out of the scope of the game.

So I went with a simpler solution which is to tag each area with certain control level - full, partial or none, which indicates how safe it is for the player to mess around with traps (and in the future murdering, etc) and how the controlling factions of the area will react to your shenanigans.

The UI shows the zone control indicator in the upper right corner and you can mouse over it to see what sort of action you can get away with and what is too risky in the current area.

As far as traps are concerned:

• In fully controller areas (such as SGS station) if someone from the controlling faction detects your trap, you'll immediately get in trouble with that faction;
• In partially controlled areas you'll only get in trouble if someone from the controlling faction sets off your trap
• In uncontrolled areas you can set traps as much as you like and if someone happens to set it off and get killed, no one will be able to trace this to you

One of the common complaints in the demo, and one of the things that I personally wasn't very happy with, is how the crossbows were playing out. Using crossbows as primary damage source was practically impossible, so I've taken some steps to bringing the crossbows up to par with firearms and making them a viable alternative.

First of all I've increased base damage of crossbows, so their straight up damage per turn potential is now about the same as 7.62mm pistols (which is another weapon class with 2 attacks per turn). Originally I kept the crossbow damage lower as I wanted to emphasize their special bolt attack strengths, but I went a bit too far there and they ended up being too weak, especially in the early game before the player could pick up any special bolts. Also, because crossbow attacks already incur more of mechanical damage resistance (125%) and have no way of overcoming that in regular attacks (no armor piercing rounds) there is no need to penalize them further by assigning them lower base damage.

The second problem was a lack of multi-target special bolts, so now I've added two of those. They fulfill similar roles but in different ways.

• Shock Bolts - These bolts inflict additional electrical damage to the primary target, stun it (works on machines as well) and then jump to nearby targets dealing smaller chunks of damage (no stun on secondary targets) in similar fashion as strikes from Shock Sledgehammer.
• Incendiary Bolts - These bolts deal heat damage to the target and have a chance to set it on fire, dealing more heat damage over next couple of turns (and, of course, panicking the living targets), but the bolt also burns everything it comes near on its flight to the primary target, dealing smaller chunks of heat damage. Keep in mind that this bolt is doubly useful against enemies that fear fire (such as rathounds).

I hope you guys like these changes and that they'll get more of you trying out crossbows in the future.

I'm currently mostly working on area designs for the new release. By the end of the week I should have most of it in place (except the new dungeon which I'll tackle later) and then it's time for quests implementation.

I've added food to the game. You can consume different meals to gain (and sometimes also lose) different base stats for 5 minutes. You can only have one type of food buff on your character at any given time. Here are the meals I've prepared so far:

• Rathound Barbecue: +1 strength
• Cave Hopper Steak: +2 agility
• Burrower Burger: +2 constitution
• Eel Sandwich: +2 dexterity
• Junkyard Surprise: +(1-3) random stat, -(0-3) random stat

* * * * *

I've also added a couple easy but important changes to game balance and mechanics.

First of all I changed a bit how stealth works. You'll still be detected over time depending on your stealth skill, enemy's detection, lightning and positioning like before, unless your stealth skill is too far behind the enemy's detection in which case you won't be able to hide from them at all. This will be indicated with a silver eye above the detecting character and the true-sight is now represented by a golden eye (previously silver). The problem was that even the non-stealthy characters were using stealth excessively to move around undetected (and have guaranteed combat initiation) and it worked as long as they didn't stay too close too long because of the way the revealing speed is capped. This change should prevent that while not changing how stealth mechanics work for stealthy characters (those who invest in stealth skill and wear light armors).

Also another minor tweak to stealth - I've added a notification when you bump into other characters and fall out of stealth for that reason. Some people were confused as to what was happening, but keep in mind that if they can't see you their pathfinding won't tell them to go around you.

I increased health scaling with levels, for both the player and non-player characters. Previously, the damage from weapons and other sources was far out-scaling the character health as you progressed in levels which ended up in very volatile fights. This change should ease that up a bit while keeping the early game unchanged. Keep in mind, though, that damage is meant to out-scale health to a certain degree because characters also have access to tougher armors and other protective stuff as the game progresses. Because of this change I've also increased the amount of health that hypos and bandages restore.

I've also doubled the psi point pool as well as psi restoration from psi boosters (also psi boosters now require three mindshrooms to make). This will allow the player focusing on psi abilities to have more sustain in combat. Some people felt like psi points need to regenerate over time, but I want it to be a resource you have to manage just like ammo and batteries. I'm considering adding other ways to restore limited amounts of psi outside of using boosters, though. We'll see.

I've significantly increased based damage multiplier of snipe ability so it should now be more powerful than aimed shot in the early game as intended (since it's a one time opening ability requiring stealth). This attack can no longer critically hit, though.

Keep in mind that none of this is set to stone. These are the changes I've arrived at by watching other people play and from hearing the feedback on the forums. Once the new version is released I will continue to keep an eye out and make changes for the sake of fun and balanced gameplay as best as I can.

I'm almost done with quest implementation for the new areas. There's still a couple smaller ones to go, as well as some support scripting and dialog to do, but that shouldn't take more than couple of days. After that I'm going to start the work on the next 'dungeon' area and that will be the last bit of content for this release.

I do intend to revisit these areas post-release and add more quests, but for now this will do.

I've also added some new weapons and armors:

• One new model of each firearm type: pistol, SMG, assault and sniper rifle
• One new crossbow type
• Knives and sledgehammers made of tungsten steel
• Tungsteen steel armor
• Regenerative vest that slowly restores health but consumes energy (can be used in creation of tactical vests or steel armors)
• Acid resistant leather armor (this will be useful in the upcoming dungeon)

Finally it's complete. All the content I wanted to put in for the first commercial alpha release is in and we're now doing last bits of testing (getting our faces melted in the needlessly hard dungeons and toning the stuff down)

If you want to know what's new in this release you can go check out the dev log posts from the last couple of months, but let me just quickly recap the highlights:

• Huge new urban zone consisting of 8 areas
• Big new 'dungeon' consisting of 6 areas (twice as much as the last one)
• A couple of 'mini-dungeons'
• New quests
• New feats
• Traps skill
• Some updated game mechanics
• Re-balanced economy
• Food
• More weapons and armors
• Updated crossbows (feats, special bolts, damage boost)
• Various other smaller stuff

Underrail alpha version has just been released on Desura and GamersGate!

and

If you want to know what's new in this release (since the demo) you can go check out the dev log posts from the last couple of months, but let me just quickly recap the highlights:

• Huge new urban zone consisting of 8 areas
• Big new 'dungeon' consisting of 6 areas (twice as much as the last one)
• A couple of 'mini-dungeons'
• New quests
• New feats
• Traps skill
• Some updated game mechanics
• Re-balanced economy
• Food
• More weapons and armors
• Updated crossbows (feats, special bolts, damage boost)
• Various other smaller stuff

Alrighty, now that the stuff around alpha release finally settled down a bit I was able to get some real work done again.

I've added export/import character options so that you can restart the game with an existing character (and all their equipment) in the future updates. This ties up to what a lot of you have been asking about - the saved game compatibility between releases. Well, the saves usually won't be 100% compatible. I won't prevent you from loading your old saves, but your saved state might miss a dialog/quest flag, an object you should have picked up earlier, a new NPC that have been added to an area you already visited, etc. So in short, you can load an outdated save game and mess around with it (it shouldn't crash or anything), but if you for some reason can't progress with the quests, I won't be able to help you with that.

Next, I've added an option to autosave on transitions for those who sometimes forget to save for a long time and die 5 areas later, losing all of the progress. I don't advise you to use this feature at the moment, because saving is a bit slow right now, especially when you get later into the game and you'll be changing areas frequently. But if you want it it's there. Also, you'll now have the option of using 'rolling saves' which means that the game will retain your (one) previous quicksave and autosave instead of overwriting it.

Now some gameplay changes.

I've changed the way the lockpicks and haxxors work. Lockpicks are now spent on successful lockpicking, so they work as a resource. They have distinct power levels and icons (+0, +5, +10) and are stackable. Haxxors work similarly like they did before, but also have distinct power levels and icons and require energy (batteries) to use.

Next up is the blueprint for chemical pistols that you'll be able to use to craft guns that fire various chemicals in various forms, if you have sufficient chemistry skill that is. A chemical pistol has two major components - collector, which determines the type of substance you can load into the weapon, and dispenser, which determines the way the gun fires the substance. For now you'll only be able to create Acid Blob Pistols, but there will be more in the future. There's also "Chemical Ammo" blueprint to accompany this. If you have sufficient biology and chemistry skills you'll be able to extract acid from acid mutants and make ammo from it.

* * * * *

I'm aiming for a new release somewhere around New Year. Not sure if it's going to be before or just after though, we'll see. It'll focus mainly on crafting. I'll be adding blueprints for new interesting gadgets as well as some existing stuff that you can't craft at the moment, such as health hypos.

Another major change will be adding respawn timers on creatures in certain areas. This will serve two purposes. First, if you ever find the yourself too weak to progress further with the quests, you can spend some time and hunt through the lower level areas. Now, I'm not saying this is something you'll have to do. The game won't ever require you to grind anything. However, the combat in this game tends to be a bit hard at times, so if you're not that good at it, you'll have this option. And secondly, you'll be able to return to previously visited areas to obtain crafting materials if you're missing on some of them (like you already can with the mushrooms).

That's it for now. Let me know what you think of these changes.

I've finished all the crafting updates for the next release:

• Renamed the "Extract Toxin" blueprint into "Extract Humour". It can now be used to extract various bodily fluids from organs of dead animals
• Creatures will now drop organs when killed. Different types of creatures (animals, insectoids) drop different organs. Harder to kill creatures have greater chance of dropping organs (e.g. rathound alpha has a better chance of dropping adrenal gland than the regular rathound)
• Added health hypo blueprint. You'll need to extract substances from both animal (cave hopper, rathounds, dogs) and insectoid (psi beetle, burrower) organs in order to create those.
• Added adrenaline shot blueprint. You can extract adrenaline from adrenal glands which are a rare drop on most creatures.

• Added chemical blob trap blueprint you can use to create acid blob traps which entangle the victim causing high damage spread over a couple of turns.
• Added acid bolts that you can create from the existing chemical bolt blueprint.
• Added caltrops blueprint. When deployed caltrops deal small amount of damage to anyone who moves over them and drain additional movement/action points. They can also be coated in poison.

• Added plasma pistol. It can be created from the existing energy pistol blueprint. Plasma pistols are high-damage energy weapons, but consume a lot of AP and energy when used which makes them a good power attack weapons (aimed shot /execute), but not the best damage per turn weapons. They deal equal amounts of energy and heat damage.

* * * * *

I've also added Morphine Shot to the game. It reduces damage taken from any source by 50% for 3 turns, but after it expires the user will take damage equal to 50% of their missing health. Basically, you can use it to absorb good amount of damage over 3 turns, but you better make sure to stabilize before it expires. It's also a good way to survive between health hypo usages in difficult fights.

* * * * *

I will be tackling the creature respawning feature next, and then I'll fix the problem with certain kills not giving XP to the player (damage over time effects, explosive barrels, etc). After that there's a couple minor tweaks and bug fixes to handle and the next release will be ready.

Happy New Year everyone and see you in 2013.

The game is updated to version 0.1.6.0 on Desura, soon to be updated in other places as well (GamersGate and Groupees). You'll find all the new stuff listed here and in the previous two dev logs.

• Added creature respawning. Creatures in most places will respawn every two hours. Some bandits will also respawn, but most of the human enemies in the current areas will not respawn (since it wouldn't make sense in the context of these areas).
• Merchants will now refresh their inventories every 90 minutes.
• Reduced the frequency of base stat point gain. Player character will now gain an extra base stat point every four levels, instead of every two.
• Fixed the problem with indirect kills not giving the player XP - all damage over time effects, ground effects and explosive barrels will now properly credit the player with XP.
• Experience gains are now calculated against character's "potential level" which takes into account all XP gained to that point even if you stayed off leveling up.
• Opening and closing doors in combat now cost 25 action points (up from 10) so no more open-shoot-close tactics!
• Locked doors and containers will now display the difficulty rating on attempted use. Lockpicks and haxxors will display the max. lock difficulty they can handle in hands of the player character.
• SGS merchants will now accept stygian coins (charons).

Two important changes to game mechanics in this update.

A lot of you have been complaining of how overpowered and game changing the grenades are due to how easy it currently is to deploy them exactly where you want even with no points invested in the skill, so I made some long overdue changes:

• "Grenades" skill has been renamed to "Throwing". It will now be used when calculating precision of all throwing actions (such as tossing flares and using throwing nets).
• Grenade cooldown no longer decreases with skill. A cooldown reduction feat will probably be introduced in the future.
• Grenade range no longer increases with skill.
• Throwing precision now increases with skill and decreases with throwing distance. The less precise you throw the farther the grenade will land from the targeted location (up to 3 tiles away).

I've introduced item durability for weapons and armor pieces (helmet, torso armor and boots). Now, some of you might not like this but hear me out first.

My main motivation for introducing degradable equipment is to reduce the amount of money the player can accumulate past the early game. As you start delving into "dungeon" areas of the game, you start finding more and more loot. And there has to be plenty of loot because different characters need different things and you have to give every type of character a decent chance to find a weapon/armor that he can use. Furthermore, whenever you kill an armed NPC (or a bunch of them) you get to loot their weapons and armor.

So very quickly you find yourself with a bunch of spare weapons and armors sets that you can just trade for a heap of money and whatever your heart desires. It's not supposed to be that easy. So now whenever you find a weapon or armor in a dungeon or loot it from a corpse it will have reduced durability and hence the cost. You can then repair the item and use it yourself, you can sell it for a percentage of its total value depending on how damaged it currently is, or, if you are crafty enough, you can recycle it for "scraps" that you can then use to create repair kits. You can also purchase repair kits from merchants, they will be plentiful.

There are three types of durability - mechanical (firearms, crossbows, metal armors, etc), electrical (energy and electroshock weapons) and fabric (leather armors, tactical vests). Depending on the item's durability type, the skills used to recycle the item (and then create repair kit from scraps) are mechanics, electronics and tailoring respectively.

* * * * *

And now I'm done messing with game mechanics for a while. Next up, new areas and quests.

Right now I have 3 more creature models ready to be programmed into the game, but with everything else that needs to be done first they'll have to wait. For now you guys will have to settle with "Siphoners", which are essentially blood sucking frog-like creatures that can be found in the underground lakes and streams, waiting for their unsuspecting victims to come close to the water before pouncing on them. Their basic attack applies anticoagulation which reduces all healing effects, prolongs bleeds and increases the effectiveness of their blood sucking attack which, as you might have guessed, transfers your health to them. They also have head ramming attack that imbalances you and has a chance to stun you as well.

I've also implemented fishing. Actually, this was functional long time ago but due to some major changes to the game I had to disable it for a time. For now you'll only be able to fish for blue eels for a quest, but I'll add more fishing goodies later and probably some blueprints that make use of those. You also have a chance to fish out other random (and some not so random) stuff in certain places.

I've added a couple of new areas, a couple of new quests and a mini-dungeon with burrowers in it.

I've also made more some changes to other mechanics (I know I said I wouldn't for a while, but I lied):

• Grenades and pyrokinesis will now deal their full damage near the center of the detonation and less and less damage the further you move from it. Something like this was already in place with frag grenade shrapnel (you'd get hit with more shrapnel the closer you are to the detonation), but now it affects all grenade damage
• Pyrokinesis has a chance to miss the targeted tile in the same way as grenade do; the targeting precision is derived from metathermics skill

Next on the agenda: more quests and a couple more areas.

I'm still working on the new content for next release (v0.1.7.0), but I also took a break from that to address more balance issues.

Now, before I hit you with a big list of changes, let me give you a brief intro about the subject at hand.

Looking at the current release version, the biggest issue with the game currently mechanics-wiseis that it gets increasingly easier once the player gets past the early stages. One of the main reasons for that, which I've already addressed in the previous dev logs, is the (over)power of grenades and other AoE attacks. The biggest issue, however, is the game's economy. Namely, that the player quickly gets rich from the insane amount of loot that he can acquire. This dev log focuses primarily on that, as well as on re-balancing some other abilities/items that I've found to be a bit too good.

The biggest change here is that I've reduced the amount of loot that is available through scavenging significantly. The biggest offenders were mid-late game dungeons (I didn't mess with the starting areas, they are fine) and also somewhat corners of urban areas that were way to easy to plunder with impunity. For the most part I haven't removed any stuff from the loot table, but have rather reduced the amount of items you get (ammo, weapons/armor and especially components) and significantly reduced the chance. So basically most places that you've looted before still have some chance of holding loot in future games (very few containers are fixed to be empty), but they won't give you large amounts of loot every time like they do now.

This, coupled with item durability cost penalty should make the game more challenging and force you to manage your resources more carefully as you should no longer have unlimited amounts of grenades, special blots/ammo, psi points, batteries, etc. When it comes the time to release the new version, I'll have to test this new economy carefully with a couple of playthroughs, though, to ensure that I haven't gone too far or not far enough. After that, I'll be very interested to hear from you guys as to what your experience was in this new economy.

Also, I've increased the difficulty of some encounters in the Old Junkyard (Depot A) and also did some bug fixing. In any case, here's the full list:

• Economy
  • Reduced the amount of loot significantly (mainly from dungeon areas and lightly guarded urban areas)
  • Wheeled bots and turrets leave loot now (ammo, scraps and sometimes more valuable things)
  • Reduce leather drop chances across the board
  • Reduced the value multiplier for certain crafted items (e.g. leather armor) in relation to their components; purchasing components from vendors and crafting them into finished items and reselling them should not be profitable (this would either force me to reduce the amount of components the merchants have or to reduce the restocking frequency and I don't want to do either); finding components and crafting them into items before selling them is profitable
  • Increased the cost of special bolts
  • Item cost penalty based on durability changed from linear function to power function; meaning that lower less and less durability and item has, the faster its value drops
  • Psi boosters now cost 5 mindshrooms to make
  • Increased deterioration rate of melee weapons by 50% to somewhat balance out them not requiring ammo
• Misc
  • Added more mutated dogs to Old Junkyard because why not
  • Player now leaves a corpse after dying instead of turning into a backpack
• Balance
  • Reduced the amount of skill points the player gets (-15 at the start, -5 per level)
  • Added activation cost to night vision goggles
  • Increased value of distance factor when calculating weapon to-hit chance
  • Weapon precision penalties (melee, on move) will now correctly be deducted at the end of to-hit chance calculation (it's no longer possible to mitigate these penalties through skill)
  • NPCs now have natural dodge and evasion bonus equal to twice their level (factor subject to change pending testing)
  • Reduced damage of shock, incendiary and acid bolts across the board; they should still be good but won't 2-shot most things in the game anymore
  • Precision bonus with special bolts removed from Marksman feat
  • Increased Pyrokinesis cooldown to 3 turns (up from 2) and reduced damage slightly
  • Premeditation now reduces the cost of your next psi ability by 50% instead of 100%
  • Increased the health of Mutated humans and restored them their normal movement points (was too easy to kite them)
  • Mutated human's AI tweaked to correctly use acid spray even when close to player if something is preventing them from engaging in melee
  • Increased mutant dog health
  • Resist chance calculations for everything (stun, entangle, etc) was previously bugged and couldn't drop below 20% no matter how powerful the attack/ability was and how bad the defense was. Also capped all resist chance at 65% (down from 80%), might change pending testing.
  • Reduced Neural Overload the damage that can be mitigated through resolve. It's also capped at ~40%.
  • Increased base psionic power of psi beetles and their synergy bonus; also their armor and health a bit (hopefully I get to watch them actually kill someone now)
  • Added some acid resistance to wheeled bots and turrets
  • Change trap detection mechanics to favor players investing in Traps skill in addition to having good perception; traps are also not revealed automatically if you beat the skill check but instead have a chance to be revealed every "tick" in real time / end of turn in turn-based mode; this will make traps a bit more dangerous than they are now for all characters
  • Changed stealth detection indicator colors for NPCs again: slowly fading in-and-out silver eye again means true-seeing again, while slowly fading in-and-out red eye means "stealth too low to hide from this NPC"; should be more intutive this way. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the stealth changes I made a while back (http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=128.0)
  • You can no longer set traps, disarm traps, lockpick or hack in turn-based mode
• UI
  • When placing traps with AoE effect, their range will also be displayed; this should make it easier for players to prevent chaining their own traps and blowing themselves up Wile E. Coyote style.
  • Toggling between all feats and only available ones should now correctly update the scroll bar
• Bug fixes
  • Fixed the bug that caused players to die during transition and return as vengeful undead if they transitioned in turn-based mode with a damage over time effect that is about to kill them
  • Fixed lightning in some areas (GMS, Elwood's house)
  • Killing someone in a single turn will now correctly propagate hostilities to their nearby friends

The game is updated to version 0.1.7.0 on Desura, soon to be updated in other places as well (GamersGate and Groupees). You'll find all the new stuff listed here and in the previous three dev logs.

The new patch is ready. As mentioned in previous dev logs, I focused on re-balancing the economy and area of effect attacks (primarily grenades). But I've also added new quests and areas, mostly in the vicinity of the Junkyard.

These quests should hopefully paint a clearer picture of the Underrail politics and tell you a bit more about some of the major factions, while still leaving many questions to be answered later in the game. They will also allow you to actively take part in faction struggles.

Without wanting to spoil too much for the players, I'll just say that one of the quests results in a larger scale combat encounter. I'm not particularly happy with this event for a number of reasons. First, the AI isn't very good in handling multiple enemies, it's been written so far to simply fight the one character that is the player and not to coordinate group fights. So you will see your companions and enemies alike to stupid things from time to time. Secondly, waiting time are just too long because I control only one characters in a fight with many participants. And lastly, in the real time sections before and after the fight there's too much pathfinding calculations going on that it can stagger the game a bit.

But despite all of this, I'm still including the encounter because it's a nice change of pace and because omitting it, or automatically resolving it somehow, would be very anti-climatic. But don't expect these sort of fights to be common in the future. The game was built with single character in mind and it shows.

Anyway, here's the full list of changes since the last dev log:

• General
  • More quests added to Junkyard areas
  • Two new mini dungeons added
• Economy
  • Toned down item degradation a bit
  • Melee weapons no longer degrade faster than ranged weapons
  • Reduced the base merchant price modifier from 425% to 350% to better suit the other changes to the economy; so basically everything will be a bit cheaper
• Mechanics
  • Caltrops have a chance to miss the targeted tile in the same way the granades do
• Balance
  • Change the mutants and mutated dog health up, down and all around; can't tell if it's more or less than what it used to be but it's balanced now I think
  • NPC natural dodge/evasion changed to 1 per level
  • Off-balanced, stunned, frozen and incapacitated enemies have their dodge and evasion reduced to zero
  • Rooted enemies have their evasion reduced to zero
  • Increased the damage of crippling strike and reduced the AP cost
  • Critical crippling strike applies 2 stacks of the debuff
  • Restored health modifier to all commoners to 100% (up from 50%/80%)
• Fixes
  • High-density foam padding price now scales with quality and quality is also made relevant in all its crafting recipes
  • Fixed Telekinetic Punch to scale off of Psychokinesis instead of Metathermics
• UI
  • Disabled Trade button when nothing is set to be traded
  • Turn-based combat path visualization should now work properly in all cases

Hey, guys, sorry for the delayed update. I was out of country for a while on a vacation of sort. I'm back in the development chair now and here's what I've been doing.

First of all I revamped the pickpocketing mechanics as I promised. The way it works now is that when you are stealing items from an NPC you are filling up their permanent "suspicion meter". If you fill up this meter to the max you will be detected and the combat will ensue. The game will indicate how much stealing a certain item will raise the suspicion meter.

The rate at which you fill this meter will depend on the ratio between your pickpocketing skill and the victim's detection. Since the detection scales off of character's level and perception, this basically means that you'll have to continue investing points in the pickpocketing skill (and ideally dexterity as well) in order to be able to steal (or steal more) from progressively higher level NPCs. Also, some items are harder to steal than others (e.g. heavy weapons and armors in comparison to smaller stuff like ammo and hypos).

The way this system is set up it means that, unlike lockpicking and hacking, the outcome is not binary. Depending on your skill-to-detection ration and the difficulty modifier of the item, you may be able to steal zero, one or more items from a given target. So investing more skill into pickpocketing will always be useful. Because there's no dice involved in the calculations, this will also eliminate the need for save scumming.

Pickpocketing does not require stealth, unless of course you're trying to steal from a hostile NPC.

* * * * *

The other major change I made is reducing the frequency of acquiring feats from one every level to one every two levels. The reason for this is that when I originally decided that you should get a feat every level I was planning on having the max character level set to 20, which would put you at 22 feats (+ some story extras), and since the total number of feats will be around a hundred having 22/100 feats seemed about right. It would mean you wouldn't be able to get every feat in the game you wanted/needed in one playthrough and the number of feats per character to the total number of feats ratio seemed like it would allow for a variety of different builds.

However, since I've increased the leveling rate a bit and decided to eventually change the max character level to 30, that would put the character at the max level up to 32+ feats. Now this is no longer a comfortable ratio, especially considering there might be expansion packs and the like that could raise the max character level. You'd be practically able to take every third feat in the game.

So now you get two feats at the start like before and one more feat each even level, which will put you at 17 leveling feats which is much closer to what I originally intended. I've also went back and buffed/reworked existing feats that were somewhat lackluster in order to make them a more desirable choice in this new feat economy:

• Burglar - Reduces the time it takes to pick and hack locks by 75%, but also add +10 bonus to stealth when in controlled areas
• Nimble - Reduces encumbrance by 15%, but also grants 15% bonus to dodge and evasion when on zero encumbrance
• Ninja Looter - Reduces pickpocketing time by 50% and also reduces suspicion raised when pickpocketing by 25% when hidden from the target
• Conditioning - Increased the damage reduction to 10% + 1% per constitution above 5, but also added requirement of having at least 5 points in constitution
• Opportunist - Upped the damage bonus agains slowed targets to 20% (up from 15%)
• Recklessness - Grants 10% increased critical chance with all weapons, but also increases the chance of you getting critically hit by 3% (up from 3%/2% I think)
• Yell - Reduces enemy offensive skills by 35% of your intimidation skill (up from 25% I think)
• Snipe - Increased the base damage bonus from 100% to 125%

The game is updated to version 0.1.8.0 on Desura and GamersGate, soon to be updated on Groupees as well. You'll find all the new stuff listed here and in the previous dev log.

As promised, I've added a number of new feats and psi abilities. With feats I mostly focused on melee combat and grenades, both of which were sorely lacking in that department.

In regards to new psi abilities you'll notice I've added an extra thought control ability. This means that there's now an equal number of psi abilities across all psi schools. You can learn most of the new psi abilities from the existing teachers (this might change in the future), with the exception of Bilocation for which you must look elsewhere (those who played through the whole game before will have a good idea where to go ;) ).

So without further ado, here's the list of changes since the last dev log:

• New feats
  • Heavy Punch - Unarmed attack that deals 200% for 250% AP
  • Bone Breaker - Critical hits from your blunt melee attacks break ribs if they deal at least 4% of target's maximal health through mechanical damage. Targets with broken ribs receive additional 25% mechanical damage from all sources. This effect stacks up 2 times.
  • Cheap Shots - Increases critical damage bonus of your melee attacks by 50% and gives your unarmed attacks 15% chance to incapacitate the target for 1 turn.
  • Paranoia - Detection increased by 20% and chance to get critically hit reduced by 3%. Also your weapon damage is increased by 20% against stealthed targets (will be useful at one point).
  • Uncanny Dodge - Grants you an ability that when activated will cause you to dodge the next regular or special melee attack targeted against you.
  • Evasive Maneuvers - Converts all remaining movement points into twice the evasion for 2 turns.
  • Grenadier - Reduces the cooldown of fragmentation and high explosive greandes by 1 turn and special grenades by 2 turns.
  • Three-Pointer - Gives your damage dealing grenades 10% chance to critically hit. This chance is increased by 2% for each point in dexterity above 7.
  • Trap Expert - Reduces time required to arm traps by 70% and increases the detection difficulty of the traps you set by 25%.
• New psi abilities
  • Pyrokinetic Stream (metathermics) - Creates a stream of fire towards the targeted location, damaging everything in its path for X heat damage every tick. The stream lasts for three ticks plus an additional tick for every 10 spare action and psi points remaining after the initial invocation.
  • Electrokinesis (psychokinesis) - Deals X electrical damage to the primary target and stuns it for 1 turn before jumping to a nearby target. It can jump up to four times, but the damage decreases by 15% of the original amount with every jump. It can strike the same target multiple times, but it needs at least two targets to jump between. Only the primary target is stunned.
  • Bilocation (thought control) - Creates a doppelganger of a human target bent on their destruction. The doppelganger is immune to all physical attacks and deals X mental damage that bypasses all shields and resistances. Last for 4 turns.
  • Mental Breakdown (thought control) - Incapacitates the target for up to 3 turns and reduces its resolve by 50%. If a detrimental thought control psi ability is invoked against the target during this period it will have double the effect, but will end the mental breakdown.
• Changes
  • Game generates a crash log now in Documents\My Games\Underrail folder when it crashes.
  • Increased the amount of health hypos, bandages and ammo the player receives at the start of the game. Player can also find a mechanical repair kit in its room at the start.
• Fixes
  • No longer possible to place the fishing rod on top of yourself
  • Game will no longer crash when attempting to disarm triggered traps
  • Game should work properly with windows on-screen keyboard now
  • Junkayrd gambling house staff and nearby Black Eels will no longer turn hostile after the attack on Scrappers

I'm currently in the process of building the Lower Underrail.

For those who don't know the Lower Underrail was the industrial/military zone of the big underground metro system before things went to hell, as opposed to the Upper Underrail which was the residential zone.

I have it mapped out on paper and am now going through each zone and constructing it in the editor. It's a lot of work without much to report so bear with me as I grind through it. At first, there won't be any quests or special points of interest (just containers, monsters, bandits, traps, and that stuff), until later I start adding the stations, dungeons and occasional random encounter. The metro train is also on the way. It will be connecting the aforementioned stations.

In other news, I've added psionic headbands to the game along with blueprint and components required to make them (creating them will require electronics and a bit of biology). These headbands can enhance one of the three psionic schools, but there are also universal ones that enhance all three (though those are generally weaker). Depending on what components are used, they can increase skill levels, critical chances, critical modifiers, and psi costs. I will add more components in the future that will have other effects or have greater effects (per quality) but with certain drawbacks.

Hi guys, I'm still down in the cellar working on the Lower Underrail. Things have been a bit quiet and slow recently, but these times come and go and are nothing to worry about. To break the monotony of working on barren hostile areas all the time, I've added a new armor type.

Riot Gear armor is a medium encumbrance armor that specializes against firearms and melee attacks (+100% damage threshold vs. firearms and +50% damage resistance and threshold vs. melee attacks). Like the tactical vest, it's crafted from a carrier vest and a ballistic panel and an optional overcoat fabric. You can also add metal plates to include a shield as well (will add other materials for this purpose at some point) which will increase encumbrance, but will give you a 20% chance to block certain amount of mechanical melee damage (depending on the quality of the material used). While using a riot gear armor that includes a shield you can only wield one handed weapons though (pistols, knives, crowbars).

Also here's a couple of minor changes and bug fixes:

• Increased duration of thermodinamicity to 2 turns
• Reduced damage of spikes and blades when mounted on a metal armor suit, but increased their damage when mounted on boots
• Fixed spikes of doom bug
• It's no longer possible to refresh the duration of stun, fear and short-circuit effects
• Fixed the scaling of Bilocation psi ability