Hello!

In the game's Discord, there's a channel dedicated to sharing what gameplay changes I'm thinking of doing for the full release, this is mostly due to player feedback, so if you'd like to share your thoughts on the game you're always welcome to stop by the discord (just be respectful).

With the recent Charlatan Wonder's video, I figured it would be better to update everyone outside of the discord, of the planned changes to the game so far -

1. LOCKPICKING MINIGAME - Lockpicking is a bit of a nuisance at the moment, it takes too long and finding the spot for the pin to turn green can be annoying.
   What I have in mind right now, is to have the lockpick minigame be automatic and create a lockpick lootable that gets consumed while lockpicking. The minigame will remain as an optional thing you can do though, to help you take less time to lockpick and consume less lockpicks. As you level up your lockpick skill: -

2. 
   

   1. The automatic part will take less time to lockpick
   2. You'll consume less lockpicks
   3. The radius to detect a pin is increased

   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. HACKING MINIGAME - Hacking will have the same change as the lockpick minigame, the bar will slowly fil automatically and you'll be able to press on the green nodes to hurry the process.
   V2 - Nuno (the SFX designer and composer) also had a new idea for the hacking minigame that would be rhythm based. The idea is that when you have a low Nerd or Systems skill, you'll need to press any letter on the keyboard at a slow rhythm, but as you level it up, the rhythm will be faster and more forgiving, letting you spam the keyboard to an extent. Leveling up Nerd & Systems:

2. 
   

   1. More green nodes show up 
   2. Green nodes contribute more to the hacking progress
   3.  Green nodes will stay up for longer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. ENEMY COMBAT AI ANIMATIONS - As they are now, their attacks come out too fast with no chance to anticipate what they can do. This can get annoying and I would like to have it closer to how Condemned does it where each enemy clearly tells you what attack or that they are going to attack at that moment.
   The big difference is that the team had their own mocap studio and did their own animations, whereas the only thing I can do is extended the keyframes in the animations and also add some to the already recorded mocap animations. This will result in a windup before the attack comes out which can be a good middle ground.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. WEAPON INVENTORY - So as it is now, you're able to hoard small weapons in your inventory (which you can access through your CorpID if you pick it up) and also healing items.
   
   This is a design choice I've been struggling with since the beginning of the project because, on one hand, it doesn't make sense lore-wise to walk around in this controlled, fascist and police-state like environment, full of weapons and items in your pockets. It also goes against the principle of having to improvise and look for weapons during combat.
   
   The planned change I have is to retain the ability to stash items, but only up to 3 small weapons. With this, I can focus on Hotkeys (where you press 1, 2 or 3 in your keyboard to select a weapon), you'd still be able to bring your own weapons into combat and it would quicken the pace by avoiding having to open your CorpID to select the weapon. By limiting to 3 you'd still need or want to improvise in combat as well as use the environment to your advantage.
   
   Inventory system will still exist for non-consumable items, for example keycards or junk you find. This is because I plan to have a crafting system inside The Salvation HQ, but this crafting system isn't done by you - you provide the materials to an NPC inside the HQ and ask them to craft a weapon for you. This is used before you go out on a mission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. PARRY AND RIPOSTE SYSTEM - In the game right now, there's a very broken and early proof-of-concept of this system. If you're able to bring your arms up to block an attack at the right time, the enemy will recoil their punch and you'll open up your arms for a riposte.
   
   This is all driven by animation information at the moment, as I was testing how I could do this system. In the future this will be a fully feature system that's going to act like Condemned 1&2 parry system. Being an RPG however, you'll have to level up your Combat skill to learn this perk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. CROUCHING ATTACKS - I'll most likely be changing most of the crouch attack animations so they don't make you stand up. This is a bit frustrating when using melee weapon as it can cause an attack to miss if an enemy is crouching.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. KICK ACTION AND THROWING WEAPONS - As it is right now, you can't kick while having a weapon equipped and I realize that's not very fun or consistent.
   
   In the future I'm thinking I'll get rid of the 'ready throw' animation when you have a weapon equipped. I believe it will be more streamlined if the Right Mouse Button is just for kicking, so I'll create a separate keybind to immediately throw a weapon, bypassing the animation where you prepare a throw by holding RMB and then tapping LMB to throw.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------