All posts by Dave

Hello again everyone! I’m glad to say that I finally managed to fix the weird UI behaviour for LBKR, and with that said it’s time to publish the 2.32 update!

The issue I had with the Unity Engine’s UI system not properly rendering scroll panels was relatively easy to work around after all, I used to adjust the size of the content elements through code earlier, and I initially believed that this caused the Unity UI to skip some sort of Refresh-call. I therefore removed all such code and added Unity’s built-in auto-layout components that properly position and resize content that is added dynamically.

I got the feeling that the UI is now behaving more consistently, and above all layout is more accurate (and I could strip away a whole lot of code.) but the problem still remained, atleast for more than half of the scroll panels. After some further testing I noticed that the game (seemingly random) would resize the content elements of the scroll panels to a size of 0px. I ended up with forcing those content elements to stretch out and fill the entire scroll panel through code, which seem to have fixed the problem. I just feel that it was a quirky and unnecessarily weird way to have to solve it.

Anyway, let’s dive into the v2.32 and it’s new features!

– Input –

The default attack-button has been changed to the left mouse button, simply because it is a more common button for this action,
Opening the Game Menu during a session will now pause the game
If the player is attacked while teleporting to a safe-zone the teleporting will now be cancelled
Dashing/Dodging now cost 10% of the player’s max energy value
Improved Camera zoom behaviour, including auto-zoom settings.

– Gameplay –

Added 6 new side-missions, 8 new achievments, 3 new void rifts, 1 new map sub-section, 1 new secret map, 6 new unique monster encounters and 1 new unique weapon

– UI –

Changed large parts of the UI, all UI is now better adapted for various screen resolutions aswell. Fixed alot of issues and bugs that the UI suffered from previously.
Improved and optimized Message Box and Log Manager behaviour

– Other –

Improved map loading procedure, and slightly more feedback for the user while a map is loaded

And on and on… I’ll spare those of you who aren’t interested in every little detail the pain of reading through the entire Update Log, but in case you wish to know it all you can find the full log over at the LBKR website!

Don’t forget to download the LBKR v2.32 full game, completely free to play with no in-game transactions and you’re welcome to follow me on Twitter if you’re interested in updates regarding my other projects or possibly future updates for LBKR if needed or desired!

Last but not least, thanks for showing interest in LBKR!

Hello again! I thought I was one with all necessary coding for the upcoming update 2.32 for LBKR about two weeks ago, so had put it aside, spending the last two weeks with adding more missions, enemies, a few new items and implemented maps that were intended for the cut DLC “Alamo”.

So with that said, a lot of new content has been mashed into the game, but as I’m game-testing it in a stand-alone build I notice some of the UI screens are still behaving in a weird fashion. Can’t quite wrap my head around what the issue could be since it works fine in the editor, but only in the compiled version of the game many of the UI scroll panels end up with weird size and offset adjustments that prevent the user from seeing the content of those previously mentioned scroll panels. And I’ve still ensured that all UI elements are scaled properly to fit all available screen resolutions…

So with that said I’ll be spending the coming week(s) with trying to solve this issue, or if in worst case scenario I’ld fail with this, I’ll have to tweak the UI layouts and find a work-around. But as I said earlier, atleast all the content I intended to publish with the upcoming update is done and implemented and is working as it’s supposed to so it’s not all bad news.

As of this time I’m expecting to be able to release v2.32 in early April. So stay tuned!

Also, follow me on Twitter for more frequent updates aswell as random previews of other projects and prototypes I’m working on!

Hello again! Been about a year since I last updated Loot Burn Kill Repeat, but after I played it for a bit again I noticed a quite large pile of things that needed fixing and improving upon, therefore I’ve spent the last 3 months doing so!

(As I mentioned in my previous post, changing stuff in the LBKR code has become quite tedious due to the size of the game, and it hasn’t been any easier now after not going through the code for nearly a year… but I’ve made some good progress on this update though so let’s go through some of the things I’m working on!)

– UI –

The user interface has been received new graphics, the previously added scroll wheel that was implemented for a few screens sort of broke the flow when navigating the UI, also some window options were not adapted and lost their purpose.

Furthermore I must admit that the last version of LBKR became quite rushed as I had lost motivation to develop the game ( which I believe I wrote in the last post aswell? ) and needless to say, when rushing things, things usually don’t turn out so good.

As can be seen on the attached screenshots, all UI windows are now linked together, all scroll-views now have a scroll bar attached to it to make it more clear that the user can scroll the view.

The inventory was changed back to a more classic grid-based style, simply because it was alot easier to fit everything that was necessary into the window, I also wanted to avoid using scroll-views in the inventory as I wanted the user to have a good and easy overview of the entire inventory and equipment window.

I’ve improved both the HUD message box and the Console window, ui messages now allocate less memory than before, also the behaviour of the message box has been completely rewritten, since it previously would fade in and out quite inconsistently.

The console now print all messages that has appeared since the session began, which could be helpful if the user didn’t manage to read some lines in the message box before they were cleaned up by the message box behaviour.

The console will wipe itself clean when it hits a character-limit and reset itself, although I don’t think this should have much of an impact.

Furthermore a new console command has been implemented, /help – this command will print all console commands that could be necessary to the user.

The ‘Item Cache’ object found in the safe zones had a very under-developed behaviour and visuals previously, so the cache has been completely revamped! The user interface is now more in line with other UI elements of the game, also the behaviour has been greatly improved, and all controls for the interface now work more consistent with other inventory-related stuff!

Bounty Contracts window now change the frame-color of the contract entries depending on if they’re empty, has a contract cached or if the user is browsing available contracts. This was done to help the player separate the screens from one another since I found this window to be slightly confusing when replaying the game after a few months of abscense.

– Performance –

I’ve optimized Map and AI initilization procedures, amongst other optimizations done, although these two are the ones that has had greatest impact on performance.

With that said, map loading has been improved, along with the map loading screen which will now update during the loading process and provide the user with some feedback with what’s going on in the background.

Time that the game spend calculating physics for physics-based objects are now affected by the “Physics Detail” setting available from the Options menu. This can impact the performance for slower computers though.

– Gameplay –

I’ve changed the default attack button to the Left Mouse button, since it’s a more standard key to use, this also led to some trouble with the UI. Since any time the user would press an UI element the character would attack- it wasn’t a major issue obviously, but since the UI code was not built around this I had to do some major changes to the UI code for this to work. The result feels good though so I’m satisfied with it, and I hope it might attract more players to the game aswell!

Some features of the Main Menu has been scrapped since I’ve come to see that these will remain out-dated as I’m primarily working on other projects at the time and LBKR won’t be updated too often from now on (or well… from a year ago- and on…), these features include links to the LBKR website (Which will be changed a whole lot within a few months, to make room for other projects!) aswell as the ‘News-Feed’.

Camera Auto-zoom adaption setting is no longer toggled on by default, also max zoom distance for the camera has been increased.

Some new achievments has been added, “Spokesman I, Spokesman II, Spokesman III” – all which require the user to interact with AI characters and participate in their conversations, and “Runner-up” which basicly is a speedrun achievment.

Improved item generation for items dropped in Masochist-game mode, they can now be generated with up to 8 additional tiers depending on active Masochist setting.

These are some of the more major changes done for v2.32 of LBKR. Alot more has been improved and changes upon and quite alot of bugs and glitches has been fixed aswell! I will return with more information and a release date for this update at a later time.

The DLC that’s in development (Alamo) has been cancelled since I simply feel that I don’t have enough time nor energy to follow it through. LBKR has been quite a large game to maintain on my own for some time and every change I’ve done this far for the DLC has created a chain-reaction of adjustments and other things that need to be done to adapt the previous version of LBKR and make the two compatible. It’s sad though since the new maps and concepts I had of the DLC felt quite cool and fun, but I simply have too much stuff going on in Life at the moment so I’ve got to prioritize.

With this said though, I’m still releasing the v2.31 update, two new monsters originally intended for the DLC has been added to the update and placed in chapter 4 and 5 of the original story, these are the Commisioner and the Clerk that was mentioned in my previous article.

The monster “Cultist” has been remodeled, this was done as I intended to give them alot more space in the “Alamo” DLC and reveal their story more properly- I find the new model to fit the game better though so I kept it even though I’ve decided to cancel the DLC!

Alot of UI updates and improvements has been made, the character-gib/dismemberment system has been improved with better visuals and many of the commonly used particle systems have been updated.

For a full update log of 2.31 have a look at the LBKR website.

LBKR 2.31 is available for download here!

If you encounter any bugs or problems while playing LBKR don’t be afraid to notify me about this and I’ll sort it out as soon as possible!

Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for future projects!

And finally thank you all for your support and interest throughout the LBKR development! 🙂