The campaign has been totally reworked from the ground up. Enemy sub-types have been properly implemented and incorporated into scenarios. The arenas have been fixed, and given unique elevator/portal spawning points to match their unique layouts.
Each scenario now begins with an entirely skippable bit of pagentry. The player avatar walks out of the elevator as the level name slowly appears, they pause for a moment or two, and the text fades. Then the countdown begins, playing new sound effects, vastly superior to the old, misplaced and copyrighted versions.
Many non-copyright sound effects were added, replacing old, and usually inferior copyright placeholders. Notable examples include the victory jingle that plays after the player beats a level, and various gun sounds. The in-game music has also been greatly expanded, and the volume and other details now adjust appropriately according to the context.
Credits, and the post level score scene were added, although neither are particularly fleshed out as of now. Likewise, a barebones version of the system for editing and playing radio dramas, the vast majority of the planned cutscenes, has been implemented. The splash screen was also tremendously simplified, and a new shader effect was added. I spent at ton of time working on the old version, but in the end, decided that less was more.
I’m not sure I’ll go with something as basic as the current intro. I really do like the custom text animation I made that plays in the old intro, and if I ever get my hands on a better intro video, of course I’m playing it. However, the new splash screen is a vast improvement from the AI slop “Timothy Coish Productions” image that presaged it, while being far more malleable.
Tons of other menu work was done, including asynchronously loading almost everywhere to seemlessly transition from one scene to the next. The level selection menu was entirely reworked, now displaying a grid of playable levels, with a few other quality of life features, and the traditional video cutscenes are also shown more cleanly.
