



Its time for another bi-weekly update! Only 1 more to go before Beta! Important updates surrounding the beta are below. Please be sure to read them!





Level Updates





Over the last two weeks, lots of work has gone into polishing our 5 beta sections. In case you are curious, these level sections specifically are:





-River

-Farm Docks

-Graveyards

-Swamps B

-Campgrounds





Work continues on polishing all these levels up, and placing down objectives, supplies, and other gameplay items and integrating those with the environment.

River - With Aurora Lighting Preset





River - With Gassed Lighting Preset





Farm Docks - With Aurora Lighting Preset





Farm Docks - With Aurora Lighting Preset

VFX Updates





Since our last update, we have spent some time prototyping and refining our effects for the darkness. The first of these is our first pass for the hunter item VFX. Get close enough to this item in the world and you transform into the killer.

We have also spent some time refining our fog effects, on the boarders of the level. Originally the fog was just a wall, meant to block players from being able to fall off the map.





The look was relatively flat, and was made up of a singular column of fog.

Old Fog Wall - No Vegetation





New Fog Wall - No Vegetation

The new fog wall is made up of multiple layers, preventing players from being able to fall off the map (and see a blank next section), while looking a lot better and allowing the radio tower and transition section to be seen through the fog.





Character Updates





We also begun creating our next killer we are internally calling "stitches". This hunter was originally the "child" character back in our Kickstarter, but due to legal restrictions surrounding children in mature rated games, we needed to tweak the direction and bring him closer to an adult. Don't worry though, we are still keeping his design as a small, very agile killer.





As mentioned though we aren't locked down on what this character's name should be. For that reason we created yet another survey to get community input on this. Please let us know your thoughts here: https://goo.gl/forms/NJjTVwOHzkivjsuq2









Backer Updates





Many of the backer tombstones have also begun to get implemented into the game. We built out a system to quickly place, and update tombstones around the map. This is a screenshot of graveyards with all the backer tombstones implemented - still very much WIP.





Graveyards Map - Work in Progress

Please be sure to message us on kickstarter your tombstone images! Only around 30% of backers who have respected tombstones currently have a tombstone portrait.





Audio





As with any horror game, audio plays a huge role in immersing the player into the world, and grounding the environment in reality. This week we locked down our audio director, Fernando Pepe, to create all the audio in the game (who created all the sounds used in the kickstarter demo). Here are some samples from the environments he has been working on:









Staff Updates





As we announced in the discord on October 1st, chris0matic had to take the week off from his scheduled streaming of the Carnival backer map. We noted that he had to prepare to move into a new place and wouldn't be able to stream and that there would be some alterations to his streaming schedule. We are happy to announce that he has accepted our offer to join us full-time, in Texas, as an Associate Environment Artist. Chris has been working on Hide Or Die since February 2018 and has made important contributions. We are fortunate to have him on the team and we're looking forward to having him in person here in the studio. He is still in the process of his move down here so his streaming schedule is postponed until we can get him here and settled in.





We are also excited to announce that Billy (He'll be tagged in the discord soon!) has accepted our offer to join us in studio as an Associate Animator. He will be starting later this month, along with Chris, and be a part of our in studio team. We're still in our temporary office space so it will be nice and cozy, but hopefully soon we'll have some news to share with you on that front!





Beta Update





Internal developer testing has started this week as we begin the push towards Halloween and Beta Phase 1. There have been a lot of questions recently in the discord regarding the topic of streaming/video creation of the beta. During Beta Phase 1, we will not be allowing streaming or any uploads of gameplay. This will be strictly enforced, with key bans, as this is not a 'marketing/promotional' beta. This beta testing phase is to improve the game, get bug reports/feedback, and playtest gameplay. Do not expect full game content, progression, and high levels of polish. This is a phase in development that is critical to the game and ensuring that we build a game together that you love to play and we are proud of. We may be more lenient with streaming in Beta Phase 2 later this year in mid/late December (read our faq at discord.gg/hideordie for more information). Thank you for your understanding regarding this issue.





With the beta quickly approaching, we'll be moving our next Bi-Weekly Update from the currently scheduled October 19th to October 26th. This date is three weeks from now on the Friday before Halloween and the launch of beta. In that update we will be detailing the upcoming beta, key distribution, and the launch plan for beta. As we enter crunch mode on our way towards beta we'll become more silent in the discord and less focused on showing off our progress. We want to focus on making sure everything is ready for our community.





That's it for this week! Be sure to check back on October 26th (not the 19th!) for our breakdown prior to the beta!