It's been a couple of weeks, just wanted to touch base. The update is in its last leg, and I'm at the point of having to stop myself from adding more things.

There'll be a comprehensive changelog when Update 01 goes live, but here's some of the major improvements:

GAMEPLAY

The flamethrower controller for the Burn Site has switched from being collision-based to raycast-based. This is a good thing.
The original version was basically a big box attached in front of you, and anything in that box would burn. That meant if there was meat behind the one you were currenty burning, it would burn too. It could also catch the edge of meat you weren't aiming at. With the raycast, it'll only burn the meat you're directly aiming at.

The meat chunk models have been changed from the blob-amalgamations into Big Chunks that you burn bit-by-bit. It's the same underlying logic but it should feel like you're actually carving through this thing.

A bunch of little interactions have been added to the Dorm. Things like opening doors, poking stuff. I'm very proud of the functioning plumbing. I am not overstating how proud I am of the functioning plumbing.

Overall a lot more 'feel' and feedback has been added to the game. Footstep sounds for different surfaces, flying ships out the window, etc.

ART

So many new art assets. Things should generally look a lot more bespoke and run-down-sci-fi rather than just basic one-texture meshes.

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OPTIMISATION

Horrifically most of the  game was made out of probuilder objects. No longer!

I plan to use the last chunk of dev time to optimise the game overall, and I'll look into some cell-loading. I don't think the game runs poorly(?) but it's a 500mb download, which seems ridiculous for a game this size.

QUESTION FOR YE

I've been thinking seriously of getting rid of the pixelisation effect. I'm worried it just makes the game look... bad. Too little detail, makes everything look a little muddy. On the other hand, it looks really good partnered with the vertex snapping shader on certain objects (like the NPCs).
Ideally it would remain an option in the pause menu, but I'm wondering what would be best as the default option.

There's a video version of the comparison with a poll on bluesky. If you have an opinion please let me know, I'd really appreciate the input!