BlueEagle

Me and my artist are looking into the shotgun reload animation, thanks for bringing that up. I've fixed the red-key in starting room (that would be too easy I guess). The brightness will actually be adjustable in the released version, I will add a slider like in most horror games for brightness. Thanks to everyone who helped me sort out problems and give me feedback about UNLOVED! The Steam store page has finally opened and if you want to follow the game on Steam, you can check it out here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/321270 Hopefully I can find you guys on the Steam discussion boards for the game, that would be awesome :D I'll leave you with the teaser/trailer for now... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqi6VJa92HI

Thanks for your feedback :D Yeah the Shotgun animation was really tricky. I'll have to look into the position and maybe I'll dynamically shift the animation downwards slightly while reloading.

Hello again! New video and new download! This is the final public alpha version of the game. The Steam store website will be opened soon and after that, I will start testing the multiplayer version over the Steam servers. In this updated alpha version, you can find all animations, ragdolls, muzzle flashes and hopefully all the bug fixes you were hoping for :D https://www.dropbox.com/s/okg4unlxqhmrm29/UNLOVEDalpha.rar?dl=0 Latest video: http://youtu.be/hJ-IiljBRsY I'm really happy about this version - please tell me what you think :)

What do you think of the textures on the Cutter?

New version is out! You can download and play it for free here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okg4unlxqhmrm29/UNLOVEDalpha.rar?dl=0 New features include - Minimap - Enemies have a new ability called Demon Speed - One new set of rooms - Updated visuals throughout the whole game I will polish the game a lot more over the next few weeks and me and my artist are currently working on the animations to get them in the game hopefully for the next update. Also I would like to announce that the game will be launching on Steam with multiplayer support over the Steam network. To test this feature, I need a few "testers" that have the time and motivation to help me test the network and multiplayer over the Steam servers. This also means that you can get the game for free on Steam, which is also a pretty nice bonus I think :) See my update & announcement video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmJOww6HjcE Totally! The next set of rooms will be "heavily inspired" by locations from Unloved, so let's see how they turn out with the new visuals :)

Thanks for the feedback (also on the video), don't worry I read all of it :) I'll make notes of your suggestions and keep them in mind for the next release. I also think that the screen-red effect is a bit weird sometimes, maybe I'm doing the math wrong ;) To your questions: I) The monsters in the game are the Cutter Demon, Butcher Demon and Salem Servant. The Butcher will have a distance fireball attack (not exactly sure what, probably some pretty slow moving ball like from the Cacodemon) and obviously a vicious melee attack. The Cutter Demon will also shoot fireballs and have a melee claw attack, he is comparable to the Imp of Doom. The Salem Servant will have a pistol hitscan attack from afar with a chance to miss the player and no melee attack. II) The overall gameplay and story will be pretty similar to the Doom mod actually. In the mapset, the player was confronted with some very minor text pieces and the house, which was basically everything you needed to create a story in your own head. In UNLOVED the game I'll do a pretty similar thing. You will have your house (probably not in the initial release, but it will come later) and also every character will have diary pages and other story items that may create a story in your head - but the game will never tell you what exactly is going on and why. So there are two ways to experience the game - play with friends in multiplayer for loot and experience to raid basement levels and shoot monsters - or play single player and drown in atmosphere and try to find out all the puzzle pieces that surround the characters and try to assemble the story in your head. (think of this like challenges from Binding of Isaac or similar games)

Thanks, I was able to tune in for the last hour when he played ;) New version uploaded! Download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okg4unlxqhmrm29/UNLOVEDalpha.rar?dl=0 New features / improvements: - many, many balance improvements - enemies can now "hunt you down" even if they have not seen you before - this increases tension and make enemy encounters much more frequent - weapon mods - every weapon has 3 slots for improvements that increase stats of the weapon - weapon pickups - many new textures have been added and meshes have been improved - you can die now - try to get to the golden room and back to the elevator in one piece :) New video about the update: http://youtu.be/xOunp9kpf1o I noticed that it's easy to get lost, so my next big feature on my list is the map btw. I'm very thankful for any comment or feedback!

Thank you very much for the response so far :D In this very early release there is almost no balancing done so far. Balancing is the aspect that takes the longest, so it is very important for me to start with this as soon as possible by getting a lot of feedback about it. The next version I'll upload very soon will have greatly improved balancing! Thanks Touchdown for your feedback. I'm reading everything you guys post here or in the video comments, don't worry :) I'll add bigger collision boxes for items that will make it easier to pick them up. Also something Hipp0cat mentions is that you can't jump on couches for example, which is because of the collision boxes. Right now I had to import around 30 models at once, so there was no time to fix up every collision of every item - also some models have to be changed, so I would have to fix collision boxes in the future again. The problems you encounter with crouching are coming from a placeholder solution to a problem. Right now the camera does not work correctly in multiplayer when you do a "real" crouch. I removed the function and right now I'm using a fake-crouching that is awkward and kinda buggy, but at least it lets you crouch for now. Will be fixed in a future version. The enemies clumping up that you notice are actually a confirmed bug from the current Unreal Engine version. Somehow the AI does sometimes not react to move commands - which is what you see. Hopefully Epic can fix this until I upload the next version - if not then please be a bit patient for this to be fixed in the near future. Currently I'm adding weapon mods to the game that you can find throughout the map. Also item spawns, enemy spawns and enemy AI have been changed to balance the game a lot more.

Here it is! The very first public alpha prototype. Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okg4unlxqhmrm29/UNLOVEDalpha.rar?dl=0 Please keep in mind that this is a very early prototype version. There will be bugs etc, but hopefully if you see behind the rugged edges and see where I'm going with this. There is also no multiplayer yet - a few last minute bugs kept me from having this feature in. I'll fix it as soon as possible and let you guys know. Feel free to spread this link anywhere you like, so more people can play the version and tell me what they think :) I'm very open for any suggestions and comments - what do you think about this game so far?

New Development Progress video! http://youtu.be/ui8Owrt7LJ4 In this video I finally show the models of the final game. I think they look amazing! Now the game is getting a destinct look. What do you think about the models and the music?

The actual level progression is in 3 steps. Red key, Blue key, Gold key. Some areas are locked by red doors - open them to get to the blue areas and then finally you can open the golden rooms that containt some sort of activity the player has to complete to be able to finish the level. Besides that there will be two progressions for the player when playing. 1) To give Doomers a true "pistol start" expierience, you cannot carry over items from one episode to the next. An episode will consist of 1-5 maps. Every level may spawn different weapons, armor, trinkets, weapon-mods, power ups etc that you keep throughout the episode, but if you die or start a new game, it will be all lost. 2) The player gains Karma (experience) that he can spend on skills, talents and other active or passive skills. This is something the player will always keep - even if you die, only some of the Karma you got in the level will be lost. Active skills have to be refilled by killing enemies and they vary from corpse-explosion to healing you and your friends (currently 12 are planned). Every player only has 1 active skill that has to be selected before playing the episode. It is 100% possible to play "purist" and never spend Karma to always stay level 0 without any skills or talents (for the true retro experience). If you spend Karma however, it will increase your level and other players can see if you are more or less well equipped to play on harder difficulties with them. Karma points can always be unspent, so if you want to play with a low-level friend, you can just unequip your skills to be on the same level with him. What I'm currently not sure about is difficulty progression. Sure, the player gets more and more Karma that increase his stats, but I'm not sure how monsters will adapt to that. There sure is only limited fun to be had when you're just blasting through enemy hordes without any challenge. And UNLOVED is all about challenge. Monsters will probably have increased fireball speed, revive after being killed etc. I really don't like the idea of bullet sponge enemies, so I will avoid increasing monster health as much as possible. You will rather see screens full with 100 enemies that keep respawning before you have to unload your whole ammo on one enemy. Almost forgot to answer your question :) The UE4 pathfinding is pretty advanced. It generates the Navmesh on the fly and is 100% dynamic. Currently I'm just using a 200.000 x 200.000 meter grid for the whole level and it generates extremely fast at runtime.

Well, you're not too far off I would say. But did you ever hear anyone say "wow Diablo2/3 has such random generated maps it takes me right out of the immersion"? I hope everyone understands the major difference between randomly GENERATED maps (for example Oblige does this) and randomly ARRANGED maps (the trick a lot of games do like Torchlight and Diablo). When a map is generated, the computer does all the work to create a level brick by brick. The programmer has to make the machine so intelligent that it does this in a fashion to create different architecture by itself: rooms, corridors, hallways etc. When a map is arranged, the designer (in this case yours truly) creates level "chunks" and feeds that into the machine. The computer just takes these pieces and places them in random order into the level. In this case all rooms, corridors etc are 100% hand crafted and hopefully give the illusion of a level that has been made by a person, but still every level is different because of the random arranging. A good example is Binding of Isaac - one of my favourite games. In BoI the designer made around 200 rooms and fed them into the machine. Whenever the player starts the game, an algorythm takes a bunch of these 200 rooms and pastes them together to give you a random dungeon. I use exactly this method, but I go a bit further. Instead of 200 single rooms, I create chunks with a bunch of different sized rooms and corridors that give the illusion of a real place. For the first level, the overall design is "underground apartment", so every chunk has the feeling of being a place some person used to live.

Very good points. Right now I'm getting all the models in the game and then I will start arranging real rooms with furniture etc. Right now I can understand that the maps look very generic, but let me add a few more interesting elements to the locations and you may see a big difference. Even though it will be randomly generated, there will be aspects that change for every instance of that room. So even if two of the same rooms have spawned, in one of them a door may be locked forever, blocking a path and you have to find a way around. Height variation is also a very important thing. In my very first room creation I didn't have any height variation and when I spawned like 20 rooms of that and ran through them all, I felt like playing Wolfenstein 3D. I'll definitely think about adding some cool height variation throughout all the levels rooms. The AI has been designed to be very random, but fierce. In Doom, most entertainment comes from the very random (and somehow quirky) behaviour of the monsters. I've read through the wiki and all forum posts that I could dig up about that to find out what makes the enemies tick like they do. I've tried to get just as many quirky moments and still agressive behaviour like in Doom. Let's see if I have succeeded :) Also here is a little screenshot for anyone who might think the game doesn't look "Doom" enough ;) (shotgun texture is placeholder)

I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I see randomly generated levels, they always lack what I consider a "soul". They never feel right. When I was thinking about random generation for UNLOVED, I knew that I want to preserve the hand-craftedness to make the levels feel good. That's why I've decided to have the game be arranged in random order, but the level pieces are still designed by hand. Each basement level has a destinct concept. The first level for example is an underground apartment complex. I will design around 20 "blocks", each containing several rooms and corridors designed by hand that look like different old abandoned apartments. When you play a level, the engine just picks some of these blocks and arranges them to a level, places locked doors, keys etc. About the washing machines from hell... I'll think about it ^^

Hey everyone :) I'm the guy who made that mappack Unloved a few years ago. Maybe some of you remember that. Since everything has started in this very forum, I thought it might be interesting for you to see where the idea is going next and I would love to involve you in the making of it. After the mapset was done, I started working on Unloved2 - as many of you might remember. But while I was working on U2, something didn't feel right. The idea wasn't fresh anymore and it felt like warming up an old can of soup. But Unloved still remained something I didn't want to lose out of focus. Since then I have become a real game developer (or at least that's what I tell myself so I don't have to cry myself to sleep every night). So when my first game was done and launched on Steam, I was thinking about my next project - well, it had to be UNLOVED. But I didn't just want to remake the original. I'm a big fan of coop games like Payday or Left 4 Dead - and also I love random games like Binding of Isaac or Spelunky. Well, so the idea was born to make UNLOVED a fast paced (old school) FPS with coop and roguelike elements. But if you want to play it alone - you still can. Even though I use the Unreal Engine 4, I wanted it to stay true to it's Doom origins and tried to recreate as many elements of Doom as possible. I even want to take screenshots from the mapset and try to recreate several locations for the new game. If you have any "favourite moments" of Unloved that you want to see in the game, please post a screenshot. I've prepared a little video to present the current state of the game to you guys and hopefully I can get a little feedback. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzyW-jmHWp0 Keep in mind that the game is in early alpha stage - many sound effects are placeholders straight taken from Doom - which will obviously change for the release. Honestly I think if anyone can judge this game and how it holds up to it's original, it's this community. This is why I want to launch a public alpha test version in about a week. If you're interested, we can keep this topic alive and talk about the public alpha and I can use your feedback to make the game as best as possible. Please tell me what you think about the game or ask me anything what's on your mind :) PS: Yes, Unloved2 might still get finished one day, but it has to be remastered in a major fashion ;) PPS: If you're offended because this topic might not be in the right forum, please feel free to move it.