Greetings, folks!

As we work on the upcoming Early Access updates for Bloodshed, we'd also like to tell you more about how the game came to be. And that's what we are kicking off today with the making-of update series 'In the Midst of Bloodshed'.

In Bloodshed, you can expect a diverse array of unique characters, each entering the fray with their own strengths and weaknesses. Although you’ll control these characters from a first-person perspective and won’t see them directly in the game, it’s important to us to breathe life into them through individual character portraits.


The character selection screen in BloodshedThe character development process is both exciting and multifaceted. Initially, we focus heavily on gameplay: How should the character feel? What makes them unique compared to others? What stats and special abilities do they bring to the table, and what weapons or spells do they wield in battle? Once we have established a functional foundation and are satisfied with the gameplay, we turn our attention to their appearance and backstory.

Ideally, we already have a rough idea of the character traits that will influence the design. To create more diversity, we develop different archetypes, which we then refine until a clear picture of the character emerges.


Character fact sheet and moodboard from our development wikiA crucial tool in this process is our character profile. This contains standardized information that describes both the visual design and the personality of the character. We determine which stereotypes apply to them, which notable quotes best express their nature, and what their proportions and physique look like. Finally, we create a short biography or backstory that fully encapsulates the character.

Another important element is our mood board, which consists of a variety of images that align with our visual vision. Armed with all this information, we approach our talented character artist, who produces the first sketches of the character. These are often still in black and white but already contain a lot of detail.


Character line art, colorization with basic colors blocked in & the final artwork of Jared, our ruthless gunslingerAfter refining the details, we move on to the initial coloring phase, where we establish the basic color palette. In this stage, we also define materials and lighting effects to bring the character to life. Once everything feels right, the final artwork is completed and integrated into the game.

We hope you enjoy discovering and experimenting with the heroes of Bloodshed. Stay tuned for more issues of 'In the Midst of Bloodshed' providing you more insights into our development process!

See you next time!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2747550/Bloodshed/

Greetings, friends!

We know many of you have been wondering what we are working on at the moment. With this news post we want to shed some light on this. Okay, off we go!

Upcoming Update

Some of you have reported that you are having problems targeting enemies. Headshots in particular were often difficult to place. This is due to the fact that we initially decided to go for a billboard approach in terms of rendering: This means that the enemy sprites are rotated on all axes towards the camera. This technique is particularly authentic, as we are aiming for the typical look of 90s shooters. Unfortunately, it has the disadvantage that, for technical reasons, only the graphics of the enemies are rotated, but not their collision boxes, which causes the aforementioned problems whenever you are not facing an enemy in a straight line.

To counteract this, we have now decided to change the rendering to ‘upright billboards’ - this way, all enemy sprites are standing upright and thus correspond to their hitboxes at all times, which should massively increase your aiming accuracy - headshots are no longer a problem! However, if you're a fan of the old look, you can deactivate this option at your own discretion, but you will have to accept certain inaccuracies in the hit behaviour.

To improve the overall user experience, we have made some minor tweaks and improvements to the UI. Among other things, the loading status of your weapons is now displayed in the UI. This small change allows you to see which weapons are ready for use at any time.

Two new relics will also be integrated into the game - here is a preview of their icons:

We will reveal the exact features behind them at a later date!

We've also added three new, short but challenging missions for this patch to tide you over while we work on brand new main missions. In one of these new missions, you can expect a variant of the familiar Graveyard map with tougher enemies and a special twist at the end. Unlike the main missions, this time it's not about surviving a predefined time, but about completing certain objectives as quickly as possible. We can't wait to see who will have the fastest time!

With the other two missions, we are introducing the new ‘Challenge’ mission type. These missions are clearly aimed at the speedrunners among you, as the aim here is to reach the goal in the shortest possible time and overcome numerous, varied obstacles along the way.

In addition to all these features, there are of course a bunch of new objectives allowing you to unlock some of the new features.

A lot has also been done on the audio side: new voice-lines have been implemented for all characters, which will be triggered on various occasions. New music has also been added for the challenge missions and the boss music and boss intro have been finalised and mastered.

Speaking of music, we have significantly and extensively refined one of our internal gameplay systems - the Intensity Manager. Thanks to a fairly complex calculation system, this system now measures the stress intensity at any point during a session. Based on this, the background music now adapts itself even more finely and the change between the three different intensity levels is therefore much better suited to the current gameplay.

In addition to all these features, we have of course also worked diligently on numerous other improvements and fixes that you have brought to our attention.

In addition to some urgently needed bug fixes, this of course also includes various performance improvements, because phew, sometimes over a hundred active enemies with complex pathfinding and behavior patterns, dozens of projectiles and effects, hundreds of active items, relatively detailed levels and, on top of that, our complex gameplay systems working relentlessly in the background admittedly demand a lot from your hardware (despite the retro look). As the analyses are very time-consuming and we already have our hands full with fixes and new content, we can unfortunately only work on these problems in small steps. We ask for your understanding that we cannot solve all problems immediately. However, we are planning further optimizations in the course of the next updates.

Outlook

We have realized that the weapon feature currently raises two big questions for many of you: Why should I ever change my main weapon? And why should I level up more than one weapon per run? We can understand these questions and are already working on several solutions that will hopefully benefit the weapon feature as a whole.

However, it is not yet certain whether we will be able to roll out these adjustments with this patch. We therefore ask for your understanding in this regard - but rest assured: your feedback is being taken seriously and we are already working on a solution.

A lot of stuff is already in the works for the upcoming patches too. There will be many brand new enemies, as well as new main missions, characters, weapons, spells, music, and much more. Parallel to the current patch, the team is currently working on this new content on all fronts and we are very excited to be able to present the first results to you soon!

As always, your feedback and thoughts are really appreciated! If you want to give us any feedback please do so in the comments, in the Steam Community Hub, or on our Discord channel[discord.com]. That would really help us a lot! ❤️

Stay tuned and happy shooting!
com8com1 Software & Headup


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2747550/Bloodshed/