RENESTRA [V0.2.3] [DECADENT GAMES]

v0.2.3
Here’s the changelist:
New Character – Elora
New Areas – Elora’s House, Elora’s Library
New Quests
New Cinematic sequence for Elora
New Story Cutscene
New prologue sequence
Added a compass and a new quest indicator to better orient the player
Improved previous interactable cutscenes – more fluid and enticing motions, better overall sound and more transitions between poses
v0.2.2
Converted the game to Unreal Engine 5.1 for various reasons: better overall performance, fixes to Nanite and Lumen systems, fixes to various addons and plug-ins.

Expanded storytelling: 2 new NPCs with dialogue; more dialogue for existing NPC; introductory sequence when starting a new game; updated the quest chains to include the new NPCs and to better guide the player; updated quest indicator; Cutscene quest rewards are now split into “Bonus” and “Main” categories; added Interest system (you need interest to unlock the cutscenes – think reputation systems; you earn interest by completing quests)
We plan to add a mini-map and/or a compass and a quest log in the future
Only bonus scenes are available now, with more intricate and elaborate ones being added to main in the future

Expanded combat: added introductory combat tutorial with training dummies and an enemy type; you can now use Light Attacks, Heavy Attacks and directional dodges (sidestepping); you can now use potions to recover HP

We have been working hard to move the cutscenes from PRE-RENDERED video to REAL-TIME interactable sequences. This means that cutscenes CAN NOW BE INTERACTED WITH: rotating the camera around the central point, zooming in/out during cutscene, pause function, do an action (grab, slap etc). Cutscenes are now looping by default for each section until the player chooses to advance to the next section.
Disclaimer: cutscenes are now bound to in-game performance and visual settings (e.g. any graphics settings changes affect the quality of the cutscene and will lead to fps variation). The general idea behind using pre-rendered cutscenes was that they would have been unaffected by any performance hitches and would play virtually the same on all machines, even low-end ones, without compromise to visual fidelity. After a lot of back and forth we decided to go for an interactable system, albeit bound by each machine’s specifications. Another limitation of this is that right now it is only possible to replay cutscenes from within the level and not from the Main Menu. We will explore how to solve this further down the line.

Fully reworked cutscenes. The initial loops were short and meant to reflect the graphical quality that could be expected. They were not meant to represent the artistic direction. We scrapped the 3 cutscenes that were implemented and we worked on new ones that should better represent what we are aiming for.

We’ve removed the 3 existing cutscenes and made new ones: 1 for each character. Expanded the selection menu: at the moment the quests rewards “Bonus” cutscenes. We plan to add quite more down the line! (both characters and cutscenes per character)

In spite of all the reworks and additions we’ve managed to reduce the overall project size to ~3.4GB.

Various optimisations that may increase performance by up to 20% on certain hardware configurations (should be more noticeable on low-end). We’ll be doing a lot of passes and iterations on performance going forward.

Reworked Save system and should now work accordingly. Old saves MAY get corrupted and/or unusable when loading an old save on the new system. We will transition to a new system that permits save compatibility in the next patches.
We recommend everyone start a New Game to avoid any problems.

Improved the general look of the level: added new buildings, new textures, new meshes, added onto existing meshes, tweaked lighting etc.

Improved the UI with new icons, new functionalities and better responsiveness.

As the game is still in very early development any of the changes above may be reverted in the future if we believe there is a better alternative or if they become problematic further down the line.

v0.01
Initial Release