miniLAW Early Access 0.1.5 Changelog

Each and every Friday an update, better than the last? You decide!

New Features

• Improved collision detection and performance
• Less sticky ragdolls
• Ragdolls show locational damage
• Ragdolls track damage character takes over lifetime
• You can interact with ragdolled enemies
  
  
  
• Explosions + ragdoll interactions
  
  
  
• New residential zone level
  
  
  
• New Track "The Crawl"[soundcloud.com]
  
  BUGFIXES
• Death and KO states should shade correctly again when not in ragdoll.
  
  Hope you enjoy! As always, we are open to feedback here on the community hub and any of our social media outlets! Help us spread the word and get miniLAW out into more players hands and help our community grow!
  
  Facebook
  Twitter
  Reddit

Noble Signage! miniLAW 0.1.6 Changelog

SEPTEMBER 30 - >:3 GARY

We wanted to take a step back from the hardcore programming this week, and showcase the city side of New Babel with some world building. There is so much background information that we want you to experience.

New Features

• The art department has created a hefty amount of bright Neon signs and we've splattered them all over New Babel.
  
  
  
• New alley level with showcasing some of the signs
  
  
  
• New catacombs level, New Babel was built on top of its destroyed past and this level gives a glimpse of it. Oxybar on top but what will find beneath?
  
  
  
• Bullet hits on enemies now generate smoke for more b-movie looking entry and exit wounds and can spurt blood or sparks depending on the enemy type.
  
• New posters to fill out our industrial levels
  
  
  
• Completed ragdoll animations for all perps.

Fixes

• Enemies will no longer spawn where the Constable car enters a level. No more spawn camping enemies!
  
• Grab usefulness increased: Fixed error that was breaking grabs prematurely. Now landing a grab properly weighs your strength against the strength of the enemy you have grabbed, and they will break out only after the grab period has expired. Grab time now caps out at a minimum of half a second and lasts up to a maximum of about 4, so you should have more time to decide what to do in any grab situation.
  
• Breaking panes of glass now look more realistic and break based on the point of impact!
  
  
  
  
• Optimized efficiency of spark and explosion drawing
  and particle movements.

Things you've been asking for: some now, some soon! 0.1.7 Changelog

OCTOBER 6 - >:3 GARY

New Features
Primary ammo types expanded: this will give you more control over your gun loadout. Check out all the new and old ammo below with descriptions. The new primary ammos are listed with ***

• 
  RAZOR 6.33MM - Standard issue miniLAW round, metal jacketed copied from old world designs. 12 round mag.
  
• 
  ML HP - MiniLAW hollow point rounds. Deal greater damage to unarmored targets. 11 round mag.
  
• 
  ML AP - MiniLAW armor piercing rounds, cut through enemy armor at the cost of lethality. 10 round mag.
  
• 
  SFTE RUBBER - Standard issue miniLAW riot rounds. 12 round mag.
  
• 
  PB SHOT SHELL*** - .410 (10 gauge) bore shot shell. Medium stopping power. 8 round mag.
  
• 
  SLEDGE MED. EX*** - Sledge explosive rounds. 3 round mag.
  
• 
  TZR ROUNDS*** - High grade non-lethal rounds with tazer warheads. 7 round mag.
  
• 
  13MM SWC*** - High powered armor piercing shot. 6 round mag.
  
• 
  .454 CASULL*** - Extremely high powered magnum shot. 7 round mag.
  
• 
  JKHMR ROUNDS*** - Jackhammer low-explosive rounds. 6 round mag.
  
• 
  FLBR 7 ROUNDS*** - Kinetic transfer gel shots. Capable of indirect firing lines. 8 round mag.

• Functional mouse rebinding. Mouse buttons 1-3 can cycle through 8 distinct action bindings, accessed by clicking on the mouse bindings or pressing left/right while highlighting mouse bindings in key rebinding screen. You (Rin D. Pryde, Chaos, and Danda!!) asked, and we provided.
  
• Two new augments in the SPDLD line that increase your mag size by 60 and 75%, for a maximum increase of 135%. Nicely supplementing the new ammos and smaller magazine sizes.
  
• Upped the spent bullet casings from 2 to 8 to give the gunfight debris a more varied look.
  
• Optimized neon sign glowage and ragdoll calculations to give you more frames per second.
  
• Different rounds impart different amounts of recoil to the player gun arm, and have different pitch and gain creating a unique feel for each.
  
• Less sticky ragdolls function more realistically and look way better.
  
• With all the additions comes a little sad news, all previous saved games will be unusable. We are sorry to do it, but with the constantly changing state of our early access builds it is unavoidable.

Fixes

• Possibly fixed a rare bug that was affecting the "Meticulously Minded" trait and inducing HUD and vision distortion.

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit

0.1.8 changelog - Blow the damn walls up

OCTOBER 14 - >:3 GARY

Unfortunately everyone will have to re-select their custom keybindings, video settings, and sound options. With all the new changes happening we've noticed that first time players were being loaded with sub-optimal settings and weird mouse button bindings. We decided to do a hard reset so all future players can experience the game correctly.

New Features

• Perps will now drop or throw their weapons when they are killed or knocked out to ragdoll.
  
  
• Cover objects will now generate debris based on the material type when shot.
  
  
• New sounds effects to compliment all of the new weapons and debris that are being thrown around.
  
• Added options in the video menu to adjust the amount of physics objects being display. If you experience any slow downs be sure to check here first and turn them down or off.
  
• New Mally's sign
  
• Added 16 new casing sounds for more jingly jangly variety.
  
• Added MiniLAW guard ragdoll sprites, and they will now ragdoll when enough force is applied.

Tweaks and Performance Improvements

• Smarter enemy ragdoll generation should be less prone to clipping into the ground on creation
  
• Improvements to all collision detection.
  
• Player-cover interaction fixes; taking cover close to other similar class cover no longer snaps you about weirdly if you are contact it
  
• Decreased the force needed to break through glass. Hopefully you won't feel like you are running into a patio door now.
  
• Improved verlet prop objects generation, which improves their performance in big gunfights significantly.

0.1.9 - Back On Track!

OCTOBER 28 - LASSO GAMES

This week we wanted to try and introduce a slight change in environment to the New Babel landscape. Variety is the spice of life and adding new variety to New Babel will give the setting more life than ever.

FEATURES

• Storefront level
  
  
  
• Derelict train level
  
  
  
• Cover objects with destruction states
  
  
  
• SFX: Servo sounds, bone breaking, knife sounds, and more.

BUG FIXES

• Much more efficient explosive projectiles, explosions, and explosion debris, resulting in little to no lag from fairly liberal use of explosions
  
• Frameskip options in video should now say 'off' or 'on' instead of 0 and 1
  
• Fixed bedroll object showing up damaged all the time. Gave metal and office chairs more health.

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit

0.2.0 Changlog - Optimized Efficiency

>:3 GARY

Performance Optimizations
We've spent almost all of this week on optimizations so miniLAW will run better on low end machines, these changes will of course make mid and high end machines run even smoother. While testing miniLAW on multiple hardware configurations, we determined the lowest specs possible. We've concluded that the Intel HD 5500 (and most likely the equivalent GeForce 720 and Radeon HD 5570) is the new required video card level and we will be updating the store page to reflect this.

If you have a low end PC, these steps should substantially increase FPS and give a more consistent play experience:

- Shadowcasting OFF
- Frameskip ON
- Physics objects reduced
- Play in fullscreen

Specifically we have done the following:

• When shadowcasting is switched to "off", all light drawing is now handled in a batch process. This will give a noticeable framerate boost for those using this option.
• Condensed all neon sign light drawing into a new batch process object. This will give a framerate boost for everyone and allow us to put more neons EVERYWHERE like we envision it should be.
• Physics objects settings now determine how many particles window panes create when you break them.
• New platform code eliminates ledge cast points and attempts to approximate those cast points themselves. Results in a big performance boost in ledge-heavy areas.
• Occlusion and shadowdrawing is now 300% more efficient and stairs create their own approximate cast points for further improvements.
• Improved how the lock minigame displays to cut down any potential lag they may have caused.
• Made tile darkness drawing much smarter.
• Minor light, HUD, and screenshake code improvements.
• Organized fonts onto proper texture pages.

New Features

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit

0.2.1 - miniFACT Mandated Holiday Update

DECEMBER 10 - >:3 GARY

Big update with a long change log, hang on for the ride.

Additions
-Added 6 different wall mounted CRT screens ANDDDD created 8 in-universe TV shows that display randomly on said screens.

-Several people in New Babel still celebrate christmas and we have added in 3 new celebratory christmas trees.

-Added new Hanger scene that displays when docked at miniLAW HQ.

-Added 24 movie posters from the miniLAW universe!

-Updated enemy AI, they will not break cover to engage the player-aligned npcs instead of always sticking in their cover. Also improved their cover taking routine to be more fluid.

-15 new "isoblock" sprites for New Babel's map screen. Also

-Snack vending machine cover object!

-5 new motorbike/scooter objects to destroy.

-New Bodega Level

-Added electrical damage effects to the appropriate cover and background objects. ZZZZZZZZZZZZap.

-New background tiles and back cover objects that take full advantage of the darkness changes.

-2 new neon signs, 4 computer monitors, 5 wastebaskets.

Optimizations

-Background tiles and back covers now draw darkness in the shape of their opaque parts, so glass or empty spaces will show through to the ambient lighting conditions(aka the cityscape).

-Paper and cardboard debris now float correctly in 60 fps.

-Optimized engine to not calculate and display various things that are off the screen. This cuts down on processing power and gives a few extra FPS in some areas.

-Changes to grab based melee moves, they perform more consistently how they were intended.

-More efficient checks for all bullets so they should run smoother in situations where a lot of them are being fired.

-All bullet ricochet noises now use a distance calculation instead of playing at full volume inexplicably. This will created depthhhhhhh of sound.

-Removed a fair amount of legacy junk from all impact creation codes.

-Longer casings like the 454 now display properly in the HUD and don't overlap it.

-Fixed miniFACT messages not formatting correctly.

Coming Soon:

0.2.2 - Clobberin' time!

DECEMBER 17 - >:3 GARY

Additions
New civilian NPCs. Currently they are just nameless dum-dums that walk around and get shot, but we've got big plans for these little guys.

Lots of new melee moves, including the following:

• Double Kick (Low Kick/High Kick)
  
  
• Crouch Dash Uppercut
  
  
• Combat Roll Spin Kick
  
  
• Combat Roll Shove
  
  
• Crouch Dash Sweep
  
  
• Wall Throw
  
  
  Try experimenting with different sequences to try new combo chains!
  
  
  Bug Fixes
  Going along with the new combo and moves, we fine tuned the melee skill progressions. Nerfing and buffing various skills so you don't turn into a god too soon.
  
• Less flickery menus
  
• Added a prompt to show the controls while in the "DNA Sequencer" mini game.
  
• Addressed Playervision and background light object crashing

0.2.3 - miniLAW : Unhinged Edition!

JANUARY 2 - >:3 GARY

Additions

Doors and what they do

• All attacks (exploding rounds count!) that can damage doors can now knock them off their hinges if sufficient damage is caused before the door opens. This generates a verlet door that can collide with enemies and at sufficiently high velocities it can knock down, ko, or even kill an enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Added 4 new doors: wood with bars, metal, deco, and reinforced wood. Updated the existing door sprites to work with the new Doors Unhinged™ system.
  
  

• 37 new pain/death sounds, all recorded by secret Lasso Games employees.
  
• Added 40 new scream sounds, which get triggered when an enemy is ko-ed and falls a long distance or is knocked back at high horizontal speeds.
  
• All npcs choose between two sound sets for death/pain now. Death sounds will get cut off completely if an npc is past a certain health threshold, or if their head region has been too damaged.
  
• New set of sounds that play when the constable rises from defibrillation.
  
• Casing environment interaction sounds modified by the speed at which they impact.
  
• Several new sounds for player melee.
  
• More ricochet variety via additional sounds
  
• Layered more machine noises into most of the player made servo noises, changed them to higher quality and stereo.
  
• More distinct player block sounds: now all player blocking should be accompanied by a 'bink' sound effect.
  
• New series of "clink" and "clank" noises for metal debris hitting the terrain.
  
• Pitched down some player melee hits.
  
• Elbow based melee moves now generates a wonderful 'bink' sound on contact.
  
• Reworked how enemy to playerteam melee and gun hit connect sounds get generated.
  
• Updated sound credits text file.

• Updated platforming level HUD to add clarity; information popups draw smaller, and some elements are moved further to the edge of the screen, health bar is taller for added readability. Compressed the pickups indications to be smaller and grouped more tightly.
  New HUD:
  
  Old HUD for comparison:
  
  
• Retooled all enemy reload cycles. Reloading doesn't operate on a timer anymore and remains incomplete until the animation is cycled, so you can now interrupt an enemy's reload reliably. Edited animations to read more easily to telegraph the stage of the reloads and in some cases just be slightly longer so you have time to react.
  
• Greatly improved functionality of 'feel no pain' perk (from augments) and extended the functionality to high armor defense levels (makes enemy weapon 'stopping power' more of a consideration based on your current suit armor value.); while taking damage you can continue to perform many normal actions, like walking, running, or performing melee moves.
  
• Player grab hit-box range increased to make it easier to land on people who are only slightly in front of you.
  
• New wall mounted medkit object.
  
• Revamped the physics of all the particles (blood, concrete chunks, wood, glass, etc.) to look way smoother and prefrom more efficiently.
  
• Updated blood splatter production to be more realistic: more directionality
  to gunfire hits, less blood but within a tighter splatter.
  
• Replaced previous instances of your constable id with a readout of which trait you have, along with an icon for that trait.
  
  
• Added variation to sparks for more ZZZZZ, sparks also look less blobby when they occur in a dark area.
  
• Updated explosions scripts to properly interact with friendly npcs death and ragdolls states and surrendered enemy states.
  
• Increased fidelity of all verlet object to environment collisions for slightly increased cost, keeps all objects (including doors) from clipping into the ground at high velocities better.
  
• Updated ragdolls to be less "sticky" when interacting with surfaces.
  
• You can now sell your default 6.3mm ammo to miniFACT.
  
• Added more wall pipes and a series of construction tiles and distributed
  them where relevant.
  
• Street signs no longer get light info/draw themselves if they are off screen, increases performance by a bit.
  
• Updated the animation for post defibrillation into standing and adjusted the screen shake during defibrillation .
  
• Multiple touch-ups to various Constable sprites and intro slides.

Bug Fixes

• Corrected math in player reload frame calculation, animation should sync up and properly start with player's reload cycle, speeding up with player's gun skill.
  
• Only enemies who sight you and intend on following you while you engage a door action can properly lock on now; applies to npc characters as well. Once a character is 'in a stairwell' they cannot be engaged or locked onto by their enemies. (No more x-ray vision bad guys.)
  
• Civilians now register ledges and will turn from them like enemies do when they are unaggroed.
  
• Fixed a bug when characters were interacting with windows while moving through vertical stairways.
  
• Reworked player airborne animation controls; jump animations properly transition momentarily to airborne animation, which then transitions to drop. Extra controls make improved jump animations not interfere with wall cling frames.
  
• Slight adjustment to crouch mechanism makes the animation and clipping more accurate, letting you finally teabag the hell out of people.
  
• Reworked how jump timers work so that it no longer interferes with crouching after jumping.
  
• Fixes to player jump animation control not triggering or progressing properly, should start at frame zero and animate at the correct speed now.
  
• Streamlined "three point landing" script so you can't glitch cancel out of it as easily.
  
• Verlet objects will now properly interact with panes of glass, damaging and breaking them at sufficient speeds.
  
• Minor change to keep minilaw guard attack from rapid fire whiffing, resulting in glitch sound production

0.2.4 - Cityscapes and Ledge Climbs

JANUARY 28 - >:3 GARY

Additions

• We've added a few new parallax backgrounds with air traffic, blimps, and spotlights too. Includes a new city ambience glow which is most visible at night. The cop cars go weeee ooooo weeee oooo!
  
  
  
  
• Reworked how player ledge climb works entirely. Hitting a ledge with the higher extremities of your body (chest and above) switches you into a 'low ledge grab state' where you are hanging from the ledge by your hands. The character will auto swing up and transition to the previous waist-high ledge climb. Additional collision detection makes it so while jumping you have some extra ledge grabbing range outside of your hitbox, especially useful for jumping up at a ledge from straight below. As before you can cancel out of any of the climb states by pressing down, which will drop you off the ledge. All new climb state speeds based on player movespeed. Getting hit while in the last stage of climbing now does not knock the player off the side.
  
  
  
• Added sound depth by adding low pass versions of gunfire, npc screams and speech, footfalls, glass breaking, terrain hits/ricochets which play alongside high pass versions at varying volumes based on space and interfering walls and doors. When you're climbing the visual sound waves should sync up with the location of your head a little better on screen.
  
• You can now coerce miniLAW HQ to update their old stock of weapons and equipment for a small fee. Look for it on the "RESTOCK" tab in HQ.
  
  
  
• Now getting hit shouldn't interrupt gun firing actions or aiming, so attempting to fire while being hit won't often result in an unwanted melee move being executed. Being hit while aiming and firing works differently now: you can continue to aim or fire, but additional aiming penalties are induced to the point where attempting to aim in the face of automatic fire will result in essentially being unable to aim properly. These aim penalties modified by your aim skill.
  
• Adjusted camera script to keep up with the player at terminal velocities more accurately.
  
• Better shouting print and timing control: shout printing is paced to the speaking better, so it won't usually finish before the line gets said. Shout total time limit increased, and sound gets cut off when the end of the clip gets reached, so each shout's total cycle will sync up the sound more accurately. Getting knocked back should properly cancel out of shouting. Getting hit will only switch off shouting if a minimum of 2% damage is dealt through armor to your health. Game shout effect should match up exactly with position of soundwaves generated by the Constable now as well.
  
• Wall, wallcling, ledge climb, and jump interactions and hitbox changes make several improvements; climbing while near a wall no longer glitches. Ledges can exist closer to walls, and won't get cut off by them as often. Wall climbing up to a ledge transitions properly into a ledge grab. Not holding 'interact' won't interrupt ledge grab functions.
  
• New reloading animation for the constable looks more personable and less robotic.

Bug Fixes

• While in fullscreen you should not be able to click outside of the game window. Holding certain keys (left/right/interact/aim) prevents you from moving the mouse outside of the boundaries of the game screen, which serves the dual purpose of keeping you in the game window while you try and perform mouse based actions, and keeps the accompanying key releases for those buttons functioning when they should by making it impossible for the window to lose focus while they are held down
  
• Fixed moving left or right messing with the execution of certain melee moves. Made it so you can't attempt to execute melee moves while in skid, which solves the issue of the melee startup glitching while the skid was still in action.
  
• Now all grab moves operate off the same mask, so your hitbox won't inexplicably and noticeably change when you transition from a grab to a grab melee/throw move.

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit

0.2.5 - The code gods must be appeased

FEBRUARY 11 - >:3 GARY

There isn't much visually to see in this update (sorry no fancy gifs this time) but you will definitely feel the difference.

Additions

• Adjusted lots and lots of code to able to use a more effiecient processing method. Specifically we've switched our GameMaker's compiling method to use YYC aka YoYoCompiler. The YYC basically skips an entire conversion step and makes certain code extremely more efficient. This equates to significantly less processing being done and therefore more frames!
  
  If you are interested in a more detailed explaination of what YYC does differently go Here .
  
• All lights and the players optical occlusion (the black lines of sight) now use Direct 3D POV method for object-light occlusion. This sets up a 3d viewpoint in the room and draws polygon versions of the platforms, instead of doing a bunch trig calculations. It emulates all previous occlusion functionalities for about 50% of the processing power.
  
• Grab moves lerp enemies into place instead of using a hard snap like before.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an error in enemy subroutine that caught them in a loop of reacquiring a fallen player character as a target, effectively preventing them from taking action against anything while in your vicinity.
  
• Ledge grab no longer initiates if you have floor right under your feet.

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit

Hey guys! First of all I want to congratulate you on a job very well done. I have to say I love the gameplay. But there are a few things that bother me a bit. Now; I´m don´t know how to disable the bomb yet so I just keep dying, lol. But I want to let you know that this kind of game would be better appreciated if you removed the survival aspect of it, Where if you die you lose your entire progress. I think this game is so much more fitting for a classic style of action rpg.

I believe that even adding a multi player mode in it along with several boss like creatures. (Leader of the biofreak gangs, renegade justice, etc) We could even go further as to add mutated cockroaches and stuff like that, Over in the Robocop movies there were a few good fights against enemy machinery. So a tribute to that would be amazing as well.  Let´s go for the big leagues! This game has everything going for it.