W...Wasters?! Mr. Podunkian here, blowing the dust off this thing for a totally unexpected update.

First things first, how are you? Good? Good.

Now, I know it's been a hot minute since I've updated WASTED, but after some light prodding from some of our community members (notably from king bore haha, creator of the extremely excellent WASTED: Binge Edition, and Big Boon, of the WASTED Wikia[wasted-a-post-apocalyptic-pub-crawler.wikia.com]), I decided to jump back in with a few light changes to warm up.

One of the biggest reasons I was resisting putting together a new update for the game was that newer versions of the Unity engine straight-up broke the rendering for the game. The first person weapon models, which were already dependent on very intricate rendering tricks to get looking right, were showing up completely see through and many of the game elements were showing weird SSAO artifacts.

Still, I persisted and after a few days of work, I managed to get things looking normal (or at least, normal-ish) under the new Unity engine!

As such, I'm expecting some things to break slightly, and others to break in horrifying ways. I'll be monitoring the discussion boards ravenously to try to catch any major issues as they arise. Additionally, because many of the game's shaders ended up having to be swapped out, modified, or replaced, you may notice some slight visual differences between previous builds and the new one.

This update also includes a feature I'm finally giving in to. Players who start a new game will now be presented the option to play the original game or to play a new "Relaxed Mode" which disables the entire S.O.B. Purifier mechanic. Previous versions of the game included a mod file that did the same thing, but browsing through recent Steam reviews, it was clear people hadn't figured out how to enable it, so I've decided to include it as an ingame option. Playing the game on Relaxed Mode won't have any effect on your ability to unlock achievements (besides the ones that involve the Purifier in some way), but once Relaxed Mode has been engaged, you won't be able to re-enable the S.O.B. Purifier without starting a new game.

Besides that, there are plenty of other bug-fixes, big and small, including a major fix to the level generator that will (hopefully??) fix the long-standing "doorway to nowhere" bug that I've been flagged hundreds of times on... Please, PLEASE, let that be fixed...

Lastly, thanks everyone for your support over the years! This update truly would not have happened without the support of the community, and I'm deeply moved by the feedback I continue to get on the game. I hope, in the coming months, to be able to pay you all back with some new features I've been tossing around in my head, but as with all things WASTED, this could just be the booze talking!

Ker-Blam!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee



Changelog for build 995:

• Upgraded the game to the latest version of the Unity engine, in addition to updating the pathfinding backend.
  
• Migrated some post processing effects to Unity's new post process stack, which means some visuals may not match previous versions of the game. The upshot of this is that anti-aliasing should actually work now!
  
• Fixed an issue with level generation that sometimes allowed doors that weren't physically close to one another to be connected, causing the infamous "doorway to nowhere" bug and breaking the space time continuum.
  
• Vulture Val now sells Cassettes in New Game+ if you've unlocked the Jukebox in a previous playthrough. Wherehouse, eat your heart out!
  
• Fixed an issue where knockback wasn't properly being reduced by 5% per level of HIT due to some misplaced parenthesis in the algorithm.
  
• Added an ingame option to toggle the S.O.B. Purifier timer. Another option to disable the S.O.B. Purifier's positional display on the minimap will be added in a future version for those of you who really, really want to play the hardest version of this game possible.
  
• The player's first person weapon now visually tracks ahead rather than behind. You probably won't notice this, so I don't know why I changed it!
  
• Fixed a null reference error that was caused by the second boss's rockets, causing them to deal no damage.
  
• Armor damage reduction can no longer be negative, granting a damage increase rather than reducing the amount of damage received.
  
• Touched up the background art on the loading screen, so you have something nicer to look at while the game loads... and loads... and loads...

Update (build 997):

There was an issue where the game would lose cursor lock after alt-tabbing away from the game that's caused by an issue with the Unity Engine. The only known workaround for this issue is to allow the game to run in the background, but changing that is something I think would annoy a lot of players, so what I've done is allowed the game to run in the background, but implemented logic on the scripting end to pause game logic and to mute audio when the game is not focused (effectively pausing the game when it's not in focus). I'll undo this hack once Unity fixes it on the engine side.

Beside that, there's a fix for a weird particle "swirl" I noticed with thrown Ger-nades.

Greetings, Wasters! Mr. Podunkian here with another update!

At long last, an update to the game that changes some of the game's more annoying aspects!

First, a bit of background. Originally, my post-launch plans for WASTED were to provide small bugfixes to the game in the months following the game's launch, while secretly working on a larger scale expansion that took wasters into some of the settlements that didn't make it past the cutting room floor. My secondary goal there was to simultaneously try to rework some of the game's more, shall I say, controversial (and perhaps review tanking) aspects in a bigger, free update -- not necessarily to neuter the game at all, but rather to make sure the game "feels" fun, and that players don't fall victim to "cheap" deaths.

The bad news is that due to scheduling and budget, the talks to get a larger-scale expansion to the game kind of got shelved by my publisher -- so barring a significant change in circumstances, Vague Ass will probably have to remain shrouded in vagueness.

The good news, however, is that a lot of these changes I had been waiting on holding off on are now things I can just introduce to the game at my own pace.

So, beyond a fix for a fairly major bug, the brunt of this patch is aimed at revising the game's mechanics, and to better signal to the player when certain, shall we say, near-catastrophic events are to happen.

The first of these changes is one that I'd been going back and forth on in my head for awhile -- allowing players to attack while knocked back. A big principle behind my game's design was that enemies and players should be on a level playing field -- that game mechanics should affect all characters equally. What I ended up finding, however, was that while this did in fact encourage more careful play, it also kind of reduced a lot of the combat to "whoever strikes first wins." It also caused a lot of super frustrating moments where players were juggled in the air by powerful attacks and were helpless to do anything but watch the health slowly drain out of their poor little bodies, which was, unsurprisingly, Not Very Fun. As such, I've changed it so that player characters (and player characters alone) can use their weapons while being knocked back. You still lose control of movement, which retains the dynamism of being knocked into traps and such, but allowing players to try to strike back while they're blasted into the air ended up being a great compromise that still penalizes players for sloppy play, while stripping the game of that brand of frustrating death.

The second change was to the S.O.B. Purifier -- not necessarily to how it acts, but how its presented to the player. Previously, a first time player was dropped into the Cooler, was probably playing the game like Fallout and scrounging every clipboard and pencil for whatever weird reason, only to be blindsided by a message that someone was really mad at them and was coming from somewhere to try to kill them, which is fine for longtime players, but obviously frustrating for people who haven't yet come to terms with how the game is played.

Therefore, I've telegraphed the S.O.B.'s arrival a lot clearer -- you get reminders at the 1 minute, 30 second, and 10 second mark that the S.O.B. is approaching. I've also added a timer to the minimap that shows exactly how long you've got until the Purifier comes to party, and as an added bonus, the S.O.B. is now marked on the minimap, so that you can make better calls as to what path to take to avoid them. Essentially, these challenges make it easier for new players to deal with the S.O.B. on their first few encounters, while veteran Wasters who already know how to game the system can, well, continue to do that as easily as they did anyways.

Anyways, sorry for the long ramble! Please let me know what you think of these changes -- I know nobody likes when a game is EZ-moded, but I've honestly made these changes in the interest of making the game more fun without compromising the extreme challenge that comes from avoiding traps and expertly handling the game's death-inducing obstacles.

Bye-bye for now!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

king bore haha

Changelog for build 990:

• Players can now attack while being knocked back, and reduced the duration/amount of radial blur that occurs when damaged. The tutorial's also been slightly reworded to reflect this change.
  
• The S.O.B.'s minigun no longer deals knockback. The knockback value was negligible before anyways, so I figured why have it at all.
  
• Added an on-screen countdown to indicate how much time the player has before the S.O.B. Purifier appears so you know exactly how long you have left in this world.
  
• Added new warning messages that appear as the Purifier's arrival approaches, in case the blinking red countdown was a bit unclear. (Also reworded some of the tutorials so that they pretty much tell you to Get Out once the Purifier Gets In.)
  
• Added an indicator on the minimap that displays the position of the S.O.B. Purifier.
  
• The S.O.B. Purifier has also granted you 30 more seconds to mess around before he comes to ruin your day.
  
• Reworded the CHIMPS loading screen hint.
  
• NG+ now properly carries house upgrades from previous NG+ house upgrades (for instance, if you're rolling over to your third playthrough, your upgrades from your first playthrough will now carry over properly)
  
• Fixed a major bug where buffs were being applied improperly, causing some hangovers, such as Heady Undeady to be prematurely filtered out and rendered useless (Thanks king bore haha!)
  
• Added instagib to the Turret race so that it no longer ragdolls and no longer can be looted.
  
• Fixed projectile-based explosions not properly setting the source weapon when calculating their explosion radius, causing the Pew Boom to be useless if fired from a gun that is no longer equipped. (Another thanks to king bore haha!)
  
• Mod manager now caches off loaded asset bundles rather than loading and unloading them for each loaded asset. This should drastically reduce loadtimes for modded assets.

Wasters big and small, Mr. Podunkian here with another small update.

Nothing too exciting here -- the biggest change is to an aspect of the AI that had been causing Dick to get involved in the Slab fight, and usually ending up dead due to crossfire. This may have a slight knock-on effect on other character interactions, but for the most part, it should be fairly unnoticeable during gameplay. There are other fixes to things like crafting recipes, which were sort of broken in minor ways weren't really that noticeable until people started messing with the new modding API.

Speaking of which, this update also exposes some more classes to the modding API. There's still a ways to go until it's where I want it to be (and 'til it's at a place where I'd be happy introducing Steam Workshop support), but some users are already using these modding tools to create their own items and hangovers and in some cases actually tweaking some of the game's mechanics in ways I totally didn't anticipate. You can check out these mod releases in the Modding Releases discussion boards!

Until next time!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

UPDATE: the incorrect build was previously pushed (Build 984, from nearly a month ago). The correct build, 988 has just been pushed live to fix this issue!

Changelog for build 988:

• Enemies no longer hear sounds from characters that they aren't yet aggroed against. Primarily, this fixes an issue where engaging in combat with Slab would cause his
  footsteps to attact other NPCs (notably a Dick and Kissinjerk), which would occasionally result in their deaths via crossfire. Now the only thing Dick's got to look out for is that cabal that's out to get him.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game was clearing learned crafting recipes immediately after granting starting recipes, causing the initial set of learned crafting recipes to be unavailable until game load.
  
• Exposed BaseArmor and BaseEquipment classes to the modding API.
  
• Exposed nonSerialized and hidden flags on Conditions to modding API.

Ahoy Wasters! Mr. Podunkian here with a quick patch.

I wasn't planning on pushing this update up, but it's come to my attention that a change in the Unity's underlying UI systems was causing the inventory to spam the output file with error messages every time it was closed, which could cause it to balloon up in filesize pretty quickly, and in some cases, could crash the game outright after awhile (Thanks to Richard Huang for the tip!). Since game crashes are pretty gnarly, especially for permadeath games, I've decided to fast-track this update and to push it in its current state.

That also means that this update also includes an experimental new feature I'd been quietly working on for awhile -- signs. Yes, at long last, a feature nobody really asked for! Certain rooms in the Cooler will now have signs to guide you towards the floor exit, as well as any major points of interest (for instance, the cafeteria that occasionally pops up in the Dorms areas). Originally, this was going to be pushed as part of a larger content update, including new room layouts, but considering the potential severity of the UI bug I mentioned before, I've decided to just push the game out as is, signs and all. Signs!

Thanks again to Richard Huang for his help in tracking down the bug, and apologies for any problems this bug might've caused you all!

Cheers!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

Changelog for build 982:

• Fixed an issue where the Inventory/Looting screens would spam the output file with errors.
  
• Signs now appear in certain Cooler rooms, guiding the player both towards the stage exit as well as other points of interests.

Hey Wasters! Mr. Podunkian with a brank spankety spanking new update, if you can believe it!

I've really, really been wanting to do a huge content update on the game with new weapons, buffs, and room layouts, but between other projects I'm being paid actual cash money (the real kind, not the buttwipe variety) to not ignore, I haven't been able to sit down and really dig in.

With that said, I wanted to give back the community something a little bit more substantial than the normal bug-fix build, so I decided to hunker down and just slam out a bunch of highly-requested Quality of Life improvements to the game.

Probably the biggest of these changes is a new New Game+ feature, which lets you take your character and start the campaign over from the beginning.

While putting NG+ together, I also had an idea for an easy-to-implement, optional harder difficulty mode, which can only be accessed in New Game+. It doesn't make the game that much harder, but it should at least mix up the encounters you've gotten so used to this past year.

Lastly, I've been making a concerted effort to improve game performance as much as I can. Unity engine being what it is, the game will never be as performant as games on higher end engines, but dang if I'm not giving it my all! In addition to adding some optimizations to the AI routines -- allowing them to be throttled when enemies are a little further away, I've also decided to bake in the lighting for some of the more static scenes (i.e. the Ony Express interior), meaning shadows and stuff won't have to be calculated in realtime. This has only been done in a few of the scenes so far, but I'm planning on giving each of the areas a major optimization pass. Hopefully this'll be able to curb some of the complaints I've gotten about game performance.

So that's it! Thanks for sticking with me all this time, I know it's been a long time since I last updated you guys. I'll be trying to push towards a content update in the near future, but in the meantime, enjoy these other new features and let me know what kinda stuff you want to see in the WASTED discussion boards!

Saiyonara!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

Changelog for build 968:

• This build includes the modding system work from the previous, opt-in update. The modding system is still very early, and some annoying Unity-engine level bugs're holding it back a bit, but it should be usable for those who want to mess with it, while also completely ignorable for those who don't. Included are a few mods, including one that turns off the S.O.B. for all you people out there who never learned to love the poor guy.
  
• I've added an optional Iron Sight aiming mode to all of the weapons. This is a toggleable feature in case you're one of those sane people who think maybe having low resolution textures right up on your eyeballs isn't necessarily the best idea. Still, it's somehow made the game's combat feel more enjoyable for me, for whatever weird placebo-effect reason.
  
• Could it be? A New Game+ mode? With an optional harder difficulty mode? Why, yes it most certainly is! Once you've finished the main campaign, you can access New Game+ from the home computer. Keep in mind that only certain data transfers over to New Game+ (your character stats/buffs, items in your Player Stash metal box, TP in your piggy bank, unlocked recipes and customizations). The game also allows you to carry over any house-upgrades, except the ones that occupy the back lot of the player house.
  
• Performance upgrades all around. I've done a lot of work optimizing and streamlining the code where I could afford to. I've also done some visuals optimization to the Player Home interior, as well as the Ony Express and Ony Express interior areas, which should've net a nice framerate boost to those areas. I'll be taking a look at the other outdoor areas in future updates!
  
• Factions you've pissed off will now forgive you after a period of 24 ingame hours. That means all you guys who, uh, "accidentally" fed Vulture Val some face-bullets can now rest a bit easier. (Keep in mind that sleeping at home only advances the game clock by up to 12 hours, so you'll still have to pass the time in other ways!)
  
• And finally, the game engine was upgraded to Unity 5.6p3, the latest available version. This required a lot of work and potentially might have broken some stuff, so please report any issues you have on the boards!

Update (5/5/17): Looks like some minor bugs made it through to this build, so I went ahead and hotfixed them:

Changelog for build 972:

• The Final Countdown now properly explodes, killing its user and actually being somewhat final again.
  
• Reduced the AI logic throttling overall, and excluded the S.O.B. Paladin from the throttling effect as it was causing it to occasionally stop chasing the player, which is probably something a lot of people wish it'd do anyways.
  
• Added a crosshair toggle to the options menu. The crosshair can be enabled, disabled, or hidden when iron sights are used.
  
• Fixed an issue with some rooms being incorrectly connected to others, particularly in the Dorms area.

Update (5/6/17): Just pushed another hotfix that resolves the rest of the bugs you guys reported originally for Build 968. A special thanks to Rusbel who helped identify these bugs before they became a bigger problem for everyone else!

Changelog for build 974:

• Resolved a weird issue where all of Jim Atomic's lines were removed, causing the radio to stop playing completely whenever it was time for another riveting installment of The Buzz. Sorry guys.
  
• Fixed an issue where having a contextual buff/debuff would break the ability to interact with Weapon traps.
  
• Identified and replaced a duplicate of the Hangover "Sadist Sangria." The duplicate was replaced with a buff called "Bruiser's Brew" that has the same 25% bonus damage as Sadist Sangria, but applies when the player has >50% health. (Thanks Xabre2th for pointing this out!)
  
• Fixed the "Iron Sights Only" setting for crosshairs actually doing the exact opposite thing it was supposed to.

Wasters! After a thousand year slumber, I have returned to bestow upon ye uncaring, wasted masses a new era in bespoke post-apocalyptia. That's right -- WASTED's experimental, potentially very broken mod build is now available for download (* once you opt-in! -- see below)

Now, as a disclaimer, mod support is very much in its infancy right now, and between having to juggle a dozen other projects, I haven't had the time to completely test it, nor have I had the time to sit down and really get the documentation in any remotely usable form. Still, I've shipped the mod support with a few example mods to point you guys in the right(ish) direction.

The modding build is currently opt-in. That is to say you have to enable the modding beta in Steam's "beta" tab. More information on that can be found in this thread.

I've also opened up two new forums in the game's discussion boards -- one for general mod questions/support/discussion and one for releases. Again, because I've been dealing with other projects, I probably won't be able to be as involved in these boards as I'd like to be, but I'll still pop in every once in awhile to answer a few questions when I can.

Anyways, thank you all for supporting the game this past year, and I'm super excited to see what kinds of weird, Slab-esque mods you guys come up with!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

It's been awhile, Wasters and Wasterettes! Mr. Podunkian here with a quickish update to get you guys all up to speed with what's been going on with WASTED behind the scenes.

Last I posted, I was hyping up the fact that I'd gotten WASTED's modding tools re-integrated into the game on a basic level. However, as I began messing with the system some more, I began running into some real limitations on what could feasibly be done within it, and the doubts began creeping in. I gave WASTED a nice, long break so that I could focus on other things for awhile.

Cut to a few weeks back, while working on an old/new project (...it's a long story...), I was in the middle of integrating a form of LUA scripting into the game when I realized "whoa, this actually solves all of the problems I was having with my own, homebrewed solution." A few days of work later, I was able to bring in my first custom weapon, complete with a user-made model and sound effects.

So, through the next couple of weeks, I'll be working to get bonafide modding support out to you guys in a form that is significantly more powerful than what was originally scoped out with my original modding system. With the new system, you should be able to modify existing items/buffs/conditions, in addition to creating new ones!

Mods will be a little bit more complicated to write, however, since mod authors will essentially be building these items through LUA scripts -- still, I'm going to try to ship the modding update with enough examples that newbies can go in, copy and modify an example file and come up with some cool new weapons and items of their own.

Custom audio and 3D models will have to be compiled into asset bundles using a copy of the Unity 3D editor. Luckily, the Unity 3D editor can now be downloaded for free.

Anyways, I've been appreciating all of the nice feedback you guys have been leaving for the game in the form of game reviews, and I'm really excited to see what you guys will be able to come up with the tools I provide!

Oh, and uh, happy, uh, wastegiving, Wasters!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

Hail, brave Wasters! Mr. Podunkian here with another update.

First off, apologies for the radio silence last week -- while I'm primarily a game dev, occasionally I do have to attend to my side business of being a human being person living in the real world which sometimes has the side effect of pulling me away from my computer in order to help a couple of my good friends get married. But now that that's through, it's back to the ol' digital grindstone for me!

The bug reports seem to have slowed to a trickle, which puts me in a great place to begin working on new content and giving the modding system another shot, and in fact, this build features a few changes behind the scenes in order to prepare for a lite-release of the modding system. In its initial release, the modding system should allow you to create your own Hangovers and Buzzes. While the system isn't completely exposed and implemented yet, things are looking good for a release within the next month.

Besides that, the biggest change with this patch is that I've upgraded to the latest version of the Unity Engine, which, while not yet fixing the strange "falling through the floor" bug that's been plaguing the game since launch, the update should (in theory anyways) improve overall stability of the game. That said, the Unity team does have a, shall we say, shaky track record when it comes to stability, so please, please send any and all bug reports my way should you run into them!

Thanks again everyone for playing the game and for all of the lively discussion on the Steam Community discussion boards. Prospects are looking extremely positive for a substantial content release in the near future, so keep your eyes peel on these announcements in the coming months!

In the meantime, happy wastings!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

Changelog for build 932:

• Upgraded the game from Unity 5.3.3p3 to Unity 5.3.5p5. That's like a whole 0.0.2 worth of changes, which is actually a lot more substantial than those numbers look. I've done some testing of my own, but please let me know immediately if something is broken as a result of the upgrade.
  
• Finally, finally added the ability to allow players to assign hotkeys from within the looting menu. This Quality of Life improvement brought to you by the fine folks at Copy and Paste. For when you have two almost identical menus, but one of them lets you assign hotkeys and the other doesn't for no freaking reason. Copy and Paste.
  
• A fix for a rare, rare, rare, one-in-a-million type bug that was, due to the joy of random seeds and daily challenges, happening 100% of the time where a Sod Off trap could spawn in the second room of the Cooler, due to the floor being randomly assigned the "Lasers streak the corridors" variation, only to have its position randomly offset in such a way that it would be positioned in the first room of the Cooler, pointed directly towards where Stinky spawn if the tutorial quest was active, which would trigger the Sod Off trap, killing Stinky instantly before he could be told not to spawn, causing the game to think the tutorial was active, breaking the game and preventing players from actually starting the Courier Run. So yeah, that happened.
  
• Updated some code behind the scenes in order to prepare for a lite release of the Modding tools soon!

Greetings, worms and Wasters! Mr. Podunkian here with another quick update.

This week's update is a bit on the leaner side, though that's not for lack of trying. The truth is, I've been spending a lot of my time trying to figure out what it is exactly that's causing you Wasters to occassionally and inexplicably fall through the floor. While it's true that Douglas Adams once said that the art to flying lies in throwing yourself at the ground and missing, welp, I don't think he meant it quite in this way.

After days and days of experimentation and slowly whittling down the possibilities for the cause of error, I finally arrived at a conclusion that was simultaneously a relief to me and also a total nightmare: the issue lies in the Unity engine itself, which is terrifying because there's nothing I can do about it besides complain loudly to the Unity Team until something gets done, but also really fantastic for me because in true Douglas Adamsian fashion, the bug is now officially Someone Else's Problem (wow, I guess I really liked the Hitchhiker's Guide...).

I've done my due dilligence and submitted an official bug report to Unity Team, along with a consistent repro-case, so hopefully it should be taken care of sooner than later. Once the issue is resolved on their end, I'll do everything I can get to WASTED running on the latest version of the Unity Engine (which, surprisingly, is usually a lot more work than it should be)

Anyways, thanks everyone for continuing to support the game! Even a month after release, the feedback has continued to keep me motivated, and the myriad of ideas you're all sharing with me on the Discussion Boards have been getting the old Tinker-tank going again on new content. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of these plans with you in the near future!

Good luck beating that summer wasteland heat and as always, happy wasting, Wasters!

- Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee

Changelog for build 931:

• Fixed Short Fuse only adding 3 points of Obliteratin' instead of the advertised 5. A class action lawsuit was being filed against the makers of Short Fuse booze for false advertising until everyone remembered nobody cared about laws anymore.
  
• Made some adjustments to audio priority values, which may potentially help with players who have issues with audio/music cutting out when too many sounds are played at once.
  
• Added a fix for Compandroid somehow getting permanently marked as destroyed, which meant subsequently trying to create a new Compandroid would create one and then immediately destroy it, as opposed to the normal behavior of it being created, and then immediately being destroyed by the first mine trap it encounters in the Cooler.
  
• Fixed an issue with conversation choices that removed items from the player's inventory subsequently adding them back to the player, which would lead to unusual situations such as one where Mayday would end up paying the player to drink his cocktails, which is, actually, not a great business model.
  
• Fixed some perks, like Shot on the House, that required the player to be using weapons that are tagged as using ammo not working properly because the tag wasn't being applied properly.