First off, final graphics are coming in:
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This is zeroing in on the final art and polish of the game. There are little fixes and tweaks here and there, but it's nearly done.
Upgrade system:
A first implementation of the upgrade system is going into 1.34. It's real simple, collect Glyph Fragments scattered and hidden throughout the game to upgrade your abilities. Everything from speed, energy regeneration, flying distance, low mass reduction and others are implemented, tested and working. There are some ultimate upgrades that are part of this as well as achievements for collecting fragments in the hundreds.
Movement and Camera refinements:
The big change here is the change stance key (default Q) is gone. Instead your default movement will be faster and she'll make some contextual decisions about how to move in the environment. The camera is tightened and more personal, entering/exiting the Dreamscape is getting some better FX. It should feel more refined and like everything else closer to final release.
Discoveries are now touchable:
You can see the hints of Dreamscape objects by default, and Discoveries are now touchable. Walk up, interact, and unlock a new Arm topic.
Layout and gameplay finalization in Chapter 1:
The first level of the game is undergoing refinement to get it finalized. This involves gameplay, graphics, layout changes, story changes, new and different cinematics. training, literally all aspects. It's not going to be 100% ready in 1.34, but the difference between 1.33 and 1.34 is significant.
One more thing:
Realtime Ray Tracing is being looked at. Nvidia is set to release new drivers in April that will support all cards from the 1060 up. I don't have these drivers yet, but I'm evaluating getting Abducted on the latest Unreal code (v4.22) when Epic completes it. Currently they're on preview 7 of 4.22 and its not quite ready for general use. But it looks like moving from 4.21 to 4.22 will be simple and probably just work, which means Ray Tracing becomes an option.
More on this as it develops. As you can see the developer options for Ray Tracing are all there, and there's plenty of controls to keep it running well. I think this will probably happen, so if you have a modern card I'll provide a toggle in the video prefs to turn Ray Tracing on and off.
Thanks for reading this far if you did. As I said at the beginning of this, 1.34 will be a huge update. I don't think I've highlighted even half of what's new and changed in this next release. Should be happening very soon, just as soon as a short list of bugs and critical fixes can be done.
