(Beta 1.34 screenshots will be scattered throughout this post)
Upgrade system:
A first implementation of the upgrade system is in 1.34. It's real simple, collect 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.
Right now this is a simple system. There's a minimum of feedback on the HUD and Arm interface in the sense that you are told how many total Fragments you've collected. Some things are missing, like an upgrade screen on the Arm for you to get more detail (see which upgrades you have, which one is next, etc). There are a couple of known bugs with it, like some Fragments collected at the end of some levels may not carry over to the next one. But the system works and will be expanded on for the next release.
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.
Shift isn't just a run key in the game, its a good key to press if you want a wider field of view. Holding Shift pushes the camera back, widens the camera and gives you more situational awareness of the environment you're in.
There needs to be more integration and usage of the Dreamscape ability in general. As you play you should realize that clues will be found there, and it's often a good way to scope out things around you and what lies ahead. Integrating this ability more into the story and gameplay is coming up, some of these tweaks will be subtle to achieve it.
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.
The Arm ability and conversation system will see major updates in the next beta. It's lagging a bit behind other updated abilities right now and has some known bugs. But I do believe it will become more interactive and important in the next beta.
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 100% complete in 1.34, but the difference between 1.33 and 1.34 is significant.
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Graphics and next release
Graphics are dramatically updated across the game and continue to be finalized. Today also happens to be the day Epic released Unreal 4.22.0, which is the first shipping release that enables Realtime Ray Tracing. Very likely the next beta of Abducted will upgrade to 4.22 and may support ray tracing as early as beta 1.35. I'm evaluating this on a system with a 1080 GTX card, and as long as I can get 20-30fps ray tracing on that system it will probably go into the next release.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy and have fun.
