The day's goal was a clearer screen and weapons that sound right.
The HUD gets out of the way
The fighting happens in the middle of the screen, so that is now kept empty. Everything else has a fixed place:
- The Watch panel, the tips and the boss bar sit along the top edge.
- The radio line sits low, between the two player cards.
- Prompts and pickup names sit near the bottom.
The "where we are" card, for example "SUNNY ACRES, 1957 · DUSK", used to appear on every Watch. It now shows once, when a session first enters an area.
A weapon sound pass
Three weapons were not sounding like themselves. The Pumpkin Cannon borrowed the mortar's shot and now has its own cannon shot. The Censer Thrower clicked and now roars with a real fire recording. The flamer and the hose ignored their own settings, and now follow each weapon's own pitch and volume like every other gun.
The Weapon Editor
The title menu now links to a Weapon Editor. It is a firing range inside the real game: pick any of the 19 weapons and fire it at three aliens. The shots, muzzle flash, hits and sounds are the game's own, not a mock-up.
For each weapon you can swap its fire, hit and blast sounds for any sound in the game, and set its pitch range and volume. The game uses the changes at once in that browser. A "Copy my weapon list" button turns the changes into notes that can be sent back to the studio.
On the range, Old Faithful landed 22 of 26 shots at 5.4 damage each. The sound bank stands at 189 sounds, 519 clips and 27.1 MB.
Where this stands
The weapon changes are measured, not listened to. The editor is there so a person can hear each weapon and change it.