PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION

It’s me, your boy, Banana Hardsoft, back again with another rare blog post. I want to give those of you who read these a bit of an update regarding the state of the game, progress that’s been made, and what needs to be finished before the game is “done”.

As of this post, the release date for PARKSIDE on Steam is currently set for 2024. This may not be the case by the time you read this, but I am pushing it out to 2025. Y’all probably expected this anyway, but if not, please don’t get mad and call me a big smelly cuck on the Steam Community forum… You wouldn’t want the final version of the game to be what it is now!

And, before I’m accused of bloating the game with unnecessary features, this isn’t the case either (just don’t look at how I spent the last week working on janky driveable cars) – rather, I’ve been working very hard on necessary polish, quality of life features, new weaponry, abilities, maps, and all sorts, and ultimately I suppose I have to admit that I had given myself too tight of a timeline to finish a game of PARKSIDE’s scope all by myself!

Where I’m at now

Before diving into the state of the game, if you just want a brief update on how development progress has been going, I’d recommend watching the latest dev roundup video:

Character & player menus

Character movement has been improved, it still needs some tweaking but things like air momentum and ladder climbing are better. Other changes include: The player’s held weapon moves back/reacts to obstacles in front of you, viewmodel movement animations, grenade throwing animation, the kick is improved (and attack feedback on enemies when they are killed is increased), and alongside many other small changes, there is now a player bodypart health system. Damage to each of the player’s body parts results in a debuff, and parts can be healed with medpacks (think Fallout 3 onward).

The inventory UI has improved some more, after the demo I implemented a grid-based system and now you can drag and drop items to reorder them and equip directly from the items’ “thumbnails”. I’m also implementing an “Intel” menu for mission maps, and other helpful data.

Two player abilities remain to be implemented, with upgrade trees to come. I started revamping the ability upgrade screen, but have not finished yet. It will probably end up looking more like your traditional skill-tree menu but with some cool visuals. The two remaining abilities to be implemented are the ability to construct and place turrets, and “biohack”, which would let you send a humanoid NPC into a frenzy (or control them directly with an upgrade.)

There is a single-use “checkpoint” item now called the Divine Elixir. Drinking it sets your position as a one-time respawn point. This does not save the game, rather if you die then you respawn at this point and get another chance to complete the mission. Dying a second time restarts the mission as normal. If you have not used the Elixir, and die, the mission restarts from the start. This is a good compromise between mid-level saving and not having any checkpoints at all, it is a mysterious, diegetic (using the big words!) respawn method that is fun to use.

Concluding this part, I would consider the player character and its abilities to be roughly 80% complete.

Weapons and items

PARKSIDE’s arsenal is nearing completion. 5 of the 8 weapon slots (excluding fists) have three different weapons to choose from, and there is one weapon each for slots 6 and 7 (heavy machine gun and rocket launcher.) That means there are currently 18 weapons to choose from in the game, with another 6 left to make (slot 8 will only have 2 options.)

The remaining weapons to be made are: Railgun, Crossbow, Flamethrower, Grenade Launcher, Hip-Mounted Smartgun, and “Divine Sight”.

I’m not going to explain what the last one is yet…

More grenade types and consumable items will be coming too, including more powerful versions of existing items (medkits, armour, adrenaline enhancer and so on) plus new ones. While the main weapons are nearly finished, I think I am only halfway or two-thirds of the way finished with possible inventory items.

Enemies and AI

AI has been one step forward, two steps back, but I am getting there and the AI is less crazy and random than it is in the current demo – but now enemies you’d expect to aggro seem to aggro less than I’d like. I just need to dedicate a weekend or a week to redoing my aggro logic.

Enemy variety has increased slightly with the introduction of a new gun-toting bipedal robot, but with my focus being elsewhere actual variety of enemy “types” has not really increased. More guys with different guns and different skins, pretty much. I intend to create a few new robot types and bulkier “elite” humans carrying larger weapons, but have not modelled this yet.

Environments

Post-demo, I have created two new levels from scratch which both together replaced an early level concept. I have revamped one already partially finished section after this, and I have another three missions to revamp before carrying on with creating new levels from scratch.

As you can probably tell, level design takes the longest out of everything, so this is where the bulk of dev time for the next few months will probably be (alongside chipping away at everything else.)

Once these missions are done, I will need to really pull my head in and grind out maps, because I will need to create another 6 – 8 missions to consider the story complete (not including cutscenes, and the fact that some will be two maps long).

If I were to give it a percentage, I’m only 35% of the way there. BUT! Fret not, because as I will soon finish the arsenal, character abilities, and other features, I will work harder and faster to complete these missions.

Technical stuff/GUIs

I have laid the foundations for save slots (functioning in code but no GUI), soon I will finish this so that you are not always overwriting the same file. Alongside this I intend to include a Half-Life 2 style level selection menu, so that you can start the game from any previously unlocked mission with the bare minimum expected gear for you to have at that point.

It’s also worth noting that I’ve fixed the issue of the player not being able to rebind the Q or E key, now I have another problem to solve with Unity’s InputSystem package – my rebind code includes stopping you from inputting duplicate rebinds, but rather I’d prefer if you could have duplicates, but it would swap the bindings automatically. I’ll figure this one out I’m sure, it is pretty low priority and I will probably fix this in the final polishing stages.

PARKSIDE in 2025

I sincerely hope that I can say, by this time next year, a release date will be set, an updated demo will be out, and I will be nearly finished creating maps. Please don’t hold me to this, after all, I still work full-time and try not to neglect other outside-of-dayjob duties, but I dedicate myself wholly to getting this game done and done RIGHT when I have the time. Y’all deserve it.

If you’re craving juicy details for what’s coming, I don’t want to spoil too much but I’ll tell you this:

In the near future, expect to see some chaotic new abilities and ways to fuck with enemies and complete your missions, which may see you tracking down some rival assassins in a gothic cathedral criss-crossed with spiderwebs of wires and technology… You may also find yourself behind the wheel of a beat-up car, or on foot, traversing the wasteland-esque outskirts of Abbotsford to track down a band of “rebels”, without any objective marker to tell you where to go – you’ll have to keep an eye out for details.

You will periodically be relieved from the Remote Combatant Viewer to explore the Brethren’s base. As the game progresses, you’ll get to explore a bit more, and perhaps increase your rank within the Brethren depending on your actions. Conversely you may be punished for foolish disobedience.

Other places you will explore, and missions you’ll complete, in short, will be:

• The University of Abbotsford campus
• “Downtown” Abbotsford (two districts in two different missions: a central business area with a convention center, and an area a few blocks away surrounding the Abbotsford Police Department and a factory)
• The People for the Uplifting of Humankind church
• A high security prison (prison break time!)
• The highrise residence of the StarSouthern Heavy Industrial company’s CEO
• A high-risk public assassination
• Return to the Lights District
• A U.S. military base in the California desert
• Civil unrest on the streets of Abbotsford

And… possibly some more, depending on how things go. I am a finnicky person, after all.

I don’t have much else to say, so I’m going to stop right there… Let’s see what the rest of 2024 and 2025 brings. Peace out.

-BananaH