Hellgate: London – London 2038 Development Update #20

Instead of a new patch and a Christmas event, we get this here development update for Hellgate: London’s London 2038 mod that apologizes for the delay, and then talks about the team’s plans for weekly in-game events. There’s even a trailer for those. Check it out:

And here are the text bits:

Hello, hello!

First things first – ah, Omerta got me to the wishes 16.

Well, still. Here I too would like to belatedly wish you and yours a merry Christmas. This too was no easy year, so hopefully these days will make for a much-needed oasis of joy.

Now then, for the last diary of the year, on to what’s been going on.

A wild bug appears

This must be what the youths call “posting one’s Ls”, I think.

Well, an initial L was that we did indeed miss the deadline for Christmas events. We tried 4, and then we thought 2 we were on track, but no. An adjacent, overlapping L was that we also couldn’t finish the patch before Christmas, the holiday event aside.

How do the two overlap? Well, a wild bug appeared that dragged them both down. This one was quite substantial, in that new event baddies don’t, um… respect the humans’ space, shall we say, so it needed to be ironed out before release. Much like Kilij’s journey, we tried a bunch of time-consuming solutions for it before the holidays started dragging us out into the sun.

Thankfully, we now seem to be stable. So we’ll have a week or so of downtime, and then we’ll probably be ready to go live.

Live for what, I hear you say, my esteemed hypothetical interlocutor. Well then.

Spoilers!

As something of a compensation for the delay, here is a juicy spoiler section.

So first I give you a trailer by Alternalo, which the discerning among you will notice was made a month ago. A rough batch, I told you.

Then, for clarity, I may quickly spoil one of the upcoming event bosses. So I give you Ruax, our new Mythic-level Zombie Summoner.

No no, he’s far from boring – behold his arsenal, as it stands:

• Knockback immunity; this one may not be pushed back, or pushed around.
• AI change immunity; single-minded as they come, he won’t be taunted, feared, or controlled.
• Thorns; when you swing at the mighty, some retaliation is in order.
• Regeneration; not the conventional regen type, perhaps thankfully, but this one too channels his inner Wolverine.
• Teleportation; cornered? No, that won’t work here.
• Hellrifts; this Summoner belongs to the Xzibit school, and summons summoning portals for more summons. What’s worse, those expire and new ones take their place – so there’s no parking them.
• Chocolate fog; wait what? Yes, this one harnesses the mysterious chocolaty powers you’ve seen before, with all the challenges that follow.

What’s more, as proud as we are of this specific monstrosity, there’s more coming alongside it. The other 3 also come with their own tricks, interactions with their minions, and phases they’re going through as they’re looking for something new.

Better yet, we’ve been collecting feedback and creative input, and we’re likely going to explore a new frontier in bossmaking in the near future. Say, state-specific skills; here’s this enemy who can’t use X skills while shocked, but becomes able to use Y skills for the duration. Expand that to other sfx, altered mind states, and what have you – who doesn’t want that?

Like a G6

Finally, all that aside, my good friend and fellow CM Psyona will be flying over shortly. That does mean festivities, but it also means more productive Hellgate sessions – as always.

Who said that demon-slaying doesn’t make for long-lasting friendships, eh. Rorke knew.

FIN

And now I may leave you, brave hunters. On behalf of the 2038 team, again I wish you all the best – within and outside of fallen London’s halls.

Cheers!