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Update - Story Mode complete, Heist Mode revealed and near-complete, progress update - December 22, 2019



Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!


Story Mode for The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt is now complete with all cutscenes, models, maps and effects associated with it fully implemented and tested (though they will still be tested a lot more for good measure). More details about what is different from the original The Demon Rush's story content (added, altered or otherwise) and what to expect from Story Mode itself will be included in a future large dev blog update (not now, though, as what is required to prepare all of the information will take a large amount of time that is needed for more immediate work on The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt itself).


The fifth mode, hinted at as a possibility in the September 2019 dev blog update, is happening, is almost fully implemented and days away from completion.


Heist Mode


This fifth mode is Heist Mode, where the 9 playable characters are split into 3 teams of 3 - a Ground Team, a Recon Team and a Getaway Team - and attempt to steal an Artifact (one of seven random Artifacts with different capabilities). Like Conquest Mode, it will make use of sprites on a tiled map as teams and enemy squads move around the map, but battles will take place in Legends Corrupt's standard 3D action-RPG play.


Each character gets a different unique ability depending on if they are assigned to the Ground Team, Recon Team or Getaway Team (9 characters x 3 Team possibilities = 27 character-specific Heist abilities). Current abilities (provided they are not cut or altered due to balance changes or otherwise) include temporary infiltration as a Force Fighter, protection from speeding cars if fighting in traffic (while redirecting the cars to the enemy), covering the floor of the building in ice (faster escape, enemies slip and fall), cutting power to the building to reduce enemy sight, setting fire to the building's interior, causing the sprinklers to malfunction so that enemies in combat will slip and fall on pools of water and blowing a hole in the wall of the building so that the Artifact holder does not need to make their way all the way back to the building entrance, among others.


More details about Heist Mode, what each character can do on each Team and what Artifacts can be heisted will be included in the future large dev blog update.



Given that 2019 is pretty much done, it is also, unfortunately, very safe to say that The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt will not be releasing in 2019, despite an initial projected release date of Q2/Q3 2019.


What has caused so many delays?


Just one culprit - Story Mode content. No big bugs, no big problems, despite the amount of heavy testing so far. Just a lot of time required for creating the cutscenes, models, maps and effects that are Story Mode-specific. The initial expectation was that the time required for Story Mode's content would take about as much time to create as the expansion content of Skylight Freerange 1 and 2 combined, but it ended up being a LOT more involved than that.


For comparison - the time it took to implement and test Story Mode's specific content (cutscenes, models, maps, effects) has pretty much taken as much time as it did to set up the initial outline, create the menus, create the battle system, create and test every active and passive ability (the number of which is greater than the total number of abilities in a Skylight Freerange game), create the models used for all modes (the 9 playable characters and the 16 enemies that appear in these modes), create the maps used for non-Story Modes, create Endless Dungeon Mode, create Onslaught Mode, create Conquest Mode, create Heist Mode and complete the admin tasks associated with Legends Corrupt.


To sum up, Story Mode content was VERY time consuming in its creation requirements. Fortunately, Story Mode has now been completed.


What's left?


Aside from Heist Mode being days away from completion, final balancing is drawing to a close, as well - changing up character presets for Onslaught/Conquest/Heist is solidifying, abilities among all characters are more effectively finding their particular uses/niches in character customization and universal changes to combat (namely basic attacks, blocking and dodging) are nearly fully fleshed out.


There is mostly final testing and admin tasks remaining, and with their completion (hopefully with no issues to delay things further), there should hopefully be a release date, trailers and that large dev blog update sooner rather than later.









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