BOTFALL Mercenaries Change Log 0.4.1 pa (487) (07 Mar 2026)

Hi,

This version mainly focused on polishing up a few loose ends, fixing issues and adding essential options for tuning the graphics and performance. Officer Bollz has been the star of the update with him now having physics body parts that spurt oil everywhere when killed as well as some other tweaks and fixes that he needed. Although, he is still missing his own barks and doesn't make a noise while moving which not only looks weird but he has a nasty habit of sneaking up behind you and ninja punching you. He should stomp around with a clear noise.

Here's the plain list of changes for 0.4.1:

Gameplay

- Increased Officer Bollz' max speed from 16 to 18 and acceleration from 8 to 9.

- Reduced Officer Bollz' stun duration from 2.0 to 1.6 seconds and sped up his stun animation.

- Unequipped weapons' slow reload speed increased from 80% to 100%. Switching weapons after firing and then switching back felt off as the gun feels like it should be ready again. Even with the 20% penalty of a "slow" reload was too much so it's scrapped. All weapons, whether equipped or not, reload at normal speed.

- Reduced damage threshold for receiving health loot from 240 to 210. Just shy of a 15% increase in health loot. Getting health loot is also linearly scaled against your current health total when it's between 0% - 50% (scales by x1.0 - x0.5 respectively). Health is only given when at or below 50% health.

- Damage threshold for receiving ammo loot is now different for each difficulty. Previously was 120 at all difficulties. Changes are:

- Enemies now have a different post fire cooldown depending on the difficulty:

- The toon shader will now still show a rim highlight even when something is in shadow. The size of the rim light has also been increased. This should help objects and enemies stand out better against same colour backgrounds, especially Officer Bollz

- Explosive barrels triggered by enemy attacks causes only a maximum of 20 damage to the player instead of the full 100 before.

- Enemies can no longer hurt themselves and enemy friendly fire is at 20% damage. No enemy can hurt itself at the moment anyway but some later enemies will have splash damage weapons.

- Player self damage lowered from 25% to 12.5% damage. Tweaks to knockback were made to account for the change and overall the power of rocket and plasma jumps has been made slightly stronger.

- Rocket launcher knockback increased from 5.75 to 6.0.

Medals

- Gold medal for Factory Pass - Fresh Oil changed from 1:00 to 1:04

- Gold medal for Factory Pass - 100 Man changed from 2:12 to 2:30

- Gold medal for Courtyard Tower - Simply Dead changed from 2:37 to 2:33

Levels

- All stairs have been clipped off with a slope for smoother traversal.

- Factory Pass initial art pass. The layout has also changed a bit.

- Changed name of Courtyard Tower to Courtyard Spire.

- Changed name of Town Square to Clock Town.

- Clock Town has grates around the clocktower platform that can be shot through.

- Courtyard Spire texture changes to help with visibility.

UI / Settings

- Added damage numbers UI during gameplay.

- Added FPS counter.

- Added vertical scrollbars to all tabs in settings.

- Added titles to various settings tabs.

- Added toggles for oil and projectile marks. There's also a toggle for robot physics parts.

- Added option to change the texture resolution.

- Added option to change the physics rate to 64, 96 or 125Hz. Defaults to 125.

- Save games menu now displays saves in date order going from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom. It also properly selects new saves and above deleted saves.

- The save game menu will not be shown when there are no save games. It will instead automatically create a new save and begin the game immediately.

- Leaving the level select screen to go back to the title menu will display an "Are you sure message?" beforehand.

- Going back to the title screen will save the game at that point instead of when the game is closed.

Entities

- Added "light_spot" entity.

- Added "object_particle_fx" entity.

Audio

- All audio channel volume levels now default to 0.5 from 0.7 previously.

- Increased volume of music tracks slightly.

- Increased volume of light armour pick-up sound.

Fixes / Optimisations

- Fixed FOV slider not working at all. It now also clamps between 10 and 170 degrees.

- Oil and bullet marks no longer infinitely spawn. The oldest ones will be reused.

- Fixed Officer Bollz' fire particle effect remaining on when interrupted.

- Fixed one instance of Officer Bollz being stuck in a standing pose occasionally after punching. Some animation issues still occur however, such as him occasionally being stuck in a post punch pose or the fire particles not turning off when stunned during his punch animation. The animation system is in need of a rework. I have something in mind, but it'll have to wait for now :(

- Fixed walk speed animation parameter being set to zero causing enemies, especially Officer Bollz, to stutter walk slowly in place.

- Decreased brightness on toon shader from both point lights and spotlights. It more closely resembles the light seen on the level meshes.

- Added rigidbody parts to Officer Bollz so that he (via you) can also add oil spraying chunks of himself to the arena.

- Reduced the 3D medal render target size from 2048x2048 to 512x512. It's ridiculous being 2K and was essentially rendering another full screen game. Any menus with the 3D medal icons present and during the pre-victory period after the mission success text appears should now see a massive gain in performance. The smaller size also has an anti-aliasing effect on the smaller medal icons too but the large medal on the mission success screen has sacrificed some clarity. Going from 512 to 384.

- Removed box collider from oil splats. They were used to check new oil splats against old ones as to not spawn too many in one area but it's faster to just not check.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the new changes!