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The player's inventory is now displayed on the upper-right side of the screen. The player can only carry up to two weapons at a time, so any weapon that is being carried will appear in one of the slots. The top slot is always the currently selected one.

When the player has dual-wielding turned on, the inventory's background color will turn yellow in order to easily indicate whether it is active or not, regardless of whether they actually have two small weapons in their inventory.

Finally, if a gun is empty while the player has no additional ammo of that type, the gun's icon turns red, showing that it can't be used.

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Here's an attempt at giving bullets a little more presence, rather than just being lines. Although they're thicker, their hit detection is unchanged.

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Like a previous update to make bodies fall to the ground more realistically, I've done similar to bullet casings and other debris. They now bounce once they reach the ground, which triggers a sound effect, alters the casing's spin, and slows the casing down. This is repeated until it comes to a stop.

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It's about time that the environment gets a little bit of attention. I've added a night option to levels, which makes it so that all outside areas are dark. Despite darkness already being a game mechanic, it was set up to only work within rooms. Now, however, it's a little more flexible.

[Ausroachman]

Looks fantastic ,Love all the little improvements you are making to levels / game mechanics etc

What engine are you using ?

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Thanks, hopefully they all add up to something good. I'm using Gamemaker Studio.

I'm aiming to have two more visual updates out by the weekend, and then focusing on a pretty major (in my mind, at least) line of updates and balances after that.

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I've added rain as another level design option. Unlike the night update, this is purely visual and doesn't actually affect gameplay, it's just something to help bring some diversity and atmosphere to levels. The rain only occurs outside of buildings and can also be used with the night option to make levels that are both dark and rainy.

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I've added wall coloring to rooms, wherein each room can be assigned an individual color, which will wrap completely around it, only breaking for doorways.

Like the floor and lighting mechanics, it automatically detects what belongs in each room, so it's an efficient/lazy way for me to diversify rooms without the tedium of placing things individually.

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As a precursor to an upcoming interface type, I've improved the volume menu's sliders, which now show an exact value rather than forcing you to guess based on the slider's position.

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Accuracy and weight have been added to weapons.

Before now, recoil was the only thing that affected a shot's accuracy, so most manual-fire guns tended to consistently hit the exact spot where you were aiming. Now, however, guns have varying degrees of accuracy so that shots will no longer land in the exact same place; the shots will still be close, just not exact. The accuracy gauge reflects this change, with how the circle shrinks and expands in order to show the boundaries of where the bullet may land, changing based on how far away the cursor is from the player.

Additionally, movement speed is now affected by weapons, as well. Heavier guns will slow units down more than smaller guns, as seen in the example, switching between the lightest gun and the heaviest.

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Swap speed and aim speed are now factors when using a gun.

The time that it takes to change to a different gun is now varied, with the smaller guns being able to be pulled out faster than the larger guns. Similarly, the time it takes for a gun to reach it's full aiming position is also varied. As seen in the example, the handgun comes out and reaches its aim position very quickly, whereas the rifle takes longer to do both.

The goal behind this is to give more reason to carry a sidearm rather than always carrying two large guns, making it faster to swap to those, as well as being faster than reloading, which makes them more useful in situations where your primary gun is empty and you need just a few more shots.

Note: All guns are in need of balancing in pretty much areas, so these speeds are not intended to represent the end result.

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As a first official step to an upgrade system, I've added a new menu where the player can upgrade their character, which will be used to improve upon various traits as they earn points. Each category can be upgraded five times, with each tier increasing the effect. The improvements can be changed at any time, so you're never stuck with something if you put a point into it.

Movement: Increases the player's movement speed.
Rotation: Improves how quickly the player's body can turn to track the cursor.
Reload: Speeds up how quickly guns can be reloaded.
Health: Increases how much damage the player can take.
Accuracy: Improves how accurate a shot will be.
Recoil: Lowers the amount of recoil that a shot can have.
Aiming: Speeds up how quickly a gun reaches its aiming position.
Swapping: Speeds up how quickly a different gun can be brought out.
Slow: Increases the player's bullet-time limit, allowing for more time.

The next batch of updates will be adapting the game to work with these upgrades, and because most basic character functions are shared by both the player and enemies, these adaptations will also allow for the opportunity to have enemy variance, as well.

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I've redesigned the cursor again, this time in order to better match the recent changes to how weapons behave, since all weapons now having a bit of inaccuracy to them. The basic cursor is now a small circle so that the accuracy gauge is easier to see as it expands/shrinks to show where a shot might land.

Additional indicators:
The diamond outline represents a normal hit.
The crosshair-like shapes represent a headshot.
The spikes represent a kill, which will pop up on top of either of the other two.

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Before putting the finishing touches on the player's upgrade system, I wanted to make an attempt at balancing out all of the weapons in order to make them function more within how I think they should. This changes many aspects, such as rate of fire, damage, accuracy, recoil, ammo count, reload speed, and zoom-out level while aiming.

Since the upgrade system will improve upon some gun related stats, the weapons themselves needed to be toned down in order to actually make use of them. As they were, many weapons were already reloading too fast, for example, so this slows them down, while providing the potential to speed them back up through the upgrade system.

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The upgrade system is now fully implemented into character functions, but it is still in need of balancing, since things like maxed out movement could definitely stand to be lowered. In this example, you can see the difference the upgrades have as the player moves, rotates, and reloads both with and without them.

Despite having 100 points in this example, my intention is to make points progressively harder to earn so that maxing out many categories would actually be pretty hard. The point of having many options is to allow players to direct their points however they prefer, to sort of amplify a specific sort of play style, not to eventually have everything maxed out.

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I've updated the lighting system in two ways:

1) A room's wall coloring now also turns dark when the room is darkened.

2) The transition between a lit room and a dark room is a bit more realistic, compared to the old transition. Light from the other room now intrudes into the dark room just a bit.

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As a first step towards making more use out of the ability to carry bodies around, here's something that I was messing with as a more puzzle-oriented level design option. It's a scale-based lock that activates when someone stands (or is placed) on it.

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I've added lasers to the game, which will block, or at least complicate access to certain areas. They deal constant damage if touched, and it adds up very quickly.

They have a safety feature that causes them to temporarily shut off if an enemy is detected, in order to allow safe passage, and players can use this to their advantage in order to circumvent it.

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I've made some changes to the security camera.

Before, the camera behaved more in a way you would expect if someone was monitoring it, as it would not only detect the player, but also blood and bodies, and the only way past it was to sneak directly under it. Now, however, it behaves more like an automated system, where it will only detect the player, and can also be fooled by using an enemy's body.

Although this is a downgrade in its capabilities, overall it works better for the direction that I intend on taking the security systems in general.

Note: Lore-wise, every enemy is tagged with some sort of identifier, which the systems scan to determine whether or not a person is permitted. When carrying or standing on top of an enemy, the scan picks up the enemy's identifier in your space, thus tagging you as friendly. This is the general idea of where I'm taking the security systems as a whole, where everything is automated, and just trusted to work, which allows the system to be abused more than if there were someone actually monitoring things.

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Like the lasers and cameras, metal detectors now also function with a sensor that ignores any enemy that comes into contact with it, only triggering when it determines that something is wrong. Like with the others devices, this allows the player to use enemy bodies as a workaround. Alternatively, you can still cross without any weapons in your inventory without setting it off.