Greetings hunters,

With the reworked gadget system & forest out, we could finally resume working on the gadgets as planned.
This update offers numerous gadget improvements, optimization, and more!

Gadget Improvements
The various improvements encourage more varied gadgets use.
For example gadgets rely more on the environment now (e.g. thermal gives readings from fog & tendrils, blacklight investigates bone piles for trails, etc..), they no longer use battery for sign scanning, gadgets give different information (e.g. emf gives precise sign location, whereas blacklight provides a vague hint to the general direction of sign), and much more.

Manual Search
Searching for signs is now triggered via its own key [F], independent from gadgets and can be done anywhere.
This also allowed the removal of the basic/advanced gadget slot concept, and instead all 3 gadgets slots are now interchangeable.

Improvements
• Picking signs up is now a separate action [F], and can be done anywhere
• Reduced video card memory usage by 30%
• Tweaked veteran scouting spawn counts for more variations
• Cleaner inventory popup for items, also shows more in depth gadget info
• New level property bone piles
• New level property fog (also indicated by breath vapor)
• EMF now uses same slot type of other gadgets, all 3 gadgets are interchangeable
• EMF no longer works near tendrils (due to interference)
• EMF is now pure audio (no cone), and get static disruption instead of range scaling
• Blacklight now shows symbol trails pointing to signs from bone piles
• Blacklight gets disrupted via flickers as well now
• Thermal now has 2 modes, analyze tendrils & fog condensation temperatures
• Thermal no longer has battery or recharges from tendrils
• Parabolic updated to show cone in invalid areas as well, albeit red
• Removed beeping for parabolic/EMF when near a sign
• Regular scan for parabolic/blacklight no longer consumes battery
• Improved tutorial #1 to be more intuitive
• Added house black boundaries in unreachable areas (like the forest)

Fixes
• Fixed Zoe evp quest to work on generic signs (to support new manual pickup)
• Fixed forest caravan crush was missing the collider
• Fixed notebook mission description for forest
• Removed Noah dialogue referring to old utilities
• Removed redundant uv flares

Thanks for the continued support and patience, there’s still a fair bit to explore with the gadgets so stay tuned!

Hope you enjoy the gadget improvements & happy hunting!
Ballistic