The new update is finally out! U8 - Annihilation is another major upgrade for the game all around, and it brings us a large step closer to our goal. Many things have been improved, and now that we don't have to work on features all the time, we can focus more on quality and polishing. This will now be an ongoing focus.
The new Eliminator is a powerful hitman with a trickshot refractor sphere and the Demolisher combines alll the best from Grenadier, Rocketeer and classic Demolisher into one fat package.
A set of 6 new Faction weapons, ranging from radioactive canister shotgun to heavy triple barrel assault rifle. Comes with a full set of new faction variants.
Nearly all menus got an iteration and have a more consistent design, which also ties into the new Universe Hub design. The end statscreen and the weapon menu got an overhaul. Keep in mind that this is still work in progress. There is still a bunch of work to do, especially around buttons, the weapon and endscreen. The weaponmenu will be accessible while playing in the next update so we prepared it to take less space on the screen already.
The upgrade shops for items and abilities have been combined into one. Additionally we overhauled cleaned up many of the upgrades and added upgrades based on the category of item. Summons can gain upgrades specific to summons only, Grenades for grenades and so on. Also we added a system which allows exluding nonsensical upgrades. More improvements are following.
The new map menu paints in your path in realtime and shows your recently visited area, as well as chests, shops and more.
You can open it with TAB / M by default. More improvements for the map are upcoming!
(Ongoing) Many environments have been updated in terms of gameplay quality and we are in the progress of making many more major gameplay improvements by improving spawn points, combat spaces, reducing backtracking and adding cover. More coming soon!
The recoil and deviation math has been changed and is now more accurate to what it should be in real-world degrees.
This was very confusing because S1 used incorrect values, and the previous values were differently incorrect as well.
In short, essentially all recoil and movement inaccuracy has been halved. This means that the weapon balance has been completely shuffled.
You now gain a fixed amount of credits on kills as a baseline. Credit pickups can still drop as a bonus, and elites grant more credits.
Weapons now have muzzle flashes with nice real-time shadows and intensity based on weapon power.
We are taking steps to prevent heavy backtracking and optimizing the level pathing, chest placement, and pickups. Pickups now have a 60-second timer, which encourages players to use them and eliminates the ability to backtrack through the entire map to retrieve an ammo pickup that was left at the start. The frequency of pickup drops has been adjusted to compensate. This change should improve the overall gameplay experience.
We are continuing to add quality and variation to our environments. Many maps have been improved, some have been reworked, and some new ones have been added.
Recently, we discovered that our environments have very inconsistent cover and spawn-point placements, and this has been too much off the radar.
This often leads to "funnels" instead of varied playing areas. The difficulty can also vary very dramatically, as we have observed on older maps versus newer maps.
Backtracking and circular maze-style movements are also issues that we are trying to improve.
We are now focusing on overhauling the maps in the near future to have better cover and spawns. Many maps have already been changed, and we think this can net a lot of untapped gameplay quality.
Classes now have increased chances to find loot that is thematically fitting for them. We have also added new chest designs. Part 2 of the loot rework is upcoming!
Classes have seen a bunch of improvements and we are in the process of merging the subclasses into more rich main classes. We currently have a lot of classes and more are planned, and we feel that we are spread too thin. We think we can add more quality and variation by combining some of the closest classes and splitting some into their own class, like we have done with the Eliminator.
The Eliminator is now its own class with a unique new design, while the Demolisher combines all the best parts from the Grenadier, Rocketeer, and classic S1 Demolisher.
A combination of the Chrono Trooper and Striker is also being considered, as well as making the Breacher a separate class with a new model. For the Recon class, we are considering some options; let us know what you think.
The Riotguard got a big iteration and a lot of quality added, but for the moment the Judge and Disruptor subclasses are being removed as these subclasses were struggling with their design.
The Judge might return in a better form, or the abilities will return as part of the loadout.
Focus Perks are being remade into Faction Kits, which are available on the Eliminator and Demolisher as a preview. Faction Kits offer a starting weapon choice of a certain Faction (or comparable) in addition to some other benefits.
These will be later unlocked by a class challenge, like reaching the fourth area above 150% with the class. The Demolisher now starts with a 2-shot grenade launcher, but can also get the Rocketeer kit, or even a melee one, giving distinct and fun options.
Class experience requirements have been noticeably reduced for early levels (0-10) and slightly reduced for levels 10-15.
Weapons now also start with their full capacity of ammo.
Ammo gain for all weapons has been tweaked and increased on average by around one magazine's worth of ammo.
Many smaller tweaks have been made, and attachments have been further tuned.
Many weapon models have also been improved.
We have completed a nice pack of Soviet Brotherhood Faction weapons. These are from our fictional faction and have no relation to real world events, and were started far in advance.
They might be some of our best models yet and come with a full set of faction variants, so enjoy!
Some cool new weapons coming in!
- High damage bouncing HE launcher - Dual shot magazine - Powerful but requires accuracy
- High magazine submachine gun - Consistent damage output
- Accurate Twin-Burst Assault Rifle - Powerful weak-point hits
- Big bore radioactive canister shotgun - Deals damage in an area
- Heavy radiation rifle - Powerful direct damage with small AOE - High recoil and slow fire-rate
- Heavy triple-barrel machine gun - Low magazine size - High damage output
- Accurate Laser assault rifle - Engages a spraying mode at low ammo
Varied improvements have happened around enemy units, including a good number of further fixes and some more tweaks. We have now realized how huge of a factor enemy spawn and cover positions are, so we will continue doing more tweaks in that regard to make gameplay more consistent. We will also continue to work on the chrono squad faction.
Various fixes and other tweaks, as well as behavior improvements and fixes, have been made.
Reinforcements coming in!
The Mantaray is a sturdy crowd control unit, using a non-lethal microwave weapon to drive troublemakers to flight.
The upgrades for items and abilities now have a new category-based system, which makes upgrades more tailored to what you are actually upgrading. Grenades get grenade upgrades, abilities that don't benefit from multicast don't get it offered, and so on. There might still be some oversights, so let us know if you find any, but overall it should make the upgrade experience much more consistently useful.
Many items have been improved or reworked. More work on items is in progress.
Items are in the process of becoming more defined as a toolset for a core gameplay sandbox.
A new synergy system has been added, which is currently being tested on some items. Certain items trigger a bonus effect once a synergy item or weapon is found. This effect is hidden until found.
We are testing to see if this doesn't add unnecessary complexity, so let us know what you think!
Great news! Co-op is alive and well. As you might have seen already, our dedicated server-based online co-op is now on a test branch on Steam. You can find more information on the Steam forums or Discord.
Keep in mind that this is a first technical test and not the same as the co-op launch, and not yet the time to invite all friends. Since all important parts finally work, we are definitely over the mountain, but a good number of balance and quality-of-life improvements are now following.
We have mostly replaced a third-party audio engine, which caused many sounds not to play on their first time of appearance. For example, the stat upgrade shop always had a very distinct sound that you would never hear. Or one explosion having a sound and the next none.
Many sounds are now more audible and the overall audio mess is now gone, but there might be some sounds that are a bit overblown right now as there is no limiting anymore (like in S1).
Performance: We have added support for DLSS and AMD FSR, which are both dynamic resolution modes.
DLSS works amazingly well and makes the game look better while also giving a noticeable FPS boost if you have a Nvidia card above 2000. On DLSS at 70% render resolution, the game looks better than native and runs noticeably better, for example. Even playing at 50% resolution looks great.
FSR has the potential for higher gains and works on any card, but does come with more noticeable quality loss. However, it is still a great tool to boost FPS if needed. Dynamic resolution overrides any anti-aliasing settings.
We have implemented a new feature that improves shadow performance on the higher shadow settings (all but the lowest) and adds better shadow quality.
Due to some fundamental switches and many optimizations, loading times have noticeably improved. See for yourself!
We also added a setting to switch monitors.
You can now convert a stat into a stack, which opens up many possibilities for tying action behavior to stats, such as health.
You can now specify specific weapons as conditions, which is useful for creating synergies.
You can now adjust the weighting for different types of loot for specific classes. This setting can be found in the class specialization configuration, and allows you to increase the chance for certain types of items to drop for a particular class.
It is now possible to add synergies to actions.
First: Add a condition to activate your synergy. Lets say your item gets a synergy if you also own orb of lightning. Ask for "Owns specific actions: Orb of lighting" in a passive condition then set as result "Synergy active" and add the orb. This now activates the synergy once it is owned.
Then on the left side, you add your synergy descriptions in the synergy text slot and again reference the orb. Your actual synergy effects can be anywhere really. Check out the "shock conductor" item.
The mod browser has been improved to show more stats and has been cleaned up a bit.
Note: The "Instant once" path was previously experiencing a bug where it would trigger repeatedly until it executed a result once, rather than just triggering once as intended. This meant that if you had a spawner with a 20% chance on instant once, it would continue to spawn until it succeeded. This issue has now been fixed, and the "Instant once" path will only check for a result once, as intended. If you were using the previous, incorrect behavior of this feature in your actions, you may need to update your implementation to use the correct behavior. To make an action only activate once, you should use the charges system.
For the coming weeks, we will be focusing on improving the core gameplay with better spawn points, cover placement, and flow through the environments. When this is done, we will then have another look at the enemies.
We are also working on a remake of our loot progression system to give us better control over when chests and terminals spawn, resulting in a smoother and more consistent progression.
For U9 and beyond, we plan to put more emphasis on quality, including a stronger focus on story and flair elements, improved bosses and enemies, outgame progression, and potentially a class upgrade system.
About the Launch date, clearly we are not planning a 2022 Launch anymore, we'll keep you updated! The other Websites will be adjusted in the coming days to reflect this.
