Chernobylite Complete Edition News

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
"Fixing the bottle in the vodka drinking animation" - we read in one of the devnotes. We’re still waiting for the results.

About the results, we invite you to read the report. Because a looot is happening in the project.

[h3]Mega Patch - what can you expect? Part 1[/h3]
Mega Patch testing is in full swing. For weeks you’ve been flooding us with videos and screenshots from the game, pointing out where the problems are. Thank you once again for all the materials, and we ask for more. Because thanks to you Chernobylite is getting better and better.

And now news for those who didn’t get to register for the tests. In recent days we’ve come to the conclusion that you also deserve some specific information on what to expect from the Mega Patch. Therefore, from today, in each report, we’ll reveal, piece by piece, the new stuff and fixes that some of you are already testing.

For starters, something you've been asking for a long time and quite often - we've added the ability to arm our companions with armor and weapons. Let’s call it... a reward for your patience.

Let's start from the beginning. So far, when approaching a NPC, we could only talk to them. Now, as you can see in the attached picture, there is an option "Show Equipment".



After selecting this option, it takes the player to the next screen. On the left is Igor's inventory, and in the right column - NPC’s weapons and stats. When you hover the cursor over a weapon or armor in the inventory, you can see how they affect the NPC's stats.



Appropriate armament of our companions will make it easier for them to complete the missions on which the player sends them.



To avoid accusations of being heartless people who like making others suffer, we’re offering you a helping hand at the same time - we improved the save system. From now on, players have three additional autosave slots, and one separate slot for quicksave (operated by F5 and F8 keys). In addition, each save has appropriate markings in the form of a screenshot from the last moment in the game, a time stamp and the length of the game. We mentioned this novelty in one of the previous reports. And soon it will appear for everyone in the Mega Patch. Like other new stuff. But more on that in the next episode.



[h3]Optimizing everything![/h3]
The Mega Patch is one thing, but a lot is going on in the game as well. We’re fixing and patching everything we can. Including even the smaller bugs - such as getting rid of the sound of blows from gas damage, or implementing a slightly different animation of removing collapsed tunnel waste in the secret storage.

But it's also a longer fight with the adjustments. All this to make everything work more efficiently even on weaker PCs and consoles.

You can see these changes in the screenshots below. Improvements and optimization affected the character models, as can be seen in the examples of your favorites - Sashko and Kozlov.



And for fans of 3D graphics, we have something special - a cross-sectional 3D model of the KGB agent character. Here you can see how the character is created in the smallest detail before the appropriate textures are applied to it.



[h3]New format on YouTube[/h3]
Finally, we present to you the new format that has taken off on our YouTube channel - Chernobylite Monthly. We intend not only to summarize the most important information from last month, but also to show behind-the-scenes materials, such as interviews with creators and making of. We invite you to watch and subscribe to our channel.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]CONTEST[/h3]
One more announcement for our talented community. We are starting a competition in which there are extra prizes to be won. What do we require from you? Creativity. For more information see this link.

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
Every week we claw our way through the tons of materials we're working on Chernobylite. It’s a lot of videos, photos and sketches that we are happy to share with you. And suddenly we come across this:



Working on reports is a new adventure each time.

Either way, we say “hello” to you all and, as always, we encourage you to read the new report!

[h3]Mega Patch - THANK YOU[/h3]
We recently started testing the last Mega Patch, which will be available to everyone before the official launch of the game. There are quite a lot of changes, fixes and novelties. So, to check them all out, we needed an extra pair of hands to help us out in the open. And we decided to look for those among people who know Chernobylite best. That's why last weekend we gave some of you access to the Mega Patch's closed tests.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3030332860923490188

The response was bigger than we expected. However, players reported bugs in a very neat and thorough manner, so we decided to expand the test group. Thus, there were over 170 daredevils among you who wanted to help us test everything we have to offer in the Mega Patch. We can already firmly say that your help is invaluable to us! Our Steam forum was bursting with all your bug reports and shortcomings. And these were the most varied.

By Vehrr

By Eshalom

There were even typos.

By Speedwagon

The movies you made were especially helpful.

By HUNSTOP

By jmmy

There were also funny bugs…



...and the creepy ones too.



You reported bugs not only related to the graphics or gameplay - you also gave us signals about missing or broken sounds and voice overs.

Thank you once again for all your bug reports and… we ask for more. Those who have only recently opened their e-mails and saw invitations to test - play and send us your observations.

Meanwhile, we get back to work. The Mega Patch will not patch itself.

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]UPDATE[/h3]
We've quickly gathered the needed tester base, so the registration is now CLOSED. Thanks all for your precious support!

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
We are fully aware that you’re waiting for the final version of Chernobylite and today we can say it’s not just around the corner. It’s already leaning and aiming at you.

We want to invite you to closed testing of the English version of the last Mega Patch before we release it next month.

The short and simple plan is that now we’re starting the closed tests of the Mega Patch, make it public in April, and then we’ll ask you to wait only weeks till the game is finally released and leaves Early Access (we’ll be able to give you the final game release date in April together with the public Mega Patch). The testing group will be limited to 100 people only, so don’t hesitate to register - we’ll send the access codes to the first 100 players who register HERE.

It was promised that we’ll deliver the last Mega Patch on Q1 2021 and we truly want to fulfill this promise. The only issue why we can’t do a public Mega Patch release today is because in the meantime we started to work on more language localizations and this process is not over yet. Thanks to cooperation with our publisher, All in! Games, the game will be localized into several additional languages, but this is taking a bit longer than our original timeline presented on the Roadmap of Early Access. The original story dialogues have been fully rewritten and character voices were recorded from the scratch, so it’s not just an update to the text and voices you may know, but it’s a true 2.0 version of the initial story. That’s why we had to restart all the text and dialogue work for all the languages.

[h3]So what you can expect if you’d join the testing group?[/h3]

• You’ll get access to the testing branch of Chernobylite on Steam, meaning you’ll download the game again in a special version prepared for this opportunity. Register below with your email and within the next few days, you’ll get access to the testing branch.
  
• You’ll be able to play the latest version of the game with all the content updated comparing to the previous Mega Patch but only in English.
  
• The game will allow you to take a look at the part of the final Heist mission, but the game endings are still not available until we release the finished game.
  
• The game is strongly optimized and cleaned up from most of the bugs and glitches you were experiencing in previous versions...
  
• ...but you can still find some bugs and glitches and this is why we need your help.
  
• You’ll lose your progress from the previously saved games (it will happen anyway after the final release, but here it’ll happen sooner).
  
• We’ll be updating the game version on the testing branch many times within the next weeks, so you may expect both improved content and new bugs from time to time.
  
• You have a chance to get cool physical rewards if you help us and to be mentioned in the game credits.
  

[h3]What you shouldn’t expect from joining the testing group?[/h3]

• Playing the finalized game till the ending is still not here - if you want to have a smooth and fully enjoyable player experience instead of helping us in quite a demanding testing task, it’s better if you wait for the final game.
  
• No language versions other than English are available at this moment. We’ll be adding other languages to this testing version as soon as we’ll get them implemented and primarily tested internally - what is the matter of the next weeks.
  

[h3]What WE’d expect from you?[/h3]

• It makes sense for both you and us only if you’ll spend quite a time on playing the game and report any bugs or issues you’d find to our Steam forum.
  
• We’re closing the game development so we should focus only on looking for the technical and gameplay issues related to the existing content. I.e. it’s very important for us to know if the difficulty balance is OK or not for any of you. Or if the game works smoothly on your current PC rig. But it won’t help if you ask us to add the possibility to drive the vehicles or hunt the animals, because we simply have no option to add new content or features here.
  
• But if you have any suggestions about the possible expansion of the game in the future upgrades after the release (like DLC or the sequel), we’re more than happy to get them collected HERE.
  

Just to make sure once again: if you’d like have the fun from playing the 100% polished game, we recommend you to wait until we release a final version of Mega Patch, and if you like to finalize the game story till the finish, please wait for the end of the Early Access.

[h2]And that's why we need YOUR help![/h2]

Back in 2015, we visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for the first time attempting to collect some data for the experimental VR documentary about the catastrophe in 1986. We couldn’t imagine that it’ll lead us to the point when today we’ll be sharing with you the (almost) finished role-playing survival horror game that tells the alternative story of the infamous incident.

Now we’re just about to end the craziest and biggest project that most of us have been working on. From the 3D-scanning of the real Zone, through the atypical non-linearity of the story, to the insane will to recreate some of the tiniest details of this beautiful and dark world - we tried to push our skills and tools to the limits.

A game like this wouldn’t be possible to make without your help. In the harsh reality of the video games industry, the unusual projects like Chernobylite usually end as small and unnoticed indie titles or turn into the bigger but much more safely crafted mainstream productions. But thanks to you, our Kickstarter and Early Access supporters, we could develop the game according to our original vision and immediately share it with you through the updates on Steam and GOG. The ideas we had a few years ago are here all the time, but their execution was strongly driven by our players’ feedback and countless discussions we had on Steam forums, Discord, messengers and direct emails.

And this is why we’d like to ask you once again to help us with the final testing phase of the Chernobylite. You could ask “why?” and the question would be perfectly valid. Well, we’re doing very excessive tests with your participation since the Early Access launch in 2019. And we believe that the high quality of many aspects of the game we’ve reached during this time is clearly your contribution. In our team, since the beginning of the development, we had some internal testers working on checking the gameflow and looking for the bugs within the game all the time. Moreover, for the last 6 months, we’re cooperating with a professional testing team that guides us from the Beta stage of the project to the soon-to-be release on many technical issues and bug fixing processes.

But let’s make it clear: a game like this (and Chernobylite definitely is not the biggest project in the world), in its original form, before it’s cooked and uploaded to Steam or GOG, contains almost 700.000 files, located in nearly 40.000 folders. It includes about 130.000 of various objects (models, textures, animations, sound files and so on) and we don’t even try to count the lines of code and parameters written in programming and scripting languages. For a team of fewer than 30 people, it’s virtually impossible to make sure that all these elements are working bug-free in all game scenarios that are available within the non-linear Chernobylite story. So we know that game still contains some bugs and the remaining weeks of development time before the final game is released we would like to focus entirely on the bug fixing and optimization of any remaining elements of the game that can be found as problematic for you.

[h3]Forgotten events[/h3]
And while we are talking about it… While fixing these major bugs, such as a bug where soldiers in Kopachi could shoot through walls (we have Counter-Strike flashbacks. You know - the mighty Desert Eagle), we came across something interesting.

As you well know, there are quite a few narrative elements in the game that help you understand the world of Chernobylite, such as newspaper clippings, notes, and official documents. But there were also numerous events scattered across the maps, which showed Igor pictures from the past. Thanks to this, players could see with their own eyes what was happening in Chernobyl during and after the disaster.

But there was one scene that caught our attention - that one event located in PripyatPort. It must have slipped out of our heads, because the cutscene lacked the character disintegration. Oops. Fortunately, the bug has been fixed, as can be seen in the attached picture.



These are the kinds of things we want you to pay attention to when testing the Mega Patch. Sometimes they can be like the one shown above, and sometimes they can be more minor like objects penetrating through walls.



[h3]Animations in the base[/h3]
Another small variety. We've always been a bit bothered by the fact that the characters recruited by the player appeared in the base and… that's it. They all stand in one place and barely move. We decided to change this a bit by implementing very simple animations of our NPCs, who now interact with specific buildings in the base.



A slight change, but thanks to this we’ll avoid the impression that the base is only a storage for dummies. Although, as you can see below, we still have to improve this and that.



We dare not ask Mikhail what he is doing...

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
We wouldn't be offended if spring came a little earlier. It isn’t about the temperature, but about the weather itself - sun and snow, sometimes even rain and snow. Indeed, the weather in spring can be really unpredictable.

LIKE A STORY IN CHERNOBYLITE.

With this clever transition, let’s dive into the latest report.

[h3]Tests, fixes, bugs[/h3]
Last week, we mentioned that the game has the Release Candidate status. This means that we’ve entered the final testing phase of the game. We redirected almost all work force to fixing bugs, as well as optimization for weaker PCs and consoles. Thus, we limit throwing new things into the game to the necessary minimum. With a slight difference, but more about that at the end of this report.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3038212890022339780

Speaking of fixes, it's worth mentioning that you report most of the smaller bugs on Steam, such as disappearing icons on maps or dialog lines that extend outside the box. But there were also bigger, much more serious ones. For example, it’s worth mentioning the optimization and corrections of building collisions on the Moscow Eye and Pripyat maps. It’s also an almost complete reconstruction of car wreckage models. The textures alone used to take up a lot of memory.



[h3]Voices all over again[/h3]
Tests and bugs fixing are also a good opportunity for serious changes. First, we are continuing the process of replacing placeholder voice overs with newly recorded ones. In addition, we’re organizing and completing the voice overs where they were missing before. If you haven't had the chance to hear the new dialogues yet, below is an excerpt from the game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Secondly, we're tweaking some in-game sounds to make them sound as realistic as possible, and to trigger them at the right moment. In this case, we also fill in the gaps.

[h3]Mega patch[/h3]
At this point it’s worth mentioning something, that you have been asking for a long time. Namely, all the fixes mentioned above, as well as those that we wrote about in previous reports, will be delivered to you in the form of a Mega Patch. We know that you’re waiting for it and we still need a few weeks to deliver - the simple reason for that is that we’ve started to cooperate with a big localization studio to deliver more subtitle languages than was originally planned and to achieve the best possible quality of translations. It takes a bit more time than we had on our original roadmap to finalize and check in all the localizations into the game. But...

Prepare space on your hard drives! The Mega Patch is near.

[h3]At the end...[/h3]
At the same time, we're working hard on the end of the game. As always, due to spoilers, we can't reveal too much. We can only say that we’re very close to the end and… it looks impressive right now. Let's put it this way: it’ll be worth the wait.

To make your appetite, below you will find small fragments of the last stages of the game, more or less censored.



Seriously, this last gif really looks like an excerpt from Doom on the SNES.

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
When preparing new reports for you, we dig through the pile of materials. Sometimes there are graphics and sometimes also short descriptions of what we’re working on. At this stage of production, the majority of notes are "bug fixes" or "testing". This means one thing: there is so much going on that our heads start to crack.



However, a few notes caught our attention in particular. One of our colleagues left a note on which he wrote "an implementation of drinking vodka". Another one - a sound technician - wrote "complement of sounds in the animation of drinking alcohol". And someone will tell us that we don't care about details and realism in the game ;)

Before we can show this new feature, we invite you to read the latest report!

[h3]Closer to the end than farther[/h3]
We are not exaggerating when we write a lot is happening here. About a month ago we mentioned we will be re-recording all voiceovers of all characters in the game. Well, today we can boast we recently finished doing that! The last week in particular was very intense but you will be surprised by the end result. But this is not the end of the news.

We have started the final testing phase.

This means that the game has a Release Candidate status. We are currently expanding the team of testers, looking for & fixing the identified bugs, optimizing the game for weaker PCs and consoles. At the same time, we are working on the promised new content for DLC and a lot more.

[h3]Quiz with pixels[/h3]
Last time we included a gameplay clip from the Chernobylite stage that is not yet available to mortal eyes. In short: it was an action scene that was heavily pixelated by us. Because, you know, spoilers.

If we could, we would show you everything. But we won't do it because
a) we like you too much and don't want to spoil the ending of the game for you,
b) we don't want the HIGHER INSTANCE to blow our heads off.

This doesn't mean we can't smuggle something in. Here’s another, small fragment of what you will be able to find in the game in just a few months. Do you recognize this character? Let us know in the comments!



[h3]A beautiful, naked piece of torso[/h3]
Speaking of showing things for which we can lose our heads. A few weeks ago, we showed the initial draft of the monster that will be the next opponent in Chernobylite. We are currently tweaking and adding some details. You’ll see the full silhouette soon in the game. Meanwhile, we’re serving you its rich interior.



[h3]Something for the eyes[/h3]
From the series "we add and improve so that it does not hurt the eyes”. We cleaned up a bit of the board in the Web of Lies. It also gained chalk drawings, as well as fragments of documents and handwritten notes written down by one of the key figures in the game.



Another thing was to check and fix a bug where the texture was sticking out of the ground and the collision wasn't working properly.

This is what it looked like:



And this is what it should look like:



[h3]A futuristic gateway[/h3]
And one last thing for today. Do you remember the biometric gateway that Igor had to pass through at the very beginning of the game? It looks a bit like from the previous epoch, doesn't it? Well, what if we tell you that at the end of the game you will come across a slightly modernized gateway?

Check out our comparison.



[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!