Chernobylite Complete Edition News

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
Before we get to the heart of the agenda, we'd like to announce something important. Our game is voting for the Steam Awards! As Chernobylite was released in Early Access in October 2019 (over a year ago. Where did that time go...) we are starting a nomination for the award in the "Labor of Love" category. We bow down and ask you: if you've had fun playing our game so far - vote for Chernobylite!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2905347189776333118

And remember that by voting you earn a special Steam badge! If you want to have the highest tier of this badge, you have to write or update a review for one of the nominated games. Of course, we would love if you'd do this for Chernobylite


The game has changed much since we've started Early Access, so if you wrote us a review 6, even 12 months ago, Chernobylite is a totally better game now. So hop in, play, see for yourselves and tell us what you think about the current state of the development!

Ok, no more grovelling! Here come our weekly specs!
[h3]Performance improvements and other smaller bugs[/h3]
We will start the report with significant changes that may not be noticeable to the human eye, but are actually crucial to the smooth running of the game.

The problem that we want to solve is that the game lagged after showing a dozen saved games (or more) with all these elements at once. We are trying to work out a solution that will fix it - we have a few ideas on how to do it so we’re testing them right now. We decided to do a little reorganization of the new load game menu by reviewing the user interface, screenshots next to each save and metadata. Such as current level, current quest, save timestamp, playtime duration, etc.

By jcden77

In addition, we are working on other improvements, which, although they are minor, have a huge impact on the gameplay and on how much you’re enjoying the game. This includes improving interaction with very small objects - this is not the pixel hunt level of old point'n'click adventure games yet, but we would like to avoid it anyway.

Also fixing the sound of footsteps that did not work well in some places, and the marker placed by our comrades who were in the wrong places or a bug that made the traps react to dead bodies. In addition, there are also some grammatical errors in the dialogues that we and you picked up.

The list of these minor bugs is much larger, so expect the bigger list when the update (Hotfix) will arrive on Steam.

By svid.vp
[h3]Chernohost[/h3]
Our favourite little devil, a.k.a. Chernohost, also didn’t escape our attention. And there is always room for improvement. ALWAYS, believe us. For example, sometimes this enemy happened to be invisible, like Bilbo Baggins after putting the One Ring on his finger. It’s hard to fight a group of Chernohosts, so imagine being attacked by… nothing. Or at least nothing visible.

Another bug was keeping Chernohost glued to us all the time. Literally! To say that it looked weird is not enough... Apart from that, we are increasing and widening these creatures’ view range and - most importantly - we are giving them the opportunity to aggro their comrades. In the group, Chernohosts are the strongest, so if one will see & attack you. And the rest will probably do the same.


[h3]Audio and visuals[/h3]

Time for a visual-auditory experience. We are currently working on the sounds made by falling bullet scales. We want the sounds to reproduce the fall of the scales not only to the ground, but also to other surfaces, such as heavy metal, glass, crystal, deep water and shallow puddles. Again, this is important to us because we want to make the game as real as possible.

Though we couldn’t show you that today, as we can’t publish any videos in Steam News, we will prepare some behind the scenes in the next month. You’ll probably be quite surprised how we can produce such sounds ^^

Among the more important visual fixes, we are working on the extremely annoying scene where you meet Tarakan in Pripyat Port. Why “annoying”? Because it doesn't work the way it should! Due to this, the quest cannot be finished - it has as many as four endings, which already mixes the whole thing up.

As for the other things, on the screenshot below you can see that we are testing various solutions in the Farm that can help us solve the problem of bad display of objects from a greater distance.



We are also working on different versions of new game objects (in this case: trees). No textures at the moment.



And finally, a package of assets from almost all sides. Enjoy!


[h3]That’s all for today[/h3]
Take care, stalkers!

The Steam Awards are here again! We are taking part in the voting too, as a game released in Early Access in October 2019, so you can find us in one category: Labor of Love. If you had fun playing our game - please vote on Chernobylite!

And if you played months ago, check out how much the game has changed:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2935744583752568383
However we are not "there" yet, meaning we still have some work to get done, we're not long before the awaited premiere. We have over a year of work behind us and finally reaching the point where we will be able to say "okay, guys, we have it!". Of course, still many things will change for the better, there is still some content to be implemented (like "The Heist").



But on the other hand, we can clearly see how much the game has improved since the pre-alpha state. And that's not an easy thing to say when you work on something day after day after day! We are proud of what we have achieved, we are proud that we will be able to bring Chernobylite to both current and next-gen consoles, we are proud that you like the ideas that we invented and the changes that we made.



So guys, if you want to show us your support - please write us a review and vote on Chernobylite during this year's Steam Awards!

xoxo,
Cherno team

Localization:
- We added a big update to Ukrainian localization and a smaller one to Turkish localization.

Another set of bug fixes you report to us. This time they may not be blocking the game, but they are very annoying. We realize that these are not all problems, but we will gradually solve them. There is still a lot of time until the premiere...

Decisions and story:

• Sashko now correctly changes his attitude if you changed your decisions in "A few things from an old hideout"
  
• Sashko will no longer react negatively to Igor for releasing Kostya from prison if Kostya died earlier
  
• Sashko now has no change in attitude due to the Ferris wheel crashing down if the player chose to kill Kozlov.
  
• “Checkpoint Assault” will no longer require player input every time you return to the Fractal Timeline
  
• If a player during "Big Fish" shoots down the helicopter, Mikhail should not leave the team. The decision influences and correctly scales with his loyalty.
  
• Olga should no longer be "lost" when we rescue her from prison.
  
• During Hack Nar Server, the decision was the opposite of what it should have been. We fixed it.
  

AI and combat:

• Soldiers should now react correctly to the death of an ally killed with a silenced weapon. When they hear the body fall, they will check it out, and when they see their ally die
  
• Weapons should now be properly filled with ammunition if it has a magazine other than the default.
  
• Bolderer's AI was created before EA started. It passed a deep update, which should solve many problems, such as correct path searching, using portals, problems with animations, or sensitivity to eyesight and hearing.
  

General:

• Event marker on the compass should now correctly change the transparency scale with distance.
  
• Fixed a collision on the passage that prevented you from entering one of the stashes behind the chernobylite wall in Pripyat Central
  
• High-tech equipment in Igor's room should now have the correct textures
  
• In some quests, an old placeholder was showing on TVs instead of Tarakan. We fixed it.
  
• Hermit we encountered on the related quest was very dark. We improved its lighting.
  
• Events with gas clouds should no longer spawn in sectors where the main quest is taking place.
  
• When entering the fractal world, the cutscene for putting on the helmet should always start correctly
  
• During training with Tarakan, it was possible to block yourself if we started a dialogue with him holding a weapon in our hand. We fixed it.
  
• We have fixed a very rare issue that was causing problems with sharpen postprocessing.
  
• Fixed issues with poor texture quality on some elevations.
  
• Fixed lighting issues during mission "Weapon Transport"
  

[h3]Hello, stalkers![/h3]
We read your opinions, and we know what you most expect ("where is The Heist?!") and you tell us what needs to be improved and what else to work on to make life in the Zone better. As always, your insights were valuable to us, as evidenced by the following corrections that we are preparing for you.
By the way, we have found quite an interesting bug ourselves that turned out to be… somewhat spooky. Although Halloween is long behind us, we think you will like what we’ve found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUwMsc7zhpM
[h3]Sustainable Shadow[/h3]
Let's start with the changes that will include Shadow - the monster with huge paws that lurks in buildings in the Zone. There will be quite a few of these changes, but thanks to them fighting him will be… maybe not so much a "pleasure" (let's be honest, meeting Shadow who pops out of nowhere was never pleasant), but definitely more balanced.

This includes faster reaction to the attack and its involvement in the fight (Shadow will not wait for your move, but will attack right away), a significant change in range and angle of view (thanks to this, he doesn’t pass a meter from the soldiers without noticing them). Plus, we make him react to sounds and damage and get rid of a few annoying bugs (e.g. blur effect, which sometimes stayed with the Shadow permanently).


[h3]Distribution of soldiers[/h3]
Another big and quite important change concerns the spawning of soldiers on the map.
To put things simply, we wanted to generate enemy squads randomly, but for them to have similar “strength”. The spawning process had a difficult time choosing which enemy to spawn in the squads. And that changed the balance we wanted to achieve - having e.g. 3 regular soldiers + 1 stronger in a group instead of 2 regulars + 2 stronger ones.

• spawner - a spot on the map where enemies are, well, spawning
  
• distribution - a word used to describe the process of spawning the enemies
  
• perfect distribution - spawning the enemies in the best way possible
  
• weight (of the soldiers) - “value” of a particular enemy type, which is necessary for the spawning process to decide which to spawn

Overall, we're working to drastically change the soldier spawning system to be more honest and random, rather than rigid, mathematical. Thanks to this, we want to avoid some weirdness related to seeing too many"crafting" on the map of soldiers of the same, weak type.

Let’s start the tech-talk now! There are spawners placed on the levels, which tell what and how many soldiers should appear in this particular place. Depending on certain variables, we choose one of the predefined levels of "difficulty" that describes the distributions of the types of soldiers. For example: when the NAR squad spawn, we want half (0.5) to be regular soldiers, one-fourth (0.25) sergeants and one-fourth (0.25) elite.

The perfect distribution is that the same group of soldiers will be spotted every time. The problem was that it did not always work as it should, so it happened that in subsequent draws, spawners "produced" only regular soldiers. Simply put, we want to improve this system to allow better, non-biased randomness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQeSlF3AAQ
Here’s a broader description of the problem:

Perfect distribution on the example of a spawner who "produces" four soldiers: two regular soldier (4 * 0.5 = 2), one sergeant (4 * 0.25 = 1) and one elite (4 * 0.25 = 1). From a mathematical point of view, everything is fine.

The problem arises when we cannot make a perfect distribution. Example: we have a spawner who has to "produce" three soldiers each time: regular soldier (3 * 0.5 = 1.5 = 1), sergeant (3 * 0.25 = 0.75 = 0), elite (3 * 0.25 = 0.75 = 0). This is a rather poor solution.

Therefore, we are ultimately working on a solution where we make a distribution based on a value that describes the probability of a given type of opponent in relation to other opponents. On the other hand, for the remaining soldiers, whom we could not replace, we use the principles of perfect distribution (i.e. a draw takes place: 50% chance for a soldier to appear, 25% for a sergeant and an elite).
In other words: every time there will be the same distribution of soldiers depending on the difficulty level. In case this is not possible, instead of spawning the weakest, we spawn them randomly by chance.


[h3]Noises (also from the underworld)[/h3]
We introduce you changes not only visible to the eye but also audible to the ear. We plan to add to the game footsteps heard when walking on very wet surfaces, such as puddles, as well as the sounds of browsing and crafting weapon upgrades. We especially care about the implementation of that second element, because that's what you deal with most often. The sounds of walking on puddles can be considered a modest addition, but it increases the realism in the game.

Similarly, we approach the issue of adding an alert to opponents when the body hits the ground. A body hitting the ground produces an appropriately loud noise that will alert enemies that something disturbing is happening around the corner.

Taking this opportunity to discuss the in-game sounds issue, we have a curiosity for you. This has to do with an interesting, yet very terrifying bug we came across. On the Red Forest map near Olga's Village, you can find wild pigs. If you shoot any of them, it will squeal before it dies ... and that squeal will still be heard even after it dies. We're correcting this bug so that pigs don't bite your conscience from the underworld. ;)


[h3]Level design[/h3]
We are also working on slight improvements to the level design. Mostly these are minor bugs that have been spotted by you (e.g. on several levels the meshes appeared too late). However, we are also working on major fixes that will improve the gameplay.
First, there will be plates with the names of the rooms in the prison for better orientation. This is a large spot where it's easy to get lost.

Secondly, in Pripyat Central, Pripyat Port and Kopachi events have been tweaked so that they don't get blocked. As you know, some places are now blocked by Chernobylite walls or locked doors which require you to use a lockpick. We had to move one of these rooms in Kopachi because there was another event in the same room that we shouldn't block in this way.
[h3]That’s all for today[/h3]
Take care, stalkers!