OUTBRK News

Hello chasers! This month was huge for OUTBRK! We announced that we are releasing the game on Steam on June 28th, we released our weather showcase video showing our new weather technology, full gameplay footage with youtuber Jeff Favignano, and much more!



We finally released a video showing our new volumetric weather technology! Our Weather Showcase 2024 video is the result of months of work with technical experts to be able to render scientifically accurate data in 3D at the scale of our 625km² world.
Watch it, or rewatch our Weather Showcase here : https://youtu.be/4C4IyySC5ZQ

At the end of the video, we also sneakily dropped the launch date of our game: JUNE 28 2024 ! It’s happening :)



We partnered with Youtuber Jeff Favignano and his friends to play a full round of OUTBRK with Marc and some of our internal testers. This is your opportunity to watch what an OUTBRK match feels like in detail.
Watch it, or rewatch Jeff’s first look at OUTBRK here: https://youtu.be/P1OXsVOWFt0


This month we did a Q&A on our social medias to answer all your burning questions about the game. You guys were on fire, we answered about 100 questions across all channels !
[h3]Facebook Q&A: [/h3]
https://www.facebook.com/outbrkgame/posts/pfbid0joPGSjeGBG896p3Sv8BT92dXMP9i89L8evT4L9CLvTNYyJUBYQWPx5CeQeT56uo5l
[h3]X (Twitter) Q&A:[/h3]
https://twitter.com/OutbrkGame/status/1790761057142673628
[h3]Instagram Q&A: [/h3]
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6_ltw9Oj-Z/


Here are some screenshots of the work that was accomplished this month on the world. The task can be followed on Trello here: https://trello.com/c/RzU2epVa/925-town-polish-pass

[h2]Northendale:[/h2]



[h2]Mountainton:[/h2]



[h2]Bakersville:[/h2]



We also modeled a new tornado siren, have a look at it in game:



Storm Chasing can be pretty intimidating, so we designed and integrated an in-game tutorial to help new players start their OUTBRK experience on the right foot. Have a sneak peak at what our tutorial experience look like:



In addition to all of that, we also integrated 7 new gameplay weather scenarios, a colossal amount of bug fixes and performance improvements, new UI elements, balancing tweaks, gameplay tweaks and visual improvements. We’re doing a lot of internal test sessions to find bugs and improve the game to do everything we can to have a smooth launch in less than a month!


It feels weird to write this, but next monthly newsletter, OUTBRK will be released to the public! Our next step is to do server stress testing, so expect more communications surrounding this to be coming when we will be ready for this next stage of testing.
This is very exciting, and stressful, and exciting, and stressful, and exciting!

That's all for this development update ! Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time, chasers.

-The OUTBRK Team

Hello chasers! This month we had a lot of work done on integrating custom key bindings for keyboard and mouse players, Kickstarter backers exclusive decals, road network update and progress on world polish, and finally the huge integration on our new weather systems.



We integrated a series of categories of customizable key bindings for keyboard and mouse players to let our players choose the way they want to play OUTBRK in a comfortable way.



New exclusive car decals were integrated in the game and are ready to be distributed to Kickstarter backers that backed the different founders packages (bronze, silver and gold). If you don’t remember your pledge package, you can always log on Kickstarter and double check here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/outbrkgame/outbrk-the-multiplayer-storm-chasing-experience



A huge pass has been done to add more interstates exit ramps and more North/South roads to improve a bit the connectivity of the road network. You can see where they were added in the world HERE and HERE.

Here are a few screenshots of these news additions:


Some progress has been also done on the world building polish tracked in THIS TASK .

Here are some screenshot of the detailing work done this month:



Our external development teams completed their first mandate on the development of our new clouds and tornado visuals, so most of the technical work on our side this month has been focused on the integration of the new clouds, tornado, physics and destruction technologies into our main development branch, plug all our gameplay systems into these new features, and debug and optimize it for OUTBRK.

We also integrated two new weather scenarios to stress test our systems into various conditions to spot edge cases. We had a lot of support from our team of internal testers to find and document new issues and helped us gain a tremendous amount of time to get all of this working properly. Among those testers, “WalkOverYou” overtook a large amount of extra responsibilities in coordinating the testing efforts and has now been nominated as our Lead Tester. You will be able to recognize him in Discord and Steam with his distinct role, say hi! Without overshadowing any of the other testers fantastic support, WalkOverYou’s quality work had a definitive positive impact on our development velocity at tackling this colossal integration task.



We know that after talking about all this exciting progress on the integration of the new weather everybody must be excited about seeing it now, we are preparing a dedicated reveal video early this month, so stay tuned!



Once the clouds will be finally revealed, our next step will be focusing on large scale public testing. This will be our final step before early access release to make sure that our online multiplayer servers can handle everything once we launch the game. We’re currently debugging some of our gameplay systems that have some issues interacting with the new weather systems, and once this is resolved, we will communicate our playtest strategy publicly.


That's all for this development update ! Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time, chasers.
-The OUTBRK Team

Hello chasers and happy Easter to those who celebrate! This month we integrated a new playable unique car, new billboard designs, new animated lights for player cars, deployed servers in new regions and optimized the game when driving around.




We integrated the chase car of Kickstarter backers livestormchasers.com and all its exterior and interior accessories. The led lights can be turned on and off by the player to improve visibility in hazardous conditions.

You can see the reveal post on their official Facebook page here : https://www.facebook.com/100044525645683/posts/962897378537775/


We integrated a lot of new billboard designs in the world, including all Kickstarter rewards we received. If you had a billboard design Kickstarter backer reward and you didn’t send us your design, please send it to [email protected].
Here are some of the newly integrated billboards that can be seen all over when driving around.



We integrated animated hazard lights that can be activated by the players for more immersion and roleplay opportunities. There will be 3 models available for early access, a small, a medium and a large hazard light. Here they are in action:



So far, all of our playtests sessions were limited to the Americas for technical reasons. As we gear up for Early Access, this also means we started deploying servers across the ocean to accommodate players from other regions. We now have a server cluster in North-Europe on which we started testing matchmaking connectivity and stability. We don’t expect to have a lot of server clusters for early access, but enough so that our international players can have a nice gaming experience without too much latency. We can relatively easily add more server clusters in different regions if the game becomes successful in regions we didn’t anticipate in the future.



In an effort to make the game run smoother at early access, we found significant improvements on the way we calculate our road trajectories, resulting in smaller file size. This will reduce fps drops that some users had when driving around during playtests, especially when approaching a city.


We’re still working diligently on integrating the volumetric cloud and tornado. The collaboration with the shader artists team is going very well, we have a weekly meeting with their team every Friday and they submit their progress regularly. We are at the last phase of debugging and we already started recording footage to show this new technology in a proper video. This part of the work is what takes the biggest chunk of our development time since we’re making a weather game after all, and we can’t wait for the big reveal you’re all been waiting for!


That's all for this development update ! Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time, chasers.
-The OUTBRK Team

Hello chasers ! On this February 29th, we’re bringing you a monthly newsletter filled with pictures of world building updates, new car customization content, new bumpable physics, update on testing and update on the visuals of the game.


A lot of detailing was done in Grassland Park, located at the center north of the map. Here are some screenshots showing what was done this month.



We integrated one more batch of colors and decals for our customizable cars, bringing up the current total to 22 colors and 40 decals. Here are some examples :



We’re working on adding bumpable physics on smaller props and having it synchronized over the network in a multiplayer match. It looks pretty good from the player’s perspective, but in this newsletter we’re showing you the result of testing in a multiplayer match from another player’s perspective. We will be looking at improving this a little bit, but we’re happy with this result and will be slowly putting this behavior on more objects over time.



This month we focused heavily on networking and matchmaking issues, doing multiplayer testing every weekend to fix major offenders. We had a lot of success finally fixing one major issue where we could see other players’ cars teleporting around when driving long distances, we greatly improved the speed and reliability of getting into an online game and fixed multiple other networking issues contained in this list : https://trello.com/c/xzDpVLrM/814-test-results-240224

We also started looking at the balancing of the points earned during a chase, the deduction of points from fuel, hail and collision, so that we can balance the price of items in the garage before the early access launch for a fair and engaging progression loop.



We've been talking about it here and there, but the next big step we’re getting ready to take is to finally update the cloud and tornado technology and visuals to its final form before early access. We’re moving from mesh and particles to a fully volumetric solution, which will be much more realistic visually and less demanding on the framerate. We don’t have anything to show just yet, and we will do a proper showcase video for this because we truly believe this is a groundbreaking innovation. More on this very soon !


That's all for this development update ! Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time, chasers.
-The OUTBRK Team

Hello chasers ! It’s already 2024 and we’re starting very strong with a newsletter packed with content and new features. We’re showing progress on our game menus, steam achievements, a new towing feature to help players that got themselves in sticky situations, new 3D models, fully playable Dominator 3 and more!


This month, we integrated graphics and full controller support in all the game menus. We also integrated the Offline mode, which was a stretch goal from our Kickstarter Campaign. Here is what our game mode selection screen looks like in game :


We also have pretty new icons for Steam Achievements integrated and functional.



If players get too brave going off-road and stay stuck in a ditch or in a lake, we integrated a neat way to unstuck your car and get teleported back to the nearest gas station. It costs some of your hard earned chase money, so use it as a last resort only !



We integrated a variation of plexiglass hail cages to fit the body of all of our 5 playable civilian cars and 2 new probe models. You can see them all displayed here in our garage.



Last month we showed our new Dominator 3 car model. This month we worked on integrating the gameplay functionality of it. Now that it’s all in-game, players that can afford this beast can drive it, light up its massive light bar, and activate its intercept mode to lower it and resist the strongest of tornadoes.




We ran some multiplayer stability tests and found some issues like this one and that one that we’re working to fix in priority before doing larger tests, but as soon as we have stable servers, we will be looking at doing capacity tests and trying to get as many people in as possible to test the limit of our servers. We also implemented the infrastructure and associated data to have player-driven destruction (running over stop signs…etc) and other players seeing it correctly and we now have to test it in multiplayer sessions to see what kind of bugs could result out of this.


That's all for this development update ! Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time, chasers.
-The OUTBRK Team