OUTBRK News

• Added party matchmaking system with the ability to host private lobbies for larger parties
  
• Added a new comprehensive keybinding system
  
• Fixed memory leak eventually leading to a crash when driving (Long technical explanation about this issue at the bottom of patch notes.)
  
• Added the ability to bind mouse buttons and other special keys
  
• Added the ability to bind actions that were previously only accessible in the action wheel
  
• Fixed all existing issues with the key binding system
  
• Added visual feedback when a player is using their microphone
  

• Added 20 new scenarios to the rotation
  
• Added SevereStudios t-shirts
  
• Added raccoon bobble head cosmetic named Cior
  
• Updated the wording of offline play to solo chase and clarified progression saving
  
• Increased timeout duration when server is loading the scenario for slower computers to still be able to load into a game
  
• Increased previously played scenarios taken into account in matchmaking from 8 to 16
  

• Fixed multiple issues causing players to randomly die
  
• Fixed a rare memory leak occurring on some systems
  
• Fixed an issue causing vehicles to vanish when exiting them
  
• Fixed an issue preventing cars to be started on match start
  
• Fixed an issue causing probes to give points when unintended
  
• Fixed an issue causing errors on vehicle exit
  

• Fixed several floating roads and objects throughout the world
  
• Fixed an issue causing one road to not be drivable
  
• Fixed an issue causing the world signs not displaying the proper town name
  
• Fixed an issue causing the towing feature to spawn players incorrectly
  
• Fixed an issue with exterior being visible through the Magnitude's hood when driving
  
• Fixed DOM3 windshield not displaying proper rain effects
  
• Fixed an issue with the lightning emitter
  
• Fixed an issue with a tornado having the incorrect flow
  
• Fixed an issue causing "enter vehicle" prompt to not display
  
• Fixed an issue causing bumpable objects to be movable by characters
  

When we first launched OUTBRK, we had some frustrating performance issues cropping up during gameplay. Players would experience occasional lag spikes, where the screen would freeze for up to a second—far from ideal when you're trying to enjoy a smooth driving experience. To address this, we cleaned up a lot of our scripts and assets. This helped reduce the amount of data being loaded and unloaded in memory, which significantly improved the situation.

However, as we dug deeper, we discovered a more persistent issue. Unity's default memory management system wasn't releasing scene content from memory after unloading it. Given the vast size of OUTBRK's open world, we had to split the environment into many chunks that would load and unload around the player as they moved. The problem was, the more you drove, the more RAM the game consumed, because the unloaded assets weren't actually being freed. This led to memory bloat, causing further performance headaches like game crashes or streamers having issues with OBS after playing for a while.

[h3]The Solution: Rebuilding Our Streaming System with Addressables[/h3]

To solve this problem, we knew we had to overhaul our entire streaming system. Enter Addressables—a Unity feature that allows us to take control of our memory management. With Addressables, we gained the ability to load and unload specific assets on-demand, releasing them from memory as soon as they were no longer needed. This switch resulted in a much more stable memory footprint, allowing us to better manage resources and improve overall performance.

[h3]The Implementation: A Massive Undertaking[/h3]

Switching to Addressables wasn’t a simple task. We had to comb through the entire game’s assets and reorganize everything to fit the new system. It involved an unbelievable amount of work and debugging, but the results made it all worthwhile. Not only did we stabilize the game’s memory usage, but we also gained the ability to further optimize our memory management down the line.
As a bonus, this massive reorganization allowed us to reduce the game’s size on disk by about 20 GB, making OUTBRK more accessible for players with limited storage space.

Hello chasers! We've been working all month on the biggest OUTBRK update to date, so we're giving up an extended update on our progress and what is coming up after that.


[h2]PARTY SYSTEM[/h2]
The party system is in great shape and almost ready to be released. It has been tested by our Quality Assurance team and we only have one remaining outstanding issue with some microphones configurations remaining to be fixed before being able to release the massive update we’ve been preparing.



[h2]KEY REBINDING SYSTEM[/h2]
We reworked our entire keybinding system to fix the various issues players had when attempting to customize their gameplay experience. We also added various bindable actions that were exclusive to the action wheel menu, like wipers, lights, antennas, anchor, etc.


[h2]BUG FIXES AND MORE[/h2]
We have identified the source of a memory leak causing crashes after a certain amount of playing time and we are currently testing a solution to eliminate it.

Various bugs have also been fixed like some world design bugs, random deaths, cars not starting or not controllable due to server issues, probes giving points when they shouldn’t, and more.

We’ve also added a black and a white version of a new SevereStudios.com t-shirt for characters to wear in game.

We’re also testing the radio system to see if we can include it to the 0.1 update.


We’re working on adding more content to the game, here are some artist renders (not in-game yet) of what is to come in the near future.
[h2]CARS AND CAR ACCESSORIES[/h2]


And a little teaser of the interior of an upcoming car.



[h2]CHARACTER ACCESSORIES[/h2]



[h2]PERFORMANCES[/h2]
The team is still working hard on optimizing the cloud rendering system. We wanted the tech art team to put all their time and energy on doing research and development to improve the overall performances of the clouds and they are currently testing different theories to find a suitable solution. As soon as this is done, they will switch their focus on improving visuals and adding more tornado types.

[h2]WEATHER MODEL[/h2]
We’ve made good progress on our weather model resolution upgrade which required us to set up a super-computer infrastructure. As previously mentioned, this will allow us to have a lot more details in storm structures, especially in the lower-levels. We are now very close to running our first model run with this improvement.

[h2]GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS[/h2]
We are currently working on revamping some gameplay systems to give a better purpose to reports and pictures. We’re also making some changes to the probes system to make them more intuitive and fun.




That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time,
-The OUTBRK Team

Hello chasers! This month was a very busy one ! We did a lot of major improvement to the game and set the table for even more cool stuff coming up.

1. Added 16 new storm scenarios.
   
2. We fixed the lag spike when driving, deploying probes, and entering or exiting a vehicle.
   
3. We greatly improved the matchmaking stability, fixing multiple issues such as needing to restart the game between matches.
   
4. Greatly improved performances overall. Users are reporting an average of 15-20 FPS gain with the same quality settings.
   
5. Improved tornado physics interaction with players.
   
6. Fixed random deaths occurrences.
   

The work we’ve been doing on the matchmaking system is the first major step on the party system, and we’re already making great progress on building the actual feature to be able to create a lobby with your friends and join a public game together without having to do a countdown and click “chase” at the same time. Players will be able to invite Steam friends to their group, or invite other chasers via an invite code to join their lobby and chase together.

It's almost ready and we're currently doing multiple daily testing sessions to rule out any possible issues before we put the party system live for everyone.

We’re at the stage of evaluating the possibility to allow large enough parties to do “Private Lobbies”, but nothing to confirm yet.


[h2]New content creators decals already integrated[/h2]

https://www.twitch.tv/caseoh_


https://www.twitch.tv/chibidoki


https://www.twitch.tv/thorlar


[h2]Work In Progress[/h2]

[h3]Rally Lights and Mesh Hail Protectors[/h3]

[h3]Customizable Tire Rims[/h3]



We’re continuing the work on the Party system, testing, working on the UI, until we’re ready to deploy this major feature.

Our VFX team is continuing performance improvement on the clouds, mainly focusing on reducing the blue artifacts caused by increasing clouds downsampling.

We onboarded two 3rd party developers to resume the work on Character Customization.

We’re reworking our key rebinding system to be more permissive and more intuitive.

We are also currently improving our weather model to use more computer power and allow us to do simulations with a better resolution, which will allow a lot more details and better structure especially in the lower parts of the storms.



That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time,
-The OUTBRK Team

Fixed an issue causing players to die for no reason after entering tornado danger zone
Fixed an issue causing the UI to break when you run out of photos on the camera
Fixed an issue causing a caravan to grow in size blocking the road