SYNTHETIK 2 News

Hey everyone! We've got more juicy insights today.


[h3]Update 'Heat' & Issues[/h3]
Originally we planned to do a faster update in-between but we encountered (and still do) some unexpected issues with the Upgrade to the 2021 Engine version. We are on the "LTS" (Long Time Support) branch of Unity which is supposedly stable and fixed but regardless we had 2 very critical issues.

One issue kept crashing when we edited any 'prefab' object in the engine, this is now resolved but another issue blocks us from touching any shaders. These things made us too slow to deploy an update for the summer event.

So we decided to not bring a patch now and continue working towards the enemy update.
We re-evaluate every week and let you know when we know. What we are working on or planning to do is unchanged however. (More details in the "Focus & Enemy Update" section)



[h3]Environment Upgrades[/h3]
Right now we are making quite some environment improvements.
Most of the changes are of artistic nature but in varied cases get new volumetric fog, cloud shadows, better lighting, reflections and more. As Synthetik 1 changed drastically in environment quality over the development, the same is happening here all the time as you surely have noticed, the only difference is that we are not hard capped here and essentially only limited by our skill level instead of the very hard capped limitations of S1s 2D engine.

A new 'state' for the second silo level center piece (also using our new Styles)

In the next update varied environments will make a good leap, especially the Missile Silo, Power Plant and the Police Academy will get noticeably nicer. This is combination of things, one part is graphical effects, lighting and materials being used better, but most actually comes down to art fundamentals, such as composition, proportions, shapes, negative vs positive space, colors and values (brightness) and consistent use of assets. Gradually improving these fundamentals in the maps can lead to very significant aesthetics improvements without making any new assets.



[h3]Environment Styles[/h3]
All levels gradually get rolled out with our advanced Style & Palette system



Our new system is being used and next patch you will start seeing some of the new environment styles. These can really change the look of each level but we try keep the identity intact.
These do not affect the models but change colors, effects and the mood. At a later point this will also be used for room events, like a poison room or desert storm. Now these are also network synced, unlike in S1 where you could have a different ground color than the other guy.

Above are the styles of the Silo level. Most people use "Diffuse" textures and define their base colors in textures, but we use masks for everything which makes us very flexible in such regards.



Here you see a test for a super heavy desert style or Mars style of the first Power Plant level you know.
This was more of a test for fun but we might add such room events.


Even dark horror styles are possible.



[h3]Focus & Enemy Update[/h3]
We are focusing on quality right now for the next update, improving as many things as possible, especially around environments, enemies, bosses, attachments, shops (and items if there is time) and a lot of fixes - this is all about core gameplay improvements - also we spend more time on internal multiplayer testing now.

The big enemy update has such a long list of improvements that we split this onto 2 parts, the foundation work and the content part. How and if we split the enemy update in 2 is not clear yet however, we'll see how it goes.

New Lightning & Riot-Foam wheel and their destruction pieces


Some few examples of foundation Improvements we want to make:
- Overhaul the existing faction units and improve and tweak every unit depending on need
- Make SAT the base Faction and Chrono Squad the late-game faction (Arctic+)
- Start spawning vehicle units even if stationary for the beginning
- Enemy Alert notifications (!) (?)
- Improve the terrorlevel alert and bring back headhunters
- Start adding rare enemy spawns
- Moving enemies to specific positions (for special events)
- New Wave spawner feature (for arena mode or defense events)
- Improve Entity creation workflows
- Tool-tips for Game Entity variables in editor
- Clean up of Game Entities in editor
- Speed up for projectiles (right now its noticeably easier than S1 as a cause)
- Improved Turret behavior
- Improve map designs regarding turret places
- New Unit-Frame for modders and testing (a window with unit stats)
- New Combat-log for players and testing
- Enemy health-bars showing increments of 1000 hp
- Update all mines with setup-time and a trigger delay
- Improved enemy editor workflows
- Improved group movement
- Improved damaging on enemies
- Animation system improvements
- New melee foundation
....

Of course there are many more things going on, big level improvements and additions, multiplayer and whatnot.



[h3]Military Faction?[/h3]
We are also first overhauling the SAT Police & Chrono Squad factions before we start with the Machine Military faction as we want to focus more on quality over quantity now. We actually already had all the Military models ready for months, but the current ones need work first. In the end, there would be Police and Military alternating, with both having their elite sub-faction appear at the ending levels.


Military Medium Tank spoiler (Saturn 5)



[h3]Animator Refactor & Funny melee hacks[/h3]
Animations traditionally are controlled by a mix of state checks (is the unit aiming or reloading) and blending of related animations (walking animation and reload animations). Right now our setup is too reliant on blend tress. This was easier to use to get a decent result quickly, but for the cost of too much CPU computation time and also restrictions for advanced use cases such supporting multiple melee strike animations. We are in the middle of redoing the animation controls from scratch and already experience much better animation performance while also seeing more precise running animations.

We are also adding some new animations in the near future which could be used for items or other abilities, like a roundhouse kick.

A foundation for a new melee system has also been implemented. This was done as the enemies uses extreme hacks for melee. At the start, enemies had a bullet attached to their weapon, leading to swings hitting targets behind (the swing doing a overhead chargeup animation, essentially the equivalent to hitting a lamp on the ceiling in your living room). Then the next hack was to make melees use invisible shotguns, which swept under the radar until we noticed that you could be one-shotted when you stood point blank due to all pellets hitting. After this, they got a simple AOE damage action, which just does a range check on weapon attacks and deals damage. This works fine but is not a proper implementation as you still have a invisible weapon firing shot, but is at least consistent in hit detection and damage.

The melee weapons are now their own weapon type independent of the existing ranged weapons of th game. This allows us to have a customized setup for them to use "Swings" with unique properties instead of using the ammo based system of the ranged weapons. We are expanding this system gradually and looking into some melee options for the player as well at a later point,
Before we embark further into on such adventures, we want to make sure though that the ranged combat satisfies our expectations. As of right now our priority here is to only make sure we have a well functioning system for NPC units.



[h3]Shop Improvements[/h3]
For the next update we also squeezed some shop improvements in.
This is not a complete iteration but around halfway in and already improves many of the shop actions.
The Medical shop and some of the Gambling and Black Market terminals got a bunch of reworks.

The shops were made when the editor was still very limiting and we were much less comfortable with the tools. Best practices haven't been found out yet and it was generally all too much under pressure, so now these can be upgraded.






[h3]Shop roles[/h3]
After some thinking, the conclusion about the shops was that their main purpose is twofold:
1 - Provide always useful "services" - Like gamble, or get healed, upgrade a weapon etc.
2 - Provide "run-changers" which drift your setup into an alternative direction with perks
3 - Sometimes terminals should provide small "challenges"

So shops are detached from items, abilities and weapons in a way. Right now they try to do everything, from giving an item, to a run changer to a stat upgrade. They also are often too niche and not impactful enough.





However their logical place is within the simple but useful services, and then adding a twist onto the entirety of your build, ideally with an up and downside. Items need to always be useful, class perks are for your class, stat upgrades now exist already, attachments are for your weapon. Shop perks ideally add a twist on everything (or provide a no-brainer always useful service, as the twists might not be what you want necessarily)

Overall they will just get improvements and we are looking for some more special things, like hacking an enemy, or get a medical drone, and letting players have a bit more choices of making the game harder as well. Later we are also thinking about a challenge / alert terminal and or bringing back the quest shrines.



[h3]Multiplayer[/h3]
As mentioned in the last 2 posts, the foundation all works and we are just testing and bug fixing and a decent state is getting quite near. Our networking structure is way above our team size structurally. Its a highly scalable (using server pools) fully dedicated server based system with extreme future proof, you can't really go much higher than this even for AAA standards. (And many AAA use laggy Peer 2 Peer, even for PVP...) We use a completely custom back-end (services, chat, authentication..) and no high level libraries. Currently the servers run over Amazon AWS but we are flexible and can pick anything we want.

This does not guarantee that the coop introduction during Early Access will be painless, but getting the foundation right was very important to us, since we've hit structural brick walls in the past and it is very hard to recover from that once things have already been released. We are still busy setting up all the machines for the live service and bug hunting in the coop. We'll keep you up to date!


[h3]Category Upgrades[/h3]
As mentioned in the previous blog posts, we are following through with the specific upgrades.
The current compositor/pandoras box system is being reworked, from the super freestyle upgrades we have right now, to more specific upgrades based on the category of an item or ability action.
(Grenade, Sentry, Potion/Booster, Summon, Orbital .....)





So each category will get a choice of a couple of specific upgrades for that category.
Like a turret can get a missile upgrade, or grenades get multi-throw, support things can get an aura and so on. We think this is going to be more interesting as you get tailored upgrades to what you need.



[h3]Menus & Graphic Design[/h3]
We are also planning on overhauling and fixing the menu structure.
We want to redo the menu architecture (less so the layouts, like how abilities are displayed) so the management how screens and windows are shown and sorted and everything around. We did not have a clear architecture at the start in mind which really hurt us every time we wanted to change something in the menus.

We think there is a lot of quality we can get out of this angle as well, including better buttons, animations, sounds, particles, screen effects, camera usage, backgrounds and everything around.

The graphic design also went through many iterations but we were never fully happy, now we finally have some refined style we like, and here is the first preview:

Keep in mind this is a rough Photoshop draft and some things are missing or poor (weapon frame)

Finding fitting fonts also took endless hours as they need to have many requirements and also support varied languages including Cyrillic. In general the style was struggling because we had a really amazing 3D-style UI once tested for a prototype and we thought this could be transferred just in sci-fi style but that somehow didn't work out at all. The S1 style looked quite good but much of it was a bit sub-conciously done. It took a while to really understand the rules behind the art as to why some of the things work and don't work in S1/S2 but the code is now 90% cracked.

Another thing we are considering while we are doing the rework, is having more of a walkable menu hub. This would be really cool and also actually help with some issues, but also be some work of course. The tutorial could be extended to be more of the completer home base and maybe you could even invite people to your base or such things, but no confirmation on these concepts.



[h3]New Cooling Chambers[/h3]
Not only are we making all levels much more varied with the style system (and better looking in general) we are also working on new environments, such as the Cooling Chambers environment.
This is an alternative second floor (next to Oilrig and Mainboard) and has 3 sub-levels again.



Not too many spoilers here. This one is going to be very cool and will have that unique Synthetik style, so watch out for that! Coming the next update.

Alright thats a lot and enough for today - we'll keep you updated about when the next patch will hit as soon as our issues are resolved. Have fun!
- Team FFG

Hey everyone!
We've got some more inside infos for you today!



[h3]VFX Foundation Work[/h3]
We had a really great idea to streamline and increase quality of VFX effects and their creation.
Right now we have over 900 materials (essentially shading functions based on many varied shaders) for all sorts of VFX effects, like explosions, muzzle flashes and whatnot. This is not unusual and a kind of standard workflow but not nice to behold.



This adds very significant bloat to the project and makes creating any new effects very uncomfortable.
As example there are probably 40 materials just adding some sort of glow, and onother 30 adding some varied rings for varied effects or auras.

In the end, this makes it very uncomfortable in creating new materials and adding to the bloat, to the degree that you want to try out dozens of existing materials and see if something fits by chance. Instead of simply creating what you need by scratch. This hurts both quality and iteration speed greatly.

After realizing that probably 80% of all effects are either based on glows, rings and lines in different styles, and with some good ideas how to streamline the process, we are now building a new foundation for the future.



The first key idea is to use texture arrays (or texture sheets) to build a very small (around 12-16 textures) but very curated selection of textures (different styles of rings as example) and have it all in the same material. Then use a special function to cycle through them, color and animate them them on a particle system level.

Texture arrays pack textures in a 3d stack instead of a classic sprite sheet.

Then we use a noise texture or the same texture array to negatively cut-out shapes on the base shape, which allows for many possible variants. With this design approach you only need 1 single material for all kinds of rings, as the particle system gives you all the control you need to do an infinite variation. Then repeat the same for the other main styles.

Normal Particle:



Interweaved rotations:



Noise Texture based UV distortion:



Magical Secret Multi Distortion:



Now particle system can also control contrast, distortion over time and more :



Final Effect with color, alpha and rotated distortion per curve:



Here you can see some varied effects made for testing with the exact same material, showing the flexibility of the setup. These were also done in just minutes.



The drawback is that these arrays will take more texture memory as they have 12 instead of 1 texture, but with a highly efficient compression (resulting in a memory cost of only around 1mb), smart distortion (hiding the resolution) and with the idea that you use this across the entire project dozens of times, this should pay dividends.

We now have a really next level setup for particles with some very smart interweaving of UV based distortion which gives really stunning results, and as consequence of using the particle system to drive the material values, we can now animate things that would otherwise not work.



[h3]Unity 2021 LTS[/h3]
We did the switch from the 2020 version of Unity, the game engine we built our UniversEdit framework and game logic upon. So far we are encountering one critical crash issue and one with TAA, otherwise the upgrade worked pretty flawlessy. Doing an upgrade in the past (Old unity times) were often unthinkable and something you do for a new game. Even S1 game maker upgrades had months of issues that followed.



https://unity.com/de/roadmap/unity-platform

New Engine features to explore:
Right now we have not yet spent the time to look into all the new things,
however we now have to options to look into GPU performance increases from Nvidia DLSS / AMD FSR, Dynamic resolution and better debugging tools for optimisation.

There is a link to the Unity roadmap above if you are interested, but keep in mind many things are not relevant, implementable or realistically useful even if they look great on the roadmap. Unity DLSS right now seems to have some bugs so we have to wait on that..



[h3]Visual Attachments[/h3]
As part of the item polish pass, we are adding some visual attachments to the characters upon pickup.
These are not for all items, but some select ones where we think it makes sense.
This started when we wanted to add the "shoulder mounted cannon" but it made no sense to add this item without a visual attachment on the character. So we thought "we have the feature, why not add a couple more"

So we made some visuals for a couple of the items here:



We are also thinking about adding some visuals for some few weapon attachments where it would actually be visible, but we'll see.



[h3]Actual Attachments[/h3]

Weapon attachments got a bigger iteration, although not completed yet.
Specific category attachments (Stock etc) got a bigger iteration.
At first the idea of Specifics was that they are all based on the same type of stat.
Stock = Recoil, Front Grip = Run & Gun ....

However when doing the attachment categories this kind of fell apart, as there was a controversy:
If you wanted to match the amount of grips, stocks etc to the amount of Mixed ones, you could not keep following the rule of making stocks about recoil, otherwise it would become very repetitive. However making them more varied robs them of their identity.
On the other hand, having only a few made them feel repetitive as well due to each weapon having 2 specific slots and you see them appear quite often.

Now the new idea was to add 3 mixed slots (Mixed attachments overall feel quite in a good spot even after a double check with new eyes) and 1 specific slot. This would leave the specifics more rare
Also the 1 specific slot is getting around 50% more powerful. Also the specifics should be condensed to their pure essence very much designed throughout.



Not 100% perfect but you can see the barrels are condensed to their essence.
All these barrel options to fit the theme (range, accuracy, projectile trajectory changes..) but
also offer some strong choices in between in varied directions.

- Projectile speed & firerate barrel
- Heavy powerful barrel with a downside
- Recoil barrel
- Deviation and range barrel
- Weakpoint barrel

Also a new magazine category was added for weapons all about sustained firepower,
like the Pioneer C900 SMG. Some effects were also switched around as they were confusing roles of certain types.

After the change the category ones already feel much better and maybe the 3-1 change is no longer needed but we'll try it out.



[h3]Moving[/h3]
After some time working from home, we are now back in a small office in the heart of Berlin, which is great for team communication and focus.



[h3]Build Pipeline[/h3]
We have an automated build pipeline which is automatically building the game exe on every "push" (uploading recent changes) and this automatically returns us if the game does not work at all and crashes right away and more. With Unity 2021 fixes, and some improvements, we reduced the time our servers need to compile the game by half but some things need to be sorted out first.



Pic: 70% of our internal server setup

This is really critical because without that pipeline, someone could upload a big issue which would leave unchecked for days, then you would have to go back into dozens and dozens of uploads until you could find it. Even with the build pipeline, it can be hard to find an issue from the last day or so.



[h3]Automatic Error checking[/h3]
In S1 we would just build the game at the end of a patch cycle and check that all is fine. Now we have dozens of automated checks every day.

Another new thing is that we are adding more error logs to the build pipeline. As example making an action mistake (like forgetting to enable stacks in an item) will throw an error. This is being more expanded in the near future.

We also have automated bots which can play the game start to end by themselves and tell us if they got stuck in some level.



[h3]Multiplayer[/h3]
The big awaited multiplayer mode is progressing really well, we are fixing up things, and make sure every strange case is covered. Some similar issues to what we had in the past are popping up, like trying to open a chest simultaneously giving doubled rewards and the likes.



Some new balancing decisions will have to be made. Shops will finally now show the same things for everyone as example. We are not sure yet how to handle chests for more than 2 players, feel free to suggest some things on discord or here.

The playercount is also still a big concern. Synthetik is traditionally a 1/2 player game and maps are designed for single player for most part, but we also don't want to leave out friends while playing.

So our current idea is to have public lobbies be 2-3 players, and allow friend invites for up to 4 players so you can do it if the 4th friend really wants to play, but its not recommended / endorsed for public games. However we need to do more testing and adjusting first before the final decision is done.



[h3]Specific Category Upgrades[/h3]
So far our UniversEdit framework and the Voodoo action editor have a lot of power in terms of flexible upgradeability of actions (abilities, items, perks etc) but the current upgrade system feels a bit too freestyle and experimental. As such we are working on category specific upgrades, to combine both the flexible upgrades with more role-play elements and identity.



This is in experimentation so no ETA for this. The idea is to use the existing categories of items/Abilities, like "Grenade" "Sentry" "Summon" "Potion" "Beam" "Projectile Firing" etc and create thematically fitting upgrades for these. So upgrading any type of "sentry" would give you options like "Double placement" "Laser Attachment" "Missile Upgrade" "Magazine Belt" "Critical Strike" ...

while a grenade would gain things like "Multi-Throw", or a Utility items would gain aura and utility effects. Our current systems already support all this, but it requires creating all the upgrades and icons and some new features to be able to properly target summons. In S1 such things would all have to be hard-coded and nothing flexible could have been possible.

[h3]Item Sandbox / Update plans[/h3]
For items, gradually more improvements are done, such as adding anticipation effects, or making mines have a trigger sound and time before, or like last patch added effects for grenade throws and such things. A stronger core item sandbox design is also being explored but more about that later.

Overall now that the core systems are set up, we are trying to add more quality and polish now overall to all the existing systems and iterating on these. Items will now get improvements, attachments, later the upgrades and so on based on the biggest need. (Not to forget the big enemy update)



[h3]Environments[/h3]
Environments are also in constant improvement and we have come a very long way since the first playable version on steam already. We keep learning new things and adding powerful new systems to improve our workflows.

We are planning to use our special color palette system for the next update which will make a huge difference in variation but also working on general composition and variation of the levels.





You can see, this is the same blue silo level environment you know, but with a different palette.
We are planning on having 3 palette variations per environment and maybe one nasty one for loop.

More work on shaders and terrain systems is also going on, you can see some tesselation and transistion between ground and walls work here:



More variations and improvements for existing maps are also worked on as always.
There is much more going on but we think this is enough for today.

As you know, the next update is coming out in the next weeks and is about environments and item / attachment quality, and after this we are straight on the road towards the big enemy update and the first multiplayer version.

We Hope you enjoy!
- Team FFG

Hey everyone!

We are very happy about the very positive reception of Update 5.
Today's patch has fixes for the patch issues and some smaller improvements:




- Improved Camera Jittering issue
- New sound when player gets hit and when hit on shields
- Removed all 3 Content ID Tracks which slipped through
- Fixed weapon switching issue and weapon switching on level ending breaking weapons
- Fixed shops / kernel not giving things
- Fixed Turret collision issue
- Fixed some Laser Issues
- Fixed Time tag explosion effect
- Fixed varied other issues

Hit & Kill sounds
- Right now we still have some audio management issues, this causes kill and hit sounds to stop playing after some time (also pickups often dont play) which makes the game feel really lame

- We are working replacing the current audio solution, for now a placeholder system is added to replace hit and kill sounds, but this is quite simplistic and dosnt sound on the correct enemy position but works at least



- Increased headshot hitbox by 25%
- Reduced global weapon heat from 0.35 per sec to 0.3
- Reduces health scaling after the first maps
- Improved kill pieces impact force on enemies, scales more logically with damage and is more varied

- Guard Judge now has 2 shorter shield dashes
- Chrono trooper teleport cooldown reduced, range slightly reduced (testing)
- PPQ-H reduced recoil, fixed perks missing
- Rocketeer switched P33 spec ops out for PPQ-H
- Eliminator Untouchable Field now only triggers when in combat
- Improved Riotguard Shield Bash sound
- Improved Grenadier Power Kick sound

- Harpoon reload 25% faster, damage 10 > 9x
- HS50 reduced heat from 1 > 0.8x
- Scatter ball ammo now splinters to near targets
- Clarified Data and Class Token tooltips


[h3]Update 6 - Heat [/h3]
It is planned for the steam summer events and is expected to go in testing in around 3 weeks+-

We are also now Upgrading to the new Unity 2021 version, this enables us a couple cool new features, and could also grant us DLSS support as well as some workflow and graphics improvements (Hopefully all goes well).

For Heat we are planning to add more polish in general, especially to items, and some big changes on environments, as well as the new Cooling Chambers environment and more.

Have fun!

Hey everyone!
With the class update we wanted to bring back switchable abilities, but first and foremost add quality and polish to the classes and do some needed changes and reworks based on your feedback.

Keep in mind that the classes are not and not supposed to be perfect and final, the bulk work is done but there will be further refinements over time based on your feedback. Overall the classes are much more engaging, refined and have more identity and replay value. For the future we have Rogue, Assassin and Engineer also in the works but with 12 classes you'll have a lot to play right now.



[h3]- Overhaul of 12 classes, tons of huge changes!
- New Switchable ability slots
- New Eliminator class
- New Heavy Gunner
- New Rocketeer
- New Sniper
- Many level & graphical improvements
- New Stat upgrades
- New Items & Weapons
- Item & Attachment improvements
- Improved loot progression (Part 1)
- Huge under-the-hood & UniversEdit improvements
- Tons of fixes and improved audio
- Many other improvements[/h3]


Known issues:
- Sometimes kill and hit audio goes missing
- (!) Avoid reloading or switching weapons at level changes/teleporter
- Sometimes icons display wrong
- Looking into fixes ASAP






[h3]NEW Class - Eliminator[/h3]



The Eliminator is a new bounty hunting class with dual wielded handguns and powerful gadgets.
He does not want to get caught and can circles his victims with his distracting infiltration ability, while going for weakpoint kills to get credits rewards.

His switchable abilities offer powerful gadgets, like the dangerous room clearing eliminator drone, or the distractor laser cluster drones. He can also place a seth-up laser sentry turret in classic professional hitman fashion. He is not easy to play but offers some nice rewards.


[h3]NEW Class - Sniper[/h3]



The Sniper is finally back! With his target-laser and focus on weakpoint hits, he is not to be toyed with. He now deals area damage on headshots and has quite some new gadgets to try.
His LS-30 is a powerful starter weapon and looks equally bad-ass. He also has different mobility choices. More tweaks to sniper will arrive based on community feedback!



[h3]NEW Class - Heavy Gunner[/h3]
The Heavy gunner is back with a force!
Dishing out heavy sustained firepower and starting with a cylindrical magazine LMG,
the Heavy gunner is a force to be reckoned with!





The new Heavy gunner mostly follows the classic S1 Heavy Gunner. Simple but highly effective and with more madness than ever.




[h3]NEW Class - Rocketeer[/h3]
The Rocketeer has been completely remade and essentially returns the key S1 Demolisher elements but adds some new twists. With Seismic Resonator you can re-trigger previous explosions for powerful combos (even enemy ones!). Rocket boost and resonator allows catapulting out of danger and burning noses of near enemies.



The Rocketeer has heavy AOE damage potential but is not as durable as other Grenadier classes. Imagine a trick-jumping sniper with explosive launchers. More tuning is to come.




[h2]HUGE TOTAL CLASS OVERHAUL![/h2]

- Essentially everything is new!
- All classes got a ton of improvements and changes
- Varied new starter weapons have been added
- Just log in and check out everything with fresh eyes!
- You can skip the wall of text and just check it all out ingame.



[h3]Total Rework - Riotguard[/h3]



Riotguard got reworked and is now a aggressive shield bashing melee brawler, while the Judge has the more S1 / previous style shield dash and bulwark. The Riotshield can now be toggled on and off, he no longer has energy shields. With low cooldown close range attacks and stagger combos. Riotguard feels like a brawling game character almost and is much more fun now. Try it out!

Some more Riotguard changes are to be expected, especially the Perks will see work and maybe some more tweaks to the shield mechanic, but this is already a huge upgrade.



[h3]Improved - Guard Judge[/h3]



Guard Judge has been improved in all areas. His Heavy Shield Dash with Bulwark up is very powerful, and he can also now handcuff people by dashing into them without the shield. His Bulwark got reworked into Stabilized Bulwark, enabling a sort of "Pistolero Mode" where you have virtually no recoil for 3 seconds and can open a fight with well placed accurate shots. He also got greatly improved visual effects making it much more fun to play.



Some more things are planned for Judge for the future, adding a "Performance Review" feature, where police duties are reviewed, and you are up-ranked if you fulfill the acceptable ratio of causalities, property damage and accuracy. A New Judge revolver is also in the works.



[h3]Improved - Disruptor[/h3]



Disruptor recieved quite some improvements. He now has a stunning lightning punch which can be triggered in melee range. His mobility is now a protective shield, which aids allies and constructs. He can also punch his shock trophy for a powerful combo.The energy shields got removed to favor a more high stakes playstyle. He really excels in playing with cover and taking aggressively pot shots melee range with his punch attacks all around sight blockers and cover, but never wants to be caught open field.

With the lightning cluster, masterkey and the Cryo turret he has quite flexible specialization abiliites- Disruptor has a quite unique playstyle which might be more for acquired tastes but definitely brings something special to the table, like some sort of melee engineer. More work on his perks and tweaks onto the shield ability are planned.



[h3]Improved - Grenadier[/h3]



Assault Grenadier got removed and his features got merged into the base Grenadier.
Grenadier's kit worked well and mostly saw polish and new perks, improved vfx and more
Grenadier got improved VFX and new perks and should see a noticeable improvement.
Some more work on Grenadier perks is planned as well!



[h3]Reworked - Chrono Trooper[/h3]



Chrono Trooper recieved quite some big changes and has much more depth now. Varied timing based benefits make him all about split second decisions and execution. He now also starts with a capable fusion SMG. Chrono charge has varied interactions and his new temporal ammo perk gives him the boost to distinguish his role as a weapon based soldier / smg ambusher type.

The new "slow motion" ability also further gives him some unique time based power.
Some more tweaks about the details of his combos and perks in general are expected.



[h3]Reworked - Chrono Striker[/h3]



Chrono Striker got many improvements and now builds around telefragging, chaining abilities for powerful combos and in general has become some sort of mobility-based 'mage' class.
He now owns the freshly upgraded shield dome and has some nice other abilities.
Striker's hard reset bonus is on the watchlist for future changes.



[h3]Improved - Chrono Breacher[/h3]



Chrono breacher has seen varied upgrades, mostly varied S1 elements were brought back, but some new twists were added as well. You can now do stagger combos with blink, go with a stimulant or explosive build with the focus perks. Many polishing tweaks have been done. Blink now also grants a powerful "priority take-down" bonus if you teleport into multiple targets and more. Overall we are quite happy with the class, maybe some sounds could be further improved.



[h3]Reworked - Anti-Material Recon[/h3]



The Anti-Material recon got some bigger changes. He now has a distinct "take cover" ability, giving him durability and staying power to out-damage the opposition. He now plays a bit like "the manly sniper" who uses powerful ambushes at the start and then overwhelms with raw firepower while caring less about pinpoint precision.
He got 2 alternative core abilities, a HEAT and a HVAP piercing shot, and has some new gadgets as well to play with. A new focus was also put on piercing enemies, this is now rewarded with stacking benefits.


[h3]Removed - Psy Recon[/h3]
The Psy recon felt too different and it's execution was not great. There are some good elements we want to bring back, such as the psy field, or the shot, but overall we think his kit should rather be in the future assassin or be items. It is still possible to get the Psy recon back, it is just not enabled in the menu by default. Feel free to upgrade and make a mod out of it or just use it for yourself!

How to get it back:
- Open universEdit, (Create a depot if needed)
- Go to PlayerClassSpecialization on the left
- Copy the Psy Recon
- Give your new copy a new name (Add a 'New' Localization on top)
- Click "Specialization of the Following Class" > Search
- Search the Recon, and confirm
- Save the class
- It now will be back in the menus

Don't forget to fill in the class survey posted on discord and steam forums!






[h3]New Switchable ability slots[/h3]
- Each class now has 3-4 switchable specialization abilties!
- The new Specialization abilities can be unlocked with data, each costing 100 data.
- Fixed Data not being gained from certain bosses
- Data gain has been increased overall (probably 2-3x)




At the start we went for a more S1-style approach where abilities were more shared, but testers wanted more unique choices, so now the classes have nearly all unique switchable abilities per class. For these abilities we also explored varied new concepts and tried making things "out of the box" such as the placeable warning poles, booster pads, bring back remote triggerable C4, killer drones, radio jammer gadgets and more. Some of these definitely will see more polish but overall these are very varied and some of our best content yet.


[h3]New Class Level Perks[/h3]



- All classes now have new perks which can be unlocked by leveling
- The unlocks are at level 3, 7 and 15
- These contain varied new perks
- Most perks have been expanded on!







New Starter Weapons:

[h3]Red Buzzards [Eliminator][/h3]


[h3]M1911 Helium [Sniper / AM Recon][/h3]


[h3]HS-50 (Updated) [AM-Recon][/h3]


[h3]LS-30 Nightowl [Sniper][/h3]


[h3]LG-3 [Heavy Gunner][/h3]


[h3]Squad-6 Compact [Chrono Trooper][/h3]




New Findable Weapons:

[h3]GM-6 Lynx[/h3]


[h3]Discus Launcher of the High Order[/h3]


Also updated sprites for: Tokko Fusion, Akita Fusion, Varied ammo types
Varied weapons have had rarity adjustments so more variation is at the start of the game







[h3]Improved Loot Progression / Mid game progression (Part 1)[/h3]
Now after the classes are much more engaging, we no longer have to compensate by adding a bunch of random upgrades in the early game where they do not belong. We also noticed that the mid-game progression is lacking. We initially made the mistake of putting too much focus on special shops (Gambler etc), while these should only be a rare bonus thing. The reason this was done was because items are not as good as they can be and that deceived into adding more other things to compensate, which was clearly a fallacy.

The plan now after U5 is first to polish up the items to be the sandbox that is at the essence of the game progression and improve the upgrade systems, while taking away focus from special shops.

Another thing that stood out was that you plateau'd extremely quickly and then after the first boss you were already fully geared and the game became bland and repetitive. This was one thing that we also really hated in S1. Below is a very simplified visual representation, and some details:





[h3]Raritiy drops:[/h3]
- You were getting too many legendaries and epics right at the start, this destroyed the progression
- You now get more blue rarity (common / uncommon) at the start of the game
- Added an additional rarity scaling, this essentially works like luck and increases rarity of loot
- This will result in you finding more epics and legendaries after the first boss but less before
- Varied weapon rarities have been adjusted


[h3]Chests:[/h3]
- Chests were too many and confusing. There were 6 metal chests for weapons.
- Removed Intermediate metal police and metal military item & weapon chests
- Chests now: Wood > Metal > Legendary Metal Police / Legendary Metal Military
- It is now easier to distinguish the different chests and their expected contains
- The Medical chest is now more rare but fully heals


[h3]Shops:[/h3]
- Mid-Map Shops (Gambler, Medical etc) now start spawning after the first Boss
- We think the class starting kits easily hold their own and we don't need these extras to fill in
- End-Map Shops (Pandoras, Compositor) now start spawning in the third map (Before the boss)
- Ability Upgrade shops now are multi use (But there will be a overhaul upcoming)


[h3]TLDR:[/h3]
Overall these changes are making the early game less overloaded and rarities less random.
You get a more logical loot and power progression throughout the maps.
The game "opens up" after the first boss, where more things come into play, compared to "Im done"
More work on making items and mid-game progression better is coming in thenext update.

We are looking for your feedback here, but the next update will make this all more complete.





[h3]Stat Upgrades:[/h3]
- Stat upgrades are back!
- They give some simple but effective body upgrade perks, found in chests


[h3]Kernels:[/h3]
- Kernels now offer a choice of 2
- Tooltips have been updated and Icons improved a little but still should get new icons


[h3]Upgrade Kits:[/h3]
- Weapon upgrade kits now drop less often but give more
- Generally if you find a upgrade kit, you can upgrade your weapon now
- Overall you get a little more
- You now also see the amount you have in the weapon menu
- A buff notifier was added to remind about upgrading


[h3]Other:[/h3]
- Varied enemies have been fixed or tweaked
- Dogs have a more forgiving attack and slow down after hitting once
- Fixed varied enemy stun issues







[h3]Environments:[/h3]
- Visuals in varied areas have been improved
- Added varied graphical improvements (Check out the Dev Blog )
-- Bent Normal Occlusion
-- New Ambient Occlusion Decals
-- New Shadow Planes
-- New Decal shaders
-- New Water shader
-- New Micro Shadows



[h3]New Map for Missile Silo (First area)[/h3]



[h3]New Map for Training / Police Academy (First area)[/h3]



Some juicy environment work upcoming for the next update!






[h3]Items:[/h3]
Priority for the very near future will be to improve items and add item synergies
Items are the core of the Synthetik progression but right now our older items are way below our current skill level and possibility space. We tried to compensate the feeling of "something is missing" with shops and whatnot but in reality it was just item quality that was lacking.

With this update, a few items have been upgraded but overall this is planned for U6.
- Varied (mostly Police) items have new synergy effects
- Added new visual effects for throwing things or punches
- Removed varied boring items to be remade as perks or other
(Combat Methadone, Executioners Badge, Hit List (now Sniper feature), Shield Combobulator)
- Field Rations (not Power rations) and Stun mines moved to rare Lost & Found loot table


[h3]New Item: Destructor Grid[/h3]
Deploys a powerful laser grid below your feet, damaging enemies over time


[h3]New Item: Weapon Jammer[/h3]
Jams weapons of enemies in close range and deals slight damage over time


[h3]New Item: Unstable Current[/h3]
Zaps a near enemy with unstable lightning


[h3]New Item: Thunderstorm Relay[/h3]
Unleashes a storm of shock lightning all around you

[h3]Scaling:[/h3]
- Abilities / Items (Actions) can now inherit power
- This means a buff your item spawns will have the same power as the item
- Spawned units now also have scaling on their ability power based on the spawner ability







[h3]Varied:[/h3]
- Unending Fixes
- Varied technical improvements
- Reduced game size by around 30%
- Reduced Loading times at certain points significantly
- Check out the previous dev blog for more details!


[h3]Audio:[/h3]
- Fixed some big issues with Audio falloff and other things
- Overall there is a huge improvement around non-weapon sounds
- Known issue: Sometimes some sounds, mostly pickups, don't play








Tons of improvements have happened to our unique UniversEdit Framework
Compared to the Early access start or even the start of this year, the workflows, power, speed has probably improved by 500%.

We now actually have achieved that you can edit and create content while in the game / Tutorial level. This is not yet available to modders but we have achieved real runtime creation of game content! We can create a new ability while playing, and spawn it in, do a change, and respawn it.
This is something extremely rare and a great boost to productivity. More work will and should be done to improve workflows and reduce the amount of friction but this is a big change for us.



[h3]New Debug Menu [F3][/h3]
- Don't forget to enable it in your settings first! This works in the Tutorial map.
- We added a new Debug menu. This was done as the previous used an suboptimal third party UI
- We can now far more easily extend the menu
- This also uses a new Hotkey feature where you can bind any button to a hotkey
- There are still some issues to sort out, especially with the search but overall it works



Highly recommended hotkeys to set for yourself:
- Credits
- Grant Ammo
- Toggle Action Debug (New Feature!)
- Spawn Dummy or Enforcer or something
- Remove actions on player




[h3]New Action Debugger[/h3]
- We implemented a new action debugger UI
- Enable with the F3 button (General > Action > ToggleActionDebugUI) and hover over an action
- This shows in realtime how the action paths are executed!



- If the condition is true, it shows green, if not, it stays gray
- We even added a fading animation so you will notice things executing just 1 frame
- This makes understanding complex actions way way easier and you can now see where it's stuck!




[h3]New Warnings[/h3]
- Some new warnings have been added in the action list
- This is warning with varied things, such as "forgot to enable stacks" or "path is still passive"
- We are working on adding more warnings and a popup on action saving





[h3]New Scaling / Inheritance[/h3]
- Spawn action now can inherit its power %, meaning it gets the same power as the spawner action
- Spawn entity now allows adding actions to the spawned entity
- This is widely useful for many things, such as using an existing unit and giving it something
- (Balldefender + Suicide, or Despawn itself after 10s action etc)
- This also means you don't need to create a new entity or entity class to just give it an extra action
- This action also will gain the power scaling inheritance same as spawn action
- This means things like shield dome can now scale which they couldn't before



[h3]Deal Damage Improvements[/h3]
- Cleaned up and hidden un-relevant things to make it easier to use
- Fixed some default values
- Added tooltips for all damage stats
- Added % current health based damage
- Added % max health based damage
- These are very useful to make things scale a little but don't overdo it
- Now works with backstabs



[h3]Shoot ammo Improvements[/h3]
- Now shoots straight if no target is found
- Now takes pellet-count from the ammo into account (shotgun ammo etc)
- Varied fixes, more fixes to come






Here are quite some powerful new goodies you (and we) can use:


[h3]New Conditions[/h3]
- Damaged by this action
- Killed by this action
- Get hit by action
- Get hit by weapon
- Hit by other weapon
- On weakpoint kill
- On explosion spawned
- On Entity spawned by owner


[h3]New Stats[/h3]
- Stat: Weapon damage multiplier
- Stat: Damage taken multiplier
- Stat: Body Recoil


[h3]New Results / Effects[/h3]
- Change Team (Mind control)
- Set Entity Invisible to Enemies
- Spawn Visual Attachment Weapon (Laser)
- Spawn Visual Attachment Entity


[h3]New Targets[/h3]
- Target last entity spawned by action
- Target last entity spawned by owner
- Target all entities spawned by owner
- Target last explosion position


[h3]Other:[/h3]
- You can now use color palettes on classes







[h3]ATTENTION MODDERS!:[/h3]
- Your custom classes still work but you need to reassign the abilities to the new switchable slot list.
- This takes 2 minutes but otherwise they won't show in the menu properly, but are still playable.
- Right now the extra ability is not visible but works, this will be fixed
- For the future class upgrades, make sure to set your focus perks as focus perk category!


[h3]General Known issues::[/h3]
- Sometimes kill and hit audio goes missing
- (!) Avoid reloading or switching weapons at level changes/teleporter
- Sometimes icons display wrong
- Looking into fixes ASAP




Thats it!
There were some things surely forgotten, it will be added in the next fix update patchnotes.

[h3]Roadmap & Dev Blog:[/h3]
By the way - don't forget about our very informative Dev Blog from a couple days ago!
It has a roadmap, Multiplayer info and more!


We hope you enjoy!
- Team FFG

Hey everyone!

Originally the class update was planned to be a shorter update, supposed to add a good iteration or rework some classes, however after starting on some of the classes, level perks and the new switchable slots, it became apparent how the game transformed. It seemed to be the right thing to go all the way and bring it all to that higher level, so you will see a ton of changes in the test branch and the full update.

We also switched our content system to stream content (using "adressables") which means packing things in bundles, as opposed to loading everything directly. This was an important step but causes quite some issues at the start. So overall things did not go exactly as planned and we are sorry for the long wait for an update, but a lot of things have happened in the meantime, and we mean a lot.
So here we go!:




[h3]The Testing Branch is live![/h3]
Try the class update U5 - ORIGIN and let us know what you think.
Now is the time for your feedback on the revamped classes.
There are a huge amount of changes, but some things aren't fully final yet.
At best just try it out with a fresh set of eyes and let us know what you think!

You can enable the public test branch by right clicking your steam library game settings and going to the last tab, and enable the test version in the drop down menu!

[h3]U5 ORIGIN - The Big Class Update[/h3]
Overhauling 12 classes was quite a huge amount of work but it did definitely pay off.
The class update is not supposed to make the classes perfect but give them all a clear foundation and well working core gameplay. We also don't say "specs" anymore, as these are really more like 12 separate classes with some shared elements and body frame at this point.
Some bullet points for the class update are below. It is expected to come out of testing this week, so last chance for your feedback!


[h3]- New Switchable ability slots
- Overhaul of 12 classes, tons of huge changes!
- New Eliminator class
- New Heavy Gunner
- New Rocketeer
- New Sniper
- Many level & graphical improvements
- Stat upgrades are back
- Varied attachment balance tweaks and others
- Tons of under the hood & UniversEdit improvements
- Fixes audio system and tons of fixes
- Many other improvements[/h3]




Please write down your class changes wishlist in the poll here:
IN CASE OF STEAM BLOCKING THE LINK - PLEASE COPY PASTE IT MANUALLY TO YOUR BROWSER!
https://forms.gle/zRysjn71xcgCUQwS8




[h2]Other noteworthy things:[/h2]


[h3]- Super boosted workflows and tools:[/h3]
Our next level ingame editor UniversEdit has come a long way since the EA launch and even made big leaps compared to the start of the year, the workflows have improved dramatically and we also have become way more skilled at using it. Tons of things have improved under the hood and the power is steadily growing.

As example, we can now use UniversEdit while in the game, so it is possible to make changes while playing, save, and then just respawn the ability or weapon, and it will be updated. There are still some inconveniences and a bit laggy menus but we have achieved real ingame creation of game content!
This is not yet available for modding, some things need to be sorted out, but in general we probably have a 500% increase in iteration times since new years, and an similar reduction in bug creation!



[h3]- Pushing the boundaries[/h3]
On the updated classes and new abilities, you will see a lot more things which are outside the box as we tried to push boundaries and see what kind of things can be done with the current tools.



New things that are in testing or are already achieved:

- Glaiving attacks, bouncing from target to target
- Charge up attacks
- Directional microwave emitter construct
- Placable gadgets which can be stepped on
- C4 which can be remotely triggered
- Neutrino bomb with a timed fuse
- Punching constructs for combos
- Thunder and warning poles you can stick in the ground
- TOW Missile launcher emplacements which can fire a guided missile Battlefield style
- Weapons jammer, blocking enemy weapons
- Seismic resonator which can retrigger explosion and used for knockback movement
- Rocket boosts with weapons
- Stealth or partial stealth effects
- Drone swarms
- Mind control
- Sticky Bombs which stick to enemies
- Slow Motion effects
- Delayed lock-on missiles
- "Hold" abilities, like targetlaser
And more


[h3]- Content / Memory Management[/h3]
We are now using the "Adressables" system from the engine, which is a different way of handling content and bundling them in packages. The difficulty is that you can't have any object reference any other from another package, else both packages will be loaded, defeating the entire purpose.
This is also an important step as this makes adding more content (and mods!) not increasing ram cost. In some areas this also drives down overall loading times, as the game will not wait for content to be loaded anymore (that may not be used any time soon).

This system added quite some headaches and delays to the test branch updates but it seems to be mostly sorted out, and ensures that the project is more scaleable. Weeks prior we also had a spring cleaning and removed a ton of unused assets, reducing the game size noticeably as well.
The benefits for you are that RAM usage is now overall a lot lower, in some areas 50% from before. The game now comfortably sits way below 8GB RAM usage.
Our project cleanups also reduced the game size by 30% without losing anything!



[h3]- Graphical Improvements[/h3]
Some more graphical improvements have been done in varied areas.
Some of these are not used everywhere yet, but these are all things which strengthen our foundation for the future. Varied points are listed below:



[h3]- Bent Normal Occlusion[/h3]
By using bent normals to check on the lighting direction, unwanted glowing reflections are reduced, making things looks more realistic. You can see here that the underside of the vehicle does not strangely glow anymore.





[h3]- New Focus on ground details[/h3]



Since most of the visible playing field is ground, we want to add more depth, detail and 3-dimensionality into the ground elements. Some maps already have more of that, but in varied maps there is still a lot of room for improvement. In the screenshot you can see a combination of varied new elements, decals, grills, border trims and more. In general, we all have become more skilled at environment creation and it really shows if you compare newer iteration to our first.



[h3]- New Decal shaders[/h3]



Varied new shaders have been made, they are not fully in use yet but are a significant improvement
Wet puddles can now look significantly more detailed, but also new grunge decals now exist with both more variation and way higher detail and resolution. They can be combined and are based on world space. Grunge shader example:





[h3]- Occlusion [/h3]
We also did some more tricks to shadow areas like the pipes in the oilrig area or deep holes better
and also did new occlusion decals and used more of them, which can shadow objects more realistically where they touch the ground.

[h3]- Micro Shadows[/h3]
By using the bent normal technique, we also can now use micro shadows, which do enable more detailed occlusion at small details especially.



[h3]- Water[/h3]
As the saying goes, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself, so we are throwing out things like Unity terrain or plugin water and doing our own implementations. These will be more flexible and have no dependencies or breaking points we can't control. Also we think they will look better in the end. Here is our current new water shader (this has improved in the meantime again):





[h3]- Custom Terrain Material[/h3]
The environment team has been developing our new foundation for terrain shaders which are very promising so far and will be the core of future outdoors areas. The terrain shader supports mesh blending, camera based render textures for things like snow trails, varied layers, tesselation and more.

We also worked on mesh blending techniques, which smoothly transistions between the ground and the asset and avoids sharp ugly intersections. Here a preview of the blending and worldspace biome effect (does not represent final terrain quality)





[h3]- New Floors[/h3]
2 new floors are in development the moment, one is coming very soon "The Cooling Chambers", as alternative second floor, while the other is an alternative for the Arctic level, which is more military themed, but you'll see. We are also looking at some potential arena style maps, but this has lower priority right now.

[h3]- System Improvements[/h3]
Now that the classes are much more engaging, it becomes glaringly apparent that the mid game progression is not at the level it should be. The class update already does tweak the curve of when things appear but this is only one part of it.

--Item Quality
Items at the moment are often quite lackluster.
After the class update, a focus will be to polish up items and make them into the core game sandbox they should be. Often it is mostly visual polish but sometimes the gameplay is simply not engaging. Playing with some of the new items makes it quite clear what the old items are just not on our new skill level and possibility space. Items are the core of Synthetik progression and due to them being lackluster, we tried compensating with shops and other things but that was a bit of a fallacy. Shops will also be improved.

As example, Power array now has a chargup time, sound, glow, laser targeting, screen fx and a buff, a huge difference from before where it just fired an ion shot. Some items have been upgraded a bit already like Power Array but more is to come.

--Item Synergies
We want to add an synergy system which links many items, to form a nice interlocking system of varied builds, planning and choices. Some examples which are already implemented:
- Shock net can electrify the spike strips, making them root enemies
- SAT masterkey fires incendiary shots when you have hot shot
- Field rations allows petting the dog for healing and granting a boost
S1 synergy items will likely also return in some form, like missile control boosting all missile items.

--Item/Ability Upgrades
We are doing an improvement of the system here as well, which will build upon item categories instead of being completely random and the same for all. The current system is too freestyle and unspecific even though it allows for some broken combinations. More info soon.

--Class Upgrades
There is also an idea of mid-run class upgrades replacing the focus perks, but we'll see..



[h3]- Multiplayer[/h3]
Our fully dedicated server based Multiplayer is progressing steadily, it is playable for some time but it needs polish polish polish and as many fixes. It is finally the time where the team starts internally doing serious playtests and where we gradually clean up the issues and start balancing and implementing coop specific features.



Instead of reviving at the next map upon dying, we are trying out a revive mechanic where you trade health to revive a player. This is more punishing on the team and less of a negative feedback loop where the dying player keeps getting weaker and then dies more because he has become weaker.
This should create more tension, be more fair and hopefully avoid making coop significantly easier than single-player.

Our plan for online coop is to have a first public test branch version ready around the Enemy Update.
Right now its most important to fix and polish up the game to a good level and getting multiplayer polished before it's given out. S1 multiplayer very unstable at launch and prone to crashing, we definitely want to avoid this.






[h3]Brief Roadmap:[/h3]

U5 ORIGIN "The Big Class Update"
- Expected this week! Last chance for your class feedback!

U6 HEAT
- Short in-between Update
- Full New "Cooling Chambers" Environment
- Environment Styles (spoiler in the thumbnail)
- Item & Upgrade System improvements
- ?

U7 LEGION "The Big Enemy Update"
- More info in a near future dev blog!
- First Multiplayer testing on test branch around that time





Thats all for today! After the class update has gone live, the enemy update will follow but we keep the enemy update talk for later.

Don't forget the class poll, we really act on your feedback so don't waste the opportunity!

https://forms.gle/zRysjn71xcgCUQwS8

! In case of steam blocking the link - please copy it manually into your browser !!

See you on the field, Androids!
- Team FFG