Hyper Light Breaker News

[h2]A QUICK NOTE FROM HEART MACHINE[/h2]

Thank you all SO much again for your continued support and feedback after a very exciting Early Access launch week for us! Last week was a big week for us -- it was incredible to see you all jump into the Overgrowth for the very first time and share your feedback with us along the way. We’ve received a ton of incredible feedback, and on our end, we’re already heads down in development as we’re jumping into making and planning changes to the game based on your all’s suggestions.

As a studio, this has been our most ambitious project yet – making an open world roguelite (which there aren’t that many out there!) -- and so, we’re beyond thrilled to make our vision for Hyper Light Breaker a reality alongside you all throughout the course of Early Access. We made Hyper Light Breaker with Early Access in mind to have it grow and evolve with our community, and today’s patch represents that as we made some pretty big changes, including a rework on Medkits, thanks to your feedback.

Today’s patch (and the one before it) is just the beginning of us using your feedback to shape the game – so you can expect even more community-driven patches and updates (see our first hotfix blog for more details on update cadence) We will be shifting the full team onto our first planned Minor Update so expect this to be the last hotfix for the time being. We are working on an Early Access content roadmap and planned to release it this week, but we need just a little more time to flesh it out and incorporate changes to it based on player suggestions. What we can say for now is there’s SO much more to come, so stay tuned!

Just a friendly reminder, the best way to ensure we see your feedback and concerns is to post it in the #hlb-support channel on our Discord: www.discord.gg/heartmachine.

That all said, let’s dive into patch notes for today’s hotfix v0.51c.108329!

~ Michael Clark, Lead Producer, and the Heart Machine team

[h2]TODAY’S PATCH NOTES[/h2]

Note: Anything listed as a “COMMUNITY ASSIST” and “COMMUNITY SUGGESTION” are fixes made thanks to our awesome community of players! We really appreciate all of your support and feedback – so please keep it coming!

[h3]Gameplay Changes[/h3]

COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Medkit rework

• Players now start with a Medkit.
  
• The first Medkit upgrade available via Pherus Bit now improves Medkits.
  
• Medkits now auto-refill on launch of run, up to max capacity (default 1, upgradeable to 2).
  
• Medkit refills at Shrines are now paid for with Bright Blood, not Medigems.
  
• Medigems still provide a small amount of health still when harvested, but are no longer used for Medikits or used in the end-of-cycle screen.
  

Enemy updates

• COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Removed the tech croc brute and white dirks from the extraction spawn table.
  
• COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Increased time between waves of additional enemies in Crown fights.
  
• Projectiles from weak enemies no longer hit-stun the player.
  
• Flinch animations will play, but the player will have full control. Previously they played a hit impact that momentarily interrupted them.
  
• Fixed an issue where damage trails would cause hit-stun on contact.
  
• Enemy aggro distance reduced.
  
• Removed some enemies from the Drop Down Lab spawns that weren't supposed to be spawning there (or at all).
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed a bug where some players would get stuck on a black screen when launched.
  
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed a memory leak causing degrading performance over time.
  

Note: See our previous Hot Fix and Letter from Heart Machine here: PATCH NOTES v0.5.1.107947

The best way to ensure we see your feedback and concerns is to post in the #hlb-support channel on our Discord: www.discord.gg/heartmachine.

Thank you to all of our players who graciously sent us crash dumps when encountering this issue. They helped us address the issue while we continued to work to reproduce the issue internally, as it is affecting only a portion of users and configurations.
We were able to do so, and have verified that this update addresses the crash we were seeing on those crash dumps.

Bug Fixes:

• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed a crash on startup related to cloud save handling.
  

There’s a lot you can do with a third dimension. Texture. Nativity dioramas. Spheres. Hyper Light Breaker, in expanding from the 2D action of Hyper Light Drifter, chooses to almost entirely remake itself as a free-roaming roguelike, trading post-apocalyptic pixel art for big proc-gen vistas and even more acrobatic swordplay.

Its technical ambition, sadly, ends up undermined by the emptiness of its world, the lack of exploratory pleasure that Drifter nurtured so well, and combat that’s more faithful to the original yet doesn’t quite adapt well enough to 3D. Not to mention it has more than its fair share of early access bugs and, especially in the early stages, balancing missteps.

Read more

[h2]A NOTE FROM HEART MACHINE
[/h2]

[h3]First and Foremost, Thank You!
[/h3]

We’ve been delighted to see so many players joining us in The Overgrowth this launch week! Early Access launch marks just the beginning of Hyper Light Breaker and we’re excited to shape and evolve the game with you all throughout the course of Early Access. Our community is awesome and has been providing a ton of feedback and support already – this is what we want out of Early Access development. Your participation is what will make this game the best it can be. The best way to ensure we see your feedback and concerns is to post in the #hlb-support channel on our Discord: www.discord.gg/heartmachine. That said, let’s dive into the current top issues we’ve received from players and how we’re addressing them in today’s major Hotfix (patch notes below!) and future updates.

[h3]Top Issues We’re Looking Into & Addressing
[/h3]

Improving Overall Performance

The strongest feedback we’ve received this week focuses on performance, particularly on lower-end machines and the Steam Deck. Today’s Hotfix includes a large number of performance improvements and improved Graphics Settings. Expect even more improvements in future planned updates as well.

Improving Graphical Options & Control Settings

In addition to performance improvements, we’ve added some additional visual effects toggles, so players can change graphic settings to their liking, as well as mouse and analog stick sensitivity options, and expanded our list of re-mappable controls. Games should be for everyone – that means being able to play on the hardware you want, where you want, with whom you want, and how you want. These additional settings are just a start towards those goals. Expect to see more control and settings options across our time in Early Access. Let us know in our Discord what is preventing you from playing where, how, and with whom you want!

Confusion Surrounding Gameplay Loop & Game Mechanics, Concerns Regarding Difficulty

As an Early Access game, the game will be evolving continuously and will evolve thanks to feedback from you all. With it being an evolving game, that makes it tricky for an indie team, like us, to have robust onboarding experiences for new players – but we clearly underestimated how opaque and complex the game can be. Expect better onboarding, tutorials, and in-game reference material in future updates. Your feedback here will help us add the “easy to learn” to “hard to master” elements and help us determine the best way to change-up the gameplay balance overall.

[h3]What’s Next & Future Updates
[/h3]
Thank you all again for joining us at the beginning of our Early Access journey with Hyper Light Breaker! Our team is hard at work responding to the feedback so far - expect to see a continual stream of updates to the game over the coming year. We will have three types of updates over the duration of Early Access.

• Hotfixes - like today’s patch, these respond quickly to serious issues raised by the community – mostly bug fixes or other improvements that address universal pain points.
  
• Minor Updates – monthly updates that include additional responses to fan feedback, along with balance updates and bug fixes. Expect to see some smaller pieces of new content – enemies, gear, characters, and more – as they become available.
  
• Major Content Drops – quarterly updates that include big changes to the game, new Bosses, Assassins, features, etc. – these major updates will change up the whole game.
  

Now, it’s time to jump into our notes for today’s (and first-ever!) major patch!
~ Michael Clark, Lead Producer, and the Heart Machine team




[h2]TODAY’S PATCH NOTES v0.5.1.107947
[/h2]

Note: Anything listed as a “COMMUNITY ASSIST” and “COMMUNITY SUGGESTION” are fixes made thanks to our awesome community of players! We really appreciate your all’s support and feedback – so please keep it coming!

[h3]Performance Optimization & Control Changes
[/h3]

COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Performance Optimization
Updated Steam Deck Settings defaults
Added Low/Med/High/Maximum default settings
Fixed bugs causing Foliage slider to not affect all Foliage
Improved Foliage LODs (Level of Detail models)
Fixed Distance Culling issues
Fixed an issue with destructible objects not culling, and rendering their expensive destruction meshes while not destroyed.
Optimization pass on the Hub’s environment assets
Added new Performance and Quality Settings:
VSync Enable/Disable
Screen Render Percentage
Prop Detail
Ambient Occlusion
Film Effects
Film Grain
Chromatic Aberration
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added Mouse Sensitivity and Analog Sensitivity Settings.
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added additional Control Bindings for Keyboard+Mouse and Controller. Note - you will need to rebind custom controls.

[h3]Features and Changes
[/h3]
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Increased base health for all SyComs by 15, except for the Tank, which was buffed by 5 health.
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added default Rails to all characters.
Added World Seed info below the version info in the HUD to aid in community reports of specific procedural generation issues.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3] COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where the camera invert setting did not work for the Rail Aim camera.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where Holobytes would be lost if attempting to exchange holobytes with keyboard+mouse controls with a full loadout.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where a combination of character and EXE unlocks could cause equipped Blades to be lost on return to the Hub.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where steam cloud saves would not transfer from Steamdeck to PC and vice versa.
Note - your save games have moved. The game should automatically relocate your save file.
The old save file can by default be found in Users\\AppData\Local\Breaker\Saved\
.bsf. In case of an error with automatically transferring the save data, this file can
manually be moved to Users\\AppData\Local\\Breaker\steam\
\savegames\.bsf. Note that the User folder can be different depending on
settings.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where blade special bonuses would persist if you activated them and swapped weapons before the bonus expired.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where having the Refined Blades EXE equipped, with multiple characters unlocked, without each character having a weapon equipped, would cause players to lose their equipped blades on exiting a run.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where some points of Interest could overlap extraction pads, potentially trapping enemies.
Fixed an issue where spawned slimes would sometimes be invisible to clients in multiplayer.
Fixed Dirk Rifle Aim VFX not tracking verticality of client players.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed the Desert Biome Train loot spawns not always being collectable
Fixed locked doors on the Crystal Biome Research Hub
Fixed an issue that could cause Charge Beetles to not be targetable in multiplayer
Fixed an issue where you could deploy two sets of mines with the Dual Claws
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue that could cause UI issues if a player leaves and rejoins the same lobby
Fixed an issue that could cause a meteor to drop at the beginning of a run.
Fixed an issue with the Vault appearing blank when opened while having a locked character selected
Fixed an issue where Crown music could play twice upon entering an arena
Fixed an issue where exiting the loadout in certain configurations could cause input loss
Fixed an issue where the Telepad Loadout and Ready Up could share inputs
Fixed an issue where revive audio and UI could linger after reviving a player
Fixed an issue where White Melee Dirks would not use their default attack
Fixed an issue where multiplayer join confirmation was not displaying.
Fixed a large number of localization layout issues
Capped FPS on title screen to 240fps to prevent issues on very fast computers
Fixed an issue where the lobby list screen could steal focus from the lobby create screen, causing WASD to clear the password.
Fixed an issue where a disconnected Client’s hoverboard could be seen in the Host’s Hub.
Speculative Fixes for erroneous player count issues (more than 3 players in a lobby)
Note - we have been unable to reproduce issues relating to player count consistently internally, hence this is a speculative fix.
Speculative Fixes for rare issue where enemies could spawn under the extraction pad.
Note - we have been unable to reproduce this issue internally.
Fixed Incorrect Vendor Names.
Updated placeholder Abyss King image.