Chaos Chain News

Salutations, dwellers...

Hey everyone! Here is the next BIG new update for the game. I didn't get every single thing that I wanted to get into this update, but I did include a lot of other new stuff to make up for it. Loot containers now respawn periodically and reposition themselves as well so it is fully randomized, the interface got a nice circuit background overlay, saves from here on out should *mostly* be safe from having to restart due to some extensive reworking of the existing system, item popup messages whenever you gain equipment, and much more! The only thing to be aware of is one of the new quests "Relief Recovery" is not completed yet. Check out the change log below!



Please note that these changes are not in any particular order.

[h2]Update 1.2.5 Change Log:[/h2]

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a typo in the intro
  
• Fixed a bug where you'd have to press back button twice when exiting world map
  
• Fixed some tileset pathing bugs
  
• Fixed a rare bug where loot containers could spawn on top of each other
  
• Fixed an unreachable container spawn location
  

Changes & Additions:

• A HUGE thank you to "heynonnynonny" for his help on this one - You should NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CORRUPTED SAVES AS NEW QUESTS ARE ADDED - MOST SAVES WILL BE ABLE TO BE USED GOING FORWARD (You can thank heynonnynonny yourself if you purchase some of his pixel artwork for sale here: https://www.gamedevmarket.net/member/heynonnynonny/)
  
• Updated Rusty's Pawn area to look more like an interior shop area and less like a warehouse
  
• Added Condemned Apartments: F1 area (Smugglers' Bend)
  
• Added "Working with Scraps" repeatable side quest
  
• Added "Relief Recovery" side quest (Not currently finished)
  
• "Helping Hands" quest related dropoff dialogues are now instantly displayed so you don't have to wait for each message to appear
  
• "Helping Hands" quest item value has been greatly increased so it should be completed roughly twice as fast
  
• "Helping Hands" quest goal reduced from 1500 to 1200
  
• Dr Cranlin's shop now has much more effective healing items once you complete "Helping Hands"
  
• "Closed Circuit" quest related dropoff dialogues are now instantly displayed so you don't have to wait for each message to appear
  
• Sidewalks and asphalt are now a bit smoother because the graphics looked a little too rigid
  
• Added some extra dialogue options to a few conversations
  
• Added lights to Bull's car outside the Views apartments
  
• Slightly reduced opacity of menu scan lines so they won't be so dark
  
• Player apartment map now has 3 different soundtracks
  
• Updated hint in the player apartment for what you need to get before you leave
  
• Updated player apartment map slightly
  
• Added extra free item to take from the apartment (Nutrient Paste)
  
• Popup text now appears whenever you gain an item/equipment/weapon
  
• Standardized sound effects for losing/gaining items/equipment/weapons to 3 distict sounds
  
• Added 1 more randomized sound effect for equipping items
  
• Improved efficiency of money popup handling
  
• Quickslot item use popup text color is now green
  
• Added subtle chime sound effect to play when transferring between maps
  
• Added a circuit board backdrop to the menu skin
  
• Added a slight shading effect around the outside of the interface
  
• Cleaned up the anarchy symbol face image
  
• Mouse improvements on the map screen so that you no longer have to move the mouse in on map screen menus and the cursor will retain it's location in the list if you don't move the mouse from it
  
• Reduced noise graphical overlay on several graphics to make them look more pure
  
• Added a lot more lootable containers to multiple areas
  
• Added fully randomized, fully respawning, fully repositioning loot containers (Respawn to a new location with new contents every 3 game days from the last time you interacted with it or from when they try to generate - 3 hours real time - be careful, you can lose stored items this way unless they're in your stash - this IS intended - your stuff can get stolen)
  
• Reintroduced a very small amount of green back into the game's time-based tinting
  
• Floating labels above events now have slightly increased opacity to be easier to see and read
  
• Added a sound effect to play when you open a container
  
• Added a sound effect to play when you close a container
  
• Added specific tutorial hint about the stash (Player safe item storage) and lootable containers (Which respawn over time and reset)
  
• Added a new lore (Data) item description with a hint about loot containers
  
• Baseball bat initiative bonus is now +4 instead of +3
  
• Rebalanced pool cue weapon because it was way too OP
  
• Updated enemy stats if they had baseball bat weapons
  
• Added improvised club melee weapon
  
• Added blackjack melee weapon
  
• Updated shop listings and made each shop a bit more unique (All shops are now more fitting to their theme and overall, they are more diversified)
  
• Added 17 improvised weapons to the random loot tables
  
• Added 10 basic armor/equipments to the random loot tables
  
• Added special rules regarding loot drops with improvised weapons and basic armor/equipments
  
• Updated The Eclipse: Basement area
  
• Slightly updated Neko's dialogues
  
• Neko's shop lists no longer look like a hardware store (He now only sells weapons that are either legitimately weapons or things that are made to be used as weapons - He's a weapon smuggler, not Home Depot)
  
• Added 5 construction worker sprites
  
• Added 10 randomized phrases for construction workers
  
• Added some construction workers to Smuggler's Bend
  
• Increased saturation of all text colors in game by 5%
  
• Nikova weapons have been renamed to Novikov
  

NOTE: You SHOULD NOT need to start a new game. If you encounter issues however, it is probably for the best.

Please let me know of any bugs or issues you may encounter. The update will be available shortly.

For more info on the game, visit the store page below!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1536730/Chaos_Chain/

If you're enjoying the game so far, please consider leaving a review. This not only helps with much needed visibility, but also gives me feedback for the game to help it become a better final product. Also, if you have questions, concerns, or requests, please visit the forums!

That's all for now, enjoy!

-Corrosion ːCStudiosː

Salutations, dwellers...

Headline for those who don't want to read this whole thing: ːcleanfloppyː *MOST* SAVE GAMES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS SHOULD BE WORKING FROM HERE ON OUT AS DEVELOPMENT MOVES FORWARD!!! ːlunar2019deadpanpigː

So, I have some good news for the game! Last night, with the help of a friend who is also another programmer, I was able to make some changes to the game's code that will accommodate most old saves/save games moving forward. It is still Early Access, so some things may still change that require a fresh start in the game after a huge update, but now it will be a lot less frequent.

I did considerable testing on my own last night with my own saves and all of that testing showed me that it is working well. Even if I make drastic changes, the old saves still work just fine.

This morning, a tester of mine was kind enough to email me her save file from 2 updates ago, and I was able to get that successfully running in my dev build as well. No noticeable issues whatsoever.

Now, with all of that said, there are still a few caveats. As I said above, huge updates may still require a fresh start every so often, so that is one thing to be aware of. That's just part of the Early Access development process and there isn't much I can do about that. Another is that the further back your save is from, the less likely it will run smoothly as development progresses. To put it simply, the older the save on the newer the version of the game, the less likely it will be stable and you may encounter issues here and there that are not present in a stable, new start.

Aside from the few stipulations, this is a really huge and really great change because to be completely blunt, I absolutely hate having to reset people's progress. Yes, I give a ton of warnings on the store page and in announcements and stuff, but it still is not a great situation, but some of it is in fact beyond my control as the game is still coming into a state of being. At least now, it will be much rarer to need to restart.

I can modify entire areas, add new quests, characters, equipment, modify enemies, and so on - all while using old saves and they still continue to work after the changes are made. This should make testing easier, and it should also make it easier to just simply play and enjoy the game as I continue working on it without you being forced to restart after every big update. Again, some big updates might still require it, but not nearly as much now since the game back-end stuff is all pretty much finalized. At this point, it's mainly just gameplay content I'm working on.

The game is very stable, bug free as far as I'm aware, and runs smooth as butter after yesterday's optimization improvements. Hopefully, I can maintain this, and you all can enjoy the game without annoyances of restarting constantly whenever large batches of new content is added.

Hopefully by the end of next week on Friday the 13th - spooky - I will be putting this build (1.2.5) out and with it, I'll be including a couple of new quests and changes to the "Helping Hands" quest as it takes way too long currently to complete and it's not meant to. I will also as usual be including improvement tweaks and optimizations as I go to keep everything running smoothly and possibly even the second companion if time allows. No promises, but that is my goal.

Thank you for reading!

-Corrosion ːCStudiosː

Salutations, dwellers...

PSA: Hey guys, this is a bit of an unfortunate thing, but it's come to my attention that a lot of people have been stealing my work through digital piracy, so I activated Steam's anti-piracy protection on my game files. I have dealt with this issue before, but decided to look the other way for over 7 years, but it gets really old seeing your hard work posted online by someone else for free. I try to keep my game prices low so that everyone can afford them, but still, I see my games stolen all the time. I appreciate everyone who has supported my work legitimately.

Since the files are now encrypted, you may get a false positive from your antivirus provider. RELAX - Steam would not allow infected files to be distributed on their system. For more (official) information, please refer to this link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5F3D-1477-AFF9-C4F3

Check out the change log below.

Please note that these changes are not in any particular order.

[h2]Update 1.2.4 Change Log:[/h2]

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed chameleon cloaking biware price
  
• Fixed and cleaned up some graphic clipping (Particularly related to lights)
  

Changes & Additions:

• Added new Steam Achievements
  
• Activated Steam's anti-piracy protection on the game's files (YOU MAY GET A FALSE POSITIVE WITH YOUR ANTIVIRUS THAT THE GAME.EXE IS UNTRUSTED NOW - THAT'S JUST BECAUSE IT IS A NEW VERSION OF THE FILE AND UNKNOWN AT THE MOMENT - RELAX, STEAM HAS ITS OWN FILE VERIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION SYSTEMS - YOU'RE SAFE)
• Further improvements to make the mouse more accurate (Minor this time)
  
• Added a 1.5 second cooldown on event position saving updates for exterior city areas with a lot of events (Before this change, it was rapid and constant, it should now be more optimized and help with performance)
  
• Repositioned some of the hub position-auto-saving events (To be more efficient)
  
• Rewrote the transitional intro text to be more specific about ongoing events in the game world (Explaining your character's position in the game world in the beginning)
  
• Updated Stubborn Love P2 quest description
  
• Added Helping Hands side quest (Pretty long side quest with some good benefits if you complete it)
  
• Renamed pain pills to painkillers
  
• Intro red blur image changed to blue
  
• Added rain effects to the intro
  
• Added support equipment slot (Total slots now 15)
  
• Added cloak support equipment
  
• Added Auto-Injector support equipment
  
• Reclassified several of the accessories to go in the new support slot
  
• Camel Pack gadget now goes in the support slot
  
• Added a new character interaction
  
• Added some new skill/stat checks
  
• Added new graphics for new characters, equipment, etc
  
• Updated a few shops
  
• Updated some dialogues
  
• Gas masks now block the accessory slot (So you can't equip a respirator and gas mask at the same time mainly)
  
• Added Accuracy IV learnable passive skill
  
• Added Accuracy V learnable passive skill
  
• Added more detail objects to exterior areas
  
• Added a bit more clutter to some areas
  
• Increased volume of all loudspeaker announcement sound effects based on feedback (10% each)
  
• Increased contrast of all environment items by 5 points
  
• Added some shadows/shading to certain environment objects to make them "Pop" a bit more
  
• Slightly increased the radius of visibility around the player character
  
• Got rid of some old leftover code and database items
  
• Added a 20 frame (1/3 second) pause after map transfers to help with event processing (This change is to help ensure that everything on the previous map before a transfer has ample time to process and finish their tasks and then once the transfer is complete, it should help the new map events run smoother)
  
• Reduced rolling fog opacity slightly
  
• Menu fog effect replaced with descending scanlines (Looks really good and gives off that "Cyberpunk" vibe)
  
• Menu fog effect now plays in all menu windows (Never realized until now that this wasn't happening already)
  
• Battle fog z coordinate is now 9999 instead of 1 so it shows above all other windows and entities on screen
  
• The menu will now reopen after the world map screen is closed (It threw you back into the game before)
  
• Active party member image overlay now has white brackets around the upper left and bottom right corners to give some depth and add a slight "camera" effect
  
• Active party member image overlay opacity reduced slightly so it's easier to see the character portraits
  
• Updated Sergeant Ash's dialogue (Not yet finished)
  
• A few other minor adjustments and tweaks
  

NOTE: You MUST start a new game.

Please let me know of any bugs or issues you may encounter on the forums. The update will be available shortly.

That's all for now, enjoy!

-Corrosion ːCStudiosː

Salutations, dwellers...

Here is a new update for the game. This is to make some adjustments and improvements based on the giant update from just a few days ago. Check out the change log below!

Please note that these changes are not in any particular order.

[h2]Update 1.2.3 Change Log:[/h2]

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed some typos
  

Changes & Additions:

• Tweaks to the intro (Some of the new effects didn't look good)
  
• Reduced the range for the protest shouts/sounds to activate by 2 (To help with performance)
  
• Improved protest loop handling and performance (They were impacting FPS slightly, the timer and on/off switch are now both globally controlled so they cannot become stuck on or off if the player leaves the area before the countdown finishes)
  
• A few other minor adjustments and tweaks
  

NOTE: You DON'T need to start a new game.

Please let me know of any bugs or issues you may encounter. The update will be available shortly.

For more info on the game, visit the store page below!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1536730/Chaos_Chain/

If you're enjoying the game so far, please consider leaving a review. This not only helps with much needed visibility, but also gives me feedback for the game to help it become a better final product. Also, if you have questions, concerns, or requests, please visit the forums!

That's all for now, enjoy!

-Corrosion ːCStudiosː

Hey everyone!



This is just a heads up that Waste Walkers and ALL DLC is on sale right now for a large discount!

Grab them now while the discounts last!

Store page for those interested:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/371100/Waste_Walkers/

You can also find the complete bundle here:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/339/Waste_Walkers_Complete_Bundle/

Enjoy!

-Corrosion ːCStudiosː