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Brigador: Up-Armored Edition News

NO December Update... But Why?!

Back in our October update news post we wrote that we’d set aside time for another update to our first game, Brigador. We have instead focused the rest of our 2021 energies on Brigador Killers development. As developers, we think this is the more responsible thing to do, because if we’re going to send Brigador off into the sunset, we’d much rather it be with the boom of an Audio Kinetic Pulse than the pfft of a Smoke Launcher. We hope you understand. However, that's not all we have for you today.

[h2]🎁BEARING GIF(T)S[/h2]
Speaking of Brigador Killers, here’s a sneak peek at one of the things we've been working on for it...

Disclaimer: this is still a work in progress but it’s exciting for things to start to come together.

[h2]📆MERCH SALE UNTIL 2021 IS OVER[/h2]
Next, we have a sale on over on our merchandise store all December long. Enter promocode HOLIDAYS2021 at checkout, or just click this link to get 20% off your next order. T-shirts, lighters, busts and more are all on sale until the end of the year.

N.B. minimum order value of 8 USD required. Promotional code is active from the moment you read this until 23:59 CST, December 31st, 2021.

[h2]🎨TAKE A TRIP DOWN SPLASH ART MEMORY LANE[/h2]
Third: a message from the rest of the devs. Please enjoy.
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Though there will not be a December update, we wanted to say THANK YOU to all the dedicated fans and players of Brigador. People are as vocal and enthusiastic about the game as we've ever seen and it's been out for six years, which is humbling to say the least.

We figured the least we could do is gather together the surprisingly numerous splash art we've used over the years in one place, with a developer comment on each of them.
Pre-Early Access splash screen, the rarest of them all. Still had a lot to learn about splash art both from a marketing and design perspective. Always annoyed that you couldn't see all of the Touro, and the Spacers coming out across a flat plane, while accurate to the game, looks a little amateurish. Got some practice photoshopping the Touro, though.

The Early Access to 1.0 release "Road" splash. Wanted to show off the Touro's entire design and accomplished that, but the rest of the splash doesn't really tell you much about the game. A little too moody and dark, too much left to implication. Ironically, despite stringent scale control for all the in-game assets, I'm not entirely sure if the road is to scale.

We wanted to get more eyeballs on this game, so we ended up with a very colorful new splash art. While still too busy and not entirely communicative about the game, I still really like the neon and the human element the Modesto portrait brings to this splash, which is important when the game's camera is so far away from the action.

Our first major update after 1.0, the Halloween 1.12 Update that introduced players to The Auditor, Marie Locke, and Man From Volta. This and the prior version of this splash maybe goes a little too hard in the other direction (VISUAL EXCITEMENT!) but I'm happy that The Auditor got such a flashy introduction.

The Up-Armored Edition was a big win for us, both for the company but also in learning how better to show what the game is about with the splash art. Far less busy than the preceding "neon" splashes, the Up-Armored splash is the first to actually depict a scene from the game with more detail and focus on what the game's actually about. We also learned that you need to have lots of different crops/aspect ratios for splash art, and this design reflects that.

The Up-Armored Edition splash reigned for quite a long time until we realized it was time for another big update, both to improve the game and celebrate a big milestone, hence Blood Anniversary.

A big step forward both compositionally and technically, we used completely new rendering and texturing techniques to try and get people excited about coming back to Brigador with new content and new features. We saw a tremendous response as a result.
Blood Anniversary Pt 2 saw the release of the mysterious Mother's Love, a design we wanted to show off in dramatic fashion, while re-using the scene built for the Pt 1 splash. Inspired by the future war sequences of Terminator 1 and 2, naturally.
Grave To The Rave Update felt like coming full circle, as the first Halloween Update for Brigador was the first major content update the year of the 1.0 release. Wanted to celebrate with a dramatic and grimy, grindhouse-poster like depiction of Precursor James.
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Feel free to download the splash arts in a desktop wallpaper-friendly format:

[h2]❄Happy Holidays from Stellar Jockeys![/h2]

Grave To The Rave Update Is Now Live



Welcome to the Grave to the Rave Update for Brigador: Up-Armored Edition on PC, Mac and Linux! Without further ado let’s get into it.

[h2]🔁NEW FREELANCE OPERATION[/h2]
It turns out a number of you really liked the auto-firing weapons on ultra class vehicles in the last update. With that in mind we ran a mapping competition via our Discord which has resulted in the Grave To The Rave operation for Freelance mode. Be warned: unlike other freelance runs, this one is configured to be tackled by Ultra-class vehicles because more enemies will spawn. Will you make it out alive?

Special thanks to Aniviron, Briggs, Cosmic Crow, SCOREGOBLIN and Commander for their efforts.

[h2]💾RESIGN & RESUME IN FREELANCE[/h2]
Following many requests, the game will now save your progress to disk if you resign from a Freelance run after completing one or more of the maps in that run for that specific operation. A freelance op that has its progress saved is marked with an asterisk after the name.

Please note that this is only visible in the OPERATIONS tab of Freelance mode. If you’re resuming a run after some time, don’t worry about replicating your exact loadout – the save file keeps all that. You just have to navigate over to that last tab and click the marked run to retrieve the saved data. More details on how this feature functions can be read in the Full Changelog at the bottom of this post.

So, if you’ve been angling to finally take on Closed Casket Special but not had the time to do so, you can completely quit the game and resume your run at a later point.

[h2]🌈UI COLOR CUSTOMIZATION[/h2]
A new SETTINGS menu tab has appeared titled INTERFACE COLORS
This allows you to change the RGBA value of almost all of the UI text elements (exceptions being “hard” assets like the images for specials) to whatever color you want. Want to just make your ammo counters brighter, or the objective messages obnoxious neon green? Be our guest.

The ability to change these colors via the global.json in the debug menu already existed – we’ve just made a lot of them available on the front end. If you end up making your UI into a completely unreadable mess, you can restore the default color values by clicking RESTORE DEFAULTS under the GENERAL tab though please note that currently this will also restore other defaults like audio levels and monitor resolution (if things get really bad and you can’t even see your UI anymore then use the debug menu – check out section 4 of our modding documentation to learn how).

[h2]🎮MOVEMENT TWEAK[/h2]
A value that affects how vehicles reverse while using one of the Absolute control methods (or “twin stick” style) has finally been added for all player-controlled vehicles. This means that if you have the REVERSING WITH ABSOLUTE toggle on while using your Absolute control method of choice, all vehicles will now be consistent in how they reverse.

[h2]🔧MODKIT UPDATED (FINALLY)[/h2]
Our official set of modkit tools had been unusable since version 1.5c i.e. prior to Blood Anniversary update – this has now changed. The reason for this is during Blood Anniversary’s development we were frequently adding new assets to the game’s packfile (the “unpacked” version of this file is one of things that’s in the modkit tools), so rather than a leapfrogging process of updating the game, then updating the modkit, then updating the game again and then updating the modkit again we shelved it until things were stable. Within the modkit you will also find an updated community compilation and a readme.txt explaining the installation process.
N.B. to Mac users - due to reasons beyond our control (see a previous update post for context), it is unlikely that Mac users will be able to mod their copy of the game.

[h2]…🤔MORE TO COME?[/h2]
This is our penultimate update to Brigador: Up-Armored Edition. We are setting aside time for one more update of similar scale for the winter holidays, after which we hope to finally consider our first game as feature-complete and focus on exclusively developing our second game Brigador Killers, which you can help us out by wishlisting.

📒Full Changelog

[expand]
[h3]Game[/h3]
  • Updated to version 1.63 Grave To The Rave for Windows, Mac & Linux
  • Six map long non-linear ultra-class focused operation “Grave to the Rave” added to Freelance mode, featuring: Fallow Junction, Bereavement Zone, Soberano Base, Edy & Lazar Private Mausoleum, Mass Grave and The Last Stop Spaceport
  • Resign & resume (“save”) function added to Freelance mode
  • Resign & resume only works for one operation at a time
  • Dying mid-run or successfully completing a run will delete the save file
  • The operation save file is stored as a file titled sv and is found in the same folder as the game’s .exe e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Brigador
  • Yes, you can back up this sv file and overwrite it if you’ve been having a good run but then Bad Things Happen; No, you will not be penalized by us for doing so
  • Do not lose or delete your profile.json between resigning and resuming a run – this will likely affect your ability to select the operation marked with an asterisk

[h3]Stability & Performance[/h3]
  • Forward pref ratio added to all playable vehicles allowing for consistent vehicle behavior when reversing while using Absolute control schemes

[h3]UI[/h3]
  • New welcome screen text added
  • New splash screen added
  • All new interface texts localized into all 11 additional locales

[h3]Menus[/h3]
  • INTERFACE COLORS tab added to SETTINGS containing the RGBA values of most of the game’s UI text elements

[h3]Modding[/h3]
  • Modkit & Map Editor DLC should now be functional with Brigador version 1.63
  • Community compilation updated


For a detailed history of all change logs to the game, please refer to this thread on our discussion forums.

[/expand]

We hope you enjoy the update and thank you for reading! If you experience technical difficulties, please:

- Stellar Jockeys

Patch Reverted - Oct 8

A crash bug slipped by us, so I've reverted the update to the previous known good build, from August 10. Sorry for the inconvenience.

We'll fix the bug and put the modkit back up next week.

Update Notes, October 8, 2021

Vehicle Handling:
  • Tweaked the forward pref ratio for all vehicles; Brigadors using SCREEN ABSOLUTE control schemes are now able to reverse. Please use this newfound power with responsibility.


Optimization:
  • Revert sprite drawing changes which were causing performance hits on older systems
  • Minor improvements to drawing player sprite


Modkit:
  • Updated modkit and community compilation to v2. This should enable modding of Brigador after the Blood Anniversary changes. Please see /modkit/readme.txt for updated instructions, or visit the #maps-and-modding channel in our Discord for further help.

Bugfix Notes for August 11, 2021

Mac Platform:
- Corrected a build tools error which led to achievements being temporarily disabled on Steam for Mac users. Thank you to members of our Discord who were instrumental in reporting the problem.

Menu Links:
- Discord invite link updated. If you had clicked the "Feedback" button and saw an "Invalid invite" link in the last day or two, please try it again.