Black Ice News

• Arcade booth visual updates
  
• Reduced roaming enemy count (especially for large areas)
  
• Miniguns now drop with more charges
  
• Fixed zombie death bug caused when dying in the Disco arena
  
• Fixed minor terrain gaps
  
• Fixed enemy spawn issue near Scar
  
• More progress on Oshiro area, we have some fun things planned out!
  

Happy holidays y'all! We've been working 24/7 to deliver your present: a complete redesign of the Arcade hub area. Plus now you can invite your friends or join multiplayer games directly from Steam's interface!



As part of the redesign, we finally added all the visual effects we've ever wanted, turning the Arcade into... well, an Arcade. 3 paths for the 3 founders of the Supermesh are color-coded to help you find your way around. Plus we snuck in some lore, like Einar's trophies.


We made all the upgrade stations easier to get to by centralizing them at the heart of the Arcade. Plus the map is now embedded in the floor and oriented with the world to make it even easier to get around.


As you know, each shop offers specific bonuses and weaknesses to align you with certain role specializations. To reinforce those bonuses, we've aligned the arenas and challenge booths with their nearby shops.

[h2]Kalt (defense + / speed -)[/h2]
The brand of tanks! Well now you can test yourself by taking a dip in the dunk tank. Get rewarded for how much damage you can survive. The Kalt arena is the Funkadelic Disco Palace, a devilish dancefloor that delivers death one disco ball at a time. Currently closed for renovations, it will reopen soon.


[h2]Feisty (speed + / damage -)[/h2]
The brand of flankers and thrillseekers! The shop got a complete makeover with a new aerial platforming combat space. Just watch out for the bottomless pit. The Airgap Challenge booth tests how long you can stay airborne. Disconnect from the grid and maximize your uptime for rewards. The Feisty arena is The Neon Demon's Speedrun Tower. Race to the top to claim your prize. This arena will open in a future patch.


[h2]Talus (accuracy + / defense -)[/h2]
The brand of snipers! The shop got a spooky redo with a bone forest to weave through while hunting targets. The nearby Console Cowboy Quickdraw booth offers speed-shooting targets to get rewarded for your accuracy and reflexes. This booth needs a little more work so it'll open in a future patch. The Aquarium next door will offer sequences of aerial targets to take down for your payday.


[h2]Overclock (damage + / accuracy -)[/h2]
The brand for people who only care about DPS. The shop has been enfolded in a spiky flower of damage. The familiar Test Your Might booth (our original challenge) has moved to its appropriate spot next to the Overclock store. It's accompanied by the Carcinization Knockout Challenge arena which is exactly what it sounds like. Step into the ring with a giant crab to see who can land the most punches. This arena will also be arriving in a future patch.

[h2]Maze of Mirrors[/h2]
Anyone who claims there's a secret 5th shop is misinformed and the broken Maze of Mirrors has been closed for repairs for as long as anyone can remember. It's too dark to see in there anyway.

The sliding block puzzle that used to be Black Ice before Black Ice became an FPS has been moved from the tutorial area to the Arcade. It's outside the Maze of Mirrors if you feel like testing your wits with The Mindgames of Professor Barbarossa.


If you've forgiven us for teasing so much content coming in future patches, then there's one more update to tease. Surrounding the map room are launchers to send you to various points across the map including the megacorp towers. Between the transit hub and the highways in the last patch, endgame fast-travel should be a breeze. The transit hub will be enabled in the next patch once we've added unlock functionality.

We wish you all a fantastic end to 2022 and thank you so much for supporting the game. We'll keep the updates coming as the game nears its v1.0 launch!

Full patch notes here



We hope you like all the new stuff! Let us know on the Black Ice Discord.

Thanks for playing, and Happy Hacking!
superdupergc and Nonadecimal

This patch adds a lot of roaming enemies all over the map - please let me know how this feels! I think it's fun, but I need your feedback.

• Added randomly roaming enemies to most sectors. The goal of this is to make the world feel more alive, and to add a little more difficulty to traversal.
  
• Added tons of new weapon and item activation sounds (Dash, Recall, Minion items, Buffers, Sentries, lots of guns, etc) (most only affect new items)
  
• Patrolling enemies will no longer attack other AI unless they've been aggroed or injured
  
• A lot of AI material, animation, and script optimizations, aimed at allowing more enemies to be active at once
  
• Updated controller support plugin to increase performance and improve support for various niche controllers
  
• Updated Antialiasing options to add some more powerful settings - setting 1 (FXAA) works best for me, but there are now settings 2 (SMAA) and 3 (TXAA)
  
• Updated the Bloom (glow) plugin for more performance - let me know if it looks different at all
  
• Added two-tone Pill logo option for avatar customization
  
• Very long item tooltips will no longer go off screen
  
• Fixed shader issues with the Ray gun while sprinting