Black Ice News

Hi everyone! superdupergc here, here's the May update! I'm really excited for y'all to try this one.

• Courier missions - Challenge your traversal skills with these timed challenges hidden throughout the world.
  
• New Progression UI with additional rewards for leveling and hacking higher level servers
  
• AI Updates - smarter ranged hiding, sniping, and keeping distance. Enemies converge better when the hack is ending, and roaming enemies are now able to detect you if you're standing right behind them.
• Also - enemies stagger from damage for longer, which makes getting in close a little easier.
  
• Lots of gorgeous new item and enemy icons
  
• Fancy new UI particles
  
• Lots of new powerups and item drops to find in the world
  
• Upgraded item brands
  
• Recycle bin upgrade to reliably give uniques which are subtypes, or tell you if there's no available unique for that item type (but then you should tell me, so i can make one)
  
• New and upgraded item skins (Green Cosmic, Gold, and Rose Gold)
  
• Balancing (mostly item damage buffs for weird variants) and bugfixes
  
• Controller support update - every UI now uses the virtual cursor for consistency and ease of use, and the cursor now has improved handling
  
• Lots of item balancing, in particular buffing some of the weirder weapons
  
• Tons of bugfixes
  

Next up, I might do some courier variations, or I might get working on the achievement overhaul and unlock store :)

Full detailed patch notes here.

Happy hacking!
- SDGC and Nonadecimal

Hi everyone! superdupergc here, just wanted to let y'all know what I've done in the past month. This patch is already live!

• About 3 dozen new Weapon Skins for Super Duper weapons (which have a small chance of showing up on other items too!)
  
• Tripled Super Duper item drop rate
  
• Low Gravity server security
  
• Minigun and SMG weapon types
  
• Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Rainbow damage types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses
  
• Detailed sub-tooltips so you can see exactly what that new affix does
  
• Per-difficulty mission and world state saves, so each difficulty level is the full experience
  
• A gorgeous new grid shader which makes spaces easier to navigate
  
• A dozen new Bounty types, including Multikills, Out of Line of Sight, and Airborne
  
• AI Upgrades for the Bats and Minions
  
• Lots of item balancing, in particular for Heals, Minions, Scopes, and Exploits.
  
• Tons of bugfixes
  

I think you're going to like this update! I'm starting work on the new progression screen today, and Nonadecimal's been working on the Act 2 finale tower!

Full detailed patch notes here.

Enjoy!
- SDGC and Nonadecimal

Hi everyone! superdupergc here and I've gotten a lot done in the last month and a half since the Scar update.


First off, Bats! .bats! These are new flying enemies, with a whole new locomotion. The idea is to bring more verticality to the gameplay, so you have to watch not only your ankles and your horizon, but also the sky. They come in two varieties so far - the Charge.bat, which winds up an attack and swoops in to smack you, and the Heal.bat, a supporter type which uses a lasgun beam to heal enemies you've injured.

The bats normally spawn from level 25+ servers, but if you want to try them out sooner, there's a new level 15 arena in the Arcade...


This arena not only has a lot of bats to deal with, but also a bunch of teleporters and a slide (yes, you read that right). I'm trying out teleporters in combat, plus there are lasers, jump pads, a bunch of verticality, and a secret or two. This new arena is especially worth doing because I've added extra XP and better loot rarity for all arena servers.


This is what it looks like on the outside - you can't miss it!


I've added another room in the Arcade that lets you try out any perk, as long as you stay in the room. You can use this before you spend your points, and try out new combos. Just shoot the perk icon on the wall to not only test out the perk, but also get the info on how the perk works.

And if you still get buyer's remorse, perk respec points are now granted every 25 levels instead of 50.


I've been working hard on making the gameplay smoother in a lot of different ways - talent respecs, lots of item balancing, bounties are easier, more in-game tips and descriptions, rebalanced hack speed and XP curve, better colorblind mode, and more. I made a lot of things a bit easier, actually. I think it's a lot more fun!

I've done some fun visual upgrades - fire and ice servers now show the shaders above, so that you can more easily tell which ones they are (which is important because fire does more damage to ice enemies and vice versa), bigger crosshairs with on-hit and kill confirm flair,

Of course, there have been a lot of nice bug fixes too - the quest indicators now go away properly when the quest is done, the resolution no longer changes when you go to the options menu for the first time, enemies are better at staying in the hack radius, lots of nav fixes, fixes for multiplayer and even for speedrunning! (By the way, if you'd like to compete in the fastest to hack the Volcano boss server on a fresh character, the world record run is just over an hour and a half!).



We hope you enjoy this update! Coming up next, Nonadecimal is planning out the act 2 boss arena, and I'm planning to set up an achievement system with unlockable rewards!

Full detailed patch notes from every patch since the Scar update

Enjoy!
- SDGC and Nonadecimal

P.S. - The bridge the Volcano is open now. It wasn't supposed to be closed. Sorry about that!

Hi everyone! superdupergc and Nonadecimal here with a new batch of content and a 15% off sale! As usual there's been a ton of performance boosts along the way, particularly for high-framerate physics and multiplayer. We're still working on the Act 2 missions and its ~final battle~ atop the Kinetic Temple but we wanted to add more high-level servers to the world while you wait. That starts with The Scar.

[h2]The Scar[/h2]
This month marks 12 years since a catastrophic error cracked the Supermesh, separating founder Rachana Joshi's Kinetic Temple from the rest of the grid. Fearing cascading failures, Quarkus sealed off the afflicted area with a massive firewall in the interest of public safety. The countermeasures proved effective and the integrity of the Supermesh was preserved.



The disaster left deep fissures radiating outward from Quarkus. Sensing opportunity, a number of shell corporations and black market enterprises leveraged the disaster to entrench themselves in Quarkus' shadow. Cloaked in fog and stealth security, they run illicit ops and trade stolen IP.

Be careful getting lost in the Scar. It's hard to tell what kind of trouble you'll find in its depths.



[h2]Branded Stores[/h2]
This feature's been a long time coming but we've finally got 5 branded stores ringing the Arcade with unique risk/reward profiles for better build customization. Having trouble looting the right gun to fit your build? You know exactly where to buy it.... but at a cost. Branded items have a pool of guaranteed benefits but also guaranteed penalties to up the challenge. Coincidentally this lets people role spec more easily as tank, sniper, etc...

Kalt - health+ / speed-
Feisty! - speed+ / damage-
Overclock - damage+ / accuracy-
Talus - accuracy+ / health-
Dysrupt - hack+, loot+ / RAM-


[h2]Talent Respecs[/h2]
One of the most requested features is here! Ouroboros responded to feedback on his OS and added the ability to spend 2 Ouro coins to respec 1 talent point. You get Ouros for completing bounties so get to work. Capitalism isn't going to topple itself!

[h2]Green Hill Zone[/h2]
We've also released the work-in-progress Green Hill Zone near the Helices tower. It's a more open-air vertically layered combat space with lots of occluded sightlines and level 35-45 servers. Please give us feedback on the combat to help shape the area as we finish it! Should be a good place for flying enemies....



[h2]Coming Soon[/h2]
Speaking of flying enemies, we have some .bat files to share with you in the next update. Be seeing you soon!



Enjoy!
- SDGC and Nonadecimal

(full patch notes here)

Hi everyone! superdupergc here and I've got a lot of cool stuff to show you. Nonadecimal has been working really hard on all these giant new areas, and in between taking care of my baby and my day job, I've managed to improve some systems and add some cool new stuff too.

This update is hot off the presses because we are very excited about it and want to y'all as soon as possible! We're still working on a lot of it, so if you've got feedback, you can help shape the game.



You may notice some changes to the supermesh here in Black Ice. Like, complete world shuffling changes! Lots of new places to explore, but mostly we're opening the Forest and Oshiro Orbital areas for combat. These new areas really push the verticality of the game to new levels (pun intended), so bring your favorite grappling hook or glide jump and have at it!



Above you can see one of the two new arenas - which I won't spoil the name of for plot reasons, but look at this place! It's a hacker's playground! I'm also working on a third arena for later with Tele-porters in it... I'll let you guess what those do.



I've added a bunch of fun new player tweaks, the biggest one of which is that talent points now go up to level 100 instead of 50, so enjoy playing at those higher difficulty levels much easier now! I've also added new guns that reload when you're damaged (like the unique weakening bolt hand cannon, Kinetic Maintenance). This can be really powerful!

I've also made a few subtle changes which make lower rarity items more exciting - every once and a while, you'll find a common item with much higher damage, or a lower rarity item with a Lot of an affix on it, more than you could get on a high rarity item.



We hope you enjoy this update! Coming up next, we'll be working on quests for the new areas, plus a talent respec option, among other fun things that I'll keep secret for now!

Enjoy!
- SDGC and Nonadecimal