ALTERA News

The newest patch includes a couple of new major game features such as Portal Dungeons and Random Intrusions. Also we analyzed the feedback regarding the current balancing of the game and committed changes to make your troop stronger in combat. The health of the commander was significantly increased and the knocking/reviving system was added.

We hope you enjoy playing the newest version!

[h3]New feature: Portal Dungeons[/h3]
After completing an Intrusion cycle and securing an area, a portal will appear right beside the tower. This portal will lead to a dungeon-like environment with a lot of enemies. The goal is to find an exit portal that leads you back to the tower.

[h3]New feature: Random Intrusions[/h3]
Areas captured by a player now can be attacked once in a while. There will be a notification and a new quest assigned in advance before this happens. Players then need to react to the attack and protect the tower, otherwise they will lose control over the area.

[h3]Health system updates:[/h3]

• Added knocking and reviving system. Troop units (excluding the commander) will be knocked down when their health reaches 0. Then they can be revived by any friendly troop commander. If not revived in time or receiving more damage the units still can die.
  
• Health of a commander was increased by about 300%. This will make the troop commander much stronger in fights.
  
• Increased health of all in-game units by about 20%.
  

[h3]Open Intrusion updates:[/h3]

• Added dynamic weather. A wide set of weather parameters will dynamically change with time. Also there are now various weather states such as light rain, thunderstorm, fog etc.
  
• Enabled day and night cycle.
  

[h3]Portals:[/h3]

• Improved portal system. The portals background should now be displayed much more accurately.
  
• When going through the portal, the troop now will be teleported together with you.
  

[h3]Level updates:[/h3]

• The road system on the first island has been expanded.
  
• Drastically increased number of enemy spawners on the island.
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed bug when building preview shapes had collision.
  
• Fixed enemies not dropping ammo on death.
  

[h3]Notes:[/h3]
In case of any game bug you can press K to suicide and restart on a starting base. Neither your progress or troop will be lost.

[h3]RELEASE NOTES:[/h3]

• Significant performance optimization. Average FPS should now improve by at least 50%.
  
• Now you can enable or disable software ray tracing featrure. To disable it set Global Illumination and Reflections settings to Medium or Low.
  
• Fixed bug with both map and mini-map disappearing on a remote client.
  
• Made mini-map icons bigger.
  
• Fixed a bug when the energy was not refilling at all.
  
• Fixed collision of a fallen tree mesh. Now the collision shape is aligned with an actual mesh.
  
• Added extra delays before some of the Mai's dialogues in the intro section.
  
• Updated Unreal Engine version to 5.2.
  

[h3]IMPORTANT:[/h3]
nonrt branch has been deprecated. Please use the default branch. You can disable software ray tracing by setting Global Illumination and Reflections settings to Medium or Low.

CLOSED ALPHA v0.14.0 is live!

The moment is here. The first alpha version is up and you can download it now.

The default game version has software Ray Tracing and Lumen enabled. If you prefer playing without ray tracing please download the game from non-RT branch (Steam Game Properties > Betas).
The password is: alteranonrt1

Act 1 is playable from start to finish and the co-op Open Intrusion game mode is added as a bonus. Keep in mind that co-op Intrusion was originally not meant to be included in this release. So some of it's features are not fully functional. Feel free to invite up to 3 friends to play and break the game mode how you want!

On the day of the release we also might deploy hotfixes if needed. There are several patches scheduled to be released the upcoming weeks and months. You can keep track of the public roadmap for the game here: https://trello.com/b/RX5xUCXL/altera-public-roadmap

We hope you will have fun with the first playable version of ALTERA and we cannot wait to hear your feedback and thoughts about it! It was a lot of work to get the game in to the state it is now! We are excited to now work towards our next milestone, which will be to make the game ready for its early access release.

In case you dont have access to the alpha join our Discord: https://discord.gg/vulkanic
We are currently giving away Alpha keys there!

[h3]VERSION 0.14.0 PATCH NOTES:[/h3]

Campaign:

• Added Campaign Act 1.
  
• Updated dialogue system.
  
• Implemented quest system.
  
• Added in-game tutorials.
  
• Added road system.
  
• Added enemy outposts.
  
• Restricted the playable area.
  
• Added enemy spawners on the playable area.
  
• Updated main menu UI and added game mode selection.
  
• Added music.
  

New Features:

• Implemented portals.
  
• Implemented health cores.
  
• Implemented grenades.
  
• Implemented loot drops.
  

Troop Control & AI:

• Completely reworked AI behavior system.
  
• Implemented AI target priority checking.
  
• Reworked enemy behavior and spawning algorhitm for Intrusion cycle.
  
• Implemented Execute command for the troop. In this mode units will move freely and try to kill the targers they are aware of.
  
• Updated and expanded Quick Command menu.
  
• Reworked from scratch H-Bot unit and all associated mechanics.
  
• Implemented new unit type: Penguin.
  
• Updated the enemy spawner system.
  
• Updated stats of all enemy robots. Now they have different speed, health, shield etc.
  
• Fixed collisions of enemy robots.
  
• 
  

Environment:

• Updated dynamic lighting and time of day system.
  
• Implemented weather system.
  
• Implemented environment/weather sound occlusion system.
  
• Updated ocean system.
  

Sounds and VFX:

• Updated footstep sounds and VFX.
  
• Updated bullet impact sounds and VFX.
  
• Added death sound.
  
• Added Sleepdealer (energy bow) sounds.
  
• Added sounds for various in-game events.
  

Improvements and bugfixes:

• Added notifications for changes in an area status.
  
• Fixed the aiming and bullet trajectory. Now the aim point is precisely aligned with the crosshair.
  
• Disabled friendly fire on units and tower.
  
• Fix health & energy bar replication.
  
• Fixed unit shrinking.
  
• Fix missing head on friendly characters controlled by remote client.
  
• Fix bug when the remote client could not acess inventory.
  
• Fixed tower stats replication.
  
• Fixed respawning in Open Intrusion.
  
• Project was updated to Unreal Engine 5.1.
  
• Project was renamed to Altera.
  

Dear Members of our Community,

We have decided to delay the Alpha release by a few weeks to ensure that the game is as polished and bug-free as possible.

We understand that many of you are eagerly waiting to get your hands on the game, and we appreciate your understanding as we work diligently to create the best possible gameplay experience. Our team is working tirelessly to address any issues and create a smooth and enjoyable experience for everyone. We are pleased to announce that the new date for the closed alpha release is June 10th.

We value your input and feedback and look forward to continuing on this exciting journey with you. Thank you again for being a part of our community and for your continued support.

Sincerely,
Vulkanic Team

Hey there and welcome to another announcement!


WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN AND WHY WAS THERE NO NEWS FOR SO LONG?!

We were very lazy doing nothing all year. We just played video games and watched Twitch streamers play I am Jesus. Please do not tell our moms. Thanks. No but jokes aside. This year was not easy at all for us. As some of you know our tiny team was directly affected by the war crimes of russian terrorists in Ukraine. And some of us also needed to relocate to a safer place. Because of that the production of the game was on hold for around 2 months at the beginning of the year. Obviously this impacted our previously announced release window for the Closed Alpha, which was originally planned for the end of 2022. But this is not something we could have foreseen, nor was it possible to plan ahead. The new release date for the Closed Alpha is the 28th of April 2023.


ALTERA? WHAT IS GOING ON?! DID YOU CANCEL GAMING!?

Alright so let's address the big elephant in the room. The game's name is ALTERA now. And yes we know this might be confusing. But to us the old name always was just a temporary project name. Even if that was not really communicated publicly. After all