SCP: 5K - Alpha Testing News

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We’re moving our release date for update 0.14 to May 15th.

Yup. I know. Read it again. Take a deep breath. We feel it too.

This update is a big one. Here are just some of the things we’re adding in 0.14:

• New Faction
  
• 2 New Monsters
  
• New Map
  
• New Campaign Chapter
  
• 2 New Weapons
  
• Better Enemy AI
  
• Bark Lines
  
• Vaulting
  
• Various Bug Fixes
  
• Additional Visual and Audio Improvements
  

Pushing our release again was not an easy choice, but releasing an unstable build of the game after all the work the team put into these exciting new elements would be unfair to the community. We want you to play the game with your mates and have fun without having to deal with technical issues.

Our party system and networking alone have been putting up a real fight. To elaborate, let’s start with that peculiar number up above. 0.14.0.111 is the current build number of the game. The ‘111’ is how many builds we’ve pushed internally as we tested and corrected bugs with QA. To be clear… that’s one hundred and eleven builds with a few more to come before releasing the update. To put that in perspective, our previous update only got up to 49 on the build number and that was after 0.13 released. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how much harder we’ve been working to ensure a successful update release.

While we finish testing, we have a few sacrificial offerings to appease your SCP: 5K bloodlust:



Today: I offer a list of the main things 0.14 promises to deliver: SCP: 5K 0.14 Patch Notes

Next week: we’ll release the 0.14 Trailer

Following the trailer release: there will be a Q+A session on Discord with myself and our QA Lead, Aaron James! Watch for that announcement here: Community Discord Server

I can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve been cooking. Not just with update 0.14, but for the entire project. We have incredible plans for this game and the stories we want to tell and we’re excited to be at a stage in our journey with so much growth and progress. This team is creating something special. But despite my excitement to share what we’ve been building, it’s more important to put quality first. After all, what’s a few more weeks in the grand scheme of things?

“Late is just for a little while, suck is forever.’ Right?” -Gabe Newell, Valve

Hold the light, watch the dark.
TREY BISHOP // GAME DIRECTOR

P.S.




[h2]HEADLINE FEATURES[/h2]
[h3]AI AND MONSTERS[/h3]

• Added SCP-3199 - Humans, Refuted
  
• Added SCP-7566 - Door Squid
  
• Added SCP-621 to some instances of SCP-1262
  
• Improved Guard AI
  • Added cover generation and utilisation
    
  • Added sprinting, crouching and leaning
    
  • Added bark lines and communication
    
  • Improved suppression and sensing
    
  • Added pathfinding based look ahead to improve facing direction while moving
• Improved Resonator AI, animations and visuals
  • Better locomotion and turns
    
  • Crashing for lunge attacks
    
  • Improved pathfinding
    
  • Updated Resonator textures to be more readable

[h3]WEAPONS[/h3]

• Added SW 500 (Long and short variant)
  
• Added SG553 (5.56, 7.62 and SBR variants)

[h3]MAPS[/h3]

• Added the first half of a new campaign mission: Antarctica
• Added chapter 3 to Area-12: Dorms and D-Class Prison
• Added PVP variant for outpost axiom
  
• Reworked logistics area to be a clearer more streamlined experience
  
  • Less gas cans are required for the generator objective
    
  • Gas can spawns are more clearly telegraphed
    
  • Gas cans are much brighter and more obvious
    
  • Reduced the number of potential gas can spawn locations, resulting in less places to check
    
  • Improved telegraphing for gas can spawns behind shutters
    
  • Added a dedicated pickup for the crowbar to reduce wandering time
    
  • Improved lighting to be more distinct
    
• Added 3199 and additional spawns to wave survival

[h3]GAMEPLAY[/h3]

• Added Vaulting for players
  
• New player Faction - GOC (Antarctica specific)
  
• Added adaptive ammo system prototype
  
  • Some ammo lockers will have more or less ammo depending on the game’s state and the player’s situation
• Balanced tactical knife
  • Removed staggering from Tac-knife on zombies
    
  • Reduced Tac-knife damage to take 1-3 extra hits to kill
    
  • Added a small radius sound event to knife so that AI can hear it up close

[h3]UI/UX[/h3]

• Improved controller and keyboard support in menus

[h3]VISUALS AND AUDIO[/h3]

• Reworked bullet hit audio
  
• Improved recoil animation overall
  
• Added new First person arms for guards
  
• Improved night vision effects
  • added Depth of Field and fireflies
    
  • improved clarity in some scenarios

[h2]DETAILED NOTES[/h2]
[h3]VISUALS AND AUDIO[/h3]

• Added additional gore meshes for human characters - through holes, headshots and gut shots
  
• Updated AS VAL and VSS handling
  
• Increased damage impulse on human characters
  
• Improved zombie death animations to use root motion
  
• Added alarm lights to intro cells
  
• Added depth of field
  
• Added suppression visual effects when under fire
  
• Added a lens flare to AI when they have a flashlight on
  
• Improved third person animation for arms and legs
  
• Added generator sound to generator
  
• Added short M1014
  
• Reduced screen shake on VAL and VSS
  
• Reduced blurriness on scope aberration
  
• Updated audio for 360J, VSS, MP7, and Stealth Hunter
  
• Updated AUG mag
  
• Fixed overlapping audio in outdoor maps
  
• Increased chem-light brightness
  
• Updated various animations
  
• Improved base water shader blending
  
• Added lights to distant muzzle flashes
  
• Improved pixel depth offset on terrain
  
• Added FOV change while sprinting
  
• Added distance to ground checks to third person falling animation
  
• Added custom distance field overrides for walls, floors and ceilings to help with lighting, AO and other effects

[h3]GAMEPLAY[/h3]

• Re-balanced M590, M1014 and M24 to make them more powerful
  
• Re added per-item movement speed to character
  
• Added multiple gamemode support to map

[h3]UI/UX[/h3]

• Added tools for player analytics and better debugging
  
• Prevented triggering AFK when reading documents
  
• Shortened the interaction UI to make the interact-able objects more visible when interacting
  
• Added copy button to version and build ID in pause menu
  
• Made lobbies much more reliable for joining from both inside and outside the game
  
• Moved Item animations to use soft references
  
• Reduced memory footprint of weapons in UI and overall
  
• Quicker loading of items in UI
  
• Added a custom maps menu for loading maps outside the main game modes
  
• Updated the pre-game UI to allow controller inputs giving access to the in-game menu
  
• Updated the post-game UI for the PVP gamemode
  
• Improved Tips
  
• Added network failure reason when you fail to connect to a server
  
• Added localisation for ban and connection failure messages
  
• Improved chat interaction

[h3]AI[/h3]

• Reduced reaction time on AI
  
• Increased zombie step height
  
• Improved SCP-1262 Spitter AI and visuals
  
  • Added look ahead to Spitters' aim
    
  • Reduced damage of Spitter javelin
    
  • Increased headshot multiplier for Spitter to 3x from 1.5x
    
  • Improved tangent setup for 1262 Spitter
    
• Updated SCP-098
  
  • Increased acceleration
    
  • Added additional attacks and animations
    
• Added relationship matrix to AI allowing them to be allied with their corresponding player factions
  
• Added detour pathfinding to some AI, allowing them to corner better and spread out

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Fixed low ready slowing sprinting
  
• Fixed players being able to see their own back (except for when vaulting and kicking)
  
• Moved more Ranged Weapon code to C++, for improved performance and stability
  
• Reduced animation cost on SCP-1262 characters
  
• Fixed bullet casings replaying every time they become visible
  
• Fixed exit holes not appearing on instanced meshes
  
• Fixed a crash from player updates on "world teardown"
  
• (Finally) Fixed a crash from physical animation on game end
  
• Fixed joining lobbies from outside the game not working
  
• Made lobbies more reliable
  
• Fixed zombie spawn issues in wave survival
  
• Fixed text size updates for settings and buttons
  
• Fixed exit holes not appearing on Instanced static meshes
  
• Fixed Melee component hitting self
  
• Fixed spawn guard command not working in some circumstances
  
• Fixed some weighting issues on resonator
  
• Fixed visibility checks not working on AI spawners
  
• Fixed an issue where resolution was not being set correctly using certain settings
  
• Fixed a bug where recoil would max out on the second shot
  
• Fixed some issues with jumping animation triggering late
  
• Fixed a crash in SCP-173 when checking for chances
  
• Fixed a crash in interaction during item sorting
  

Hello SCP: 5K backers, fans, and everyone else on the internet. I’m here today to share some news about the progress on update 0.14. I’ll cut to the chase: we’re pushing our update release to April 29th. And now I’ll explain why. Our development team on SCP: 5K has been working incredibly hard, doing a tremendous job of creating and implementing new content and improvements to the game for this release. It has been a monumental lift to say the least!

As stated in our previous Devlog: we’ve expanded our team and capabilities in a big way. The learning curve however means that we (as you might expect) hit some bumps along the way. Such is the life of a game developer.

One of the departments we’ve expanded on is QA with the addition of our newest member: Aaron James. A proper QA team is something we’ve always wanted but in the past we were limited to sharing that workload among team members in addition to their existing responsibilities. We’re excited with how much of a help it’s been having people dedicated to hunting down bugs and other issues within the game. This is a very time consuming process but vital to ensuring a great experience with minimal issues.

That said, through testing we’ve encountered a few unexpected things that required us to make a decision. Either ship it as is and hit our deadline, or shift the deadline and give our team more time. I would say it’s not an easy decision but I’ll be honest here…it really is.

Our current goals:

1. Make an exciting and fun experience for players
2. Treat our humans well

The entire team is so passionate about this project. It would be wrong to not allow this update a bit more time to cook. We’ve been reworking and polishing a lot of things. We’re all very proud of everyone for stepping up to the plate. I couldn’t be more grateful for the tenacity of this development team; they’re the real magic-makers and they deserve all the credit in the world because thanks to them, we’ll still be able to release 0.14 this month despite the challenges we faced.

In the meantime, we’ll have more information between now and then, along with a new trailer. Thank you for your support and for playing our game!

“Hold the light, watch the dark.” TREY BISHOP // SCP: 5K GAME DIRECTOR

[h2]Prizes[/h2]
1st Place: $150 Dollars, the original SCP-173-B Plushie, and Area-12 crate 2nd Place: $100 Dollars 3rd Place: $25 Dollars 4th Place: $25 Dollars

[h2]Contest Details[/h2]

To participate. Play a speedrun of the current 0.13 version of SCP:5K, you need to complete both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Area-12 with a fire team of 4 players to qualify. Make sure to record your run on Youtube or on Twitch. Once completed, upload the video or link the video’s url of your run and post the URL on speedrun.com for verification.

The group with the fastest completion time will advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, the winning four man fire team, will split up into two teams and complete Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and whichever team has the shortest run will reach the finals.

In the finals, the two finalists will compete on the outpost Axiom map to achieve the fastest completion time and determine the plush speed running winner. The first phase of the competition will run from April 8th - April 12th. The semi finals will take place from April 13th- April 14th. The two finalists will have between April 15th to April 17th to submit their final runs.

Please check out our 173-B plushie campaign at https://www.makeship.com/products/scp-173-plush and thanks to Voidspace and the people at Speedrun.com for making this competition a reality.

Hey all, we are happy to announce that SCP: 5K's very own SCP-173-B is now live on Makeship in the form of a plushie!

You can find the campaign link: here.

All Kickstarter Backers who pledged for a plushie as well as previous orders of the plushie will be honored, if this is you then you then no further action needed! Your plushie will be shipped to your address that was recorded at the time.

If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to update your shipping address, please email [email protected]