Cepheus Protocol News

[h2]June 2, 2020 Patch Notes ( version 0.7.25)[/h2]

-Geforce Now Streaming is now allowed once you link your Steam account to their Service
-Fix where Chelsey dying would not cause the end game screen to appear.
-Aspect Ratio configuration options added for Ultra Wide screen monitors
-Rebuilding HLODs, meaning more optimizations for objects that are further away.
-Fast travel dock station near Hotel has been fixed as some units were unable to use the stairs.


The Defense teams being merged into Away teams will be in the next day or so
Hers the new layout and some teasers for Vehicles were are coming soon as well. New UI to show the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta teams. Please make sure to read the info below as some major changes are coming - this includes having to reset save files for the Faction system.





ICYMI:

-In the next 2 or so days, we will be getting rid of the Defense teams. We heard you and we know you wanted to have more soldiers and more control! We will be separating your teams into 4 squads: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. All of these teams will be considered "Away" teams in that they can go anywhere on the map even if you don't own the areas.
-Engineer Unit: The Engineer is now added in and will now allow you to build Barracks, Walls, CERC building, etc. anywhere on the map as long as you own the zone! Before, you were only able to do this at your base but we know this was a feature many of you had asked for!
1)Since the Engineer unit is brand new, you might run into more bugs than usual. Please ensure you're reporting these on our Discord here: https://discord.gg/cepheus-protocol


Important message about your saves: In preparation of the Factions system, you'll start seeing the (currently) untextured area of the map slowly get updated. We will have to wipe save files around June 12-19 in order to implement the new system (which will add a new dynamic angle to the game). We'll have confirmation closer to the date so you have enough time to finish your current games.

Until next time, good luck in Treasure Island!

[h2]June 1st, 2020 Patch Notes ( version 0.7.24)[/h2]

Hello CERC Recruits,

We have some major news and updates to report today:

-In the next 3 or so days, we will be getting rid of the Defense teams. We heard you and we know you wanted to have more soldiers and more control! We will be separating your teams into 4 squads: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. All of these teams will be considered "Away" teams in that they can go anywhere on the map even if you don't own the areas.
-Engineer Unit: The Engineer is now added in and will now allow you to build Barracks, Walls, CERC building, etc. anywhere on the map as long as you own the zone! Before, you were only able to do this at your base but we know this was a feature many of you had asked for!
1)Since the Engineer unit is brand new, you might run into more bugs than usual. Please ensure you're reporting these on our Discord here: https://discord.gg/cepheus-protocol


- Morning, Midday and Night have been tweaked to look better visually with improved visuals in lighting
- Loading a save during night time will no longer break the Sun and cause you to plunge into eternal darkness
- Spitter Texture tweaked to look better in certain lighting conditions
- Winters hair adjusted further as with some face textures
- More safeguards added for Gamma to ensure new installs dont get bugged settings that reduce it to 0
- Crash Fix for following Camera
- Spawn Fix for infected spawning inside blocked out assets in Grid 03
- Fog of war tweaked to visually depict where you can see and cannot
- Juggernauts temporally disabled while we tweak their AI internally (replaced with packs of Spitters)
- Optimization Pass for Flashlights and View Distance settings tweaked
- A Patch of land near the draw bridges navigation was resolved near the ambulance mesh
- Mouse Pan delay added so loading a new game wont send you flying in a direction
- Grenade Costs corrected to tool-tip

We are also working on a larger TUGS sensor for the next update in a few days stay tuned!



Important message about your saves: In preparation of the Factions system, you'll start seeing the (currently) untextured area of the map slowly get updated. We will have to wipe save files around June 12-19 in order to implement the new system (which will add a new dynamic angle to the game). We'll have confirmation closer to the date so you have enough time to finish your current games.

Until next time, good luck in Treasure Island!

[h2]May 30, 2020 Patch Notes ( version 0.7.24)[/h2]

Hello CERC Recruits,

We have some major news and updates to report today:

-In the next 3 or so days, we will be getting rid of the Defense teams. We heard you and we know you wanted to have more soldiers and more control! We will be separating your teams into 4 squads: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. All of these teams will be considered "Away" teams in that they can go anywhere on the map even if you don't own the areas.
-Engineer Unit: The Engineer is now added in and will now allow you to build Barracks, Walls, CERC building, etc. anywhere on the map as long as you own the zone! Before, you were only able to do this at your base but we know this was a feature many of you had asked for!
1)Since the Engineer unit is brand new, you might run into more bugs than usual. Please ensure you're reporting these on our Discord here: https://discord.gg/cepheus-protocol

2)We are aware that you can currently build on top of other buildings and are already working on a fix!
3)The Engineer can be bought from the CERC centre. It currently will say Assault but a fix is coming.
-Little Bird to the rescue: In the off chance your whole team has been wiped (except for Cpt Winter of course), and all of your buildings have been destroyed, you will now be able to call in an Engineer anywhere on the map for no cost so that you can rebuild your team. It's not game over till its over!
-Base defense turrets have been taken out but will be back soon!
-Slomo will no longer affect certain UI commands. All UI based systems have been corrected to ignore Slomo, Selecting Unit Groups including the drag selection arrows and call ins.
-We recently streamed on our Steam store page and realized some of the infected were getting stuck in alleys in the city. This has now been fixed and they shouldn't get stuck anymore.
-Adjusted materials on characters so they don't look metallic.
-We will be implementing energy consumption to different items including all turrets. Every generator will have a meter and it'll turn off until you remove one if its over capacity.
-Major optimizations in place that see load times 70-80% improved.
-Crash for infection system is now resolved.
-Horde map: QA will be testing the horde maps this week going into next. We're working away on the Year 1 Roadmap and are excited to show off this new game mode!
-Fixed bug with achievements so should be functioning again. We're still implementing the remaining achievements and should be in soon.
-Collision changes to draw bridge so players will be less likely to fall through.
-Buildings will no longer look pitch black in the shadows.

Important message about your saves: In preparation of the Factions system, you'll start seeing the (currently) untextured area of the map slowly get updated. We will have to wipe save files around June 12-19 in order to implement the new system (which will add a new dynamic angle to the game). We'll have confirmation closer to the date so you have enough time to finish your current games.

Until next time, good luck in Treasure Island!

[h2]May 28, 2020 Patch Notes ( version 0.7.23)[/h2]

Hello CERC Recruits!

A couple of notes before we dive into this new Build update:

Keep in mind this is a roll up of everything we've been working on all week in our public testing realm. Every few days we'll aim to shove them out with a collection of fixes we test.

0.7.23

- Dead Body quality optimized and being worked on internally
-Build size reduced to 3.8 GB compressed
- Attack Move added
-Horde AI should not stand around and malfunction on occasion (fixed)
-Gameplay: If unit ends on 0 bullets and no nearby enemies, they don't reload (fixed)
-Gameplay: Hard to get units into fast travel vehicle. (fixed)
-Gameplay: Spec Ops special ability is not visually clear (fixed)
-Engineer Unit Progress (Keep in mind in a few days the Engineer class will get his final mesh and you'll be allowed to build everywhere if you know that territory. [Early Preview]
-Attack Move bugs relating to switching states
-Crash fix for when a unit was infected
- Adjustments to various Hills to stop infected from clumping on them and getting stuck

0.7.22

Major Change:
- Horde System: The infected now might launch up to 10 different attacks to one location or an attack on 10 different locations. The number will increase as their army grows - every 250 infected allows them to use one more pod. So if you have 1000 infected, they can launch from 4 pods.

This will definitely keep you on your toes and you will have to watch yourself from every direction. They will no longer attack in a straight line from only one direction. Good luck out there recruits!

Patch Notes
-New, better optimized grass.
-Gun texture fixes.
-Override of line of sight logic to allow player units to truly see through one another.
-Added logic to make characters automatically reload if they hit 0 ammo (rather than if they try to shoot when they hit 0).
-Initial attack move commit.
-Improved horde logic to no longer 'prune' the number of attacks based on the number of targetable areas.
1)Made the horde logic 'loop through again', instead, to spawn additional attacks from other owned nodes: attacks from multiple nodes can 'stack' on a single target now (priority is to hit as many different nodes as possible, but if there are enough infected, an infected post can target a command post that another infected post is already targeting).
2)Also added in logic to fix an issue with horde controllers not sending out an attack command to their spawned infected if there's not enough room (or not enough infected) for a full wave.

0.7.21

-UI: Dropdown and unit place arrows too small (resized them).
-UI: Main Menu URLs too small to read (resized them).
-Collision: Infected spawning on things (collision tweaks across the island).
-Structures cannot be destroyed (barbed wire and certain object types have been fixed).
-Level Design: units/turrets having trouble shooting in Marshlands or elevated enemies (fixed).
-Gamma configuration tool (added).
-Weapon ammo status added on top of units, configurable in ROE tab (fixed).
- Units falling through the docks (fixed).
-Unit names save through save system (fixed).
-Gameplay: Sandbags/barbwire being built on objects (fixed).
-ROE need to save through save system (fixed).
-Blow Up Guy and Spitter damage issues (fixed).
-Formations save support (fixed).
-Collision: CERC units stuck when around certain CERC Buildings I.E Barracks (fixed).
-Gameplay: Turrets don't shoot over sandbags (fixed).
-Units aren't reacting quick enough to melee attacks (fixed).
-Tutorial sliders (fixed).
-Gameplay: Hard to get units into fast travel vehicle. (fixed).
- Horde/Standard Infected ignoring player units (fixed).
- Night Vision Ability for Spec ops made more visually clear.
- Fast Travel cars made easier to enter/exit.
- Impostors added to the Trees around Treasure Island to make rendering them much cheaper at higher elevations.
- Stilted towers structure optimization.
-Adjusted Grid10 water tower placement and fixed some duplicate props.
-Improved melee radius for BlowUpGuys, and added a larger radius for their jump attack melee trace.

0.7.20

- Major engine overhaul from 4.22.3 to 4.25 (brings destruction and a bunch of optimizations to the engine itself).
- Vulkan and Directx 12 are still experimental for now (here be dragon's!).
- Command Window selection bugs resolved.
- Selecting a CP post will now remove the Patrol and other misc. unit buttons. You'll see more of this as we remove unnecessary information when you select buildings that have no need to show such graphics.
-Dynamic Lighting optimization passes.
- Fixed sandbag and barbed wire not being destructible.
- Gamma calibration window added to first launch and configurable from settings (basically brightness adjustment). This will help for any players that had a very dark screen at night.
- Increased arrow size on unit cards based on user feedback.
- Doubled the spawn rate of samples in recruit mode to balance out the reduction in infected so its less of a grind.
-Dozens of meshes across the level optimized and tweaked for better performance.
- HLODS updated across the island.
- Foliage wind effects adjusted so they weren't as expensive when you zoom the camera out.
- Navigation optimization to stop infected from being able to spawn on objects I.E low level walls and rocks.
- Fixed an issue that would break the reload ammo keybind preview in the command window.
- LODS were tweaked to make them more aggressive across the island.
- Touched up the text to remove any kinda blurriness on the player HUD.

0.7.19

-HLOD and texture streaming data rebuild in some areas for optimizations. Depending on builds, players might even see 200 FPS.
-Discord integration progress.
-Steam Achievements enabled (30 or so more are on the way).
-Boats optimized near pier zones.
-T1 and T2 turrets resized so their barrels will be at a higher elevation.
-Tree placements adjusted across the map to free up movement lanes.
-Several rock formations smoothed out to stop hordes from malfunctioning around them.
-Bug fixed that could cause your assault to enter a state of building sandbags and turrets at the same time.
-Main Menu Sequence updated.
- UMP, Scar, P90, MP7, MK14 have new metal finishes, the textures camos have been removed.

0.7.18

-Build size is now reduced from 11 GB to 6 GB.
-Mass Optimization to texture sizes across the board (we will release a 4K Texture Resolution in the future for those 4K enthusiasts out there - we're not forgetting about you!).
-Infected and CERC units should no longer spawn stuck inside vehicles.
-Units should no longer fall through the piers and Marina areas.
-New HUD UI elements introduced.
-New Assault missile and machine gun variant meshes implemented.
-Further UI optimizations.
-Gun textures changed to generic metal finish - more changes on the way.
-Tessellation removed from build as it was causing too many performance issues.
-Burning Fire VFX removed while we rework the particle effect.
-LOD’s added to Chelsey and Winter.
-Cliff textures reduced.
-Music adjusted so its not as sudden and gives more time for fade in and fade out.
-Intro Music lowered so you can hear the narrator more clearly.
-CP posts can now be destroyed by the infected (meaning they have to destroy the upgrades you buy first before they can take a zone).
-Infected pods now do not just spring up after a zone is taken but instead “grow” in numbers. Starting with 1 pod at 0 Health while it builds to max health. Afterwards, it grows more pods and they will show up over time.
-Various adjustments to optimize the navigation around certain key zones including the esports arena.
-We are aware of the issues the tree placements are causing in the beginning island. We're revising their placement at the moment to support better movement through them.
-Special Abilities now are timed to work flawlessly while in slomo. Grenades and setting up bipods act as they do when slomo is off and there is no UI lag or delay anymore!
-Weather system was slightly optimized for performance.
-Slider typos and loading screen typos fixed.
-Camera move speed option added to Controls. Default speed set to max.
-New Minimap graphic.
-New Weapon market for buying weapons and viewing their stats.
-Helicopter SFX levels adjusted.
-Expanded UI Command window.
-Class dialogue adjusted.
-Several crash fixes.
-Pier 4 should not randomly disappear anymore.
-Barbed wire no longer becomes sandbags when loading a game.
-Defense teams have a brand-new UI.
-A Yes/No confirmation has been added when deleting a save game.
-Gates don't lose power and won't malfunction. I.E if you placed a generator and then destroyed it, they would sometimes remain "ON".
-Walls now give proper refunds when deleted.
-Turrets and Buildings now have tool tips.


ICYMI:
As we move closer to completing the first stage of our Road Map, we're glad to announce that major changes were implemented in terms of bug fixes and stability. In most cases players should see a 50-60% decrease in load times and a huge drop in RAM utilization. We are still actively working in areas where the FPS drops 10-15 frames and are confident we will have them fixed within the next week.

We hear you guys and in the next few days we will write an article on Indiedb outlining all the community changes that will added to the game within the next few weeks based on your feedback. A lot of them have a focus on replayability, quality of life, and set the stage for the upcoming Factions update in the next few months. We're also happy to announced that Autoloaders are coming very soon for turrets as an optional upgrade!

Our Discord will also be getting a revamp in terms of roles for people that don’t want to always get pinged by “everyone" tags and we'll be searching for Moderators in the coming days. We'll post a Google form application for anyone interested in being more involved with our team and the game. Mods will help us look at every piece of feedback so we don't miss anything.

Until next time, good luck in Treasure Island!

[h2]May 28, 2020 Patch Notes (PTB version 0.7.22)[/h2]

Hello CERC Recruits!

A couple of notes before we dive into this Public Test Build update:

We are aware of the pink buildings you might see in the map - a fix should be out tomorrow or so. As you may have seen, we've been releasing patch updates for the public testing build as we're testing things out and ensuring we don't break anything in the main game build.

Major Change:
- Horde System: The infected now might launch up to 10 different attacks to one location or an attack on 10 different locations. The number will increase as their army grows - every 250 infected allows them to use one more pod. So if you have 1000 infected, they can launch from 4 pods.

This will definitely keep you on your toes and you will have to watch yourself from every direction. They will no longer attack in a straight line from only one direction. Good luck out there recruits!

Patch Notes
-New, better optimized grass.
-Gun texture fixes.
-Override of line of sight logic to allow player units to truly see through one another.
-Added logic to make characters automatically reload if they hit 0 ammo (rather than if they try to shoot when they hit 0).
-Initial attack move commit.
-Improved horde logic to no longer 'prune' the number of attacks based on the number of targetable areas.
1)Made the horde logic 'loop through again', instead, to spawn additional attacks from other owned nodes: attacks from multiple nodes can 'stack' on a single target now (priority is to hit as many different nodes as possible, but if there are enough infected, an infected post can target a command post that another infected post is already targeting).
2)Also added in logic to fix an issue with horde controllers not sending out an attack command to their spawned infected if there's not enough room (or not enough infected) for a full wave.


ICYMI:
As we move closer to completing the first stage of our Road Map, we're glad to announce that major changes were implemented in terms of bug fixes and stability. In most cases players should see a 50-60% decrease in load times and a huge drop in RAM utilization. We are still actively working in areas where the FPS drops 10-15 frames and are confident we will have them fixed within the next week.

We hear you guys and in the next few days we will write an article on Indiedb outlining all the community changes that will added to the game within the next few weeks based on your feedback. A lot of them have a focus on replayability, quality of life, and set the stage for the upcoming Factions update in the next few months. We're also happy to announced that Autoloaders are coming very soon for turrets as an optional upgrade!

Our Discord will also be getting a revamp in terms of roles for people that don’t want to always get pinged by “everyone" tags and we'll be searching for Moderators in the coming days. We'll post a Google form application for anyone interested in being more involved with our team and the game. Mods will help us look at every piece of feedback so we don't miss anything.

Until next time, good luck in Treasure Island!