Cepheus Protocol News

Starting a few weeks ago we pushed out the started inklings of Operation Hammer Down. Our first major patch which targets adding more replayability and simulating a larger world to fight in. We want to hear what you folks have to say about how it plays so we can properly focus the aspects that need the most attention. After we feel they are in a good place overall we will shortly afterwards put up a factions public beta.

• Finalized Open World Map
  
• Doctrines
  
• Juggernaut
  
• Little Guy enemies
  
• Leviathan
  
• Revised Power Generation System
  

[h2]Patch Notes - 0.7.89 Leviathan AI Improvements & further minor fixes[/h2]



There is an economy rebalance coming soon. Also quite a few refinements are coming to the Worm/Leviathan

As a reminder here is our schedule for the next 3 months of development!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/3025827991049876866

Share your feedback here on the Worm/Leviathan
https://steamcommunity.com/app/979640/discussions/0/3113646913571960146/

[h2]Patch notes from this patch[/h2]

• A new Restrictor building blockout has been added that will scare away Leviathans.(This mesh will receive more refinement over the next few weeks as we broke our rule for any more community suggestions to ensure this got in for you folks! Now back to Factions!! )
  
• Restrictor Unlocks in Phase 2, costs $5000 and requires 50 power
  
• Added logic to make the Leviathan 'change his mind' about emerging if its within a non-navigable location (he'll try to adjust rather than emerge from within a building)
  
• More SFX/Ambiance added to the Islands
  
• Leviathans will now only be summoned by Hordes
  
• Once a Leviathan enters the world, he will only assist hordes until he's bold enough to strike out on his own (after 6 horde participations, he'll be able to start flanking on his own instead of assisting a horde, though he can do that too)
  
• Leviathan incubation rate boosted to 1200-1600 seconds (from 800-1000) (multipliers for incubation rate from difficulty/custom mode still apply, but the value they're multiplying is larger now)
  
• Fixed grenade throw visualization
  
• Result: Leviathans should be more manageable now. When you see one, you can be sure that he'll be striking at zones of yours that are bordering infected zones unless you let him live too long, in which case he'll be emboldened and start flanking you.
  

Cepheus Protocol Novelization is now available on Steam Store!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1387390/Cepheus_Protocol_Novelization

Keep in mind this book takes place before, during and a bit after Pandemic mode and follows dozens of characters around the events of CP. It will hint to our year 2 content(So spoilers if you analyze it close enough). Its not for the faint of heart (Very violent deaths and all that). You can pick it up for $3.99 now!

It will also be available on the Steam Store as an DLC on October 1st if you prefer to get it there! Just keep in mind on our website we make 99% of the sale the rest goes to PayPal

Feel free to use the #💬lore-questions on our Discord to discuss the ramifications of what the book brings to the universe and how it will affect the game as we start to work in story elements presented in the novel

Over the next month you will notice a drought in terms of patches as we will be heavily focusing the implementation of Factions. If there are any severe issues/bugs these will be prioritized first but we will be putting a hold on adding any further community suggestions for the month of March until April. We will be aiming for at least 1 patch a week for the next 2 weeks.

Then shortly around the 19th to the 26th we will be enabling the public beta branch for the remainder of the month for early adopters to try out Factions.

Arsonist Faction

Police Faction


[h2]Factions and Dynamic Civilian Factions Live Stream [/h2]

We will be having a live stream on March 26th to essentially do a breakdown of factions and have it as a community event to gather feedback and talk openly about our first implementation of factions.



Our plan going into April will be for any remaining adjustments needed for Factions and then move into the polish stages. We will be putting up a special "branch" for those having optimization issues to provide "stat" files these will allow us to quickly and effectively fix performance issues.

Short List of Polish Items

* Infected can climb building
* Infected can swim
* Improving Path Finding
* Formation Dance Bug
* Squad Formation overhaul
* A system for allowing all units to enter a building and climb the stairs to get to a rooftop ( will not be a full garrison system like they fire out of windows)
* Performance profiling and improvement
* Cleaning up the code base and optimizing it for modding and coop support
* Infected Growth on structures and VFX to show when a zone is owned



This month will be on the focus on any leftovers from polish and then situating Coop. 95% of this month will be coop and we expect to have a beta this month. It will stay in beta for a 1-2 month period while we work to get systems fully online and take into consideration feedback on any adjustments that might be needed to really provide a proper coop experience. We will be announcing a Year 2 Roadmap on May 15 that will go over all the systems coming next.

Because of recent delays modding is still planned but being fit into Year 2 content now.

Starting a few weeks ago we pushed out the started inklings of Operation Hammer Down. Our first major patch which targets adding more replayability and simulating a larger world to fight in. We want to hear what you folks have to say about how it plays so we can properly focus the aspects that need the most attention. After we feel they are in a good place overall we will shortly afterwards put up a factions public beta.

• Finalized Open World Map
  
• Doctrines
  
• Juggernaut
  
• Little Guy enemies
  
• Leviathan
  
• Revised Power Generation System
  

[h2]Patch Notes - 0.7.88 Branding, Collision Improvements and Levi Changes[/h2]



There is an economy rebalance coming soon. Also quite a few refinements are coming to the Worm/Leviathan

Share your feedback here on the Worm/Leviathan
https://steamcommunity.com/app/979640/discussions/0/3113646913571960146/

[h2]Patch notes from this patch[/h2]

• Fixed units that were running in Patrol before hitting a patrol point while in combat entering a 'run' status without actually speeding up
  
• Added a safety to prevent units that hit a patrol point while in combat to forget their patrol path when combat ends
  
• Improved patrol 'waypoint detection' distance to account for unit capsule size, reducing or eliminating situations where saved patrollers would load 'next to' their waypoint and think they haven't reached it, thus stand still
  
• Improved movement safeties for patrolling to 'restart' the movement if needed should an "OnMoveCompleted" call occur without thinking that we overlapped the patrol point
  
• Made vehicles not stop patrolling if they see an enemy
  
• Boosted T2 Wall health to 3200 (from 1600)
  
• Boosted Electric Wall health to 3600 (from 2000)
  
• Boosted T2 Wall Corner health to 1600 (from 800)
  
• Reduced Player Building damage resistance against Leviathan 'little buddy' damage to 91% (from 70%). (The 'Buddies' deal 45 damage, so this results in them hitting for ~4 damage per hit against player structures)
  
• Improved walls, sandbags, and barbed wire to be able to properly apply damage resistance types
  
• Made walls have less damage resistance against Leviathan 'little buddy' damage when compared to building resist (walls resist 70% of Little Buddy damage instead of 91%).
  
• Improved some spawn pod spawning to prevent some situations where infected get 'stuck' too close to the pod after emerging from it
  
• Improved some Leviathan actions to not try to 'run again' if the Leviathan is performing an animation related to that action (i.e. it's not complete)
  
• Improved several bits of Leviathan positioning+spawning logic to reduce situations where it spawns/emerges too high or low
  
• Improved synergy between Leviathan combat tunneling and the movement burrow system
  
• Added safety to mitigate or prevent Leviathan tunneling around 'while standing'
  
• Improved Leviathan Horde Sphere following logic (still not yet enabled, not done yet):
  
• Will now wait to emerge until the horde sphere is closer to the target, instead of emerging+waiting+tunneling+repeating
  
• When emerging to fight the target command post after following a horde there, the Leviathan will properly reset his combat timer (instead of potentially only hanging around for 20 seconds)
  
• Fixed some buildings in the master that had distance culling issues
  
• Updated vision logic for LOS checks to no longer run 'fixZ', resulting in skewed LOS checks when something tries to see something else that's below or above it
  Result: Turrets no longer get as confused against groups of infected (such as those attacking a wall)
  
• Updated DamageCharacters (for buildings, etc.) to register as 'player owned units' if indeed they are player owned (to prevent things like the TUGS unnecessarily blocking player shots)
  
• Updated 'team index swapping' to also properly register/unregister player-owned units, too, for the cases where something changes team
  
• Fixed the medical truck visuals having collision enabled (after collision updates, this was enough to block line of sight for units)
  
• Fixed the construction 'power radius visualization' blocking line of sight
  
• Reduced infected 'horde catchup' speed buff (to 1.4, 1.65, and 1.85, from 1.5, 1.85, and 2.3 respectively)
  
• Updated the Spitter AI to not call for spitting at the target if the Spitter doesn't have clear LOS to the target
  
• Updated the Spitter spit projectile to be blocked by objects (like buildings)
  
• Updated collision presets to stop certain things (like buildings) from allowing units to 'shoot through them' as long as they had initially seen someone around them
  
• Updated gates to start as open upon being constructed
  
• And ensured that unpowered gates that are open will properly open themselves when loaded despite the lack of power
  
• Catwalk Collision in Grid 03 improved
  
• Implemented a fix for population not calculating correctly on loading a save
  
• Because of a fatal error that caused us to revert back the build for a week this patch combines 0.7.87 with this one
  

0.7.87 change list
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/979640/view/3029205057045935204

Cepheus Protocol Novelization is now available on Steam Store!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1387390/Cepheus_Protocol_Novelization

Keep in mind this book takes place before, during and a bit after Pandemic mode and follows dozens of characters around the events of CP. It will hint to our year 2 content(So spoilers if you analyze it close enough). Its not for the faint of heart (Very violent deaths and all that). You can pick it up for $3.99 now!

It will also be available on the Steam Store as an DLC on October 1st if you prefer to get it there! Just keep in mind on our website we make 99% of the sale the rest goes to PayPal

Feel free to use the #💬lore-questions on our Discord to discuss the ramifications of what the book brings to the universe and how it will affect the game as we start to work in story elements presented in the novel

It should be noted the next few patches will also focus on nerfing some of the units like the Apache as they are greatly overpowered. This will include further refinements with the health/damage tables being further adjusted for other units as well. Stay tuned!



Starting Friday night we have pushed out the started inklings of Operation Hammer Down. Our first major patch which targets adding more replayability and simulating a larger world to fight in. We want to hear what you folks have to say about how it plays so we can properly focus the aspects that need the most attention. After we feel they are in a good place overall we will shortly afterwards put up a factions public beta.

• Finalized Open World Map
  
• Doctrines
  
• Juggernaut
  
• Little Guy enemies
  
• Leviathan
  
• Revised Power Generation System
  

[h2]Patch Notes - 0.7.87 Leviathan Tweaks & Bridge Fixes[/h2]



The pre-beta opt in will be removed in the next week. Please remeber to finish your old game sessions on them ASAP!

There is an economy rebalance coming soon. Also quite a few refinements are coming to the Worm/Leviathan
Share your feedback here on the Worm/Leviathan
https://steamcommunity.com/app/979640/discussions/0/3113646913571960146/

[h2]Patch notes from this patch[/h2]

• Adjustment to hospital roof collisions
  
• Adjusted destructible bridge BP to be more accurate and with more collision 'under' the surface as a safety
  
• Added blocking volumes under the 'connecting segments' of Carnside Bridge
  
• Added a crash safety to the horde saving
  
• Various Collision Fixes in Grid 06
  
• Infected Animations improved across the board
  
• M9 Animations tweaked to look better
  
• Added crash safeties for the patrol path finalization
  
• Added 'Enable' toggle options for Juggernauts and Leviathans to the custom game settings Updated the sliders with an ON/OFF mode for this purpose
  
• Hid the relevant suboptions if Juggernauts/Leviathans are off Ensured said settings save/load
  
• Used Juniardi's new assets to drastically clean up the Treasure Island minimap
  
• Also fixed an issue with that minimap having offset
  
• Also fixed the Lock Icon on Treasure Island minimap
  
• Added a safety to bridge destructible segments to try to 'warp' units that fall through back up on top
  
• Updated DamageCharacters to respect damage resist types when calculating the damage they've taken
  
• Updated the bridge with damage resistances to try to make it fully immune to damage from any source other than powerful explosives (infected could still break it) (result: bridges won't die from infected melee attacking things on top of it, now)
  
• Added crash safeties to the horde controller debug
  
• Fence and other "shoot thru" object collision conversion
  
• Fixed some bridge management actors/move proxies referencing the wrong bridges
  
• Implemented a fix for 'bridge fall through':
  
• Leviathan Reduced size (from .8 to .5)
  
• Leviathan Increased swipe attack speed from .5 to .6
  
• Leviathan Reduced the chance of bite attack usage to 50% when it's available (rather than 90%)
  
• Leviathan Reduced melee cooldown setting (which affects a lot of things) to 1 second, resulting in a more aggressive feel
  
• Leviathan Reduced move cooldown interval to 50 seconds (from 1 min)
  
• Leviathan Increased liklihood of performing a move
  
• Leviathan Started on an 'aerial attack vomit' montage (for later)
  
• Updated the Leviathan extra spawns to deal a new 'LightMelee' damage type
  
• Leviathan Which deals 66% less damage to player structures than it does to other targets
  
• Leviathan Fixed melee attacks not respecting custom 'melee damage type'
  
• Added a safety to when the Leviathan finishes emerging from burrow state to try to prevent falling through the world
  
• Added a safety to try to prevent Leviathan entering an infinite animation loop on emerging from the ground
  
• Started on Leviathan 'horde behavior' (not currently enabled, not quite done):
  
• Changes to Presidio fence collision settings
  
• Fixed destroyed bridges failing to load the ability to be repaired
  
• Fixed destroyed bridges failing to be 'repair-able' if they are destroyed multiple times in a single session (w/o saving/loading)
  
• Fixed a visibility-flickering issue if you repair a bridge multiple times in a single session (w/o saving/loading)
  

[h2]Patch notes from public beta period[/h2]
Here is a patch list compiled for your convenience so you can understand all that has been changed/adjusted in the public beta.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/3028077442854098574
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/5196558685239608610
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/4492868685540062205
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/2892963558047527966
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/2892962924328296977

Cepheus Protocol Novelization is now available on Steam Store!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1387390/Cepheus_Protocol_Novelization

Keep in mind this book takes place before, during and a bit after Pandemic mode and follows dozens of characters around the events of CP. It will hint to our year 2 content(So spoilers if you analyze it close enough). Its not for the faint of heart (Very violent deaths and all that). You can pick it up for $3.99 now!

It will also be available on the Steam Store as an DLC on October 1st if you prefer to get it there! Just keep in mind on our website we make 99% of the sale the rest goes to PayPal

Feel free to use the #💬lore-questions on our Discord to discuss the ramifications of what the book brings to the universe and how it will affect the game as we start to work in story elements presented in the novel

It should be noted the next few patches will also focus on nerfing some of the units like the Apache as they are greatly overpowered. This will include further refinements with the health/damage tables being further adjusted for other units as well. Stay tuned!



Starting Friday night we have pushed out the started inklings of Operation Hammer Down. Our first major patch which targets adding more replayability and simulating a larger world to fight in. We want to hear what you folks have to say about how it plays so we can properly focus the aspects that need the most attention. After we feel they are in a good place overall we will shortly afterwards put up a factions public beta.

• Finalized Open World Map
  
• Doctrines
  
• Juggernaut
  
• Little Guy enemies
  
• Leviathan
  
• Revised Power Generation System
  

[h2]Patch Notes - 0.7.86 Horde Improvements & Further Light Tweaks[/h2]



The pre-beta opt in will be removed in the next week. Please remeber to finish your old game sessions on them ASAP!

There is an economy rebalance coming soon. Also quite a few refinements are coming to the Worm/Leviathan
Share your feedback here on the Worm/Leviathan
https://steamcommunity.com/app/979640/discussions/0/3113646913571960146/

[h2]Patch notes from this patch[/h2]

• Adjusted Dormant horde sphere move order speed to be more often
  
• Adjusted infected horde move order speed to be slightly move often (6 seconds intead of 8)
  
• Fixed an over-tuned movement component optimization that was breaking unrendered hordes/Chelsey from capturing as effectively when the camera was not facing them
  
• Fixed several Presidio infection zones being in the wrong positions (resulted in widgets being misplaced)
  
• Fixed Presidio spawn nodes not being properly scaled or placed (resulted in poor wandering and defensive infected spawning)
  
• Generated weapon LODs.
  
• Weapon Material fixes.
  
• Added Bridge move proxies to smooth out more types of horde attacks
  
• Fixed a 'bridge reference' on Angel Island thinking it connecting to the Treasure Island dockyard when it actually connected to Gold Cove
  
• Added logic for a Horde Controller to bypass the freespawns limit for its first set of spawns (to prevent situations where a horde would initialize while all slots were taken up): should only be about 7 spawns per, so likely not an expensive change in exchange for smoother horde capture attempts.
  
• Fixed Horde attacks erroneously trying to assign 'attack targets' when there were none (resulting in stalled hordes)
  
• Updated Horde Attacks to try to issue a move order anyway even if there are attack targets issued (in case some infected don't think they should chase due to distance or some such, no longer should be a problem)
  
• Added a basic distance limit to the Juggernaut's rock throw (8000 units for now)
  
• Fixed gate navigation being 'too wide'
  
• Fixed gate doors going 'too short', so gates open completely now
  Result: Vehicles can fit again (and there's a 'minor issue' if you open two adjacent gates: made a Trello card for it
  
• Fixed wrong JLTV exhaust emitter.
  
• Added a proxy move actor between two nodes on Presidio (PRSG5 and PRSG2)
  
• Adjusted a spawn pod in PRSG5 that was resulting in stuck infected
  Result: Infected seem to be able to move between PRSG5 and PRSG2 easier now
  
• Adjusted an infection pod in the Treasure Island Dockyard that may have resulted in some 'stuck infected'
  
• Fixed the Alcatraz spawn node having erroneous bounty spawn and stuckpoint references
  
• Added a new 'proxy move' system for some command zone capture points: in some cases, certain move orders were deemed 'too far' at an engine level, so proxy 'move targets' were added to certain zones to make it possible for hordes to move towards their designated targets without getting stuck or just sitting still
  
• Used the 'proxy move' system to fix hordes having issues moving between Alcatraz and Treasure Island
  
• Lowered Shawnee health to 160 (from 800)
  
• Hooked up basic 'headlights' onto each vehicle
  
• Fixed a crash with the Shawnee
  
• Updated WeatherManager to clear out any existing particle systems if there's a mismatch between incoming FX and current or target FX (for swapping between high/low quality weather effects, or console-command setting weather)
  
• Added 'WeatherEffectQuality' to the advanced video options (for toggling between regular and low quality weather particle effects)
  
• Updated Minimap settings for Treasure Island (new minimap, and new settings to accommodate its size and color)
  
• Also updated Alcatraz to not be auto-captured when playing Treasure Island on its own (Unlike in the Open World map)
  
• Updated the Weapon Flashlight default intensity to 120 lumens (per Dimitry)
  
• Added a safety to the attack-move reissue that was responsible for crashes (should resolve the crash)
  

[h2]Patch notes from public beta period[/h2]
Here is a patch list compiled for your convenience so you can understand all that has been changed/adjusted in the public beta.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/3028077442854098574
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/5196558685239608610
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/4492868685540062205
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/2892963558047527966
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/2892962924328296977

Cepheus Protocol Novelization is now available on Steam Store!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1387390/Cepheus_Protocol_Novelization

Keep in mind this book takes place before, during and a bit after Pandemic mode and follows dozens of characters around the events of CP. It will hint to our year 2 content(So spoilers if you analyze it close enough). Its not for the faint of heart (Very violent deaths and all that). You can pick it up for $3.99 now!

It will also be available on the Steam Store as an DLC on October 1st if you prefer to get it there! Just keep in mind on our website we make 99% of the sale the rest goes to PayPal

Feel free to use the #💬lore-questions on our Discord to discuss the ramifications of what the book brings to the universe and how it will affect the game as we start to work in story elements presented in the novel