First, we want to apologize for the uncharacteristically long time between updates. This update necessitated substantial backend changes, which required more work and thus more testing than a typical update. We had to break everything, fix it, break it again, fix it again, and then test everything that we’ve added and fixed, so it’s taken a bit longer than normal to release. The great news is that there’s a ton of new stuff in this update for all players, including both visible changes and stuff that you probably won’t notice but will make everyone’s experiences better. There are a lot of significant changes in this build, so we’ve been testing it both internally and with the community on the Discord for the last several weeks. Even with extended testing, we expect to find new bugs once it’s widely available. Please submit your crash logs and let us know about any other bugs you find on the Discord or Steam forums. [h1]Backend Changes[/h1] We’ve moved The Anacrusis to a new backend provider. This should improve issues with downtime due to provider issues and all our Crossplay lobbies to be updated in real-time as players change the game settings or player loadouts for banners and titles. It’s also one step closer to our eventual goal of running a true offline mode. From a player perspective, almost everything is the same as it was in the previous patch. Matchmaking works within the same constraints as it always did, Crossplay between the Steam, Microsoft Store, and Xbox versions of the game works, and party codes work to join games. The backend changes allow us to change the way in-game rewards are distributed to players, but we needed to roll out the new back end before we could begin work on the rewards system in earnest. While we finish up that system, we’ve temporarily made all the dances, cosmetic items, matter compiler re-rolls, and the Rocket Rocket Launcher available to everyone. We expect to roll out the new system in an update in the next month or two, but before we reach 1.0, we have to reset player progress for most earned items. [h1]Engine Update[/h1] With this update, we’ve moved The Anacrusis to the latest version of Unreal 4.27. With that change, we’ve already fixed several crash bugs as a result of this change, including the bug that caused crashes between levels for people with very fast computers. We’re currently testing fixes internally for the last few DX12 crashes and expect to reenable DirectX 12 support for everyone in the next several patches. DirectX 12 support will allow us to improve framerate dramatically, especially on newer cards. It will also make it possible to support perf and image quality features that are available on newer GPUs. [h1]More (and More Audible) Survivor Voices[/h1] As part of this update, we’ve added hundreds of new voice lines. These are mostly concentrated in Episode 4, which you can hear today, and Episode 5, which will be available in the next month or so. But there are also a large number of new lines in all episodes that include special alien callouts (”Did you hear a Gooper?”) to general story (Lance shares things he loves, Liu’s relationship with computers) as well as lines for specific power ups that didn’t exist the last time we recorded voice lines. We've also added more callouts for downed characters and respawn events. These lines should have subtitles for English, but we’ll add the localized lines for other languages in an upcoming patch. We’ve also done a top-to-bottom pass on the priority of all voice lines, so the Survivors should no longer interrupt important story or mission lines with transient callouts. They should also be smarter about calling out objects that another Survivor has already mentioned or that they’ve already used. Now if you hear a Survivor mention a Matter Compiler, they can see a MC that they haven’t claimed a perk from. Finally, we’ve adjusted the audio mix so that Survivor callouts should have priority over most other sounds in the game, making them more legible for all players, even in chaotic battles. [h1]AI Director Adjustments[/h1] We’ve made substantial changes to the AI Director for this update, which should reduce the frequency of unwanted double special spawns in co-op mode. Additionally we’ve added several new behaviors to the Special aliens in co-op mode. Expect your special aliens to be sneakier and/or more aggressive depending on the class. Additionally we’ve changed the way the Director handles aliens that it believes are stuck in geometry. Previously, the game killed those aliens, which meant their deaths were attributed to the players. This would dramatically increase game’s measure of player skill, which would increase the number of aliens it was trying to spawn, which would increase the likelihood that aliens would get stuck in a spawn. This feedback loop could unintentionally increase the difficulty of games. Now the Director simply despawns those aliens, which doesn’t increase the game’s perception of the player’s lethality. This should make the game feel fun and challenging without being overwhelming for players of all skill levels playing both Episodes and Versus. A side-effect of this change impacts Versus mode, where players on the Alien team would occasionally be killed by the Director when it thought they were stuck. Now if the Director thinks you’re stuck, it will trigger a respawn loop, where it will warp you to the leading player and let you choose where to respawn you. When you reenter the game, you’ll have the same health you did when you despawned. [h1]Episode 4 Updates[/h1] In addition to the new voice lines added to help players understand what’s happening in Episode 4, we’ve also cleaned up a bunch of places where aliens get stuck in Episode 4, added new alien spawn spots, fixed a bunch of collision bugs, and retuned each of the Episode 4 events to be more impactful. There are several spots we know of where aliens are still getting stuck or having difficulty finding a path that lets them attack enemies, but if you spot one, please grab a screenshot and post it in the #report-a-bug channel in the Discord. We’ve also significantly reworked the Episode 4 finale. We’ve provided more clear pathing for Survivors between the three reactors, added a path that aliens can use to move from the reactor room to the control room (so aliens left outside can still attack players after the control room event starts), and simplified the path from the spawn to the reactor room. We’ve also added placeholder sounds to the reactor room, which will be toned down significantly in the next patch. [h1]Player Viewpoint is the Intended Height Again[/h1] This is a weird one, and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit. We’re not exactly sure how this happened, but at some point in 2022, the default player height was reduced fairly significantly and no one noticed. We’ve been experimenting with player movement speed during this update process and we noticed that the player height seemed low versus the common aliens. So we’ve reverted the change. [h1]Reduced Common Alien Speed[/h1] We’ve reduced the common alien speed to match the speed of a full-health Survivor. We feel that it makes the game less punishing and more fun at the Normal difficulty level, but we’re extremely interested in feedback from players on this change, especially for people who tend to play on Intense or Intenser difficulty. [h1]New Audio[/h1] We’ve continued adding environmental sounds to many parts of the game that didn’t previously have them. These include spark and bubble sounds where there are relevant VFX, beeps and boops when doors open or close, made adjustments to the balance of all weapons, including special weapons, so that the audio mix is less fatiguing for longer sessions. We’ve rebalanced all the special alien announce cries that they make on spawn, so they should be more perceptible when we intend for them to be more perceptible. We’ve added pain noises to all Survivors, to signal to players that they’re taking damage. Some of them are a bit much and will likely be removed or toned down in an upcoming update. [h1]Lots of Smaller Changes[/h1] [list] [*]Increased the network tick rate for the game significantly [*]Increased the heap size on all platforms, which should help minimize some of the weirder crashes we’ve seen [*]Added AFK mode for alien players in Versus [*]Fixed laggy scoring for Versus mode. Previously, it would take a few moments for the score to register correctly at the start of a new map, now scores for both teams should be correct from the beginning of the round. [*]Added tutorials for the current alien Special class to the inventory/tab menu of Versus mode [*]We’ve begun utilizing more aggressive precomputed visibility on each level in the game. This should improve performance dramatically, especially on lower-end systems. We’ve done a handful of levels so far and will continue adding more in upcoming patches. [*]We’ve also started using mesh streaming on all platforms. This lets us load a lower-quality asset at first and then replace it with higher quality assets when needed. This should help performance on all systems as well. [*]Updated the DLSS plugin to the latest version [*]Added kill confirmations for specials to hitmarkers [*]Players joining games will be routed to Survivors that are alive first. [*]Players rejoining Versus games will be routed to the team that they were previously on if there’s a slot available [*]Adjusted the holographic sights to work the way holographic sights typically work in other games [*]Added the -nomods & -noworkshop startup commands for modders to test with. -nomods will disable all mods, both local and Steam Workshop. -noworkshop will disable only the Steam Workshop installed mods. These are useful for debugging/testing addons if a modder already has a version of the same mod on the workshop. [/list]