Hello, Chasers! This month, we released a patch enhancing the private match experience, kicked off development on sanctions for toxic players, and made progress on the vegetation update. Additionally, we have an update on the Catalyst team’s work on improving clouds and tornadoes.
IMPROVEMENTS TO PRIVATE MATCHES AND SMALLER GROUPS
We recently released a patch that lowers the minimum group size required to start a private match on a dedicated server from 8 to 4 players. Additionally, we introduced a timer for groups with fewer than 4 players, allowing the match to start automatically if additional players aren’t found during matchmaking. These changes aim to make it easier for friends to quickly start a chase together. However, early player feedback suggested this may have unintentionally reduced the number of players in open lobbies. To address this, we’ve just released a hotfix that should resolve the issue and restore a better balance between fast matchmaking for small groups and keeping open lobbies populated.
This update also introduced UI improvements for passengers, allowing them to view the minimap and access important data, including wind speed (if the driver has the mesonet upgrade) and their own probe data.
You can read the full patch notes of this update here : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1107320/eventcomments/597391378287190879/
ADDRESSING PLAYERS TOXICITY
We’re aware that every online environment is bound to have a few bad eggs. We’ve been working on a solution to be able to put sanctions on players actively trying to be a nuisance online by abusing voice and text chat or having other unacceptable behaviors. In a future update that is soon to be entering its testing phase, we will be able to put timed or permanent restrictions to text and voice chat, or even to online play entirely to players that do not respect our terms of services. A more official and detailed communication will come regarding this in due time.
VEGETATION UPDATE PROGRESS
The vegetation update is a colossal task, but the technical work and preparation work is complete and the work in the world is starting.
Here is a screenshot of the playground where all the assets and biomes were crafted and layed out next to each others to validate the cohesion and general feel of the entire palette:
XQC PLAYS OUTBRK
Twitch/Kick streamer XQC played OUTBRK a few times this month and made a video on his youtube channel. This is very relevant for us since we made a bunch of easter eggs about him in the tutorial room. XQC played on his own (not a sponsored stream) and loved the game enough to come back to it a few days in a row. We made a post on reddit to show the easter eggs we planted about him:
https://www.reddit.com/r/xqcow/comments/1hveaak/outbrk_tutorial_room_xqc_easter_eggs/
Here is his youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShobJY-9fOg&ab_channel=xQc
CATALYST PROGRESS
This month, a second member of the Catalyst team joined the effort, and together they achieved a significant milestone: eliminating visual artifacts—specifically, the blue pixels around small objects—while preserving the performance benefits of cloud downsampling. This breakthrough comes after persistent work since the game's release, requiring extensive modifications to the cloud shaders. These changes not only resolve the issue but also lay the groundwork for upcoming enhancements and new tornado-related features. We are now entering the testing phase of these improvements and anticipate some iterations over the next couple of weeks before they are included in an upcoming update.
NEXT STEPS
The focus for the next month is to continue the development of the vegetation deployment in the world and continue to support Catalyst in their incredible work. We also started to look at bringing the Car Radio feature (car-to-car voice chat) in a future update. You can follow our progress on all our tasks here: https://trello.com/b/nsBmMfIa/outbrk-game
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Till next time,
-The OUTBRK Team