Reality Break Patch 2 has gone live as version 1.00.2.
Courtney's notes: By far the most substantial upgrade in this patch is for object spawning performance. It necessitated a comprehensive pass over the entire game's spawning pipelines for gameplay visuals and UI elements. This will especially help players using HDDs, but it also helps heavy combat run much faster on SSDs, including on my nine year old PC with a 970GTX.
Also, I have adjusted the balance for analysis, crafting, unique item drop rates, and more to address player feedback directly, as well as making chassis items drop from destroyed enemy ships.
I've included another set of improvements to quality of life, such as the frequently requested Story Skip option for players who have unlocked the true ending.
Players who wished for the "forced story breaks" to work differently - I have heard you, I understand, and I agree that these could feel unnecessarily punitive. I have addressed this in a way that preserves my vision for the surprise factor. When the timeline ruptures, you can now continue playing in a Severed Timeline for as long as you like. When you're ready to continue the storyline, you can enter the Chaos Vortex and resume the campaign. I hope this feels better, and I appreciate those who left this helpful feedback.
In addition, I have been thrilled to see some players take on the mantle of investigating modding the game (including a couple of super cool test mods already released in the discord, as well as a modding tool and a save file editor). I have added a small first pass at a modding section to these patch notes to reflect my continuing work to support that aspect of the game.
Finally, I am pleased to reveal a brief roadmap indicating where the game will likely go. Even though Reality Break isn't a live service game, I love working on this game and I love the community that has coalesced around it, so I want to give it some more love.
Thank you very much!
~Courtney
Performance
- Implemented a massive overhaul to the game's handling of visual object spawning so that the vast majority of game visuals are now automatically pooled for faster creation. (dev note: I've been testing this extensively over the past week, but please keep an eye out for visuals that don't spawn correctly or that persist for too long and let me know)
- Greatly improved CPU and GPU memory usage across the board, with an emphasis on particle and UI texture memory.
- Greatly improved performance of Hurricane elite affix on planet-based maps.
- Improved performance of world pickups.
Stability
- Added proper handling to prevent certain rare game crashes.
Quality of Life
- If you have completed the Story Campaign and reached the True Ending, you can now skip all story content when creating a new pilot or breaking an existing one.
- Tutorial progress is now saved in the Reality Stream rather than per-Pilot, which means new Pilots created to try different Aptitudes or to restart Ironman runs will no longer be repeatedly taught the basics.
- Added a flyout when auto-looting a resource drop to make it more obvious it happened.
- Increased the default Resource stack size by 100%, and doubled all of the stack size Specialist Upgrades as well.
- When using Retrieve on an item in the Quantum Frame, automatically equip it if there's an empty equip slot.
- Added an indicator to show that the recurring villain had been defeated during the current cycle.
- Added gamepad cursor teleport when opening the side mission Challenge Level rewrite UI.
- Added Stash cursor sweep, allowing you to hold down the stash/retrieve input while sweeping across ship inventory items do move them in bulk.
- Reworked the story campaign flow so that, after the prologue, profile breaks are no longer forced by the story. Instead, you may continue playing indefinitely until you choose to go into the Chaos Vortex and continue the campaign.
- Demo profiles are now immediately imported into the full version without requiring Story Campaign completion.
Content
- Chassis items of all rarities can now randomly drop from enemies once crafting has been unlocked. (dev note: until I add this to the loot filter UI, it can be disabled by setting LootFilterAllowChassisDrops in UserConfig.xml to false)
- Added a tutorial popup that explains how the recurring villain works.
- The Voi'ner capital ship now spawns on side missions located in Voi'ner Shipyards.
Balance
- Increased the drop rate of Epic rarity items by 100%, and increased the drop rate of other unique items by 400%.
- Greatly reduced Crafting cost scaling with item level and affix category when applying affix fragments.
- Added item level scaling to Crafting budgets, increasing them beyond previous caps.
- Rebalanced Analysis: durations have been slashed by around 10x, Credit costs have been upped by the inverse. (dev note: This will serve as a better foundation for future changes, provide a Credit sink and make targeting currency gains worthwhile, and facilitate far more Discoveries. As usual, I'll be monitoring feedback.)
- Specialist Upgrade Resource costs are now also reduced by the Aetheric Negotiation talent. (dev note: Credit cost reductions are fixed as well.)
- Extracted affix fragments that were already boosted via the Vibrant Formulation talent now cost +100% to apply to new items.
- Map enemy levels are now either the story mission level or the side mission Challenge Level. Enemies are then also upgraded based on the selected Omen level. Reward scaling has been adjusted.
- Station and trader inventory item levels are now increased to the last completed side mission Challenge Level.
- Shielded enemy ships now scale their shielding with Omen level.
- Affixes that are guaranteed on unique items, such as Engine Thrust on most Propulsion and Stabilizer items, can no longer gain an Affix Type rewrite or the bonus from the A Beautiful Cortex talent.
- Reduced chassis bonus budget multiplier from 2 to 1.5, and added a cap that scales by +3 with item rarity.
- Haste scales less strongly with item level and more strongly with rarity.
- The aptitude trait Exponential Programming has been reduced from +20 item level to +8, and the Accessory Overlord trait has been increased from +100% to +400%.
Polish
- Improved the description string for the Multiplex Analysis talent to clarify that its effect is automatic.
- Improved multiple description strings for the Timespace Cache talent to clarify its restrictions.
Modding
- Added various crafting variables to ScientistSettings.xml: CraftingBaseBudget, CraftingBudgetFromRarity, CraftingBudgetItemLevelScalar, CraftingBudgetChassisMultiplier, CraftingFragmentPrimaryAffixCost, CraftingFragmentFateAffixCost, CraftingFragmentItemLevelCostScalar
- Data-driving for item definition XMLs: BaseAnalysisCostLevelExponent, BaseAnalysisCostRarityExponent
- Custom defined items can now point to existing icons using IconName in their XML definition.
- Added fallback display for defined item's UniqueDescription if there isn't an entry in the string table.
- Neutral Propulsion inputs also trigger abilities on the player ship's equipped items.
Bug fixes
- fixed certain translated strings not using the correct formatting, leading to improper display in East Asian languages (dev note: This included over a hundred instances of improperly formatted strings, mostly in Japanese, but across all East Asia languages. My apologies for not catching these sooner. I have implemented automated error detection so that future problems will be caught immediately.)
- fixed Skills flagged to scale with total ship damage output double-dipping into critical damage
- fixed possibility of applying both Compressed Fabrication and Vibrant Formulation subtalents of the advanced crafting talent Diversified Assembly on the same item by backing out to the main menu between acquiring a chassis and applying fragments (dev note: if an existing item has enough unapplied fragments to reduce the remaining budget below 0, it will not be possible to apply fragments to that item until enough have been removed to bring it within budget; and previously unapplied crafting budgets will be reinitialized using the new math)
- fixed showing Equip Boost line on item tooltips before it was unlocked on that character
- fixed Favored Affix multiplier display string causing color bleed to subsequent affix strings
- fixed ship rotation for tank controls not respecting delta time
- fixed Favored Stat bonus not being updated after rewriting an Affix Type to/from the relevant affix, or if the relevant affix was added due to rewriting an item's rarity
- fixed certain buffs from equipped items not hiding correctly when the player ship is warping through a jump gate
- fixed cost discount from Aetheric Negotiation talent not working on Specialist Upgrades
- fixed items like Resources and Affix Fragments having higher priority than Equipment items when sorting various inventories
- fixed untranslated character dialogue text appearing in speech bubbles after the player has unlocked the Booming Reformulation talent later in the game
- fixed being unable to cycle loadouts while the cursor was hovering an item
- fixed weapons and drones occasionally not firing if multiple ones of the same type were simultaneously equipped and the frame rate was lower than their adjusted cooldown rate
- fixed missing icons for Max Shields and Blast Radius affix types
- fixed certain indicator icons on Rewrite Dialog being clickable
- fixed various layout issues with Aptitude selection UI
- fixed incorrect formatting in Skill tooltip when displaying an altered maximum level cap
- fixed needing to restart the game before an unlockable Aptitude's modification to Skill cooldowns took effect
- fixed text label for credits gained from selling scrap potentially overflowing the station dialog UI
- fixed Asteroid Barrage entities not playing destruction fx when they expire
- fixed being unable to chain-cast Negate Existence and Asteroid Barrage with fast enough Skill cooldowns
- fixed improper visual scale for pooled ability effects that modulate their visual size with ability level, stats such as Blast Radius, and other multipliers
- fixed a certain Aptitude being able to chain-cast Ship Regeneration for free
- fixed Vibrant Formulation talent granting a 200% boost to Fate Affixes instead of 100% (dev note: it always said "up to 200%" but was granting 200% no matter what)
- fixed certain entities still appearing on radar even if their root visual was hidden
- fixed beam type weapons spawning their beam fx visuals in the wrong direction if overlapping a collision trigger, such as for a interactive object
- fixed shields up effect playing when player ship was hidden while jumping in after death and respawn
- fixed sorting of inventory item UI scrap and locked indicators
- fixed text outline coloring on Codex set names
- fixed speech bubble dialog being locked at a high scale factor no matter the screen setup
- fixed more visual effects not being hidden when player ship is hidden, such as when jumping to a different map
- fixed mission CL rewrite cost displaying incorrectly when first shown
- fixed codex set bonus name outline coloration by rarity
- fixed rewritten UI fx interaction with pooling
- fixed current side mission not auto-abandoning when beginning the story-mode fracture mission
- fixed input bug if abandoning the fracture side mission before the waves had begun spawning
- fixed always skipping story on broken profiles
- fixed completed mission objective text locking to incorrect scale
- fixed speech bubble dialog being locked at a high scale factor no matter the screen setup
- fixed enemy health bars occasionally getting stuck on-screen without being anchored to anything
- fixed the Foe Undermine talent applying twice
- fixed Through The Looking Glass skill not incorporating Tactician bonus
- fixed astronomical collision damage inflicted on the player's ship at higher map levels
- fixed Superheated preventing pickup of world drops while afterburning
- fixed Voltaic Fortifier unique description string not dynamically changing when Unique Mod Type was rewritten