Hello everybody! We are now less than one week away from our next open playtest, and we are thrilled to welcome all of you back to the battlefield to fight for survival. We have been working hard to implement as many updates as possible for this upcoming session. Our primary focus has been on this:
Custom settings for the player.
FOV slider that many of you have been asking for is now in place.
You can now choose a field of view from 70 to 110. With this change, we had to rewrite our aim-down sight code so that it works with different types of FOV. In our internal tests, this feature has received very positive feedback from the players. Standard FOV has been 80.
Keybinding is something that we have added to. So now you can set your custom inputs in the game settings that fit you best.
Mouse senses got an overlook and it's now easier to set up.
First step to make it easier to play with friends.
We also have a first version of joining friends who already are inside a server. You can do that in the Steam overlay like you do in other games. Join a friend or invite a friend to a server. This is something we will keep working on like lobbies and so on in the menu.
Weapons & Gunplay
Last official version of the game all weapons had too much bloom in ads. This gave the feeling of a bad hit registration. In this case, this had nothing with the server performance to do. Is about a hard heat bloom for all weapons in ads. To prevent this we have now a new recoil code in the game with different types of recoil patterns. Now it's less bloom and up to the player to master the recoil. We hope that we still maintain the feeling of the weapon that most of you liked. For this pass, all the weapons in the game have been overhauled to feel better and perform greater. ARs are more powerful now and SMG are better at close range.
All weapon sights have been overhauled too. RDS ( red dot sights ) have a new shader on them performing more realistic and a new “dot” texture has been added to them.
All sniper rifle scopes have been reworked. Now they feel better and not as off as before.
Our explosive weapons have been overhauled with changes in the projectile's velocity/gravity, sound effects, and damage fall-off.
All the weapons still need tweaks and polish to make them perfect but we hope you feel the difference. We still have a lot of work, one nasty bug is that when you reload the weapon and then aim in the middle of the reload animation the wrong aim offset adds to the weapon. Just aim down sight again and it will be the right aim offset. We are going to fix this, we promise.
Our damage models on the soldiers are now working as it meant to work. We have 3 types of damage zones on the players. Low damage: Arms & Legs. Standard damage: Torso. High Damage: Head.
Nothing groundbreaking but in our last playtest low damage zones didn't work.
We still going to be aware of all feedback around the weaponplay we want it to be great. We are not aiming for a realistic tactical shooter experience. We want something between realistic and arcade.
Keep developing content that is missing and new features.
Let's talk about the radioactive fog. In the first official version of the game, the fog was kinda meh. Most of it was placeholders but our idea is that the fog will have a bigger impact on the game. The fog is a tempo changer in the match, slowing down the fighting for a while. A perfect time to spend time in your base building up the defense. But if you want to fight outside you need to be prepared.
Last, playtest all you needed to do was press the gas mask key (G) to equip the gas mask, after that, you were safe in the fog. Now we have started to develop a more depth to the fog system. One of them is the gas mask.
Now you need to loot gas mask filters. They will wear out when they are exposed to radioactivity. When you see the status on your gas mask filter is low, change the filter. If you do not have any clean filters in your inventory you are in trouble.
In the world, you can find clean filters and used filters. Now you are thinking, what can I do with used filters? We have a new construction item called the Gas Mask Filter Station that you can build inside your captured Stronghold. In that station, you can clean used filters and use them again. So be sure to loot a lot of filters to be able to fight outside the radioactive fog.
We are also working on radioactive zones on the map. In them, you can find bigger loot stashes and better loot. But these places will drain your filters way faster.
All of this new system is a work in progress but the main goal is that the fog is now a threat for all the soldiers.
But be sure to have filters on you!
Our third map Kolarin is ready for testing! Kolarin is right now our biggest map in STRIDEN. It takes place on the Northern Swedish / Finnish border. Populated with a big military airfield, a wood industry area, a small village with a Scandinavian church, and surrounded by big fields with trenches. All Strongholds are in the middle of the map with close distance between them. Our internal testers say this is the best map so far in STRIDEN so we hope that you are going to like it.
We have also added loot boxes to the new map.
But this map needs a lot of testing and work before we can call it done.
We have updated the stamina system. Now it behaves more naturally and with our new sound code for it, it sounds much more realistic. You can hear what state your soldiers are in with and without your gas mask. This gives the game a more immersive feeling to the players.
Fall damage systems have also been reworked to behave better.
We can't wait to see you all in STRIDEN again. We really believe that we have something new in the FPS genre. It's a hard task to do, but together with you, we can do this together. Invite all your friends and spread the word. That will help us a lot to keep developing this game.
Here is a list of all the changes and new features we have done in the last 1,5 months:
Weapon/Gunplay
● New RDS sights shader
● All ARs got tweaked and a new recoil pattern.
● All LMGs received more damage and a new recoil pattern.
● Removed fire mode select waiting for correct sounds.
● Mosin Nagant got it from 50 damage to 75 damage at body hit.
● FN FAL got a lower fire rate and less recoil
● SVT-40 gets the same damage as before but more kick to it and slower fire rate.
● Rifle Muzzle Flashes get smaller “sparks/embers”
● Tweaks to all sniper scope weapons. Less zoom-in sights and new cross-hair texture
to Mosin & SVT40.
● M26 LMG Gives more damage & 2 new variants added.
● M60 Gives more damage.
● Weapons with lower damage curve in close range change to full damage at close
range.
● Swedish K Drum version animation ADS fire loop fire bug fixed.
● Hammer melee collision bug fix.
● Assault Dynamite Stick more velocity speed to throw.
● Shotgun got 5+ more damage.
● Correct Damage Zones on Soldiers.
● Grenade Launcher M79 Higher velocity and lower bullet drop + new sound effects
● GRK 48 Grenade Launcher + Higher velocity and lower bullet drop + new projectile
sound effect
Sounds
● Sound delay bug on the first shoot & reload fixed.
● New stamina soundsystem
● M79 Grenade Launcher Sounds
● Lower the fog alarm sound and duration
● Lower radius on footsteps
● New voice for Support Class
● GRK 48 new projectile sound effect
● Snow / Ice footsteps
● Gas Mask Muffles Soldiers' Voices.
Gameplay
● Gas mask / Fog overhaul ( Work in progress )
● New Gas Mask UI ( Work in progress )
● Updated inventory UI ( Work in progress )
● Updated deploy screen UI ( Work in progress )
● Tweaked Fall Damage
● Outside map border ( Only in Kolarin so far )
● Lootboxes ( Only in Kolarin so far )
● Vending Machine / Loot Storage functions and UI ( Work in progress )
● New map Kolarin ( Work in progress )
● Less pickup delay on loot.
● Tweaked ragdolls on soldiers
● Sentrygun pass
Settings
● FOV Slider
● Mouse input changes
● Custom key inputs
● Select Mic Input In-Game
● Invite & Join a Steam Friend
Bug Fixes / Performance
● New lightning and optimization work to all maps
● Tweaked post-process effects for better performance
● Airdrops use better lods
● New lightning and optimization in Strongholds
● Moose Tank projectile causes server crash.
● Netcode bug fixes for fewer crashes
● Removed Snow shader on soldiers for better performance
● Removed Snow shader for Radioactive bear and no attack VFX for better
performance.
● Lower resolution on sniper scopes for better performance.