Hello all, We’re exactly three weeks into the Early Access - thank you for all the support you’ve given us!
Why "megadevlog"? Forgive us for using that kind of differentiation between this devlog and a regular one. We call it that way because it's really a huge amount of information. And because we won't post news like that regularly - we'll leave it for moments when we want to address a lot of different subjects in a detailed way.
So this Megadevlog will be focusing on something most important in the Early Access: your feedback.
Every feedback counts, positive and negative equally, as we released an early version of the game exactly to gather your opinions and your invaluable input (meaning: reviews, reports, suggestions, all of these).
Of course, we know the game has issues - we expected some to appear (didn't want to, but nonetheless expected) and we are happy you provided us with so much feedback. It helps us identify and solve problems, so overall: it helps us to make the game better than we ever could without your help.
Screenshot by TheGameTales
That said, we’ve prepared this quite long post about our nearest plans. And, as you might expect, our observations regarding the information you’re giving us every day (either thanks to posting on the forum, posting reviews or purely technical reports).
We know this might sound vague, but we’re working on making everything run smoothly as well as filling the huge open world of the Zone with content we either already prepared or are getting ready now.
This post is to let you know: yes, we hear you.
We try to respond to as many requests, comments, reviews, suggestions and reports as possible. We treat every single feedback or opinion we get seriously and analyse it as well as we can. We also wanted you to know that even if we don’t respond to your post, it’s only a matter of how time-consuming it is, not because we do not care. So if that happens: remember that we see you. Sometimes we just don’t have enough time to write to each one of you separately.
Our plan to stay in the Early Access for 6-10 months is not changing - that’s the goal we set when entering the EA.
So… what’s been going on with the development?
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The development process
The nearest plans include three main paths:
- planned work
- fixing and optimizing the game
- analyzing your feedback
Each of these paths may seem simple, but believe us: none of these is more or less important than the others.
- First, planned work is not something that is changing on the go. This is the part of development that needs to be scheduled and taken care of day by day, as the whole production takes years to complete. So if we say “this or that will be added" - that’s the case. Why? Because we’ve been working on it for a long time.
- Second, fixing and optimizing the game when the game enters Early Access. That’s quite opposite to the planned work, as it’s purely “spontaneous”. Meaning that your reports and information you share direct us to the things needing our attention.
- Third, analyzing your feedback is also something that we do every day. And despite it’s also quite spontaneous, it needs more time to think about. We’ll give you an example: imagine there’s trouble with weapon balance. As soon as it’s reported, we have to deeply analyze what is the cause of this, sometimes re-check if that’s a persistent thing or just an error - and what can we do about it. Only then can we shift our priorities to take those matters into our own hands.
Screenshot by Kevin Czaski
This seems quite easy, right? Well, in a perfect world - it would be. But the real trouble here is a question of how to give attention to the “unplanned” things when we also have the… well, planned ones to attend to.
Of course, given our previous experience with Early Access when Chernobylite 1 was released in Steam’s programme, we were definitely better prepared. Yet, Chernobylite 2 is much bigger (the map itself about 20x) and much more complex than the first game was. This means one thing: we really need to think about what, how and when we can do to make your experience the best.
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The plans
So maybe you already know this, but we want to make it clear: Chernobylite 2 is in development.
It simply means that a lot of content is not yet there and the one that is - needs polishing (or even more). When we started Early Access on March 6th, Chernobylite 2 had about 30-40% of the planned content prepared.
Pay attention to the word “planned” - as we were completely sure that your feedback would give us a lot of important suggestions. So changes or adjustments will take more time. But these were accounted for (as well as we could before entering EA).
The closest important update (let’s stick to Chernobylite 1 names and call it a “megapatch”) will be published in the upcoming weeks and with it, we will most probably prepare the specific roadmap that will show you what steps we’ve planned on taking next.
Besides adding more content, the update will fix a lot of current issues that cannot be addressed by a simple hotfix or a patch.
Screenshot by Nazerbanu
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AI Voices and translations
This is one of the “hottest” subjects here, on our Steam page. You pointed out that you encounter voices that hear like an AI. Well, that’s the case. But the reason behind it is quite simple: it’s production matters and every single line of AI voice will be replaced as soon as the proper voiceovers are ready.
When we entered the Early Access, the English voiceovers were almost ready. Yet, not finished.
There were bugs, the AI voices were still standing out sometimes. We used them only temporarily to make our work easier and quicker: it’s a lot better in the matter of production time to use placeholders which will later be swapped with real assets.
Imagine this process as sculpting: first, you chisel out some crude shapes, and then you gradually make smaller and smaller cuts. Before the sculpture is considered ready, the skilled craftsman has to “review” it piece by piece, making adjustments, corrections, checking every centimetre.
But let’s leave abstract examples and focus on technical reasons: AI-generated voiceovers serve as placeholders that allow us to test animation systems, cutscene lengths, and gameplay pacing.
They were never meant to replace voice actors, and they never will.
Screenshot by 🅕🅤🅝🅚🅦🅔🅛🅣
So yes, “placeholders” are exactly what they sound like: they are just holding the place for when the real asset comes in. A similar thing goes for translations. Yes, this should be done better and we’re working on it, so it’s nowhere near what we consider a finished state.
That’s one of our priorities to have them ready as soon as we can. So don’t worry if they are not yet ready or are buggy. We know it, we’re not leaving them inside the game looking like this, we had the work scheduled long before the EA started.
Perhaps we could’ve waited a bit more time and prepared them before entering the Early Access… but now it is done, the game's Early Access version is already published. We take responsibility for that and we’re sorry if you encountered any unfinished translations or voices.
What can we do now? Work on them as we planned. We’re doing it right now. When will that be? As always, we won’t sugar coat anything: we can't promise any precise date yet, we simply aim to add them as soon as possible. And that's also one of our top priorities.
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Translations - additional languages
Taking your feedback into consideration, we’ve noticed a lot of you asked for examples for Turkish or Portuguese translation.
We’ll be completely honest with you: we can’t make them ourselves. We need your help to make those unplanned translations happen. Why? Simply because of time and costs of preparing outsourced professional translations.
If you want your language to be present in Chernobylite 2, please comment below. Especially if you want to help us make that happen! We will direct you to people from our team that handle translations.
Screenshot by Jack Hammer
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Co-op
A lot of you also asked about co-op, so we will address that here: yes, you can invite your friends from your Steam list to play together in co-op missions in fractal worlds. You have to unlock these first. Usually, if you don’t rush through the gameplay, it’s achievable after about 2-3 hours of playing, depending on how you play, of course.
As our protagonist, Cole Grey, you play as a planewalker - a person able to travel through many different versions of one world. Later in the game, you learn to create different “personalities” which live in parallel universes and that you can summon on the go. No spoilers, but this also connects to how the co-op works and why, after you play the mission with your friends, everybody returns to their own world.
After the co-op mission finishes, every player returns to "his world" - with all the benefits of a successfully carrying on the task (like loot or experience).
Screenshot by marshmallowwuwu
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Your feedback and questions
We have many discussions going on Steam right now, and that’s great! That’s what we aspired to have: direct contact with you, our players. After all, our goal is to give you an entertaining experience.
There’s a pinned post which points out the current status of community requests. We will keep this updated to show you which proposals will be added to the game and which will be discussed (for example to assess how or if can we make them happen).
You can check this post & it's updates here (CLICK)
For you to better understand how your suggestions can impact the development process, let’s speak about that. What happens when you post your feedback, for example a clear suggestion of a particular change? Usually, when the change is small or cosmetic, we can deal with it on the go (like your suggestions about traders).
But what happens with more complex ones (or really huge ones)?
Screenshot by DragonwithinDivine
Let’s try to break it down step by step.
- First step: we gather more suggestions and discuss them internally as it would be impossible to address each one separately (that’s why we often can’t respond to your feedback immediately). We look into how your idea can impact the existing game infrastructure, what could break down or what processes can it change.
- Second step: let’s say your idea will fit into the game. Now we discuss how can we make it happen, what will it need to be implemented and how long could it take (just an early estimation).
- Third step: let’s say we estimated that it’s possible to implement, we know how to deal with it, how long will it take (more or less), what changes we have to make in the existing system. We schedule creating a new feature or tweaking an existing one simply to keep our workflow organised.
- Fourth step: we prototype the change and test it against the existing mechanics. It actually happens quite often that what sounds good as an idea, is really “not cooperating” as reality. So before we can let you enjoy it, we have to test it and re-check it at least a few times.
- Fifth step: when we are quite sure it will fit inside the game, we test it, we check for errors or bugs - only then we can release it along with an update.
So now we have our new feature!
Nonetheless, it’s impossible to predict and bug-hunt everything that hundreds or thousands of players will encounter (for example, because of so many different PC configurations). That’s why Early Access is so important - it gives us invaluable information on what needs to be polished, perfected… and sometimes simply re-done.
Of course, that whole process was oversimplified just to explain it in an easy way. But we hope now you understand better how we have to work on your suggestions. That said, let’s get back to your feedback.
Screenshot by Jack Hammer
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Suggestions under consideration
These suggestions are already under discussion or consideration, so we’re estimating how much would it take to make them happen and whether it’s possible for us or not.
- Weapon Jamming - we really like the idea! It could introduce a nice change into how the gameplay feels without nerfing the weapons or making enemies near immortal. Though we will discuss it, it could be really difficult to implement as it is not simply a matter of turning on/off, but rather require an entire new animations (which take quite some time to make).
- Using the Tablet in TPP – okay, that’s on us. We made the FPP mode because a lot of players suggested this. Then again, if you can now play fully in the first-person perspective… it would be great to be able to play full TPP experience, right? Despite we agree with the idea, we’re not yet sure how to make that happen - or rather if / how can we translate the tablet functionalities into the TPP. No promises, but we’re looking into it.
- Weapon Holstering – it is exactly how it sounds. No further explanation is needed, right?
- The ability to modify the main character's hairstyle and beard – we didn’t think that you would miss deeper character customization. Not because we don’t like it, but because we didn’t think the Zone would be a place where one could find a barber. Maybe we travelled there so much it just never occurred to us - it’s quite an empty and alienated place without even the simplest conveniences of everyday life. However, you explained how important it is for you to have at least some influence over their character’s appearance. So maybe we’ll give it a try.
- Possibility of walking - on a gamepad, we can walk simply by tilting the analogue stick more lightly. However, with a mouse and a keyboard, we can only run or sprint. We’ll check if we can change that.
- Possibility to disable head bobbing - it’s basically this “feel” of the head moving while the character is walking or running. That animation, while moving in FPP, can cause motion sickness in more sensitive individuals, so we’re looking into it.
Screenshot by Kevin Czaski
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What has already changed?
Here are a few of your suggestions that have already found their way into the game.
- FOV adjustment - We’ve added a slider, so now you can freely change FOV.
- Motion Blur Control - that’s also a slider, so you can increase, decrease or disable motion blur completely.
- Traders - you’ve pointed out that the amount of money is not enough, but also some items you were able to sell were overpriced. We’ve corrected these, but we still want to hear your feedback. Also, please note that the traders’ items and money are replenished every few days.
- First-Person Combat (FPP) - that was suggested by many players even before the Early Access started. We organized the Kickstarter campaign exactly for this reason: to make FPP mode happen.
Now, you can freely choose between FPP or TPP in the settings, even during combat, if you feel like experimenting with the feel of different perspectives. Of course, the FPP mode requires a lot of improvements and polishing, so despite a lot of you saying it’s already nice, it will be the subject of many changes.
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Okay, now let’s see how many of you reached this point - we’re curious mostly because of how big this post is.
Some of us don’t believe anyone could read it all, so if you’re reading this, post a comment saying what you like in our game or what could make Chernobylite 2 better.
As always, we encourage you to share your feedback with us. The particular sub-forums are here:
We also want to ask you to leave a review if you feel like sharing your experience with everybody!
As soon as we can, we will announce new changes, updates, fixes. Keep in touch with us and our posts / announcements. Do you have any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments, we'll try to answer as good and as precisely as possible at the moment.
Cheers!
The Farm 51