Hello Everyone,
We have been actively working on making Outbreak: Pandemic Evolution making the game that we personally want to play. That being said, it has been no secret that when we took over the project there were a lot of core gameplay mechanics, bugs, and features that were missing. We appreciate all your support and patience and can't wait to fix what is here and begin adding our new content and ideas. We are sure that you guys are going to enjoy the direction we are taking the game.
We'd also like to welcome industry veteran Scot Bayless to the team. Scot has decades of AAA game experience and will be heading up Outbreak: Pandemic Evolution and its team going forward.
We do have a Discord channel for those interested as well.
https://discord.gg/sarMhNa
Thanks
The Forthright West Development Team
CHANGES IN THIS BUILD
- COLLISION Alaskan Cedar branches no longer block attacks. This was happening from only one direction which is why you could sometimes end up getting shot by an AI while simultaneously being unable to shoot back. Chain link fences no longer block attacks.
- AI Player movement now affects ranged enemy accuracy. Basically, the faster you run, the lower their chance to hit. The effect is range dependent. At close range, running won't help you much. At long range, it'll help quite a bit. Crouching now affects enemy accuracy. As with running, range is a factor.
- PERFORMANCE Some general improvements have been made on the rendering side. This should get most players a noticeable boost in overall perf.
- CAMERA We've been tweaking the 3P camera to improve on the parallax problem that can cause you to shoot cover that's in front of you even if your sight shows a clear shot. It's still a work in progress and, at the moment, 3P aiming with long guns is a little frustrating since your target can be obscured by your head. When fighting with long guns, the 1P view is probably your better choice at the moment. The FOV change when aiming has been changed to zoom your view in a little tighter. This happens in both 3P and 1P and is intended to give you a better sight picture when you're aiming.
- UI / UX Changed the font in existing UI elements to improve readability, especially on smaller monitors. We have also added a version text to the HUD to help make reporting bugs easier going forward. Largest Fan Request! We also added a compass to the top of the HUD to help navigation and communication going forward.
WHAT'S NEXT
This isn't a full roadmap. At the moment, we're focusing on knocking down the really egregious bugs and on nailing the fun in moment to moment gameplay.
- AI More improvements in enemy AI. The goal here is to reward smart tactics, use of cover, etc. More distinct differences between types of enemy. Each type should present clear and unique tactical challenges. In combination, these could get pretty hairy, but then that's kind of the point.
- ONLINE While basic FPS gameplay works pretty well over the wire, there are a TON of serious sync issues in MP. These are mostly associated with unique game objects and with character spawning. Our goal for the next update is to clear this list of bugs completely and it's currently our #1 priority. We're investigating the potential of an option to use cloud-based game servers. We don't have a timeline for this, but it's something we believe can greatly enhance some of the bigger online features we're looking at.
- VISUALS There are a huge number of content bugs that need cleaning up. We probably won't get them all in the next patch, but we hope to clear many of them. Much of the game still needs lighting love. Expect to see continuing improvements as we work our way through this list.
- GAMEPLAY Along with the AI improvements, we're looking at, we have a growing list of gameplay tweaks. These range from weapon damage tuning to crafting tweaks and even major new features (which we cant' talk about just yet).
- CRASHES We've received some reports of in-game crashes. Hopefully our cleaning up of the latest code will help, however, if you experience a crash, please know that we are actively looking at the possibility that some of the desync issues may be causing this. We are looking to fix this as soon as possible.