Welcome to The Sawbuck Update for Brigador Killers. This is a content update that adds ten new missions to FREELANCE, the Sawbuck powersuit as both a vehicle that can be acquired and as an enemy threat, as well as some new lore entries and inventory items.
The game continues to be split into both STORY and FREELANCE for the time being and there is no new story content at this time. Our intention is that the next update before the end of the year will add story content.
This update also adds two technical things:
Steam cloud saves.
An experimental fix for the numerous bugs and crashes experienced by NVIDIA card users on more recent drivers.
For the first point, we noted a couple of weeks ago that once Steam Cloud is turned on, players can turn it off for a game by right clicking the game's title in the Library tab of the Steam client and going to Properties… > General. This should not be an issue for 99% of our players, but there are a few who have been playing the game across multiple devices and may not want to have their progress overwritten by whatever file ends up in the cloud.
The second point is the addition of a folder called mesa to the root directory. This folder contains four .dll files. The point of this addition is that the open source graphics library that Brigador Killers relies on (and what many other games still continue to use) has been running into infrequent problems, particularly on machines running Windows 11 with NVIDIA cards in the RTX 40 series or later, typically resulting in inconsistent crashes. This addition seems to not only reduce or outright eliminate the crashes, but also makes capture of the game (screenshots or recording) much easier. The downside is that this change may impact performance on your machine. If you experience worse performance than before, you can revert this change by browsing to the game's root directory and deleting the contents of the mesa folder (do not delete the folder itself). By default on Steam this location is C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Brigador Killers\\mesa. Note that if you end up reinstalling Brigador Killers or verifying the integrity of game files, this folder's contents will be restored.
A detailed list of the changes follows.
Gameplay
Specialty backpacks were previously able to store items of incorrect types, but not any more.
Explosive pallet added, can be encountered in new freelance missions.
Civilian worker unit added, can be encountered in new freelance missions.
Eddy now sells the Carlos, 84mm HEAT, Pinch, 100mm Chaff, Bricklayer, 60mm HE and LYAM.
Huang now sells 84mm HEAT, 44mm Beehive and 17mm HVAP.
Some props have been adjusted to be less sturdy, or to show an occlusion bubble when the player is behind them, or to give them new pyros.
Weapons
Lore added for Breaker's Wheel, Porco, Sandbagger, Zeus and Crambo.
Costigan features new firing and reload sounds.
Graxa reload sounds modified.
Deployable Turret renamed to Armored Tripod.
Vehicles
Sawbuck added, featuring twin hardpoint setup, 410 HP and decreased handling compared to its placeholder version from before.
The fuses for the Juke's lights have been found.
Vehicles cannot be healed with first aid items any more.
Mongoose makes a sound when it kicks, and can aim grenades better.
Fork's kick sound revised.
Changes to inventory size for multiple units that is far too long to list.
Text & UI
Unique sprites added for vehicle components.
Examine vehicles to see hardpoint and storage information.
Lore added for wounded Jove, food vending machine items, medkits, Loyalist battledress, Dromon rig, Carmine rig and Cinderblock.
Enemies
Gruzchiki enemy units added.
Seeker's hitbox adjusted.
Mission-specific spoilers
[Fix The Bucket Lifts] Fixed some mild out of bounds moments.
[Garage] List of missions updated. Mini fabricator added for making smaller things like backpacks. Vending machine sells additional items. Lights for gantry slots will appear when the relevant slot is unlocked, and players will no longer spawn in the southwest until all debris is removed.
[Night Market] Most units set to immovable so players can no longer steal them via the elevator.
[Shoreline] Reinforcements added, who will target the player's location when triggered along with fixing the cultist who disappears.
[Roundabout] A prop has been removed that was obscured by one of the lights.
[Aubrey's Hood] Vehicles that should have been unlocked last patch are now unlocked.
[Papyard] Vehicles that should have been unlocked last patch are now unlocked.
[The Stakh] Reinforcements "fixed" in that they will home in on the player when they spawn in. Loot also increased.
[Kolibri Point] Eddy's scripting changed slightly, and slight changes to prevent out of bounds.
[Dealership] Delay on reinforcements removed, and reinforcements will now close in on the player. Vehicles that should have been unlocked last patch are now unlocked.
[Silverleaf Estates] Vehicles that should have been unlocked last patch are now unlocked.
[Vilutian Promenade] Security truck has reappeared on Vilutian Promenade
[Tide Wall Tunnel] NEW Rescue the hostages, don't raise the alarm. Infantry only.
[Kolchak Park] Map adjusted to prevent out of bounds moments, and elevator changed to be consistent with other maps.
[Wilderness] Lonesome chobber with no AI given their autonomy back.
[Joutsen Pt. 1: Investigate] Mission name and description changed.
[Joutsen Pt. 2A: Pharma Pharm] NEW Raid a drug farm and collect intel. Watch out for reinforcements.
[Joutsen Pt. 2B: Islands] NEW Raid a lawyer's office and collect intel. Watch out for the Lil' buddies. Infantry only.
[Joutsen Pt. 2C: Logistics] NEW Raid a logistics hub and collect intel. Watch out for the forklifts.
[Joutsen Pt. 2D: Warehouse] NEW Raid a warehouse and collect intel. Infantry only.
[Kill: Katar Joutsen] Phone cannot be tapped once the alarm goes up or any Joutsen dies.
[Outskirts] Reinforcements should have an easier time getting to the player.
[McLaughlin Industrial] NEW Destroy a couple of loading docks and kill the manager.
[Miracle Autoworks] NEW Steal a tuned up car from a Gruzchiki gangster. Infantry only.
[Ferreiro Terminal] NEW A VIP is arriving at a high security terminal, make sure he doesn't leave.
[Lil' Factory] Buddy respawns will now home in on the player's location.
[Vinton Villas] Killing the Rounder is no longer sufficient – the player must kill the pilot to complete the mission. Rounder is no longer locked if pilot bails.
[Pascal Hydro Dam] NEW Heavy corvid resistance. Watch out for the new Sawbucks.
[Devil's Causeway] NEW Like the Sinkhole but longer and nastier.
If you encounter a bug or a crash, please tell us about it in the Technical Issues subforum on Steam.
A new addition to Brigador Killers art pipeline
The rest of this article is intended as a sequel to the post that explained Brigador's art pipeline. The art pipeline for Brigador Killers is very similar but with some interesting changes, and we will be using the recently added Juke spacer powersuit as an example.
The pipeline has changed in the following ways:
3D Models are made in a program called Plasticity, instead of 3DS Max. Plasticity is a CAD program that appeared around 2023. Not only does it not require a subscription to use, but some of our artists also vastly prefer it to other tools. More on this later.
Houdini is still used to make UV maps, no changes there.
Substance Painter continues to detail the materials of a model, albeit with an additional change that will be explained further on.
Blender is still important for lighting, baking, animations and getting depth buffer information. However, due to the increased output resolution in Brigador Killers, the sprite packer program had to be updated from 64 to 128 rotations of 3D models, which are then mirrored to account for when a sprite is facing the opposite direction. A sheet of the Juke's sprites will make this obvious later. Blender is still used for making architecture.
Photoshop and/or GNU Image Manipulation Program (AKA "GIMP") is used for something called CLUTs, which comes after all of the above.
The point of this post is to respond to something we've seen recurring in various comments or reviews that's along the lines of…
"Why can't the models from Brigador just be brought over?"
Every new model since the appearance of the Sledge - the hauler agrav that appears in the player's garage - has either been made directly in Plasticity, or was given a makeover from its old model. There are two big exceptions to this: character portrait renders and building props, which are topics for another time. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the original Juke from Brigador in gray posed next to its Brigador Killer version in Plasticity. First facing front…
Side…
Rear view…
From an angle looking down…
…and the reverse of that.
The canister on the back of the new Juke is for reference and does not exist on the final model.
The previous game could get away with the vehicle models being "simpler" in appearance, especially on the undersides, since the camera in that game is at a fixed distance far away from the player. Brigador Killers, on the other hand, allows the player to zoom in much closer and scrutinize those details. As a result, any unit making the jump from Brigador to Brigador Killers needs to stand up to that new level of scrutiny and so its appearance is updated in Plasticity. Since Plasticity can also do NURBS, the program is ideal for making all sorts of curved shapes and chassis for the game's various vehicles.
Once the vehicle model is done in Plasticity, it goes on to be textured in Substance Painter.
Splat maps, DOOM and CLUTs
Texturing is done in Substance Painter using relatively simple materials with edge wear on them so that the powersuit still looks like worn metal. At this stage something new happens called splat maps. This is the Juke as it appears in Substance Painter.
And if one happens to inspect the sprite sheet for the Juke's upper, they'll see something like this.
But when viewing the Juke in game, it looks like this.
So what's going on? Typically, splat maps are used to call out on a model something like "This thing here is going to be leather, but this other thing on the mesh is going to be a different material". This is usually done so that the artist doesn't have to painstakingly mask off each part from another in Substance Painter, though we're doing something different.
Instead we render out the splat map version of the Juke as the final asset so that it ultimately ends up doing the same thing, but within the game engine. What makes the difference is a simple 64x64 .png file that's not even 20kb in size, though for the purposes of this article it has been blown up in size.
What this is all leading to is a slightly new take on a very old technique: palette swapping and this gives us yet another excuse to talk about the original DOOM. Take a look at this image of a deathmatch session of four doomguys on screen.
This next image is every single color that appears in the original DOOM's palette, meaning you can pick almost any one of the 256 squares below and find that as a pixel on the image above.
What might stand out immediately is just how much of this palette is taken up by flesh and blood tones (which is also why two of the multiplayer color swaps are carmine and beige), but draw your attention towards the green band in the middle (112-127). Those colors are all for doomguy's well known outfit.
When a player enters a deathmatch, the DOOM engine says to itself "OK, take that row of color, and transpose it five rows up. Now this green doomguy is a dark red doomguy. Another player has joined? OK, shift it just one row up. Now that's a grey doomguy."
We are fundamentally doing the same thing in Brigador Killers, just slightly more sophisticated. The sophistication is, instead of all sprites getting locked into one global palette, a sprite can use whatever colors we want. However, to keep it simple, we use certain very bright color ranges, just like how DOOM recolors doomguy's green armor, but we do it with what's called a Color Lookup Table (or CLUT) that doesn't just transpose a specific range of color, it can transpose any color to any other color arbitrarily. That 64x64 image of the Juke's spacer color scheme shown earlier is one such CLUT.
In Brigador Killers we use blue, cyan, magenta and green (as can be seen on the Juke images earlier), but we leave red and beige out, because much like DOOM, our game has a lot of blood and guts flying around and we don't want to mess up flesh tones or blood. Better yet, those four colors are easy to select and then transpose with the help of Photoshop's Hue/Saturation control.
Or via GIMP's equivalent tool.
When the Juke is rendered out wearing those four splat colors, those splat colors are then transposed into a spacer color scheme. In other words, the game looks up the color in a table and goes "change that to that". The huge bonus to this is, so long as we are consistent about which colors get used where and how they are transposed, it means that certain CLUTs can be used universally.
In other words we can give a Juke a new coat of paint without having to export another set of sprites – it's the same original Juke sprite sheet. Put visually, what about a loyalist Juke?
What about a corvid Juke?
Or a taxi color for the Juke?
Suppose Mar Nosso's municipal government gets too much money to spend and now you have garbage truck Jukes?
Or maybe just keep it sleek with a noir Juke.
Not every unit follows this new splat technique at the moment, which is why we've used the Juke as an example. A lot of the older units will be put through the splat process and given CLUTs. How this will end up impacting gameplay is we will be able to easily give existing units different CLUTs to match their faction and substantially increasing what sort of enemies the player will be able to fight, but more importantly better communicate what sort of threat those units present to the player.
This also isn't limited to just recoloring vehicles. We are also able to recolor existing shrapnel effects, and this is a big deal for us when it comes to saving texture resolution.
Don't forget about animation work
Along with updating the level of detail on models via Plasticity, and the new splats and the CLUTs, those new models still need to be rigged, then have new animations set up for them, then exported into a big sprite sheet like with the rest of the model. Below is a gif of an earlier version of the Juke in engine and in motion, but the animations had not been dialled in at this point.
The tell is that the Juke appears to "slide", particularly on the sidestep, and in this case increasing the framerate made the motion look less floaty.
Animations are made in Blender by one of our artists, and behind the scenes it looks something like this.
This is a recording of an early version of the Mongoose's leg animations in Blender, after the legs had been rigged but not yet exported. Much like with the increase in detail on 3D models, any new vehicles, particularly more complicated ones like powersuits, need to go through this process.
This is what is involved when bringing over old models from the previous game into Brigador Killers.
To close out this post, this month's track is "You're Coming With Me" by Makeup and Vanity Set, which is the sixth song on the OST.
Also, all our games are on discount for the next week as part of a regularly scheduled sale.
