Corporate Graveyard

After lots of work, the corporate wasteland is finished just in time for the spookiest time of the year... December. In the 2060s, Zheglov-Mang and Sol Fusion went to war. While the megacorps eventually negotiated peace, the cratered wrecks of old servers litter the battlefield. The surviving megacorps tower over the holes ripped in the Supermesh.
The Wasteland is a high-level playground for veteran players, full of level 46 - 48 servers. The gigantic towers are perfect for using your teleports, grappling hooks, gliders, and triple jumps to vault from tower to tower and dodge enemies.

Enter the Dragon

Plus... there's a giant dragon. Do I need to say more?

Black Ice, Inc.

Ever wonder why every server that defeats you has a skull floating over it? Black Ice, Inc.'s cybersecurity platform is constantly studying you so their AI can shut down your hacks and fry your systems. They must not be a fan of Ouroboros or ouroborOS. I wonder who will win that fight...

0.9.217 - 12/2/24 Corporate Graveyard Patch Notes

• New high-level area: The Wasteland
• Added Black Ice, Inc. arena
• Fixed bug that prevented the firewall on the Volcano bridge from unlocking
• Added waypoint back to the tutorial cache so tutorial can end properly
• Added free heal item back to cache for new characters
• Decreased WeCare level slightly

Stay safe, hackers. - Nonadecimal & superdupergc

[ 2024-12-03 07:59:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sol Fusion... what if the final boss is lasers?

Real talk about game development: There's never enough hours to make all the things you want to make. When we released the Sol Fusion megacorp tower last year, there wasn't enough time to add the final boss: *absolute tons of lasers*. With each additional update to add the other megacorp towers, there was never enough time to go back to Sol Fusion. But we decided May 2024 would be Lasers Month.
This meant not only fixing all the bugged lasers throughout the tower by hand one at a time, but creating a new boss fight arena with tons of rotating laser sweeps. You can limbo under the lasers to stay alive or take risks to get them to sweep through the enemies. Let us know what's the best strategy!

New Pizza, Same Great Flavor

Since this patch was all about improvement, we took the time to replace some of the Volcanyon terrain to make the new game experience a little smoother. That included replacing the Machiavelli's Pizza server with a better platforming experience and doubling the lava for the pizza ovens. There have been some persistent bugs with the mission system and waypoints and this self-improvement / self-care patch fixed as many of those as we could find. Plus we may have fixed the bug with enemies getting stuck inside servers!

Looking Ahead: Zheglov-Mang

Just like a delicious pizza, sometimes good things take awhile to cook. Zheglov-Mang's trap-filled tower is going to take us a little bit longer to build. Stay ready!

0.9.214 - 6/14/24 Laser Boss Fight! Patch Notes

• Added a new Laser Boss Fight to the Sol Fusion Megacorp tower!!
• Fixed misaligned Sol Fusion lasers throughout entire tower
• Replaced the Volcanyon Machiavelli's Pizza server with a better design
• New Volcanyon courier routes
• Enemies stuck under buildings, especially Aimbots, should respawn properly after a few seconds now
• Fixed the Edgerunner achievement being given incorrectly by some missions
• Fixed multiple bugs related to missions not completing or waypoints not clearing
• Fixed Dark Deeds/Volcano Throne waypoints displaying incorrectly
• Fixed the Server Security Encyclopedia exit button not working
• Rebalanced early game item drop levels to add more item diversity before level 10
• Terrain and layout fixes throughout the world

Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2024-06-18 03:36:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Megascorporation

Deep in the mountains, the AI for a data mining facility has gone rogue! A lowly Scorporation has gorged itself on the volatile code mined from the Supermesh and become... well, a really big scorpion. You might even call it a Megascorporation. In addition to its increased size, damage, and new attacks, it also still controls the mining facility. Be careful not to antagonize it... no way to tell what it might do.

Startup Valley

The area where you first jack in to the Supermesh needed a little refresh. Streamlined to get you to main world faster, it also features some improvements to the Prank War servers.

Security Encyclopedia

Ever wondered exactly what a Proxy server is? Or what Fire enemies are vulnerable to? Just check out this encyclopedia for all the server securities!

What's Next?

You may have noticed that the Zheglov-Mang megacorp has a new outer shell. The surrounding area is also taking its final form with craters and cracks from an ancient war fought between Sol Fusion and Zheglov-Mang. Don't rush to explore it yet, we haven't added the servers and secrets. Those will come in the next major update! Also be careful you don't fall through any holes in the ground - it was a very busy week and not everything is polished yet.

Get the full patch notes here!

https://steamcommunity.com/app/311800/discussions/0/3844430784752116453/ Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal (okay maybe a little spoiler)

[ 2024-04-19 19:53:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helices is in its Growth Phase

Helices: a megacorporation known for genetic engineering, biotech, and prefab agriculture.
Everyone knows Helices engineered the factory crops and lab-grown foods that helped us survive the 21st century. Along with genetic engineering to make humans resilient against pandemics and food scarcity, Helices is now restoring wilderness and bringing many animal species back from extinction. Although some say that the genetically enhanced aleph generation of designer babies was a step too far. Plus eliminating seeds from all crops so that they can only be purchased from Helices...

Sticky Situation

Like Oshiro Orbital, Sol Fusion, and Quarkus, the Helices tower is an endgame dungeon with servers spanning levels 35 to 49. Much like the toxic pollutants contaminating the GHZ, Helices is filled with toxic goo puddles. Watch out, they seem to have a mind of their own! It's a cramped, close-quarters fight as you spiral to the top of the helix. Might be good to bring a shotgun or some explosives.

Encyclopedia!!

Now you can look up every item type and specialty SuperDuper gear in the Encyclopedia! This will help you find the items you don't have and collect the ones you want. Plus, now the Recycle Bin prioritizes the items you haven't found yet.

Root Access

If you're still reading, watch out for a surprise new enemy at the top of Helices tower!
Get the full patch notes here! https://steamcommunity.com/app/311800/discussions/0/3844430784752116453/ Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2024-03-18 21:55:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Einar's Throne Room

Einar's final resting place beneath the volcano is now fit for a king! Decked in gold, the new boss fight arena offers more platforming and routes to evade the swarm as you battle the Mother of Spiders. With the new boss fight HP bar, you can focus on the objective before you're overrun. We've also streamlined the early stages of the game to help you get through the volcano faster. More routes, better waypoints, rebalanced enemy progression. We will continue improving the early game with a reworked tutorial area soon!

New Missions

A small taste of what's coming next, we added 2 new missions while streamlining the other 100 story emails already in the game. Tangle with Baba Yaga (again?) in the Forest, then help some Quarkus employees stage a coup in Act 3.

Looking Ahead: Helices

Stay tuned for the next update bringing the Helices megacorp tower. Full patch notes below!

0.9.207 - 12/20/23 Gilded Rage

• Remade Einar's Throne Room (Volcano Boss Arena)
• Major navigational improvements to the Volcanyon and Volcano
• Added a new shop in the Volcano
• Quarkus improvements, including boss attack telegraphing
• Overhauled mission waypoint system to be more readable and useful
• Added Courier Story Missions (including one to take you to the top of the Volcano)
• The first character on an account will now always get a free heal in the Cache
• Added two new unique items as rewards for the Quarkus and upcoming Helices fight
• Added two new missions between level 25-35
• Edited and improved all previous missions
• After you complete a mission, the active waypoint will automatically switch to the next active mission
• Players now run a lot faster on the Information Superhighways
• Heal Over Time items now automatically enable when the player logs in or respawns
• Rebalanced hack speed to make it less punishing if you fall behind on icebreaker upgrades
• Added Hack Timer calculation in the Full Stats UI
• Added Time To Kill calculation in the Full Stats UI
• Added a Boss HP bar for dungeon bosses and Lockout enemies
• Increased Flat Damage affix scaling at the low end, but also reduced drop rate
• Made Lockout GUI and in-game particles easier to see
• Lockout enemies now slow the hack down drastically instead of completely stop it
• Added a video option to reduce the sky intensity
• Reduced sky star size for stars closest to the player
• Added a green cooldown indicator for items with charges to show when charges will cd
• Fixed terrain hazards like lava doing increased damage in multiplayer
• Evading servers no longer appear in the Volcano
• Reduced Charge.bat damage
• New unique Sprint which applies Frictionless
• Items now have full charges when equipped for the first time, and remember both charges and cooldowns when you unequip them, which you can now do at any time.
• Many bug fixes, including waypoints, missions, etc.

Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2023-12-22 20:10:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quarkus Returns

Quarkus: a megacorporation known for quantum computing and data at every scale. The biggest search and social media monopolies of the 21st century merged to form Quarkus. While its CEO Grafton Bayles never completed his vision of a "metaverse", Quarkus dominates the Supermesh with their quantum computing infrastructure. Although some say all of Quarkus' innovation was stolen from Supermesh founder Rachana Joshi and the other megacorps...

By their powers combined

Each of Quarkus' four towers wields the powers of ice, fire, corrosion, and laser... Almost like they were copying their 4 megacorp competitors. Equip the right gear to deal with each one!

Dissect their networks

Like Oshiro Orbital and Sol Fusion, the Quarkus tower is an endgame dungeon with servers spanning levels 35 to 49. But the Quarkus servers are all connected. Follow the arrows to know which server is protecting another. Hack them in the correct order or risk them all joining forces to defend the hack!

The W.O.R.M Returns

After testing their newest AI atop Rachana's tower, Quarkus has redeployed the W.O.R.M. with upgrades. Watch out, they look ready for revenge...
Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2023-11-27 04:18:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sol Fusion is open for business!

Sol Fusion, a megacorporation known for nuclear power and opulent enclosed cities. Formed from a merger of aging oil export corporate kingdoms, Sol Fusion ascended to megacorp status through the construction of sealed cityscapes to survive the new world climate. Between widescale adoption of nuclear power and their technologically advanced and climate-controlled urban planning, Sol Fusion saved many lives across Africa and Eurasia in the mid-21st century. At least, that's what their PR department keeps telling us...

Climb The Lasers

Much like Oshiro Orbital, the Sol Fusion tower is an endgame dungeon with servers spanning levels 35 to 49. Hack servers to power laser platforms as you climb. But each additional platform fills the room with more and more lasers. Choose your hacks wisely. Just watch out for the giant laser well that bridges each floor. It can be a shortcut if used correctly or it could end your run.
Stay safe, hackers. - superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2023-07-12 21:16:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

ouroborOS: the operating system for hackers by hackers

Systems online....... After a lifetime hacking in the Supermesh, Ouroboros built an operating system that gamifies network (in)security. Corporate AIs personified as spiders, scorpions, and squids. Viral vectors and brute force attacks visualized as laser fire and... y'know... disco balls spewing even more lasers. Because an accessible platform for hackers and hacker wannabes puts even more people on even footing with giant megacorps. Even you, Mako. Hack them all!

Where are we going now?

We improved the waypoint system with cleaner visuals. Red waypoints for servers to hack, green waypoints for servers to defend, blue waypoints for deliveries. Distance indicators make it easier to find servers in twisty indoor spaces and volcanoes. And the best part? If it's not your primary objective, the waypoints are hidden when you get far away. No more waypoint clutter! Just a focus on the things you're doing right here and now.

What else?

Additional fixes include balancing enemy counts on higher level servers, making Treasure Crawlers a bit easier to catch, improving Bounty rewards, and allowing for more explosions at once!

Where are we going next?

Sol Fusion is coming next! Be ready for another megacorp skyscraper to climb. Just watch out for lasers...

[ 2023-06-29 16:13:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Green Hill Zone

The verdant Green Hills surrounding Helices are finally packed full of towering corporate fortresses, biotech cartels, and toxic sludge that amplifies damage.
Another quarter of the world is filled in with the addition of this swampy cityscape full of 40+ servers for levels 30-40. The new Proxy security type forces you to platform the giant castles to hold unlock points in order to finish the hack. The corrosive sludge being dumped by the warring biotech cartels causes both you and enemies to take bonus damage while standing in it.... use it to your advantage!

Gotta Go Fast... Travel

We added the much-requested Fast Travel system to the Arcade. You can use the ring of launchers to fly through the air back to locations you've already visited like the volcano, megacorp skyscrapers like Quarkus and Oshiro, and distant locations like the Phish Market or the Scar. You'll have to visit those places again after this patch in order to unlock each launcher. We also added the missing respawn points to Oshiro so you can get back to the fight quicker after dying.

Specialty Shops

Four new specialty shops like Ol' Glitchy's Bait Shop and the Data Broker in the Phish Market, the Black Market in the Scar, and PiuPew in the volcano make it easier to find specific item types like minions and mods. A fifth new shop in the volcanyon makes it easier for new players to empty their inventory before heading to the volcano.

We Hear Your Feedback

We also fixed some major bugs like the broken Virtual Virtual Reality perk tryout room, the Oshiro boss fight, and enemies no longer getting stuck in walls (but please tell us if they still get stuck). Along with some level progression balancing after the volcano, we hope this makes it easier to level up and get through Act 2 of the story. And get ready for another megacorp tower to drop in June because Sol Fusion is coming online soon....

Update Highlights:

• New Server Security: Proxy Servers, which lockout and create capture points to unlock the hack
• New Perk: Rootkit: Turret minions now have a permanent healing zone around them
• Added fast travel launchers to the Arcade to catapult you back to the volcano, Oshiro, and other landmarks!
• Added 4 new specialty shops around the world so you can clear your inventory and find specific items like minions and mods! Improved shop visuals to make them easier to spot too.
• Fixed enemies getting stuck in walls!!! (but please tell us if they still get stuck)
• Added respawn points in the Oshiro towers so you can get back in action faster.
• Fixed the Oshiro Orbital boss fight server and added its reward loot.
• Fixed the flying aimbots in Oshiro so they don't fly away.
• More level balancing to even out the gameplay progression after the volcano.
• Fixed multiplayer bugs when someone leaves your game.
• Increased the Ouro max capacity so you can get more rerolls.
• Fixed the teleport destination for the Virtual Virtual Reality perk tryout room.
• Plus way more bugfixes and quality improvements in the full patch notes.

If you're excited about the upcoming megacorp finales, please leave a Steam review as we near the finish line! -superdupergc & Nonadecimal

[ 2023-05-26 02:50:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Supermesh message received, downloading... Unzipping...

Oshiro Orbital

My grandfather believed the only way to save humanity was to escape Earth. He thought a select few could flourish in space, free from the corruption and catastrophe of our home planet. He was willing to sacrifice the many to advance the few he deemed worthy. My father, on the other hand, grew obsessed with the virtual: federated communities, simulated worlds, deep space exploration. He believed that if given the tools, the worthy would reveal themselves, ascending to the stars alone by virtue of their own communal labors. But under my governance, Oshiro Orbital has proven that it is the virtuous few who toil in space to provide for the survival of the many on Earth. Exceptional skills don't place us above others, but below, carrying them on our shoulders. The Oshiro Orbital network, in close partnership with Atlas Foundry, carries the Earth on its shoulders, providing food and medicines the likes of which Earth has never seen before. Don't worry, we're watching over you. [The Oshiro megacorp zone is now open for business! I don't want to spoil the surprises it has in store, but you should be at least level 35]

[ 2023-03-22 02:44:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.9.198 - 1/22/23 Arcade Upgrade 3

• Added four awesome new Courier paths in the Arcade
• Reenabled Arcade secret pathway to the Teleporter Arena (in the mirror maze)
• Reenabled Arcade teleporter to the Talus Shooting Gallery (first floor, center of arcade)
• Lots of work on Oshiro, for release later (but you can explore some now!)
• Linked Servers will only send their security affixes up the chain one link, instead of the entire upstream chain
• Added link to get sweet Black Ice shirts in the main menu
• Arcade puzzle restart button (and guaranteed a reward for solving it the first time)
• Enhancement powerups will now show the name as a popup text when you pick them up
• Volcanyon and Forest areas are now less flat
• Converted some extra servers in the Volcanyon and Volcano into terrain so new players don't get bogged down
• Minor arcade visual improvements
• Improved Slowing/Corroded Lava colors
• Fixed an issue causing sectors to disable and enable repeatedly (this was most noticeable with roaming enemies respawning for no reason)
• Fixed an issue where turrets minions would respawn improperly when the player got too far away
• Fixed an issue causing enemies to not disintegrate properly
• Fixed several arcade shop color issues
• Minor performance improvements

[ 2023-01-22 22:40:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Arcade booth visual updates
• Reduced roaming enemy count (especially for large areas)
• Miniguns now drop with more charges
• Fixed zombie death bug caused when dying in the Disco arena
• Fixed minor terrain gaps
• Fixed enemy spawn issue near Scar
• More progress on Oshiro area, we have some fun things planned out!

[ 2023-01-05 04:36:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Even more Arcade visual updates
• Reopened Disco arena and Perk Tryout area
• Fixed hacking issues when playing offline
• Damage directional indicators now hide when the UI is hidden
• Fixed home location icon on the map
• Accelerating Fire on non-miniguns is now more rare
• Prework for Oshiro area overhaul (Stay tuned!)

[ 2022-12-30 23:19:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy holidays y'all! We've been working 24/7 to deliver your present: a complete redesign of the Arcade hub area. Plus now you can invite your friends or join multiplayer games directly from Steam's interface!

New Look, New Everything

As part of the redesign, we finally added all the visual effects we've ever wanted, turning the Arcade into... well, an Arcade. 3 paths for the 3 founders of the Supermesh are color-coded to help you find your way around. Plus we snuck in some lore, like Einar's trophies.

Upgrade Your Gear in the Map Room

We made all the upgrade stations easier to get to by centralizing them at the heart of the Arcade. Plus the map is now embedded in the floor and oriented with the world to make it even easier to get around.

Shops, Arenas, and Challenges

As you know, each shop offers specific bonuses and weaknesses to align you with certain role specializations. To reinforce those bonuses, we've aligned the arenas and challenge booths with their nearby shops.

Kalt (defense + / speed -)

The brand of tanks! Well now you can test yourself by taking a dip in the dunk tank. Get rewarded for how much damage you can survive. The Kalt arena is the Funkadelic Disco Palace, a devilish dancefloor that delivers death one disco ball at a time. Currently closed for renovations, it will reopen soon.

Feisty (speed + / damage -)

The brand of flankers and thrillseekers! The shop got a complete makeover with a new aerial platforming combat space. Just watch out for the bottomless pit. The Airgap Challenge booth tests how long you can stay airborne. Disconnect from the grid and maximize your uptime for rewards. The Feisty arena is The Neon Demon's Speedrun Tower. Race to the top to claim your prize. This arena will open in a future patch.

Talus (accuracy + / defense -)

The brand of snipers! The shop got a spooky redo with a bone forest to weave through while hunting targets. The nearby Console Cowboy Quickdraw booth offers speed-shooting targets to get rewarded for your accuracy and reflexes. This booth needs a little more work so it'll open in a future patch. The Aquarium next door will offer sequences of aerial targets to take down for your payday.

Overclock (damage + / accuracy -)

The brand for people who only care about DPS. The shop has been enfolded in a spiky flower of damage. The familiar Test Your Might booth (our original challenge) has moved to its appropriate spot next to the Overclock store. It's accompanied by the Carcinization Knockout Challenge arena which is exactly what it sounds like. Step into the ring with a giant crab to see who can land the most punches. This arena will also be arriving in a future patch.

Maze of Mirrors

Anyone who claims there's a secret 5th shop is misinformed and the broken Maze of Mirrors has been closed for repairs for as long as anyone can remember. It's too dark to see in there anyway. The sliding block puzzle that used to be Black Ice before Black Ice became an FPS has been moved from the tutorial area to the Arcade. It's outside the Maze of Mirrors if you feel like testing your wits with The Mindgames of Professor Barbarossa.

Transit Hub

If you've forgiven us for teasing so much content coming in future patches, then there's one more update to tease. Surrounding the map room are launchers to send you to various points across the map including the megacorp towers. Between the transit hub and the highways in the last patch, endgame fast-travel should be a breeze. The transit hub will be enabled in the next patch once we've added unlock functionality. We wish you all a fantastic end to 2022 and thank you so much for supporting the game. We'll keep the updates coming as the game nears its v1.0 launch! Full patch notes here
We hope you like all the new stuff! Let us know on the Black Ice Discord. Thanks for playing, and Happy Hacking! superdupergc and Nonadecimal

[ 2022-12-25 00:45:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch adds a lot of roaming enemies all over the map - please let me know how this feels! I think it's fun, but I need your feedback.

• Added randomly roaming enemies to most sectors. The goal of this is to make the world feel more alive, and to add a little more difficulty to traversal.
• Added tons of new weapon and item activation sounds (Dash, Recall, Minion items, Buffers, Sentries, lots of guns, etc) (most only affect new items)
• Patrolling enemies will no longer attack other AI unless they've been aggroed or injured
• A lot of AI material, animation, and script optimizations, aimed at allowing more enemies to be active at once
• Updated controller support plugin to increase performance and improve support for various niche controllers
• Updated Antialiasing options to add some more powerful settings - setting 1 (FXAA) works best for me, but there are now settings 2 (SMAA) and 3 (TXAA)
• Updated the Bloom (glow) plugin for more performance - let me know if it looks different at all
• Added two-tone Pill logo option for avatar customization
• Very long item tooltips will no longer go off screen
• Fixed shader issues with the Ray gun while sprinting

[ 2022-12-06 05:03:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Autumn is here, along with a 15% off sale. Of course we have a huge patch for you too! Also: it's my birthday, so if you buy the game, it's my gift to you to me! The megacorp skyscrapers for Oshiro Orbital, Helices, and Sol Fusion gained massive upgrades along with a high-speed highway network for fast travelling around the world. And we've got not one, but TWO new flying enemies, several new server and enemy affixes, and a handheld sea creature as a new gun. AND a new action-packed trailer! [previewyoutube=xIxkU0oB3s0;full][/previewyoutube]

Information Superhighway

As the megacorps' massive towers take on their final forms, you'll need a way to get around the vast world quickly. The Information Superhighway boosts your movespeed to dangerous levels, letting you zip from tower to tower while providing some great views of the scenery that might just help you spot new secrets in the future. While the megacorp towers haven't gained any servers yet, the foundation is set for the next update.

New Enemies

We've got two new flying enemies for you to play against at high level - the Bufferfish and the Laser Ray.
The Bufferfish is a fairly slow but tanky flying enemy that creates a wide bubble around it, damaging everything inside it. They drop a poison cloud when they die, which deals a lot of damage but, like all poison damage, is non-lethal. They deny a lot of area, so watch out!
The Laser Ray is like a flying Aimbot, but they launch a series of wide Wave lasers. Unless you're right underneath them, in which case they'll rain large bubbles on you. Additionally - if you like the Ray's attack, have I got the gun for you! Grab your own handheld Ray Gun unique Hand Cannon with custom animations and color changes.

New Challenges

We've added several new server security layers which can spawn randomly in the world and a few new enemy-specific affixes. The Live Wire enemy affix encourages you to kill things in as few hits as possible. It sends electrical surges along the ground every time it's attacked! For balance, you can't get a server with all Live Wire enemies, but you can get them randomly in any hack. Infested enemies (and servers!) shift your strategy with swarms - when you kill an Infested enemy, it spawns a Nanospider where it dies. If you don't account for this, you'll be swarmed by the little ankle biters in no time! Containment Servers might be my favorite. These servers add an electrical barrier to the hack, damaging any hacker foolish enough to be caught trying to escape. Additionally, this can stack with Evading, Constricting, or Oscillating servers, for extra fun. Full patch details here. (if you haven't played in a couple of months, we've got even more new stuff in the previous weekly patch notes here)
We hope you like all the new stuff! Let us know on the Black Ice Discord. Thanks for playing, and Happy Hacking! superdupergc and Nonadecimal

[ 2022-11-24 02:46:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch comes a bit early to fix a crucial multiplayer bug, but also comes with a really cool new unique, some AI improvements, and quality of life stuff. 0.9.189 - 11/3/22 Paresthesia

• New Unique SMG: Paresthesia. Hit an enemy with 20 pink needles to trigger a large explosion
• Charge.bats now telegraph their charges with a targeting beam
• Heal.bats now stay closer to the player and don't get distracted by full health friendlies
• Low HP enemies now show partially derezzing (helps make them easier to target!)
• Chance to Poison affix values nerfed to align this with other affixes
• Fixed a crucial multiplayer issue where guns wouldn't fire
• Fixed buff display UI text being too long sometimes
• Fixed cluster grenade child grenades not inheriting affixes properly
• Fixed tracking for limited enemy types from one server (like MOS or turrets)
• (Back end preparations for information superhighway and new ranged flying enemy)

[ 2022-11-04 03:35:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch introduces a new damage type, Poison! Poison does a lot of damage but is nonlethal, leaving enemies at 1hp. You'll need to finish them off with another damage type! Additionally, the Halloween Event is all day on Halloween. Play for your chance to get a Pumpkin Bomb special weapon! 0.9.188 - 10/30/22 Poison

• New Damage Type: Poison. Poison is NONLETHAL! Poison damage guns don't do damage on hit, instead always Poisoning the target for 3x the hit damage over 5s
• New Affix: Chance To Poison. For non-poison damage base guns, this deals 1.5x hit damage over 5 seconds (nonlethal)
• New Affix: Poison Damage percent (increases poison damage done)
• New Affix: Damage Type Conversion. Can convert any gun to any non-normal damage type
• New Unique: Replay. The first shot of this SMG is a tracing Railgun. If it hits an enemy, all subsequent projectiles will strongly home in on that enemy.
• New Unlockable Talent: XP Gained! Up to +20%!
• New modular payload: Poison Needle
• Eggs now spawn 3 Nanospiders instead of one Webcrawler
• Payload/Treasure Crawler world events now happen more often
• Updated enemy color overriding system so that it falls back properly when one color wears off but another is in place.
• Updated the star color over the Volcano
• Fixed ambushes stacking improperly in the honeypot area
• Fixed EMPs not scaling with damage affixes
• Fixed Grappling Hooks being invisible

[ 2022-10-31 03:09:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.9.187 - 10/3/22 Payload

• New World Event: Payload - Deliver this gitsfish to the site safely to earn some loot. He'll stop moving if you get too far away, or if enemies are nearby!
• New Unlockable: Pulse Pack - Two affixes listed below.
• New Affix: Every Third Shot, pulse additional N times.
• New Affix: Pulse Length Reduction
• The hidden volcano teleporter is now a Lot easier to find (to teach people that there are several shortcut teleporters to find)
• Added a two-pulse hand cannon archetype
• Treasure Crawlers have higher HP at higher level
• Treasure Crawlers now color/icon match the (first) loot they're carrying
• Increased time between successful world events from ~1.5 to ~4 minutes
• Knocked back/falling enemies should be able to find the ground better and not get stuck
• Modding: Added no recoil affix (does not drop normally since it makes guns feel less powerful, but it's useful for testing)
• Treasure Crawlers now check more thoroughly in each area for server matches (and so the event should show up more often)
• Improved the hack meter info during the act 2 finale boss fight
• Bouncyballs are now less flashy right when they spawn
• Fixed a navigation issue in the Forest
• Small improvements to Volcano glow
• Slight performance improvements

[ 2022-10-03 22:13:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

• New Super Duper Recall: Resynchronizer, which lets you manually place a Recall point and come back to it within 5 seconds
• New Super Duper Teleport: Rubberbanding, which Recalls you back to your teleport position after two seconds.
• All player Lasguns have had their graphics updated
• All Recalls now trigger Telefrag explosions
• Explosive weapons now have an extra tooltip explaining that they're explosive, showing their explosion radius, and that they don't pierce/chain/headshot.
• The Full stats UI now shows explosion radius (after bonus radius affix calculation)
• The Eagle Eye perk can no longer activate while you are on the ground, saving the cooldown for when you actually need it.
• Impact Grenades (from grenade launchers) now have a wider hitbox
• Scorpion aiming lasers now only use yellow/orange colors to help differentiate them from slowing turret lasers
• Small performance improvements for large numbers of projectiles
• Small updates aimed at preventing enemies from snapping to positions inside objects
• Treasure Crawlers can now go to neighboring sectors (which should make them show up more often)
• Updated Fire Pool On End affix to have more damage
• Updated several fire pool affixes to actually have a chance to burn now
• Reworked World Event timers so that they can try again sooner if they fail to start
• Loot Find now drops with a higher minimum value to add more impact
• The Volcanyon fort server now only has one level to help with AI nav
• Fixed the Unstoppable buffer preventing any other buffs from applying (even friendly ones)
• Fixed Tracer item sometimes targeting invalid targets like explosive barrels
• Yoyo projectiles fixes (target position, return miss, incorrect pierce override)
• Fixed a rare bug where projectile death particles would play in the wrong position
• Fixed Speed Daemon minion buff not resetting properly
• Fixed Aimbot projectiles piercing incorrectly

[ 2022-09-26 18:35:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

• New World Event: Treasure Crawlers. This golden webcrawler will try to deliver its package from one server to another nearby. Kill it first to earn a lot of loot, but watch out for its defenses at higher levels!
• New Item: Tracer, which focuses all your minions on a target (and also increases its damage taken, and lets you see it through walls!)
• New Item: Taunt, an EMP variant which causes all nearby enemies to attack you for a while
• New Item: Friend Exploder, which sacrifices your target minion to deal a lot of AOE damage (Unlockable)
• New Item: Recall, which returns you to where you were 3 seconds ago (Unlockable)
• New Unique: Complete Recall, which also returns your health to where it was too
• New Unique: Page Swap, a decoy which can be reactivated to swap places with it
• New Affix: Movement Cooldown Speed (Global) - reduces cooldown times for movement items only, like Teleports and Recalls.
• New Affix: Chance to Trace, which increases damage taken and lets you see the enemy through walls
• New Affix: Chance to Taunt, which will cause the target to attack you for a while
• Lots of optimization aimed specifically at allowing more projectiles on screen at once

[ 2022-09-19 02:01:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

The focus this patch was improving minion gameplay. I still have some things I'd like to try, but please let me know your suggestions too!

• New Item: Networks. When activated, Networks temporarily add constant laser beams between each of your minions. Damage scales a LOT depending on the number of minions you have. Range of each beam is ~25 max. Unlockable.
• New Item: Speed Daemon. When activated, it buffs your minions' Attack and Movement speed drastically for a short time. Unlockable.
• The Affix Reroll and Item Upgrade machines now show the complete list of affixes you can get for the item, including the chances of each affix!
• All minions can now drop with Attack Speed and are affected by it
• Critical Defragmentation now only gives 4% per stack, making the total added crit +20 instead of +25
• Lasbreakers now use purple beams/icons to make it easier to differentiate from incoming Scorporation targeting lasers
• Aimbots now fire in a two second burst no matter how many projectiles they have (small nerf for low level, big buff for high level)
• Scorporations and Aimbots now fire faster at higher level
• Fixed a bug where the Slowed debuff actually made enemies attack faster instead of slower

[ 2022-09-12 02:36:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey y'all, sorry for the delay on patches here - I've been on sabbatical from my day job. Went on vacation, got covid, all that.

• New Perk: Critical Defragmentation: Kills with Grenades give you +5% Crit Chance for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
• New Perk: Left Shift: Critical hits Double the Chance to X affixes chance to activate.
• New Affix: On Hack Recharge: recharges all cooldown/charges on an item after you complete a hack successfully
• Grappling hooks now accelerate slightly over their duration
• Shredder executables now have a little longer range, but falloff damage like Shotguns
• Photosensitive Mode now makes the ground way less bright to make it more comfortable
• Updated saving algorithm to create a temp file, so if it gets interrupted during saving, it won't delete the old save.
• Made E-Snail barrel hitbox size a little bigger
• Encrypted hack icebreakers now take only 10% damage from zones, lava, etc
• Talus shooting gallery events now drop Talus gear
• Total Move Speed now shows in the full stats UI
• Weak point hit sound +50% volume
• Fixed a bug where movement speed wasn't updating quickly enough
• Fixed quest item rewards not scaling with difficulty settings
• Fixed an issue where Encrypted hack icebreakers spawned in inappropriate areas on linked servers
• Fixed grenades/missiles not playing their explosion particles if they hit a target directly
• Reinforced a few walls/corners in the Volcano

[ 2022-09-02 16:16:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added a new Talus-branded shooting gallery with two challenge levels to the Arcade (look for the sparkles!)
• Improved the Chain after Kill perk from Chain +1 to Chain +3
• World Events now try to find servers closer to you
• Respawning will now spawn you in the most recent sector you were in *for this difficulty setting*. This will initially reset everyone's spawn point to the startup valley, but it'll work properly when logging back in.
• The Yo-Yo projectile affix can now combine properly with Chain/Ricochet for multiple hits
• Added Javelin, Yoyo, Circuit, and Sine projectile movement types to the drop pool at level 40+, but very rare.
• Fixed a Teleport/Dash/Grapple issue where it wouldn't allow short range teleports after correcting for an angled floor
• Fixed a Grapple issue where it would cancel early if it was aimed straight up
• Fixed a bug where Accuracy, Crit%/x, and Attack Speed were not marked as Weapon Local
• Fixed a rare issue causing loading to fail (couldn't find a random server for a quest). If this ever happens again, just try logging back in.
• Fixed an issue where grenades/zones would (re)spawn as the wrong size after a while
• Fixed the Brute Force exploit not dealing damage at all. And nerfed the damage it was supposed to do, because wow it was more than I thought. Still is super strong.
• Fixed the Volcano end boss arena not letting people out
• Fixed Ride the Glide achievement unlocking too early and only when on the ground
• Minor AI navigation fixes
• Started working on the Sol Fusion tower, but it's definitely not open for business yet.

[ 2022-07-08 03:01:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added a new mission in Act 2
• Updates to mission level balancing
• Added new mission rewards (including a new super duper!)
• Added more Anima chat messages to Act 2
• Lots of Inbox/Mission/Waypoint fixes
• Fixed an issue where you'd perform a short hitching mantle at the top of a ramp
• Fixed a few location specific navigation bugs
• Fixed an issue where jumps wouldn't come off cooldown after returning to the main menu
• Removed No-hit servers from the random drop pool. They'll return as specific servers later
• Updated Yo-yo projectile tooltip to mention they always pierce
• Improved Exploit drop rate
• Created a separate gambling choice cube for EMP+Decoy+Sentry, so now the executable choice cube only has executables and exploits
• Fixed an issue causing Unlockable items dropping or being in shops before they're unlocked
• Improved damage of Jash's 10 Pounder
• Fixed the explosion particles not showing up for the Brute Force exploit

[ 2022-07-01 16:45:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We've got Act 2 for you to check out, and I also want to highlight all the great work we've done since the Funkadelic update.

Highlights

• Act 2 released! A new boss fight, new areas, and a ton of new missons just waiting for the right runner to try them!
• Recruit a team to break into the Quarkus Megacorp Tower and get payback
• Tunnel through the Firewall to discover the secrets of the Kinetic Temple
• Tons of new abilities, perks, and items to unlock, like Sentries, Buffers, and the Portable Cache.
• Improved crafting and gambling
• Added a world map to help you get around
• More enemy types, enemy powerups, and server security types!
• Tons of performance improvements, bug fixes, and balancing

Full detailed patch notes here. Happy hacking! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2022-06-23 16:21:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Overhauled Cooldowns so that in-progress cooldowns can benefit from any change in Attack/Cooldown speed. This is particularly useful for the Gigahurts perk with long-cooldown stuff like Shotguns.
• Added the Heatsink Buffer, which gives a temporary +50% global cooldown speed
• Added the Space Bass Super Duper Hand Cannon. Recharges 2 charges on kill, Reverse Spread
• Added the Hot Foot Super Duper Hand Cannon. Recharges 1 charge on jump.
• Added the Ghosteater Super Duper Minigun. Recharges several charges on kill, health on kill.
• Added several new spawn points, and changed the spawn point system to always spawn you near where you were last (instead of by quest progress)
• Frozen enemies can now no longer rotate - but they can still attack, if they're facing you.
• Recharge on Kill can now drop randomly on multi-charge guns like SMGs and Miniguns, and can recharge several charges per kill.
• RAM Cost Reduction added to the random affix pool
• Reduced cooldown/attack speed affix scaling (since they're more effective now)
• Tweaked Specialized Mods to respect caps properly at high level/rarity
• Corroded enemies now turn a brighter shade of purple to make it more visible
• Using a jump now cools down all other jumps until you land again
• Modding: Added ability to modify affix attributes: Local, WeaponLocal, and Whole Numbers
• When Hit Cooldown ICD fixed to be properly 1s; removed Hazard Damage from affecting it
• Equipping an item with charges now properly sets the charges to 1 instead of 2
• Fixed debuffs which change enemy color failing on Target Dummies
• Fixed Glide Jump not triggering jump animations
• Fixed enemies spawning inside the Volcano Cavern shop
• Fixed bounce pads in the volcano boss arena
• Enemies from higher level areas will no longer spawn on Upgraded/Linked servers in low level areas due to their increased effective level
• Fixed a server in the Phish Market not spawning enemies at all
• Fixed moving platform jitter
• Fixed On Kill tester pads in the Perk Tryout area
• Reset mouse look/shake when respawning
• Fixed Cosmic gun shader not showing stars
• Added BI_SHOP cheat

[ 2022-06-13 03:20:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added Frictionless servers, which make the whole hack area slippery
• Fixed RAM Enhancements not showing their name on mouseover
• Fixed various typos
• Fixed an enemy lasgun out of range graphical issue
• Fixed a few areas where lava was incorrect
• Test Your Might is open for business again
• Fixed Charge Jumps not going higher (this smooths out all jumps a bit)
• Zones dropped by projectiles now reduce chance to X affixes based on how fast the pool hits targets
• Enemies should be less likely to leave Portcullis
• Stun particles now show up instantly instead of over time, to make them more obvious
• Shop locations now show up on the map if you've found them in any difficulty level
• Tweaked Stagger mechanics so larger enemies like GITSfish are less likely to stagger, and all enemies don't stagger quite so often
• Vortex Grenades now shake the camera less
• Popups can now be knocked back while jumping
• Stun and Freeze effects now stop enemies while climbing
• Scorporation damage reduced 25% (it was doubled last patch, so it's at +50% from two patches ago)
• Enemies now properly ignore shields/barriers again
• Lightning projectiles now enable visuals further away from the player to reduce flashing
• Volcano Silhouette added
• Targeting dummies no longer activate on-kill effects every hit
• Fixed blink/dash/grapple not activating on the first press after loading
• Reduced latency when opening/closing inventory
• Fixed Linked servers sometimes not including the whole chain
• Dark servers now show their level after the hack
• Healbats and Mother of Spiders can no longer be Lockout types
• Fixed an issue with respawning enemies/minions (especially when using the teleporters)
• Added ground under the lava on top of the Aimbot fab
• Fixed a server near Eitri which couldn't create any spawn points
• Instant Heals can now upgrade to the Patch SD in the recycle bin
• Spawning enemies now more gracefully spawn somewhere else when blocked

[ 2022-06-04 02:42:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added unlockable Buffer items, which you can activate for a temporary boost to your power. Variants: Fire, Feedback, Unstoppable, Consuming, Ghost, Tracing, and Downloadable RAM (SD)
• Added the Daisy Chain turret minion, which uses a Pinball launcher (with chain!)
• Added the Patch super duper instant heal, which heals for a percentage of your missing health
• Reduced the size of the crosshair kill confirm animation
• Reduced Beam Turret slowing at lower levels
• Buffed Scorporations across the board (damage, timing, and accuracy, especially with level)
• Lockout enemies no longer spawn in boss hacks
• Lockout enemies now are detailed on the progression screen
• Triple Blink cooldown increased back to what it should have been (about 3s)
• Cleanse renamed to Debug. It still removes all your debuffs (negative effects/Vulnerabilities)
• Targeting Dummies can now be debuffed and in general behave lot more like regular enemies
• Updated AI line of sight algorithm to be more accurate, and so they can do stuff like attack targeting dummies
• Fixed an issue where canceling a hack on a circularly linked set of servers caused a crash
• Fixed the end of the Prank War quest chain
• Fixed a bug causing negative stats which are talents to not apply (move speed, attack speed, etc)
• Fixed an issue causing Finality to be a level lower than it should have been, preventing difficulty progression

[ 2022-05-28 01:27:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added unlockable Turret Minions which fire a barrage of missiles to aoe your opponents!
• Added Take No Damage servers, where the hack will cancel if you take any damage. Very challenging, but doable!
• Added an option to scale the crosshair
• Added VoidBlack weapon shader (black with dark blue highlights, reacts well to light) - as random drops and a few super duper items
• Linked servers now also grant +2 levels (per link) and their extra Security to the protected server
• All minions get a 25% movement speed boost
• Popups can now jump longer distances at higher level
• Popup and Webcrawler minions now drop with higher damage values
• Plasma projectiles and a few other are now Lightning damage, which adds damage to shields
• Invulnerable enemies now have a bright visual to help show they are
• Homing projectiles now behave better: they'll now try to home to a different target after hitting theirs, and they no longer remember targets from a previous life.
• Quest waypoints will now hide while you are hacking a boss server
• Upgraded the dynamic spawn point system to prevent enemies spawning through walls
• Added description for Linked Servers on the progression screen
• Einar's Flame War now no longer pierces by default and has a little less damage
• Friendly non-minion AI (like from fort servers) will no longer play damage sounds/numbers as if the player had caused them
• Fixed an issue where Super Duper Dome Barriers had very little damage or healing
• Fixed some navmesh bugs in the startup valley
• Fixed an issue where enemies would spawn in a particular wall in the Scar area
• Fixed a tooltip typo for common items granted affixes from perks
• Lots of progress on the act 2 boss fight finale that y'all can't see yet :)

[ 2022-05-23 02:38:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Level 40+ ranged enemies now sometimes have the Invulnerable Barrier affix. The barrier cannot be destroyed, but they can. A fun challenge for higher level players!
• Added the Light Rail railgun shotgun minigun :)
• Clicking anywhere on the map will now add a custom waypoint. Right click to remove
• Updated Mantling animation to smooth out how it feels.
• Improved the "enemy stuck" detection algorithm so enemies should always respawn if stuck in a wall etc.
• Glide jumps now properly activate on-use affixes
• Glide jump now does not carry upward momentum past 5 m/s
• Ricochet now works on Shields/Barriers
• Fixed some items not selling for the correct value
• Fixed Oshiro tower servers not showing as hackable
• Fixed Sol Fusion hologram sometimes appearing in the wrong location
• Quarkus tower updates, though we still do not recommend going there yet.
• Lots of background work preparing the act 2 boss, but you can't see it yet :)

[ 2022-05-16 03:24:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.9.171 - 5/1/22 - Barrier Enemies

• Added Barrier enemy affixes, so ranged enemies at higher level sometimes drop dome barriers to shoot at you from. You can enter the domes to shoot them, or pierce!
• Added subtle sounds when Anima messages you, to make them harder to miss
• Added an Occlusion Culling option in video options for linux users who have trouble with it. Leave it on unless you have issues!
• Holograms on player models now apply to the Pill old model too
• Last enemy remaining indicators are now smaller
• Minions now teleport to near you when you are over 100 meters away
• Updated projectile algorithm so they don't occasionally miss hits after piercing something (especially on faster projectiles) (this effectively buffs piercing weapons)
• Fixed a bug preventing lasguns from piercing shields with the IEYTD perk
• Oersted's Hammer damage nerf (4->2.75)
• Last enemy remaining indicators no longer show for world events
• SMGs now have more charges by default
• Added a new affix which adds a percentage of charges, up to double (for weapons like miniguns and SMGs)
• Minor UI updates
• Fixed turrets not stopping their "charge up" particles in multiplayer
• Fixed beam turrets not showing their beam in mp
• Fixed Unhack actions from quest acceptance not propagating in multiplayer properly
• New shaders for mines
• Minelayer enemies will more properly space out mines now
• Fixed an overflow issue on buy expensive item bounties
• Worked on the act 2 boss, but that's for later :)

[ 2022-05-01 20:15:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone - normally I'd get a bit more done over the weekend, but I really wanted to fix the multiplayer loot bug as soon as possible, and y'all are getting the rest of these nice fixes too. Enjoy! Next week I'll focus more on new content.

• Updated the windows version to be a 64-bit binary. Please let me know if you have any trouble at all running the game! I'm pretty sure everyone can run 64b now, though.
• Fixed enemies in mp not getting set up correctly, resulting in wrong colors, wrong health values, and no loot!
• In multiplayer, now only the primary hacker in a hack will see last remaining enemy indicators
• Fixed an issue with damage bounties not completing at very high level
• Fixed the Green Hill Fort server not being hackable from the outside edge
• Fixed crit Healing numbers showing as red instead of green
• Fixed an issue where the tutorial might move backwards if you left Portcullis through the front door after hacking it
• Fixed an issue where weapons with many charges, like Miniguns and SMGs, would have way too high chance to activate on-hit effects. It's now properly normalized to their shots per second average, like all other weapons.
• Fixed Sentries attacking friendly Mines
• Shields and Barriers now can scale to extremely high health values at high difficulty
• Added Min/Max difficulty buttons in the main menu to make it easier to navigate
• HP values displayed in game on mouseover now prettyprint

[ 2022-04-23 01:38:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added the Portable Cache unlockable super duper, which allows you to access your Cache from anywhere, unless you are hacking.
• Added new Chain Lightning Sentry super duper
• Added four new super duper Specialized Mods (Accuracy, Range, Long Range Damage, Burn Damage)
• Fixed the Skip Tutorial button never showing at all
• Added an Auto Claim Bounties option to the Game Options menu
• Added a Highlight Remaining Enemies option, which points you toward the 0-10 enemies remaining in a hack
• Fixed a typo in damage type bounties
• Enemies outside the hack will now respawn once every 15 seconds, up from 5, to give you more time to catch them where they are
• Tutorial objective markers now use quest objective markers, instead of the old green arrows (and turn off properly)
• While hacking a server you have a quest for, the objective marker for that server will hide
• Fixed an item dupe glitch that occurred when trying to swap over an equipped item which was on cooldown
• Buffed dome barrier healing and damage
• Renamed Einar's Feeble Retort to the Dome of Silence (it still causes Weaken)
• Surprise Birthday Party now has an +XP% range of 10-15, up from 5-10
• Fixed options menu vertical alignment
• Bounties now prettyprint very high numbers
• Fixed an issue where extremely high damage numbers could cause bounties to instead be 1 damage
• Fixed an issue causing bounties to get stuck and not reroll
• Fixed an issue where Laugh Now, Cry Laser damage would always reset when you were struck. Now it only consumes when you have Feedback Damage or When Hit Burn to consume it.
• Prank War quests now are accessible even if you skip the tutorial
• Prank War quests no longer loop infinitely
• Fixed an issue where buffs/debuffs wouldn't properly stop when something died

[ 2022-04-18 02:32:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added Dome Barriers, which are unlockable spherical Barriers, with special shaders, icons, and four different Super Duper variants:
• Einar's Feeble Response - Weakens enemies in the dome
• Thunderdome - damages (and potentially stuns!) enemies inside the barrier
• Bubble Dome - Heals and Cleanses friendlies in the dome
• Chrome Dome - When hit with projectiles, fires a Seeker back at the enemy
• Buy Item bounties are now more rare
• Increased the Ouros cap to 14 or 21 when you beat Finality 50 and 100, respectively
• Increased Latency projectile type radius, and damage slightly
• Added more support for extremely high numbers (bitcreds, test your might, DPS, minion HP, etc)
• Time now continues after you are dead so you can see your death particles
• Barrier tooltip updates to make comparison easier
• Fixed multi-Barrel explosion delay timer
• Fixed the Ruins hacker cache being unopenable
• Fixed enemies getting stuck inside tree structures
• Fixed an issue where the star colors would not update properly when leaving sectors

[ 2022-04-11 03:33:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.9.167 - 4/3/22 - Slow Projectiles

• Added Slow Projectiles server security, where both your an enemy projectiles move very slowly!
• New Achievement: Upgrade Item Rarity
• New Achievement: Find the Arcade Secret Shop
• Buffed Charge Jump height by 25% (to compensate for the recent physics change)
• Homing projectiles now acquire targets better (let me know if you notice any performance difference)
• Enemy HP now uses more bits to allow higher difficulty scaling
• Exploits now all have more homing, Ricochet, and no Dizzy, to make them easier to use
• Added more UI particles to the special arcade machines
• Advanced Tooltips now defaults to On
• Limited projectile hit particles/sounds at the very high end
• Latency projectile weapons now properly count as Explosive for affix generation purposes
• Fixed waypoints being left over in UI for some quests
• Fixed an infinite XP exploit in RE: Incoming Raid quest
• Fixed arcade secret shop being too easy to find
• Fixed enemies dying from explosives not causing death particles
• Fixed outline highlighting for .bat enemies
• Worked on the Act 2 end boss, for a later patch ;)

[ 2022-04-03 21:36:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added the Bomb.bat enemy type, for levels 35+. Explodes and drops bombs!
• More level design progress on the Quarkus area - please check out the tower!
• The stars will now change color when you go to certain areas, like the Volcano or Forest
• Enemies will now dodge out of Zones/lava/etc when getting low HP
• Added hologram shaders to many corporate logos in-world
• Tweaked ground shader to more appropriately color some areas as Wall vs Floor
• All black temporary building shaders now have a bit of shine to them (which matches star colors)
• Added the new Samurai Punk company logo to the holo icon options (https://samuraipunk.com/)
• After 10 seconds of not being on the ground, teleporting now causes you to drop more
• Glide Jumps now show when they're actively gliding on the item icon
• New/Favorite items are no longer treated separately in the item sorting algorithm
• Improved framerate by not rendering many decorations at long range
• Anima chats now replay per session instead of per difficulty (in case you miss one)
• Fixed some Arcade and Volcano booster pads from not quite getting you where they needed to
• Fixed the Speedrun notification message accidentally triggering when you failed a unique hack

[ 2022-03-27 03:40:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new quest, a new projectile type, several fixes, and more framerate!

• Added a new level 35 quest (triggered at hack level 30) with a unique item reward
• Added a new projectile type which explodes a short time after sticking to something (new projectile and particles)
• Added pulse, hand cannon, and super duper SMG versions using it (new icon)
• Increased Micromissile explosion radius from 1 to 1.5m
• Reimagined visuals for Zones with new shaders
• Aimbot Fab now always level 35
• The Sell All button now mentions that Favorited items don't get sold
• Optimized framerate for Zones greatly, and for all projectiles to some extent
• Fixed volcano ambush having incorrect spawn points
• Fixed Portcullis 1 nav issues
• Fixed the in-game hotbar being clickable in some menus
• Fixed the Finality rooftop hologram shader
• Fixed the Stuck achievement/bounties not working
• Fixed Sticky grenades taking way too long to explode
• Fixed certain missions showing up again in your inbox after completion

This is the third patch in four days! I've been spoiling y'all, so I'm going to take a few days off this week. See y'all later!

[ 2022-03-16 03:43:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just some quick fixes, please enjoy the pizza

• Fixed an issue breaking missions at higher difficulty settings
• Temporarily disabled projectors (Zone center colors) until we can figure out what's going on (performance++)
• Scope tooltip fix
• Tutorial items will no longer be marked as New
• Inbox will always open to the inbox even if you close it in a weird way from an email

[ 2022-03-13 16:01:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

By community request, I've uploaded this build earlier than I'd planned, just so y'all can get the new stuff as soon as possible!

• Added a very special unique item reward to the Machiavelli's Pizza questline
• Added World Shortcut Tele-Porters - to/from the Arcade, find them in the world to unlock them
• Added (large) XP rewards to all Missions
• AI which are blocked by a player or AI while spawning will now try to spawn on another spawn point
• Mission rewarded credits now properly account for game difficulty level
• Mission inbox sorting now prioritizes Unread vs objectives
• Added a Total Unlocks progress bar in the unlock screen
• Improved framerate dramatically when Loot Find powerups are nearby
• Other minor framerate improvements (for ESD executables etc)
• Extra Charges on weapons which reload an entire clip now increase the reloaded amount too, so that you always reload the whole clip
• Fixed gambling shop color again
• Added a few new loading screen backgrounds, which now are chosen randomly
• Quests, Courier missions, and Ambushes now try to drop the reward directly in your inventory, then cache, then on the ground as a last resort
• Improved AI pathing in the crane area near Oshiro
• Fixed courier missions not showing the countdown timer properly

[ 2022-03-13 04:46:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

A fairly hefty weekly patch for y'all! This one is aimed at making the inbox easier to navigate, as well as fixing a few bugs I found in the big multiplayer night we had on PetePlaysTheGames twitch channel.

• Added new Student Loans quest which unlocks when you hack a level 25+ server
• New Quarkus area - not open for hacking yet, but please let us know if you like how it looks!
• Inbox update - filtering by Inbox (important), Tracked, and Archive. Autosorting. Prettier, added tooltips to icons.
• Increased bitcred rewards for all early quests significantly
• The Gambling shop now drops a bunch of money instead of nothing
• Added a progress bar to each tab of the Unlocks page
• Spend bitcreds bounty amount reduced
• Multiplayer - +XP% per person increased to 15% from 10, share radius increased from 75 to 100m
• Added an Upgrade Rarity machine to the volcano secret room
• Raidseekers now have their own icon to differentiate that they spread vulnerabilities
• Glide jump now properly glides on first jump if the button is held down
• Accelerating Fire now increases RAM cost as the gun heats up
• Laugh Now, Cry Laser now decays over time, and does not count damage from hazards like Lava
• Doubled +Weapon Damage (flat) scaling with level to help it compete at higher level
• Forward-firing disc machineguns drop rate doubled
• Shotguns, Snipers, and Pulse weapons now have uncapped final Attack Speed (but still generate with the same base attack speed, to preserve their feel)
• Shotgun accuracy cap increased from 70 to 85
• Disco Deathballs and items with low cooldowns and no charges can no longer have the When Hit Cooldown affix
• Added a 1 second cooldown to the When Hit Cooldown affix
• Extra Projectiles affix now normalizes damage to +25% total dps per extra projectile (this is a nerf for low projectile count weapons, but a buff for high ones)
• Destroy Mines bounty now doesn't happen till higher level
• Sentries now say what they are when you mouseover them
• Fixed the gambling shop/secret arcade shop from having the wrong colors
• Fixed the cache in the volcano secret shop from being too big, added a cache to the cavern shop
• Fixed damage bounties overflow
• Fixed an issue where the Enemies Remaining text wouldn't show up after you'd done the volcano boss fight
• Optimized performance for aoe Zone abilities from Snails, players, etc. Fixed targeting issue.
• Fixed other player icons not showing up on the map in multiplayer depending on who joined when
• Fixed Ride the Glide achievement triggering too early
• Rezigen server now can be hacked from the very top
• Fixed the map clipping through the wall in the arcade

[ 2022-03-07 05:31:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Improved Healbat healing amount
• Improved Chargebat charge speed and damage
• Fixed all flying AI from wobbling and not acting when too close
• Minor performance improvements
• Vortex grenade damage rebalanced downward
• Invalid items can no longer have their rarity upgraded in the arcade machine
• Removed chromatic keyboard support (the plugin was no longer being updated)
• Disabled sorting inventory during choice cube item choice, to prevent an exploit
• All items now come off cooldown when you die
• Players will respawn close to where they died more often (it only falls back to quest progress when you load in the first time)
• Epic items in the world now show properly orange instead of dark yellow
• Fixed chromatic aberration issue
• Fixed Email buttons opening the wrong email when filtered
• Missions which have a bitcred penalty will now take all your bitcreds if they try to take more than you have, instead of none
• Fixed the Cache Waypoint in the tutorial not going away if you skip the tutorial in that phase
• Fixed a systemic issue causing waypoints to not disappear
• Untracking a quest now untracks it in the in-game gui too

[ 2022-03-01 04:42:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fixed an issue which could cause jumps to not work well if the player wasn't moving
• Glide Jumps now glide while holding the button down for both jumps
• Damage numbers should display properly for very large numbers now
• Chromatic Aberration now properly shows only while sprinting instead of all the time

[ 2022-02-24 04:09:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added a World Map, with zone levels, mission locations, player icons (including others in mp), and store icons for stores you've visited (among other niceties)
• Inbox filtering buttons now display which one you're currently using
• Fixed the arcade terrace cache not opening
• Fixed finality ramp being invisible in photosensitive mode
• Fixed inbox track button disappearing when disabled
• Fixed Lasbreakers dropping with useless weapon range
• Fixed non-arcade shops showing as the wrong color

[ 2022-02-22 05:22:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Overhauled Inbox UI to make it easier to filter and track Missions
• Added Chuy's Yo-yo unique item (with new yo-yo projectile motion affix)
• Added the Bitpuncher non-unique sniper, which does a ton of damage but reloads (kind of like a longer ranged hand cannon)
• Fixed TV teleporters getting you stuck
• Fixed slight momentum loss when mantling
• Fixed Rarity Upgrade menu Close button not working
• All visible timers in the game now properly round up so they show 1 second instead of 0 remaining
• Added instructions to the Avatar Customization Icon page to mention how you can mod in your own icons
• Added a Skip Tutorial button to the escape menu
• Minions which drop zones on the ground now scale with the minion item's (final) DPS instead of the minion's damage (nerf)
• Accepting a mission no longer closes the inbox completely, it just returns to the email screen
• Fixed typo in the sprint tooltip
• Fixed duplicate emails showing up again later

[ 2022-02-16 03:08:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added a Gambling shop in the Arcade, which sells all Choice Cubes - some of which are specialized - all of which can have Super Duper items. It uses your Loot Find value, so switch gear first!
• Added the Seeking random enemy affix - enemies launch seekers at you (watch for the purple glow)
• Added the Chance to Seeker unlockable item affix, which fires a seeker (javelin style) when you use the item
• Added Circuit projectile movement (with an SD sentry and an SD micromissile SMG to use it)
• Added a small chance that items generate with up to +-30% base cooldown, same dps
• Added a new guard against players being launched too far by enemy clipping (this should get it this time)
• Dropped loot cubes in multiplayer can now be picked up instantly by other players
• Increased Heal.bat range
• Synced new projectile movement types in mp
• Improved Sine and Javelin projectile movement types
• Added a subicon for Discs
• Added an Advanced Tooltips option - turning this off hides item levels unless necessary
• Added particles to buying items in shops (in addition to the selling ones)
• Fixed a bug where shops were restocking on a 2 minute timer, now it's properly 3
• Fixed scrolling up/down to get chat history bug
• Fixed Zone scaling issues for certain locations (in particular in the volcano end fight)
• Removed accidental FOV bump when dashing/teleporting
• Tweaked momentum retention for dash/grapple/teleporting
• Random enemy affixes now have some limits based on level

[ 2022-02-01 04:03:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added Sentry.exe unlockable executable - spawns a stationary sentry that fires at enemies
• Added Butterfly.exe unique sentry (unlocked with sentries) - fires a ton of seekers!
• Added the Rarity Upgrade Arcade machine - upgrade a Common/Uncommon/Rare item up to Epic for 1/3/5 Ouros, picking from 3 random affixes each time.
• Added Super Duper: Ejected Disk, with sine wave projectile motion, piercing, and ricochet
• Added Super Duper: The Javelin, a pulse which launches missiles overhead
• New Unlockable Perk: Interrupt Request - Invulnerable while dashing (+25% distance)
• New Super Duper Mod: I Like To Move It - adds 10% dash distance and explosion area
• Options Menu: Added Aim Assist separate sliders for Aim Assist Pull (moving your cursor) and Bending (changing projectile aim)
• Options Menu: Added Gun Volume slider
• Full Stats UI updates for dps/power/healing
• While invulnerable, you can no longer be debuffed (fire, slow, etc)
• The Disco Deathball now does individual damage rolls per sub-projectile
• Lasguns now have their own subicon
• Forward-firing discs now have their own green disk icon
• Mod tooltips no longer show cooldowns since it's irrelevant
• Collision fixes (aimed at fixing player yeeting - please let me know if you get launched way too far in combat)
• Grappling Hook fixes
• Fixed Recycle Bin issue causing no-name items (and properly rebalanced it to get the right amount of shotguns/mg's/snipers/pulses)

[ 2022-01-22 04:19:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just some quick bugfixes. Thanks to ozzuneoj and Ray for reporting these on the Discord

• Fixed a UI issue preventing difficulty changing in single player games
• Fixed an issue where recycling to a Specialized Mod would sometimes cause it to become an Icebreaker

[ 2021-12-23 21:47:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Added Unlockable Perk: Brainsaver. After being hit, gain 1 second of invulnerability (4s cd)
• Added Unlockable Perk: Resistance Cascade: After killing an enemy, your next shot chains
• Added Unlockable Item: Knockback EMP
• Added Unlockable Affix: Increased/decreased aggro for weapons
• Added visible timers for debuffs to show how long you're slowed for, etc
• New icons for Slowing EMPs and Halt and Catch Fire unique EMP
• The Flatline perk will now give you a short period of invulnerability after activating
• Discs will no longer upgrade to the Dodgeball in the recycle bin, since they behave so differently
• Buffed Dodgeball unique item damage scaling with level significantly
• Added sound options for muting just hit confirmation and cooldown sounds
• The item sorting button now accounts for Favorite and New items (sorting them first and last, respectively)
• When Hit Cooldown tooltip now properly mentions it does not apply when your minions get hit
• Hit Confirm sounds on targets you are dealing less damage to (e.g., fire damage on a fire enemy) will sound slightly different
• Added an option to change the scaling of in-game floating damage numbers
• Floating damage numbers are now more consistent and scroll faster, for readability
• Branded Affixes now properly mention whether they're item-local
• Placed 5 new Caches in the Arcade, one near each shop
• Items will now only be marked not New after you hover them for a bit
• Your minions now noclip you
• Player knockback fixes

[ 2021-12-22 03:34:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc here, here's the Funkadelic update!

Highlights

• Funkadelic Disco Palace - Now Open! This level 30 survival arena has a ton of new unique mechanics - bring some heals, and maybe don't bother with a gun!
• Huge Achievement Overhaul
• Unlock System - Added a big new system which allows you to unlock new Item, Affix, Perk, and even Talent options for Unlock Points (earned with Achievements). These are account-wide, so once you unlock it, you can use it on this character or any future characters.(with more to come later - send in your suggestions!)
• Engine Upgrade
• Visual Upgrades (perk/achievement/unlock UI, fog, stars, shaders, etc)
• Lots of balancing bugfixes

Full detailed patch notes here. Happy hacking! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2021-09-20 23:49:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc here, here's the May update! I'm really excited for y'all to try this one.

Highlights

• Courier missions - Challenge your traversal skills with these timed challenges hidden throughout the world.
• New Progression UI with additional rewards for leveling and hacking higher level servers
• AI Updates - smarter ranged hiding, sniping, and keeping distance. Enemies converge better when the hack is ending, and roaming enemies are now able to detect you if you're standing right behind them.
• Also - enemies stagger from damage for longer, which makes getting in close a little easier.
• Lots of gorgeous new item and enemy icons
• Fancy new UI particles
• Lots of new powerups and item drops to find in the world
• Upgraded item brands
• Recycle bin upgrade to reliably give uniques which are subtypes, or tell you if there's no available unique for that item type (but then you should tell me, so i can make one)
• New and upgraded item skins (Green Cosmic, Gold, and Rose Gold)
• Balancing (mostly item damage buffs for weird variants) and bugfixes
• Controller support update - every UI now uses the virtual cursor for consistency and ease of use, and the cursor now has improved handling
• Lots of item balancing, in particular buffing some of the weirder weapons
• Tons of bugfixes

Next up, I might do some courier variations, or I might get working on the achievement overhaul and unlock store :) Full detailed patch notes here. Happy hacking! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2021-05-27 17:36:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc here, just wanted to let y'all know what I've done in the past month. This patch is already live!

Highlights

• About 3 dozen new Weapon Skins for Super Duper weapons (which have a small chance of showing up on other items too!)
• Tripled Super Duper item drop rate
• Low Gravity server security
• Minigun and SMG weapon types
• Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Rainbow damage types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses
• Detailed sub-tooltips so you can see exactly what that new affix does
• Per-difficulty mission and world state saves, so each difficulty level is the full experience
• A gorgeous new grid shader which makes spaces easier to navigate
• A dozen new Bounty types, including Multikills, Out of Line of Sight, and Airborne
• AI Upgrades for the Bats and Minions
• Lots of item balancing, in particular for Heals, Minions, Scopes, and Exploits.
• Tons of bugfixes

I think you're going to like this update! I'm starting work on the new progression screen today, and Nonadecimal's been working on the Act 2 finale tower! Full detailed patch notes here. Enjoy! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2021-04-28 01:34:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc here and I've gotten a lot done in the last month and a half since the Scar update.

.bats

First off, Bats! .bats! These are new flying enemies, with a whole new locomotion. The idea is to bring more verticality to the gameplay, so you have to watch not only your ankles and your horizon, but also the sky. They come in two varieties so far - the Charge.bat, which winds up an attack and swoops in to smack you, and the Heal.bat, a supporter type which uses a lasgun beam to heal enemies you've injured. The bats normally spawn from level 25+ servers, but if you want to try them out sooner, there's a new level 15 arena in the Arcade...

Tele-porter Arena

This arena not only has a lot of bats to deal with, but also a bunch of teleporters and a slide (yes, you read that right). I'm trying out teleporters in combat, plus there are lasers, jump pads, a bunch of verticality, and a secret or two. This new arena is especially worth doing because I've added extra XP and better loot rarity for all arena servers.
This is what it looks like on the outside - you can't miss it!

Perk Tryouts

I've added another room in the Arcade that lets you try out any perk, as long as you stay in the room. You can use this before you spend your points, and try out new combos. Just shoot the perk icon on the wall to not only test out the perk, but also get the info on how the perk works. And if you still get buyer's remorse, perk respec points are now granted every 25 levels instead of 50.

Other Improvements

I've been working hard on making the gameplay smoother in a lot of different ways - talent respecs, lots of item balancing, bounties are easier, more in-game tips and descriptions, rebalanced hack speed and XP curve, better colorblind mode, and more. I made a lot of things a bit easier, actually. I think it's a lot more fun! I've done some fun visual upgrades - fire and ice servers now show the shaders above, so that you can more easily tell which ones they are (which is important because fire does more damage to ice enemies and vice versa), bigger crosshairs with on-hit and kill confirm flair, Of course, there have been a lot of nice bug fixes too - the quest indicators now go away properly when the quest is done, the resolution no longer changes when you go to the options menu for the first time, enemies are better at staying in the hack radius, lots of nav fixes, fixes for multiplayer and even for speedrunning! (By the way, if you'd like to compete in the fastest to hack the Volcano boss server on a fresh character, the world record run is just over an hour and a half!).
We hope you enjoy this update! Coming up next, Nonadecimal is planning out the act 2 boss arena, and I'm planning to set up an achievement system with unlockable rewards! Enjoy! - SDGC and Nonadecimal P.S. - The bridge the Volcano is open now. It wasn't supposed to be closed. Sorry about that!

[ 2021-03-30 02:09:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc and Nonadecimal here with a new batch of content and a 15% off sale! As usual there's been a ton of performance boosts along the way, particularly for high-framerate physics and multiplayer. We're still working on the Act 2 missions and its ~final battle~ atop the Kinetic Temple but we wanted to add more high-level servers to the world while you wait. That starts with The Scar.

The Scar

This month marks 12 years since a catastrophic error cracked the Supermesh, separating founder Rachana Joshi's Kinetic Temple from the rest of the grid. Fearing cascading failures, Quarkus sealed off the afflicted area with a massive firewall in the interest of public safety. The countermeasures proved effective and the integrity of the Supermesh was preserved.
The disaster left deep fissures radiating outward from Quarkus. Sensing opportunity, a number of shell corporations and black market enterprises leveraged the disaster to entrench themselves in Quarkus' shadow. Cloaked in fog and stealth security, they run illicit ops and trade stolen IP. Be careful getting lost in the Scar. It's hard to tell what kind of trouble you'll find in its depths.

Branded Stores

This feature's been a long time coming but we've finally got 5 branded stores ringing the Arcade with unique risk/reward profiles for better build customization. Having trouble looting the right gun to fit your build? You know exactly where to buy it.... but at a cost. Branded items have a pool of guaranteed benefits but also guaranteed penalties to up the challenge. Coincidentally this lets people role spec more easily as tank, sniper, etc... Kalt - health+ / speed- Feisty! - speed+ / damage- Overclock - damage+ / accuracy- Talus - accuracy+ / health- Dysrupt - hack+, loot+ / RAM-

Talent Respecs

One of the most requested features is here! Ouroboros responded to feedback on his OS and added the ability to spend 2 Ouro coins to respec 1 talent point. You get Ouros for completing bounties so get to work. Capitalism isn't going to topple itself!

Green Hill Zone

We've also released the work-in-progress Green Hill Zone near the Helices tower. It's a more open-air vertically layered combat space with lots of occluded sightlines and level 35-45 servers. Please give us feedback on the combat to help shape the area as we finish it! Should be a good place for flying enemies....

Coming Soon

Speaking of flying enemies, we have some .bat files to share with you in the next update. Be seeing you soon!
Enjoy! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2021-02-11 22:42:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! superdupergc here and I've got a lot of cool stuff to show you. Nonadecimal has been working really hard on all these giant new areas, and in between taking care of my baby and my day job, I've managed to improve some systems and add some cool new stuff too. This update is hot off the presses because we are very excited about it and want to y'all as soon as possible! We're still working on a lot of it, so if you've got feedback, you can help shape the game.
You may notice some changes to the supermesh here in Black Ice. Like, complete world shuffling changes! Lots of new places to explore, but mostly we're opening the Forest and Oshiro Orbital areas for combat. These new areas really push the verticality of the game to new levels (pun intended), so bring your favorite grappling hook or glide jump and have at it!
Above you can see one of the two new arenas - which I won't spoil the name of for plot reasons, but look at this place! It's a hacker's playground! I'm also working on a third arena for later with Tele-porters in it... I'll let you guess what those do.
I've added a bunch of fun new player tweaks, the biggest one of which is that talent points now go up to level 100 instead of 50, so enjoy playing at those higher difficulty levels much easier now! I've also added new guns that reload when you're damaged (like the unique weakening bolt hand cannon, Kinetic Maintenance). This can be really powerful! I've also made a few subtle changes which make lower rarity items more exciting - every once and a while, you'll find a common item with much higher damage, or a lower rarity item with a Lot of an affix on it, more than you could get on a high rarity item.
We hope you enjoy this update! Coming up next, we'll be working on quests for the new areas, plus a talent respec option, among other fun things that I'll keep secret for now! Enjoy! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2020-12-28 04:19:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Please forgive me for the brief patch notes, we just had a baby! That said, this patch has a ton of new stuff. Check it out!
The 0.9.1 Patch is here! This one has a lot of fun systems upgrades, adding a ton of new weapon types, several new enemies, and a lot of bug fixing.

• Turret and E-Snail Enemies, which add a whole extra strategic layer to combat
• Mini-webcrawlers and E-xploding-snails enemies, which spawn as ambush waves to surprise you
• New items! Dash, Fire Wall, Electrostatic Discharge, Flare Gun, Shredder, Line Break, etc!
• A full 20 New unique items, including the Sharkbringer, Pizza Launcher, Slink King, Jash's Ten-Pounder, and more!
• New item affixes, including Fire pools on the ground, Kill Chain, Longshot, Reverse Spread, Cleanse, Self-Push, and No Clip
• New Enhancement system, a dozen new types of temporary buffs you can find in the world, but choose wisely because you can only use one at a time!
• New Debuffs: Fear, Corrode, Weaken, with items to match
• New Perk: R.I.P.exe, which heals you on close range kills but prevents the use of healing items, enabling a new push-forward playstyle!
• Four new exploding barrel types - fire, ice, lightning, and healing, plus they drop zones on the ground for a lingering effect
• Tons of bug fixes, especially for Multiplayer and Photosensitive Mode
• A bunch of other stuff I didn't have space to mention

Enjoy! - SDGC and Nonadecimal

[ 2020-09-18 23:15:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Volcano is finally out, and with it, Act 1 of the story is done! To support it, we've added a ton of new mechanics. New guns, new abilities, perks, enemies, music, world events, and more! This patch is so big, we're finally moving the price of the game up to the full $20 after the sale. Also a heads up - we have not yet updated the trailer with all this new stuff, but the demo is now updated!

Volcano

We've got a giant new zone fully implemented! The volcano fortress of an eccentric tech trillionaire, packed full of monuments to his success and corporations mining their IP. Continue unraveling the conspiracy with Anima as you wade through the miners' mischief and plenty of lava. The volcano offers multiple pathways through the caverns, and triples the game's quest content, with new missions utilizing new mechanics like one-to-many server links to untangle, servers to defend, laser and lava hazards to dodge, and secrets to find. All of this culminates in a leap of faith and a boss fight with a new enemy - the Mother of Spiders and her many eggs. Be careful you though - along the way, you might get ambushed by a corp trying to take revenge in one of the new random world events.

New Items

Get ready for even more build options and replayability, with over a dozen new unique items and about 10 new normal item classes as well. Hand Cannons are a new base weapon type - close range burst damage, utilizing a new reload-style mechanic. Not shocking enough for you? How about Chain Lightning? SMGs? Smartguns? And my personal favorite, the Pinball Launcher. We've also added a Grappling Hook and a Glide Jump, to give you even more movement options to master, complete with new perks to complement them. New affixes? Tons! Off the top of my head: shield piercing, cooldown speed, charge speed, extra projectiles, aim assist, health/ram on kill, crit kill explosion, shatter frozen enemies, double/half projectile speed, spread vulnerabilities, and more!

Multiplayer Customization

Mako is finally showing her face in multiplayer, fully modeled and animated! You can set up a unique look, changing her suit, skin, and hair colors to whatever RGB value you prefer. Personally, I think you can't go wrong with magenta and cyan. Additionally, you can customize her jacket with a bunch of great icons (some from my friend's games!). You can even mod your own icon in extremely easily - just put a .png in a folder. (Modding in general is easier with a new in-game debug display). If you don't want to see other people's icons, just uncheck "Allow custom content" in the game options, password protect your game, and kick anyone that crosses you. And don't worry, if you miss the old pill models, you can still do that too!

More!

I'm very excited to announce that we have over 24 minutes of excellent new music from V-Axys! The music system is now location-specific, so for instance, the Volcano has a different feel than other places. And what's also location-specific? Spawn points. So if you die in the volcano, you get to go right back. We've also added a new Recycle Bin mechanic, which lets you reroll 3 items into a new item which will be different from those three, of average item level, and of at least the rarity of the minimum one - so you can reroll 3 uniques into a new one! We overhauled the Scorporation firing pattern which is much easier to predict and track while still being very challenging, and the Webcrawlers can now dodge! You'll notice this right away, it's a big change. Also! Six new perks, Encrypted Server Security, better bounties (simpler, with in-game tracking and the option to reroll), and enemy path jank reduction. Of course, we've done tons of bug fixes, including a truly MASSIVE amount of optimization, resulting in a gain of *40* FPS, even on some low spec systems! Full details here.

Thanks!

We hope you like all the new stuff! If you do, please feel free to leave a review and let us know on the discord. Thanks for playing, and Happy Hacking! superdupergc and Nonadecimal

[ 2020-06-25 13:31:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Like a fancy cake, we're adding more layers to Black Ice. We added rewarding Bounties, the expansive and vertical Volcanyon (with missions!), and both Grenades and Launchers! Read on!

Bounties

First off, we've got bounties now! Bounties are nice little side objectives which grant rare or better loot in return. In-universe, Ouroborous, the famed hacker who made your deck software, is the one paying you to do these bounties. More on him in later patches! There are about a dozen bounty types, with several subtypes each, which can combine into hundreds of variations. Unlock more as you hack higher level servers! You'll be tasked to with things like killing enemies with a specific weapon types, or Exploit enemies, or hack difficult servers while taking no damage. There's even a chance you'll get an extra hard bounty with a Choice Cube!

Volcanyon

A dense new zone, called the Volcanyon, is now available. This area is targeted at levels 5-15, with dozens of new servers layered in a very vertical environment. There are several new quests to complete here, in addition to all the fun new servers to hack - all leading up to the Volcano, which we are working on next!
Will you hack Machiavelli's Pizza, up on the cliff while watching out for the lava, or will you go straight for the gold and take out WeCare, the insurance company that has been denying your friend's daughter the medicine she needs?

Grenades

Make room on your deck, because you're going to want one of these! We've added not just throwable grenades, but also grenade launchers, in a bunch of different variants. Want to set enemies on fire? Sure! Want to stick an aimbot right before it groups up with its friends? You can! There are even a few unique grenades, like the Vortex Grenade, which pulls enemies and then explodes.

More!

We also did a ton of things you might not notice at first glance, but you'll love! We made it so AI can use booster pads. We upgraded the main UI, so that you can see more at once. We added quest indicators in the world, so you can see where you need to go. We added new affixes, which can show up randomly on weapons, but you can also mod in, like Chance to Pull. And of course, tons of bug fixes. Full details here.
We hope you like all the new stuff! Let us know on the discord. Thanks for playing, and Happy Hacking! superdupergc and nonadecimal

[ 2019-11-05 00:47:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I just did a quick bugfix patch that was on the indev patch, but I figured y'all would want on live. I say it's a bugfix patch, but there are some nice quality of life improvements and a couple of new item variants too. Check it out! Next up, we're working on bounties! We've got them mostly working on our development version and hopefully we'll have something to test on indev in a few weeks.

• Added some fire-based executables, with punny names. I won't tell you all of them here!
• Added a new unique EMP, Halt and Catch Fire
• Sniper weapons now have a wider range of firing rates (some are slower now)
• Fixed several bugs in the overpass area (thanks o-goncho and others!)
• Minions now prioritize the player's damage taken over their own when deciding aggro
• Dark enemies now have a grey outline to differentiate them more when highlighted
• Fixed an issue where Remote exploits would not properly detonate
• Aimbots now have *much* faster projectiles at high level, (15 scaling to 50 in NG++)
• Spidermines should properly reacquire targets if their first target dies now
• Reduced Mine damage
• Servers leveling up from killing players or other servers is now called Upgraded and can spawn in the world as a regular security affix. Level is +3 on top of the sector's max level instead of server level
• Fixed Upgraded server not removing skulls when taken over sometimes
• Hostile takeovers can no longer be from one server to that same server
• Fixed an issue where ranged enemies could get stuck and ignore things when not finding cover positions
• NOW FOR THE MOST REQUESTED:
• Escalating servers now cap out at 5x power
• Scopes now reduce aim sensitivity when used

[ 2019-08-12 18:58:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

*checks notes* Yep, Biggest Black Ice Patch Ever. Everything is getting bigger and better, which is why this patch is called Escalation. It's been a while since I've updated the live version of the game , but don't think that we haven't been hard at work! We've actually done over 45 weekly patches of the game on the Indev version, and now it's time for everyone to see all the new stuff! First, a preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S-kbHAvhz4

A Whole New World

We've overhauled the entire world, adding new areas to the Supermesh, starting with a central hub called The Arcade. Explore intricate new combat areas like the overpass, alley and scar sections, as well as traversal areas like the Forest. And we're not done yet! We'll be adding stories, servers, and scorporations (and other enemies) into many of these areas soon! Not only are there a lot of new places to see in the world, there's also a new event that happens periodically as you wander around. Corporate servers will try to perform a Hostile Takeover and hack another server! Will you choose to swoop in and clean up both servers, or will you let them fight and watch as one server takes the other over, gains an ally, and grows more powerful in the process?

Corporation Updates

Corporate security has had a huge upgrade. Not only can Swarm and Dark servers be found anywhere, but also there are now Evading, Escalating, Regenerating, and Explosive servers - a dozen security types in all! And if you thought I'd go easy on you and have only one security type per server, they definitely stack. Have fun with that Ice + Mines + Swarm server. webcrawler To help you prepare for the new servers, the info terminals have been updated to corporate logos, color commentary from Ouroboros (written by Nonadecimal). The terminals even include which types of items that server is more likely to drop, which is great for when you need to upgrade that one piece of software.

Items

Speaking of upgrades - I have so many new items for you to hunt for! Details:

• Pulse Rifles, which are a fourth modular weapon type which can use the dozen or so modular projectiles
• Executables, spell-like abilities with longer cooldowns that can be used instantly to fire a burst of projectiles without swapping to the item, allowing for a new type of build we call "Wizard"
• Exploits, a subtype of Executables that have a bonus ability that triggers when they hit debuffed enemies - like a huge explosion, a burst of projectiles, or calling in a mortar strike
• Barriers, which are tough summonable shields to defend from projectiles
• Specialized Mods and Scopes, which focus specific stats
• Micromissiles and Seekers, which are new types of projectiles with wobbly and homing behaviors

On top of that, I've got more than a dozen new Super Duper unique items to find and create new character builds around, all with punny names because, well, a good pun is its own reword. LazyThunk Weapons and gear are more variable and interesting than ever, with new six new bonus affixes and more affixes in the new customized drop pools. These pools ensure that items don't drop with affixes that don't apply to them, which results in more power for you! Additionally, I've added an important new item mechanic called Charges, which allows items like Executables to store up multiple uses over time. All these new knobs to create items are accessible to players with the updated modding support, which makes it easier than ever to create and share new items with your friends. The tutorial is built into the csvs, which are now included with every patch in a built in Mods folder! It would actually be possible to enable Steam Workshop support for these types of item mods, so please let me know in the comments if you'd like me to enable that! One more little thing that I love: dead enemies no longer block shots, which means that a single shotgun blast can take out a whole group of enemies. As you might expect, this feels AMAZING. See below:

New Builds

As always, I am focused on enabling more ways to build your character. To that end, I've added a new perk - Braincase - which heals the player for a percentage of their max health every time they get a headshot. On top of that, I've overhauled six of the perks which were previously locked you into specific weapons. Now, these perks still apply to those weapons - but also to *all* of your weapons. This means you can now use the Double Data Rate perk which doubles projectiles with a machinegun, or the Aimhax homing perk with a pulse rifle - or both! "I Expect You To Die", the lasgun piercing perk, now adds piercing to *all* weapons, which can be fantastic if you are also running Drunken Master with its dizzy ricocheting projectiles.

Clever Girl...

Enemies now understand how to find cover positions, which means that ranged enemies will climb up on servers to snipe at you, while the melee enemies come at you from all directions. This has a huge difference on game feel!

Polish

And now for the lightning round, a huge list of other small things that we've worked on to improve quality of life, many in response to player suggestions (so keep suggesting things please!)

• Tons of new sounds, including unique sounds for each enemy and item rarity on pickup
• The Hack Radius has been completely redone - it animates and reacts to what you're doing. Gorgeous, if I do say so myself.
• UI updates, including a death report, fancy damage numbers and chat, and inventory updates
• Visual upgrades including Fog, Depth of Field, and Camera Tilt when strafing
• Explosions now show their radius, to help aim
• Players can now change their name and color in multiplayer, see allied players through walls, and share full XP
• And of course, we've spent a ton of time on bug fixes and performance improvements

Thanks for reading all that. We've been working extremely hard on the game, and we're very proud of what we've accomplished. Looking ahead, I'm planning on working on Bounties next, while Nonadecimal will be working on stories and new areas! Let me know what you're excited about, either here or on the discord. Thanks a bunch, Super Duper Garrett Cooper

[ 2019-06-25 03:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Reports are coming in from across cyberspace that local SWARM SERVERS have having.. . corrupted outtttputtttt And then only ?! Console jockeys, you'd better investigate!

[ 2019-04-01 16:23:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Super Duper Garrett Cooper here. Just wanted to let y'all know that Black Ice is 25% off for the Winter Sale, including the 4-Pack and the Soundtrack! Now's a great time to tell your friends about the game! We're working on some awesome new stuff, like a Volcano zone and a bunch of new hack types - which you can preview on the Indev build right now!

[ 2018-12-20 19:18:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

I wanted to wait until we got the volcano done, but I figured y'all would want all these other fixes I've been working on since February. So without further delay,

Enemy Upgrades

So above there - you can see the new Mor.tar.gz enemy, who denies a big area for several seconds. They're pretty easy to take down at close range, but they can ruin your day if you're not paying attention. The Popup also has a whole new look, and the Aimbot is actually animated now. Additionally, all enemies now can be staggered by doing enough damage to them, which allows for some great close-ranged gameplay. Also: CC resistance, smoother pathing, minion following improvements.

Item Upgrades

One of my goals is to encourage people to play multiple characters with different builds. To that end, I've created a cross-character Hacker Cache, placed near shops throughout the world, which allow you to easily transfer items between any of your characters. You can also upgrade their storage size with bitcreds. In your inventory, you can now mark items as Favorite to exempt them from the "Sell All" button. Choice Cubes are a new mechanic, which offer a choice of three items when opened. They drop from Arena servers like Portcullis, and can also be purchased from shops. They can contain unique items! Also: Self-damage on explosives, new uniques for disc and mine, new EMPs/Discs, ChanceToDebuff affixes.

Perk Upgrades

A full FIVE new perks, with all sorts of new combinations! Also - Aimhax has been changed to affect machineguns instead of snipers, to reward accurate sniping. Sniper rifles can still drop with Homing on them, however!

Performance

You should see a *huge* increase in framerate in this patch. I've updated through two major versions of Unity, added Occlusion Culling, and now de/respawn enemies/powerups with distance. Also: Tons of balancing changes, PVP updates, bug fixes, on-hit sound!
Please let me know if you like all this stuff. We've been working really hard on it, and we've got some Really Neat Stuff coming very soon (Volcano/Arcade/etc!) Anyway, go have fun! (Full detailed notes for 0.8.102 - 0.8.119 are here)

[ 2018-06-23 03:19:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Super Duper Garrett Cooper here - I'm the main dev of Black Ice. I just thought you might like a sneak preview of what's coming in the next big patch. Nonadecimal and I have been working very hard on the game this year, putting out an indev branch patch on average about once a week. (Patch notes for the indev version are here!). Just real quick off the top of my head - a new enemy (the Mor.tar.gz), HUGE performance improvements and bugfixes, five new perks, new animations for all enemies to allow a new combat mechanic (staggering), a debuff revamp, cross-character item stash, new types of EMPs/Discs, new uniques, lots of balancing, and enemies are even better at finding and killing you. All of these upgrades are actually accessible on the indev version right now. Coming up after that, I'm working on crafting a new volcano zone, as an upgrade of the current lava zone. Our focus has been on creating new types of experiences within Black Ice! Nonadecimal has been working on a hub area called The Arcade, which be varied area with jump pads and tunnels - great for PVP! Anyway - if you're new, welcome! If you're an old (black) hat - there's never been a better time to jack in to Black Ice ːwebcrawlerː

[ 2018-06-22 15:34:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I'm super proud to finally launch the "Firepower" patch - with gun models, a lava zone, completely overhauled enemies, and the start of the mission system! My buddy Nonadecimal has been helping me out with the missions, corp names, and other cool stuff.

Weapons!

Check out these sweet gun models (created by Ethan Redd, and animated by yours truly, the weapon models represent a huge change in Black Ice. Not only do they look great, they actually change the functionality of the game. There are about a dozen new weapon models, each coming in several colors. You can only use one gun at a time, but I've rebalanced enemies to compensate.

Enemy Overhaul

Enemies are now even better at coming to kill you! Aimbots now fire Imp-style projectiles, Gitsfish charge at you, and Scorporations now snipe from long range, from behind a shield. Enemies gib or disintegrate depending on how hard you've just killed them. More than one enemy can climb the same wall, and all enemies are now much better at predicting where you'll be.

It's Getting Hot In Herre

Behind Portcullis, there's a new lava zone. The floor is literally lava, so fight across the rooftops, and dash across the new moving platforms into the Aimbot Fab, a new indoor arena with dozens of aimbots to dodge. It feels like a bullet hell! Check back in later - we have big plans for the lava ;)

Missons

Take up Mako's quest to save a little girl the corporations don't think is profitable enough to keep alive. In over her head from the first keystroke, Mako has to learn fast to navigate the rapid cycle of corporate espionage and payback that divides ultra-rich executives from everyone else. Choose carefully who to trust as the story begins to unfold.

Other Features

• Exploding Barrels!
• Tons of balancing changes - enemy speeds, attacks, hp, etc, weapon damage and RAM costs, and more!
• New weapon recoil system, affected by the new reduced recoil/spread affixes on items
• Sprint is faster, but you can no longer shoot while sprinting
• Depth of Field and Fog video options, plus I fixed 1990 mode!
• Too many optimizations and bug fixes to list!

Discord

Come hang out in the officially verified Black Ice Discord channel!
Enjoy! :webcrawler: And please take a second to review the game and tell your friends. It really helps!

[ 2018-02-15 14:16:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I'm super proud to finally launch the "Firepower" patch - with gun models, a lava zone, completely overhauled enemies, and the start of the mission system! My buddy Nonadecimal has been helping me out with the missions, corp names, and other cool stuff.

Weapons!

Check out these sweet gun models (created by Ethan Redd, and animated by yours truly, the weapon models represent a huge change in Black Ice. Not only do they look great, they actually change the functionality of the game. There are about a dozen new weapon models, each coming in several colors. You can only use one gun at a time, but I've rebalanced enemies to compensate.

Enemy Overhaul

Enemies are now even better at coming to kill you! Aimbots now fire Imp-style projectiles, Gitsfish charge at you, and Scorporations now snipe from long range, from behind a shield. Enemies gib or disintegrate depending on how hard you've just killed them. More than one enemy can climb the same wall, and all enemies are now much better at predicting where you'll be.

It's Getting Hot In Herre

Behind Portcullis, there's a new lava zone. The floor is literally lava, so fight across the rooftops, and dash across the new moving platforms into the Aimbot Fab, a new indoor arena with dozens of aimbots to dodge. It feels like a bullet hell! Check back in later - we have big plans for the lava ;)

Missons

Take up Mako's quest to save a little girl the corporations don't think is profitable enough to keep alive. In over her head from the first keystroke, Mako has to learn fast to navigate the rapid cycle of corporate espionage and payback that divides ultra-rich executives from everyone else. Choose carefully who to trust as the story begins to unfold.

Other Features

• Exploding Barrels!
• Tons of balancing changes - enemy speeds, attacks, hp, etc, weapon damage and RAM costs, and more!
• New weapon recoil system, affected by the new reduced recoil/spread affixes on items
• Sprint is faster, but you can no longer shoot while sprinting
• Depth of Field and Fog video options, plus I fixed 1990 mode!
• Too many optimizations and bug fixes to list!

Discord

Come hang out in the officially verified Black Ice Discord channel!
Enjoy! ːwebcrawlerː And please take a second to review the game and tell your friends. It really helps!

[ 2018-02-15 14:16:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to the Black Ice "Disconnected" Patch! I've got a ton of great stuff in this one, aimed primarily at making the world feel more alive, game feel, and quality of life. Check out the features below!

Roaming Enemies & Fort Servers

The Supermesh just got a lot more dangerous! There are now enemy ice patrolling the map, trying to protect their territory. Ambush them as they patrol, or sneak past them - just make sure you're safe before starting a hack, or they might sneak up on you! Fort Servers are a new type of server which spawn enemies continuously to protect themselves. You can take out the enemies and get by, but in a minute or two, they'll be back. If you hack a Fort server, however, it will spawn friendly ice to help you fight in the surrounding area! It's like having a few extra minions! Look for the crenelations!

Shooting Feel Update

Who likes headshots? Enemies now have weak points which take triple damage from any hit. Additionally, they now have proper hitboxes, which means you'll be able to hit them in their legs or tentacles or whatever other creepy thing they might be crawling around on. Player projectile speeds have also doubled, and the projectiles now hit things matching their visuals. The end result is that it's much easier to hit things accurately at range, and you no longer feel like you missed something by a few nanometers. To balance all that out, your weapons now have an accuracy spread over time. This means that the longer you shoot, the less accurate your weapon will be, recovering over time. Snipers, of course, are the most accurate, but also take longer to recover their accuracy. Additionally, enemies move faster and have more hitpoints. The end result? It feels even more awesome to kill things now.

New Enemy Variant

The Super Duper GITSfish now roams the world, and spawns from high level miniboss (light blue) servers. With massive stature and a frontal shield, he can be a beast to deal with. He's pretty slow to turn around, though, so you'd better hit him from behind!

New UI and Sounds

The UI has been completely overhauled for the inventory and shop screens, with gorgeous new icons for all items by James Hostetler. The new Virtual Cursor for controller users is particularly useful, as it's easier to understand and use. There's also a new comparison system, which will show the difference in *actual* end-result DPS and health for any particular item swap. On top of all the new UI goodness, there are custom sounds for both the game and the UI. They were made by excellent sound designer Jocelyn Reyes, who also worked on Overland and Looty Dungeon. And she's not even done yet - there will be more sounds in the next few patches.

Other Features

• New Perk! Double Barrel, which doubles your shotgun's number of projectiles at a cost of attack speed and accuracy
• Map changes! There are new ramps and things all over the place, including in the arena server on the rim
• Aggro! Enemies now have a proper aggro system, and will prefer enemies that have damaged them or their allies. Minions will attack enemies that attack you!
• Minions now scale with player HP, damage, and attack speed (converted to damage)
• Loot Find Buff! More better items faster!
• Optimization! We converted the ENTIRE GAME from JavaScript to C#, added a bunch of multiplayer improvements, and enabled more enemy death particles to boot. Better framerate for everyone!
• Bug fixes like you wouldn't believe.

Upcoming Features

As a special treat for reading this far, I'll tell you what I'm working on next. I've got not one, not two, but SIX new enemies planned for the next few months. They're being created by the radical Ethan Redd, and will have different move patterns and methods of attack. Additionally, we will soon be working on quests and plot!
Enjoy! :gitsfish: And please take a second to review the game and tell your friends. It really helps!

[ 2017-07-28 02:37:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to the Black Ice "Disconnected" Patch! I've got a ton of great stuff in this one, aimed primarily at making the world feel more alive, game feel, and quality of life. Check out the features below!

Roaming Enemies & Fort Servers

The Supermesh just got a lot more dangerous! There are now enemy ice patrolling the map, trying to protect their territory. Ambush them as they patrol, or sneak past them - just make sure you're safe before starting a hack, or they might sneak up on you! Fort Servers are a new type of server which spawn enemies continuously to protect themselves. You can take out the enemies and get by, but in a minute or two, they'll be back. If you hack a Fort server, however, it will spawn friendly ice to help you fight in the surrounding area! It's like having a few extra minions! Look for the crenelations!

Shooting Feel Update

Who likes headshots? Enemies now have weak points which take triple damage from any hit. Additionally, they now have proper hitboxes, which means you'll be able to hit them in their legs or tentacles or whatever other creepy thing they might be crawling around on. Player projectile speeds have also doubled, and the projectiles now hit things matching their visuals. The end result is that it's much easier to hit things accurately at range, and you no longer feel like you missed something by a few nanometers. To balance all that out, your weapons now have an accuracy spread over time. This means that the longer you shoot, the less accurate your weapon will be, recovering over time. Snipers, of course, are the most accurate, but also take longer to recover their accuracy. Additionally, enemies move faster and have more hitpoints. The end result? It feels even more awesome to kill things now.

New Enemy Variant

The Super Duper GITSfish now roams the world, and spawns from high level miniboss (light blue) servers. With massive stature and a frontal shield, he can be a beast to deal with. He's pretty slow to turn around, though, so you'd better hit him from behind!

New UI and Sounds

The UI has been completely overhauled for the inventory and shop screens, with gorgeous new icons for all items by James Hostetler. The new Virtual Cursor for controller users is particularly useful, as it's easier to understand and use. There's also a new comparison system, which will show the difference in *actual* end-result DPS and health for any particular item swap. On top of all the new UI goodness, there are custom sounds for both the game and the UI. They were made by excellent sound designer Jocelyn Reyes, who also worked on Overland and Looty Dungeon. And she's not even done yet - there will be more sounds in the next few patches.

Other Features

• New Perk! Double Barrel, which doubles your shotgun's number of projectiles at a cost of attack speed and accuracy
• Map changes! There are new ramps and things all over the place, including in the arena server on the rim
• Aggro! Enemies now have a proper aggro system, and will prefer enemies that have damaged them or their allies. Minions will attack enemies that attack you!
• Minions now scale with player HP, damage, and attack speed (converted to damage)
• Loot Find Buff! More better items faster!
• Optimization! We converted the ENTIRE GAME from JavaScript to C#, added a bunch of multiplayer improvements, and enabled more enemy death particles to boot. Better framerate for everyone!
• Bug fixes like you wouldn't believe.

Upcoming Features

As a special treat for reading this far, I'll tell you what I'm working on next. I've got not one, not two, but SIX new enemies planned for the next few months. They're being created by the radical Ethan Redd, and will have different move patterns and methods of attack. Additionally, we will soon be working on quests and plot!
Enjoy! ːgitsfishː And please take a second to review the game and tell your friends. It really helps!

[ 2017-07-28 02:37:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks for checking out Black Ice! I've got another big patch coming up soon, but I want to playtest it first at RTX (July 7-9) before I post it. I should be posting the patch around mid July, but you can already play it on the Indev beta branch right now if you'd like a sneak preview!

Major Features

• A new enemy - the Super Duper GITSfish with a frontal shield and massive scale!
• Shooting Mechanics Upgrade - Headshots, Projectile Spread, and Proper Hitboxes, oh my!
• Wild Enemies roam the map, making it much more dangerous to run around
• Fort Servers - these crenulated servers keep a few enemies around to guard them. Hack it, and the guards will spawn as friendlies to help with nearby servers!
• Brand new UI, with a virtual cursor for controller making it a lot easier to use
• Brand new custom sounds from awesome sound designer Jocelyn Reyes, who also worked on Overland and Looty Dungeon
• We've started work on quests!

Thanks for reading!

In addition to all that, there's multiplayer enhancements, new icons, tons of bug fixes, and the whole game runs on C# now. Even the tutorial is getting updates. We've been busy! As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!
That's all, folks!

[ 2017-06-22 15:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks for checking out Black Ice! I've got another big patch coming up soon, but I want to playtest it first at RTX (July 7-9) before I post it. I should be posting the patch around mid July, but you can already play it on the Indev beta branch right now if you'd like a sneak preview!

Major Features

• A new enemy - the Super Duper GITSfish with a frontal shield and massive scale!
• Shooting Mechanics Upgrade - Headshots, Projectile Spread, and Proper Hitboxes, oh my!
• Wild Enemies roam the map, making it much more dangerous to run around
• Fort Servers - these crenulated servers keep a few enemies around to guard them. Hack it, and the guards will spawn as friendlies to help with nearby servers!
• Brand new UI, with a virtual cursor for controller making it a lot easier to use
• Brand new custom sounds from awesome sound designer Jocelyn Reyes, who also worked on Overland and Looty Dungeon
• We've started work on quests!

Thanks for reading!

In addition to all that, there's multiplayer enhancements, new icons, tons of bug fixes, and the whole game runs on C# now. Even the tutorial is getting updates. We've been busy! As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!
That's all, folks!

[ 2017-06-22 15:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

I think y'all are going to really like this one! This update has been months in the making, with updates to many of Black Ice's core systems, a ton of added content, and literally too many bug fixes to list. Let's get into it!

Major Features

• World Overhaul - The world is now hand-crafted, with lots of verticality, secrets to find, and lots more fun areas to kill things in. More details in the patch preview.
• Arena Servers - Two boss arenas in which you must fight *inside* the server! More to come!
• Drastically Enhanced Mobility - Double Jumps are now standard, and you can grab ledges and climb up on anything!
• AI Update - The AI have never been better at climbing, chasing, jumping, and hunting you down.
• UI Overhaul - The UI is in the process of being completely redone, by a real artist instead of me this time!
• Powerups! - The world now has fun little powerups or items to discover, including a 2-minute movespeed buff, items, and XP!
• Controller Vibration
• When multihacking, enemies can kill each other and level up, retaining XP
• Motion Blur - try turning this to about 8 (or max!) in video options. Off by default.
• Ranged enemies try to hide after firing
• Melee enemies try to flank
• Enemies can be seen through walls after a hack is completed
• Increased the number of supported controllers
• Aim Assist is drastically enhanced
• Tutorial Overhaul
• Added Triple Jump unique
• Lots of little visual updates!

Changes

• The player now automatically gets +5% damage per level (up to level 50)
• The Damage Returned perk now also increased DR range
• Hack Links are no longer visible except for Lasbreakers (to account for the new terrain)
• Leveling is faster! Talents are twice as effective, but the limit is now at 50 points
• Condensed talent list to six options (much less confusing for new players)
• Aimbot projectile slowed to encourage dodging
• Reduced Aimbot and Scorporation damage
• All icebreakers have longer range
• Homing is drastically enhanced
• Reduced the number of affixes per rarity on items (so each feels more unique)
• Reduced the number of items dropped by dropping XP instead of a third item
• Shotguns fire more projectiles
• Shotguns and Snipers are now slower and have an attack speed cap (making them feel more like shotguns and snipers)
• Shotguns now have damage falloff, but do much more damage at close range
• Rocket splash radius increased to 2m
• Normal lasers are now sometimes Orange, green, purple, and blue, in addition to red
• Teleport items no longer go through buildings, but can still go through enemies/players
• Teleport visual upgrades (which are disabled during Photosensitive mode for those who get motion sick)
• Servers stay solid after hacking (so you can still climb on them!)
• Added a few new random hacker names
• Piercing projectiles now only go through enemies but not walls (except for railguns, for now)
• Enemies will respawn if they get stuck
• Knockback effects on the player have been reduced (to prevent the player from clipping through some walls)
• Loot now drops toward the player
• Other minor balance changes

Fixes

• Multiplayer stability improvements
• Aimbots can now properly fire all machine gun / sniper / weapon projectile types
• Hardcore mode should function properly
• Disco Deathball now syncs properly in multiplayer
• Holding tab in a multiplayer game now properly pauses all items
• Monitor resolution should make more sense
• Toggle sprint option works a lot better now
• Music now properly resets on death and going to the main menu
• Loot cubes from shops and missiles from shotguns are no longer deafening
• Many more!

Known issues:

• The game sometimes crashes on quit. I'm still working on figuring this out, but it doesn't affect your save.
• The SHARK is on a vacation, but will return!

Would you like to know more?

As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!
That's all, folks!

[ 2017-02-13 15:08:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

I think y'all are going to really like this one! This update has been months in the making, with updates to many of Black Ice's core systems, a ton of added content, and literally too many bug fixes to list. Let's get into it!

Major Features

• World Overhaul - The world is now hand-crafted, with lots of verticality, secrets to find, and lots more fun areas to kill things in. More details in the patch preview.
• Arena Servers - Two boss arenas in which you must fight *inside* the server! More to come!
• Drastically Enhanced Mobility - Double Jumps are now standard, and you can grab ledges and climb up on anything!
• AI Update - The AI have never been better at climbing, chasing, jumping, and hunting you down.
• UI Overhaul - The UI is in the process of being completely redone, by a real artist instead of me this time!
• Powerups! - The world now has fun little powerups or items to discover, including a 2-minute movespeed buff, items, and XP!
• Controller Vibration
• When multihacking, enemies can kill each other and level up, retaining XP
• Motion Blur - try turning this to about 8 (or max!) in video options. Off by default.
• Ranged enemies try to hide after firing
• Melee enemies try to flank
• Enemies can be seen through walls after a hack is completed
• Increased the number of supported controllers
• Aim Assist is drastically enhanced
• Tutorial Overhaul
• Added Triple Jump unique
• Lots of little visual updates!

Changes

• The player now automatically gets +5% damage per level (up to level 50)
• The Damage Returned perk now also increased DR range
• Hack Links are no longer visible except for Lasbreakers (to account for the new terrain)
• Leveling is faster! Talents are twice as effective, but the limit is now at 50 points
• Condensed talent list to six options (much less confusing for new players)
• Aimbot projectile slowed to encourage dodging
• Reduced Aimbot and Scorporation damage
• All icebreakers have longer range
• Homing is drastically enhanced
• Reduced the number of affixes per rarity on items (so each feels more unique)
• Reduced the number of items dropped by dropping XP instead of a third item
• Shotguns fire more projectiles
• Shotguns and Snipers are now slower and have an attack speed cap (making them feel more like shotguns and snipers)
• Shotguns now have damage falloff, but do much more damage at close range
• Rocket splash radius increased to 2m
• Normal lasers are now sometimes Orange, green, purple, and blue, in addition to red
• Teleport items no longer go through buildings, but can still go through enemies/players
• Teleport visual upgrades (which are disabled during Photosensitive mode for those who get motion sick)
• Servers stay solid after hacking (so you can still climb on them!)
• Added a few new random hacker names
• Piercing projectiles now only go through enemies but not walls (except for railguns, for now)
• Enemies will respawn if they get stuck
• Knockback effects on the player have been reduced (to prevent the player from clipping through some walls)
• Loot now drops toward the player
• Other minor balance changes

Fixes

• Multiplayer stability improvements
• Aimbots can now properly fire all machine gun / sniper / weapon projectile types
• Hardcore mode should function properly
• Disco Deathball now syncs properly in multiplayer
• Holding tab in a multiplayer game now properly pauses all items
• Monitor resolution should make more sense
• Toggle sprint option works a lot better now
• Music now properly resets on death and going to the main menu
• Loot cubes from shops and missiles from shotguns are no longer deafening
• Many more!

Known issue: the game sometimes crashes on quit. I'm still working on figuring this out, but it doesn't affect your save!

Would you like to know more?

As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!
That's all, folks!

[ 2017-02-13 15:08:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Want to know about what’s coming up in Black Ice? I’m planning on releasing a big new patch pretty soon, but first, I’m going to playtest it at PAX South (come see me!) and then release it shortly thereafter. The patch should be out in early February. Until then, I wanted to tell y'all about all the cool stuff I've been working on. I'm doing a level overhaul, adding crazy mobility to the player, a UI update, and laying the groundwork for even further improvements. Check it out!

Level Overhaul

For a number of reasons (that we have discussed in detail on the forums), I need to switch the level generation from procedural to hand-designed. That means the geometry of the world will look more or less the same each time you log in, instead of randomizing, although things like corporation types (and therefore loot, enemies, and colors) will still be randomized. This means I can spend time on more interesting places to fight in, and, crucially, a lot smarter AI. The updated AI that can handle overhangs, complex climbing paths, and catwalks! Here are a few shots of some new geometry:

UI Overhaul

I’ve been talking about this for a while, and it’s finally happening. I have been working with Metkis (the same artist who did the logo) for a while, but he’s the one actually creating the new UI. This UI will retain the usability of the current UI, while also scaling correctly for up to 4K, and just look way better. Check out some of the work in progress:

Mobility

I’ve added the ability for the player to mantle up onto surfaces, and also made all Jump items work as double jumps. The result of this is that the player is *massively* more mobile, and able to navigate the much more complicated and interesting game space. It’s really fun to see how high up you can get, especially as enemies are chasing you. We should talk about the jetpack, though - I am planning on removing it (although you will still be able to cheat to get one). Jetpacks make it too easy to get away from the enemies, which makes them a lot less scary. Plus, if players can’t fly, I can make all sorts of cool walls and barriers that the player might have to fight their way around, and that makes the world a lot more interesting to traverse. Here’s what it looks like running across rooftops *without* a jetpack.

Further out

I’m also working with my friend Nonadecimal on a quest system that will not only have hand-written cyberpunk stories, but also procedural quests! For instance, to take down a particular corp, you might need to recruit a physical security expert to work in tandem with you, but first, you’d need to free them from another corporate prison where they’re being held. Exciting stuff!
After that patch, I’m thinking about doing a weapon overhaul, so that you’ll actually be able to see the weapon you are holding, although because of that, I will need to limit it to only one weapon used at a time. Mayyyybe two. This part is still in the concept phase, but the nice thing about that is that it’ll make it easier for me to balance enemy health, so that you won’t need to use a bunch of weapons at once just to kill things.

Would you like to know more?

That's all for now! It’s been a heck of a year for a lot of reasons, and progress hasn’t been as fast as I’d like, but I’m really excited about the direction that Black Ice is moving. I think y’all are going to love the changes. By the way, you may notice a lot of red and green servers in Black Ice this week. This is normal. Happy holidays! As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!

[ 2016-12-22 17:13:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Want to know about whats coming up in Black Ice? Im planning on releasing a big new patch pretty soon, but first, Im going to playtest it at PAX South (come see me!) and then release it shortly thereafter. The patch should be out in early February. Until then, I wanted to tell y'all about all the cool stuff I've been working on. I'm doing a level overhaul, adding crazy mobility to the player, a UI update, and laying the groundwork for even further improvements. Check it out!

Level Overhaul

For a number of reasons (that we have discussed in detail on the forums), I need to switch the level generation from procedural to hand-designed. That means the geometry of the world will look more or less the same each time you log in, instead of randomizing, although things like corporation types (and therefore loot, enemies, and colors) will still be randomized. This means I can spend time on more interesting places to fight in, and, crucially, a lot smarter AI. The updated AI that can handle overhangs, complex climbing paths, and catwalks! Here are a few shots of some new geometry:

UI Overhaul

Ive been talking about this for a while, and its finally happening. I have been working with Metkis (the same artist who did the logo) for a while, but hes the one actually creating the new UI. This UI will retain the usability of the current UI, while also scaling correctly for up to 4K, and just look way better. Check out some of the work in progress:

Mobility

Ive added the ability for the player to mantle up onto surfaces, and also made all Jump items work as double jumps. The result of this is that the player is *massively* more mobile, and able to navigate the much more complicated and interesting game space. Its really fun to see how high up you can get, especially as enemies are chasing you. We should talk about the jetpack, though - I am planning on removing it (although you will still be able to cheat to get one). Jetpacks make it too easy to get away from the enemies, which makes them a lot less scary. Plus, if players cant fly, I can make all sorts of cool walls and barriers that the player might have to fight their way around, and that makes the world a lot more interesting to traverse. Heres what it looks like running across rooftops *without* a jetpack.

Further out

Im also working with my friend Nonadecimal on a quest system that will not only have hand-written cyberpunk stories, but also procedural quests! For instance, to take down a particular corp, you might need to recruit a physical security expert to work in tandem with you, but first, youd need to free them from another corporate prison where theyre being held. Exciting stuff!
After that patch, Im thinking about doing a weapon overhaul, so that youll actually be able to see the weapon you are holding, although because of that, I will need to limit it to only one weapon used at a time. Mayyyybe two. This part is still in the concept phase, but the nice thing about that is that itll make it easier for me to balance enemy health, so that you wont need to use a bunch of weapons at once just to kill things.

Would you like to know more?

That's all for now! Its been a heck of a year for a lot of reasons, and progress hasnt been as fast as Id like, but Im really excited about the direction that Black Ice is moving. I think yall are going to love the changes. By the way, you may notice a lot of red and green servers in Black Ice this week. This is normal. Happy holidays! As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or check out the Black Ice Twitter for the latest updates!

[ 2016-12-22 15:12:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes for version 0.7.200 - "Onboarding"

New Features:

• Added Allied Server links - servers with a blue link between/around them must be hacked at the same time, and their minions are allied!
• Enemies are *much* better at climbing up things, and more of them can be active at once with
• Completely redid the tutorial, to help ease players into the game.
• Ziggurat buildings >>
• Added a loading screen with hints while buildings are spawning
• Added a glitch effect to the screen when the player takes damage. This can be disabled under Video Options
• Added more terrain types - now the world isn't just a flat plane with a single hill, it can have many hills of multiple types, as well as some steppes. More to come!
• Added "pie slices" to the controller inventory and shop menus, to really emphasize that it's a radial menu
• Added a scrollbar to the controller inventory and shop menus, so you can see how far down the list you are

Changes:

• Added a toggle option to stop menu movement
• Tutorial and UI now understands when you remap keys
• Reflections now are off by default, and require the highest quality setting. They severely affect performance, so try turning them off if you are having any lag at all.
• Only new characters go through the tutorial now. Any character can skip the tutorial, but you should do it at least once!
• Servers you hack, as well as the SHARK, now drop loot that you can either equip immediately or within 3 levels
• Toggle Heal items now scale 100% better with level!
• Enemy blood particles no longer glow so brightly in large quantity
• GITSfish are much better at pushing players out of the hack radius
• The player can jump higher by default
• The player can step over taller objects without issue
• The hack radius now "woops" out toward you when you start a hack
• There are less dangerous things near the spawn point, such as Dark servers.
• Items dropped by the player can be picked up faster, especially in single player
• The controller gui now shows item rarity colors
• Scrolling through items on a controller is faster now
• Buying an item with a controller while an empty slot is selected will attempt to equip the item immediately
• Shops can now be lots of different levels

Bug Fixes:

• The Puss-Puss super-rare unique minion no longer describes itself as a GITSfish
• The Kokinator unique shotgun now properly shoots both missiles AND fireballs
• GITSfish will no longer rocket players up into space
• The "Boosh" achievement will now only trigger from *player* mines
• Enemies can no longer fly after climbing a building
• Enemy lasers no longer make a loud annoying sound when the player dies or pauses the game
• Info box screens no longer stay visible after their server is hacked
• The UI no longer switches immediately to the mouse/keyboard UI when the mouse moves a tiny bit (like if the table shakes)

Known Issues:

• Servers spawning on steppes might hang over an edge a bit, it should be fine

As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or tweet me! Especially if you have ideas for building shapes or terrain types - as long as it doesn't require an overhang! That's all for now! Check out the Black Ice Twitter for more frequent updates about the game!

[ 2016-07-09 03:53:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes for version 0.7.200 - "Onboarding"

New Features:

• Added Allied Server links - servers with a blue link between/around them must be hacked at the same time, and their minions are allied!
• Enemies are *much* better at climbing up things, and more of them can be active at once with
• Completely redid the tutorial, to help ease players into the game.
• Ziggurat buildings >>
• Added a loading screen with hints while buildings are spawning
• Added a glitch effect to the screen when the player takes damage. This can be disabled under Video Options
• Added more terrain types - now the world isn't just a flat plane with a single hill, it can have many hills of multiple types, as well as some steppes. More to come!
• Added "pie slices" to the controller inventory and shop menus, to really emphasize that it's a radial menu
• Added a scrollbar to the controller inventory and shop menus, so you can see how far down the list you are

Changes:

• Added a toggle option to stop menu movement
• Tutorial and UI now understands when you remap keys
• Reflections now are off by default, and require the highest quality setting. They severely affect performance, so try turning them off if you are having any lag at all.
• Only new characters go through the tutorial now. Any character can skip the tutorial, but you should do it at least once!
• Servers you hack, as well as the SHARK, now drop loot that you can either equip immediately or within 3 levels
• Toggle Heal items now scale 100% better with level!
• Enemy blood particles no longer glow so brightly in large quantity
• GITSfish are much better at pushing players out of the hack radius
• The player can jump higher by default
• The player can step over taller objects without issue
• The hack radius now "woops" out toward you when you start a hack
• There are less dangerous things near the spawn point, such as Dark servers.
• Items dropped by the player can be picked up faster, especially in single player
• The controller gui now shows item rarity colors
• Scrolling through items on a controller is faster now
• Buying an item with a controller while an empty slot is selected will attempt to equip the item immediately
• Shops can now be lots of different levels

Bug Fixes:

• The Puss-Puss super-rare unique minion no longer describes itself as a GITSfish
• The Kokinator unique shotgun now properly shoots both missiles AND fireballs
• GITSfish will no longer rocket players up into space
• The "Boosh" achievement will now only trigger from *player* mines
• Enemies can no longer fly after climbing a building
• Enemy lasers no longer make a loud annoying sound when the player dies or pauses the game
• Info box screens no longer stay visible after their server is hacked
• The UI no longer switches immediately to the mouse/keyboard UI when the mouse moves a tiny bit (like if the table shakes)

Known Issues:

• Servers spawning on steppes might hang over an edge a bit, it should be fine

As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so please post on the forums, email me, or tweet me! Especially if you have ideas for building shapes or terrain types - as long as it doesn't require an overhang! That's all for now! Check out the Black Ice Twitter for more frequent updates about the game! Edit: Just patched a few more things on top of this:

• Shops will spawn more frequently
• Shops will no longer spawn above level Finality's level
• The damage taken glitch effect will no longer invert the camera
• Light blue (miniboss) servers will show correct colors now
• Old save files with minions in them will work again
• Colorized enemies with the Huebris perk should no longer be converted permanently

[ 2016-07-09 03:53:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Special Announcement: Super Duper Game Company + Patch Preview

Hi everyone! First off, you might notice that Black Ice is listed under Super Duper Game Company now. Don't worry, that's still me, Super Duper Garrett Cooper, I just built a company around the game!
Also, there's cool stuff coming just around the corner! I've been talking for a while about linking multiple servers together for added challenge, and the gif above is how it's going to look when two servers are allied. That's going to be one of at least two types of server links - and feel free to suggest more in the forums!
Of course, the next patch will come with a ton of bug fixes and improvements. For instance, I finally figured out why GITSfish could launch you into space. I've got more up my sleeve, so stay tuned!
If you're at RTX in Austin, Texas next weekend, be sure to stop by and say hi! Our booth will look a bit like this! Check out the Black Ice Twitter for more frequent updates on the game!

[ 2016-06-23 14:35:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes for version 0.7.100 - "Chroma"

New Features:

• CHROMA SUPPORT - Black Ice now has Chroma support for Razer Chroma products like the Razer Blackwidow Chroma - watch as the colors on your keyboard and mouse react to the game! It even has your cooldowns!
• (and other brands listed here!) Thanks to C63 Industries LEDL plugin for all the glowing support :D
• Server Visual Update - Server lines now come in more interesting shapes, sometimes with slopes! The lines on them are also much cleaner. I generate the meshes by hand at runtime now! Hurray, trigonometry!
• Desaturation - The color drains out of the game when you're at low health now!
• Valuable Information - Weird stories have been going around the grid. Now you can find them and sell them for bitcreds!

Changes:

• The main menu GUI has been updated (more awesome work by Metkis) but it's not done yet
• Pathfinding update - Enemies are better than ever at climbing all over things and finding you quickly
• The game world now expands infinitely by default in both single and multiplayer. This can be lowered in single player by going to advanced options when starting the game.
• Physics tweaks to how the player falls and handles slopes - feels better now!
• Stores are less common now
• View distance (specifically for servers) is higher now
• Player Health, RAM, and RAM Regen are higher at level 0
• Player Health scaling is higher across the board - try a tanky build!
• Instant Heal items are stronger
• Jetpacks don't go quite as high now (but are still super fun and useful)
• Lasbreakers do a lot more damage now
• The Crosshair is slightly larger and is much easier to see in all situations
• RAM Returned has been renamed RAM Regen for clarity

Bug Fixes:

• Players can no longer blink under the hill. If you haven't played in a while, there's a hill now! More terrain later!
• Holding down the button for an instant heal item will no longer repeatedly play the error sound
• Falling off a building no longer makes you fall really quickly

Known Issues:

• Chroma colors current do not understand key remapping - this will be fixed!
• Valuable Information doesn't display properly on controller-specific GUIs

That's all for now, but stay tuned! I might not always be posting them on Steam, but I'm working on updates almost every day! Check out the Black Ice Twitter for more frequent updates on the game!

[ 2016-02-05 01:54:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright! It's been a little over a week since I released the giant 0.7 patch and showed off the game at RTX, and a few of you have reported some bugs. So I took this week and focused entirely on fixing bugs! Here's what I got done.

Fixes:

• Steam Achievements are working again! Your achievements from the demo should transfer over to the full version
• Slowing projectiles no longer cause enemies to rocket off into space
• Minion items can no longer have a minimum damage which is higher than their maximum damage
• Homing projectiles no longer track friendly minions
• Spider Mines no longer corrupt saves
• Visual quality settings now load on startup
• The Ice debuff goes away faster
• Minions are now colored white properly
• Mines now color properly (so you can tell friend's from foes'!)
• Enemies no longer set off each other's mines when in the same faction
• The extremely rare random framerate losses should no longer occur. If you see issues like this, please delete and redownload the game (you can copy your saves out first, but the Cloud Saves should re-download them). Apparently Steam doesn't update the game properly.

Changes:

• Shops now restock every 5 minutes instead of every 1
• While in full screen, the game no longer darkens other windows (good for streaming!)
• The quality settings are now numbered from worst to best (0-5, 5 being best)

That's all for this week! Thank y'all for supporting the game. Happy Hacking! ːwebcrawlerː

[ 2015-08-17 03:11:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Let's not get too corporate here: you know what Steam Trading Cards are, you know they unlock emoticons and profile backgrounds. What you don't know his how freaking sweet James' artwork is, so here it is below! Also! Here are all six collectible emoticons: ːwebcrawlerːːscorporationːːgitsfishːːcybersharkːːaimbotːːKappaː My favorite is the webcrawler, but I know a lot of people are excited about the GITSfish and the Kappa. You can also earn these badges to show off your leet hacking skills on your profile.
- Level 1 - Script Kiddie
- Level 2 - N00b Hacker
- Level 3 - Freelance Decker
- Level 4 - Digital Infiltrator
- Level 5 - Console Cowboy
- Foil - 1337 Below: All the gorgeous trading card and background art ːscorporationː






And now for backgrounds! Alleyway:
Guardian:
Jumper's Overview:
Mirrorservers:
Server Sea:
Jetpacker's View:
Shadow of Finality:
Utter Chaos:
SHARK Stalking:

[ 2015-08-11 15:42:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Biggest. Patch. Ever. I've been working really hard on this patch since March, and even though I've been releasing patches almost every week on the Indev version, I wanted to make sure it was great before sending it out to everyone. With all these improvements, I feel the game is now worth $15, so I've raised the price. NOTE: YOU MUST START A NEW CHARACTER FOR THIS PATCH. This was a necessary evil, but with the new save and perk systems (details below!) it shouldn't ever happen again.

New Features:

• PERK SYSTEM starting with unique 8 perks to change how you play (details below)
• Leveling/Difficulty Overhaul - The game still starts pretty easy, but will get much harder, especially after level 100.
• - Talents cap at 100 (to increase end-game difficulty and reduce treadmill effect)
• - Percentage Talents are now multiplicative with item stats, which keeps them valuable even as you level
• - It's now faster XP to always try to hack higher level servers, although multihacking is still good too.
• Engine updated to Unity 5, meaning a major physics update, so character movement feels great, the graphics are AMAZING with a new bloom plugin and DX11
• Save/Load Update - Cloud Saves, Hackable Saves (for you modders) and:
• You can now drop items for other players in multiplayer
• Full Controller Support with Key Rebinding
• Drastic Multiplayer Performance Improvements - play with 10 players at once with no issues
• Four new amazing music tracks from V-Axys (These will not be added to the soundtrack, as V-Axys is planning a second album)
• Aim Assist - This is subtle, but it really helps. You can turn it on for controller and mouse separately

Perks:

• Currently, you get one perk point at level 10, and one at 20, although I will be adding more points as I add more perks. These are intended to make each character play differently, so you will need to create multiple characters to try them all.
• Perk damage bonuses stack multiplicatively with items and talents
• Aimhax - Adds +30 Homing to all Sniper weapons
• Emergency Overclocking - Adds a 25% Damage and Movement Speed bonus when you're below 25% health
• Bomb Voyage - Dropping a mine grants you a movement speed bonus - which stacks with Sprint.
• I Expect You To Die - Lasguns pierce through everything, allowing them to deal damage to multiple targets at once
• Discipline - Launch up to 5 Discs at once, from each Disc item
• Drunken Master - All projectiles gain +100% Chance to Ricochet, but also 25 Drunk. It's hilarious
• Stopping Power - Standing still grants you a 15% damage bonus
• Hard Drive - Moving forward grants you a 10% damage bonus, but moving backwards reduces your damage by 10%

New Items:

• Scorchporation - A Scorporation minion with the power to set your enemies aflame
• Oersted's Mallet - Hammers circle around you, piercing and damaging everything
• Ice-a-Kill - Icebolts circle around you, piercing, slowing and damaging everything
• Disco Deathball - Saved the best for last. This ultimate item has a long (30s) cooldown, and only fires one disco ball - which then fires HUNDREDS of lasers in all directions, which ricochet. (shown below)

Improvements:

• All projectile particles react to explosions and
• Jetpack and Charge Jump items overhaul - much more fun!
• Added rocket jumping
• Infinite city size performs much better on every computer
• Aimbots can now fly
• Unique items are now more rare, and only truly unique items will drop (Loot Find is still OP)
• The Options Menu has several new options and is organized better
• Minion overhaul - Minions now do much more damage and are improved by your damage and health stats, but have less health overall.
• The Homing and Drunk item affixes now work much better

Fixes:

• Main Menu Lag eliminated
• Private Multiplayer games now properly require passwords
• Your Highest level server hacked is now saved, this affects which items stores sell
• Innumerable additional fixes. Chances are if you noticed a bug in the live version before, it's gone now.

Known Issues:

• Achievements work, but aren't pushing to Steam. This is due to either Steam or the plugin I'm using, and I will be fixing this as soon as I can

Stay tuned, everyone. I've got much more up my sleeves!

[ 2015-08-06 19:16:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! This is a culmination of several indev patches over the past few weeks, mostly aimed at fixing bugs in multiplayer but also adding two new unique items, a bunch of small balancing changes that add up for better quality of life. I think you'll be quite happy with the results! WARNING: This patch will break previous characters. They'll still load, but they won't be able to regenerate RAM. Please just create a new character. I tried really hard to avoid this, but was unable to.

Additions:

• BIG CHANGE: TL;DR: 10-Player multiplayer works with no problems now! I did a huge networking code update and you can *see* it in multiplayer games - all the projectiles move much more smoothly
• Added a new unique item: The Disco Dodgeball. Must be picked up after fired, but can be retrieved by activating again
• Added another new unique item: The Spicy Meatball, which is a bouncy fireball (with 100% ricochet but no innate piercing)
• Added Gisborne Industries as a reference to Mike Bithell's new game, Volume. He's a really nice guy
• Players in multiplayer now get a +15% XP bonus for each player past the first
• If you cheat, you will be marked as such
• April Fool's day joke :) Wait and see!

Item Balancing Changes:

• Shotguns + high accuracy should feel more like shotguns now (more spread)
• Nerfed bouncyball damage to be more in line with other weapons
• Mine damage has been reduced (including spider mines). I doubt anyone will notice
• RAM Regen from leveling has been decreased
• RAM and RAM Regen from items has been decreased
• Icebreakers cost more RAM per hack now
• Lasbreakers do more damage now
• Health per Second items now cost more RAM and heal less per level

Other Changes:

• You can now see the highest level server you've hacked, which is important because:
• Shops now sell loot only up to the level of the highest level server you've hacked
• GITSfish health has been lowered, but their damage has increased
• Bitcred drops have been quadrupled
• Multiplayer city size is now set to max at all times - not infinite, but large.
• Hacked buildings are much more transparent now, this should let people see the loot better (Known issue: They don't show up on Macs now)
• The select button now closes the inventory menu on a controller
• Player and enemy movement in multiplayer is much more accurate now

Fixes:

• Invert controller toggle works now
• Punchthrough achievement works now
• The Main Menu should lag less for lower-power machines. I expect this to improve next major patch when I upgrade to Unity 5
• Overlapping buildings no longer spawn near the starting area
• Nemesized servers now show up properly in multiplayer
• Mines are colored appropriately in PVP now
• Loot (including dropped credits) from every server is now always the appropriate level
• Shared XP in MP now has a minimum of 1, not 0

Proof that 10-player multiplayer works :)

[ 2015-03-31 17:03:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! This is what I've been working so hard on, I hope you like it :) This, and showing the game off at PAX South, East, and GDC!

Features:

• Controller Support! This should "just work" for any controller. Try it out!
• UI Overhaul - many menus are updated, prettier and easier to use
• Gorgeous new server/building paint jobs.
• Added Scorporation minion. All minions are now shiny!
• Added Antialiasing as an option in the options menu
• Drastic performance improvements, especially on large cities
• Added a Colorblind mode for item rarity colors
• Loot Cubes are a lot more descriptive and easy to see
• Added new modular projectile type: Bouncy Ball! Reflects off all walls/floors but pierces through enemies. Can hit the same target multiple times!
• Mysterious new Dark Servers

Changes:

• Enemy blood particles are now the opposite color of enemies. Rainbow sometimes!
• 1990 Mode looks better (bloom takes affect afterwards, causing a glowing pixel effect)
• Scorporation damage has been reduced by 50%, and other balancing tweaks
• Removed "Simple Reflections" mode. Reflections are now on or off.
• Buildings drop bitcreds instead of items sometimes now :)
• Added a big floating $ hologram above shops
• F7 is now Quick Save

Fixes:

• Too many to count, but the game is going to run a lot smoother, faster, and better, especially on lower-end machines.

Controller GUI:

New Loot Cubes:

New Bouncy Ball Projectiles:

Dark Servers

[ 2015-03-03 03:04:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Major Features:

• PVP - Shoot your friends!
• LAN Mode - Play offline with reduced latency! Great for LAN parties!
• Nemesystem - Dying has consequences, but revenge has its reward!
• Two New Enemies - The Ghost in the Shellfish and the Scorporation
• Minions - Summon your own combat AI!
• Reflections - Oooh, Shiny!

Would you like to know more? Keep scrolling! I've got more details on the major features below.

Minor Features:

• Cloaking Enemies affix - The Predator comes to mind
• Rebalanced Server Difficulty - Now just look at your player level to figure out what level server to hack!
• Retooled Level Generation - Easier to find servers of your level!
• New Unique Item - The Porta Device - A Unique Mod which has a chance to teleport your attackers away
• H or Q to hack - No matter which slot your Icebreaker is equipped in!
• Halloween Surprise 2014 - Find your own #HackOLantern, or make one IRL and win a Black Ice T-Shirt!. Don't like the Black & Orange servers? Select "I Hate Halloween" in the top left of the main menu.

Not to mention Bug Fixes and System Enhancements all over the place!

PVP:

Just select PVP from the Advanced Options when creating a multiplayer match to jump into PVP. You'll be automatically assigned to the Red or Blue team, although you can switch teams at any time by holding Tab and pressing the Switch Team button. Note that all servers and enemies are still active - and not friendly to you - so it's a race for each team to try to outlevel each other via hacking. Damage numbers are enabled for all players, which makes it much harder to hide from your enemies if you're hacking.

LAN Mode:

This takes a little extra work (instructions here!) but the benefit is that you can play multiplayer with no internet connection and with drastically reduced latency. And if you also own Disco Dodgeball, it's the same LAN setup :)

Nemesystem:

Dying to a server near or below your level will cause it to level up, but also will increase the odds of getting good loot from that server. And of course, the server will taunt you by displaying a large red skull hologram on the roof.

New Enemies:

The megacorps have been busy upgrading their security. First, the Ghost in the Shellfish is a big beefy crab-like enemy who can really knock your socks off (or your ass out of the hacking radius). The other new enemy is called the Scorporation. This high-tech scorpion AI packs a highly-damaging lasgun and can be very accurate, so keep moving!

Minions:

Ever wanted your own pet AI? Now you can have one! Or eight! Minions are great for distracting enemies and can put out some damage to boot. Grabbing a health powerup will also heal your minions.

Reflections:

The world of Black Ice just got a bit brighter with the addition of high-fidelity raytracing reflections. This does affect performance, but you can turn it down to Simple Reflections mode in the options, or turn reflections completely off. One side effect of the Fancy Reflections mode: enemy death particles look super cool now. Still want more info? Find me on Twitter! @BlackIceTheGame

[ 2014-10-25 19:21:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey guys! Here's another update. PVP has been released and the word is that it's fun, although I'm waiting to hear back from you all for how I should balance it. Right now, I think the most fun way to play is for everyone to start new characters, then go hunting for each other while trying to get some hacking in. One thing we should talk about is how EMPs should act in PVP - I don't think being stunned would be fun at all, so I was thinking we could turn it into a 90% slow. Also, I think we might need Slowing debuffs to affect the jetpack, so that you can't just jet away. Right now, loot still drops for everyone in PVP - even the opposing team - and I'm not sure if I like that or not. A quick update on the weapon models - they're still being worked on. My artist has been busy with other work. One of the things I did over the weekend, which I can hopefully push to the Indev patch tonight, was tweak Hack Difficulty. The way it works now is that a server with Hack Difficulty 5 will spawn enemies appropriate for a level 5 player and drop items requiring player level 5. Item levels on items is no longer listed, since it's now always the same as required level. I did everything I could to preserve exponential enemy HP and mostly linear enemy damage. Finality is now level 150 instead of 500. Shops are around 100-120, and they sell loot up around the player's level, capping out at the shop's level. I'm going to have to redo the achievements - I don't think anyone's going to get up to level 5000. One thing that might cause trouble here is that players that are exceptionally strong might be able to hack servers above their level, which of course they won't be able to use until they level up a bit. I'm not sure what the best way around this is, but one thing I could do is have servers drop gear a couple levels *below* their level - but that's confusing. I'd love to hear your suggestions. The other major feature I've been working on is Minions. A lot of people have asked me for an ability to convert an enemy to their side, but I thought it'd be more fun to summon them directly. I can always add the ability to temporarily convert enemies later. Right now, you summon enemies by targeting a position up to 10 squares away, which spawns a minion as if it was being spawned by a server (with all the same particles). It takes one second for the minion to appear, and they last until they die or 30s. They follow you around if they can't find anything to kill. Currently you can summon as many minions as your RAM supports, but I was thinking a better solution might be to only allow one (Strong!) minion per item, but it would be permanent and you could unsummon it by pressing the item button again. I could also play around with summoning them in packs of 3. Minions will have more HP and damage based on the item level and rarity of the item, but I'm also thinking about introducing minion-specific item affixes, so that you could build a character that relies entirely on minions. I don't think I want minions to scale with your weapon damage and health because I want you to have to choose what type of character you make instead of being good at everything. Have suggestions or comments? Let me know!

[ 2014-09-29 23:35:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey all, just thought I'd share the results of what I've been working on in the past couple of days. First off, PVP is pretty much working, but I'm not satisfied with it yet, so I'm not ready to release it. In particular, you can damage and kill other players, kill counts are working, you spawn randomly throughout the city and cannot teleport to other players (even on your same team). There are two teams - Red and Blue - and you can switch between them at any time, but it kills you. You don't lose credits when dying to a human or by switching teams. What's not working about PVP yet is that you still share XP with nearby players on opposing teams, you can still see damage numbers for all players, and it doesn't feel very satisfying to kill players, on account of there not being a death animation or any sort of confetti. I also still need to do some work to get debuffs working - and I might need to change some, like Frozen and Stunned, which really would be too harsh in PVP. Damage scaling is also not in yet, so you'll die really fast at high level right now. These are all relatively easy to fix, but will take some time, and I'm not sure PVP will be a ton of fun until they're in. I tried to get Item Trading working, but I kind of ran into a wall on this. The problem is that the way I serialize player data to save the game or to send data over the network is no longer being supported, so while I can save an entire character no problem, I'm having trouble compressing the Item class so that it can be sent to another player. Actually, I got it working for *some* items, but not others, which is almost worse than not working at all. The end result of this is that I'm probably going to have to start using another serialization solution, which unfortunately is going to break everyone's saves. I know, this sucks, but another advantage of this is that I might be able to find a solution that might be fast enough to enable autosaving, which I think everyone would like. I also have been talking to my artist (the permanent one that made the GITSfish, not the temporary one that made the Scorporation) and he's going to start working on some weapon models! The current plan is to have one for each of the following: The Disc, Lasguns, Machine Guns, Sniper Rifles, and Shotguns. For the modular weapons, I'm planning on adding some particle effects to differentiate these weapons. I'm going to try to make the weapons only show up when you're firing them, but if the conjuring time is too long and the weapons feel like they take too long to fire, I might need to just have them visible at all times. Maybe that'd be better anyway. One of the challenges to this is that I'm also going to have to make the projectiles come out of your hands instead of your face, which could affect accuracy if I don't do it right. Another thing I'm planning on doing is showing only weapons in your left and right click - and in fact, restricting players to only being able to place weapons in the left and right click slots (but you could put other items there) - unless the players went into the options and selected the option to allow them to place any item in any slot. It'll be like Diablo 3's Elective Mode, and hopefully the effect will be that new players understand the system better, but experienced players will still have all the freedom they've come to expect. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

[ 2014-09-24 17:09:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

The TL;DR is that I changed a ton of numbers, fixed a bunch of bugs, and added a new item: The Lasbreaker. You should be able to carry over your old saves, but it would be best to start a new character to stay balanced. Additions:

• Added the Lasbreaker, a new icebreaker type that damages all enemies touching the hack link
• Added a bunch of new achievements, including Humble Beginnings
• You can teleport to another player in multiplayer by holding tab and clicking their name
• XP is now shared evenly among all players within 50 meters in multiplayer
• Added Sprint Toggle option so you don't have to hold the button down
• All text in the game has a new font, which should help Linux players who don't have Arial. It also looks really cool
• :D added to multiplayer (you'll know it when you see it)

Changes:

• The SHARK now scales with difficulty... strongly
• Damage Returned now scales much more with ilevel
• Changed item rarity colors
• The color red should now only be used in text for bad things. Magenta is used for Weapon stats now
• Set Items have been renamed to Epic items, to properly correspond to their function, since sets aren't implemented
• Weapon Range talent nerfed to 5
• RAM Regen talent changed to 5%
• RAM talent changed to 5%
• Health talent changed to 5%
• Movement speed talent removed (but items now have more)
• Weapon recoil is lower
• Machineguns have been tweaked to be more competitive with snipers and shotguns
• Reason (the Unique machinegun) has been buffed
• Railguns fire faster and cost less RAM, but do less damage
• Most modular weapons fire faster
• Icebreakers hack faster and scale better with ilevel, but cost more RAM
• Item level to Required Level scaling has changed
• Item affixes overall are more variable
• The homing affix now has a maximum amount that can drop on an item
• You now only lose 10% of your credits on death, but the maximum amount you can lose is now 250k (from 50k)
• Enemy HP scaling has changed (more at high level)
• Enemy Damage scaling has changed (less at high level)
• You now get most of your XP from hacking instead of killing enemies
• XP required to level has been lowered, since enemies give less XP now
• Lasgun damage has been lowered a bit, RAM cost has increased a bit. Still pretty OP
• Mines no longer shake your screen as much
• Only 30 enemies can spawn from a server at one time (60 from all servers), but servers will spawn the same total number of enemies before being hacked
• Jetpack is now quieter
• The store near the spawn zone has lower level loot now
• Knockback to players shouldn't ever be *too* ridiculous
• Player HP and RAM Regen per level has been buffed
• Only unique items have a minimum level requirement of 5 now
• Items now cost more from stores compared to how much they sell for, encouraging players to hack for items instead of shop
• Players can no longer spawn more than 6 mines per mine item - spawning more causes the oldest one to explode
• Jetpacks now use a percentage of your RAM that increases as they heat up. This is so that players can no longer fly forever, so they actually have to give the enemies a fighting chance.
• The hack timer is now a progress bar counting up (It's at 80%! I need more time!)
• When you create a character, the default is a blank bar, which should lead to some more interesting names in multiplayer. Random names are still available
• Players can no longer choose to not spawn buildings (which people thought was a bug)
• Enemies fall to the ground faster
• All player projectiles fly faster, so you don't need to put as much of a lead on enemies
• Players can select the closest multiplayer webserver to them manually. All games are visible from all servers. I'm talking about the real, physical, out-of-the-game cloud server that hosts multiplayer games, not in-game servers.
• Servers drop 3 loot less often (1-3 is still what you get)
• Damage taken redness is now a LOT more noticeable, especially after taking multiple hits
• Healing items (Instant and Over Time) heal for a lot more
• The SHARK's death explosion is a lot more spectacular now
• Sprinting now looks cool as it changes your view a bit
• Mines do less damage and use more RAM, but are still super strong
• You can no longer unequip an icebreaker or mine while they're in use, or a jetpack while it's heated up
• Maximum movement speed is now +150% (down from +200%)
• Additional hack range on items is a little lower
• Missiles don't knock enemies back as far
• Other servers spawn further away from Finality
• Finality spawns further away from the spawn zone

Bug Fixes:

• Dying now causes the game to save, so going back to the main menu won't make you lose progress
• Updated the achievement system to work even if you exit the game prematurely
• Mines and Health Powerups now can fall through enemy shields
• Achievement: Pay, Pal now works even if you drag and drop the item
• Enemies can no longer fly at you when you're jetpacking about. They can still jump
• Piercing weapons no longer go through the floor
• Firing two lasguns at once no longer causes crit problems
• Crit and Crit Multiplier are no longer global affixes
• Shops now drop the appropriate item level loot when hacked
• Swarm Server info terminals now display text appropriately
• Enemies no longer seem to stick to you when they're close
• Jumping off mines to effectively walk on air has been disabled
• Pressing enter after you die no longer causes issues
• Skipping the intro video should be faster and not cause issues
• Enemy Shields and Mines should no longer cause lag
• More enemies can be on screen at once now
• Player mines shouldn't blow up on other players in multiplayer
• The modding menu buttons for payloads and unique payloads have been fixed
• Zombie Derezzed enemies should no longer appear
• Joining games with passwords now works properly
• Swarm buildings now change colors properly in multiplayer
• Jump buildings no longer drop the item on top of them when they're hacked
• XP can no longer overflow into negative numbers
• Aimbots and the SHARK are now much better at chasing you down
• You can no longer hear icebreakers from across the map in multiplayer
• Camera shake can be turned down properly now
• The Flatline talent now properly checks for you to be below 5% HP
• Enemies no longer keep being knocked back after teleporting to respawn
• Frostbiter, one of the unique lasguns, spawns less particles and therefore causes less lag
• Music doesn't change way too often anymore
• Really high RAM regen no longer causes items to not reserve RAM
• You can now see damage numbers in multiplayer (crits don't show as red, though)
• You can no longer see the original pre-bloom/1990/CRT textures on items in close range peripheral vision
• Jump puzzle buildings now always have the correct level displayed in multiplayer

Thanks for reading all this! I hope you like the patch <3 - Super Duper Garrett Cooper

[ 2014-08-08 02:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]