From the Desk of Game Director Reset

Welcome back Meat Scientists! During the break we showed SWAP/MEAT at Gamescom, devcom, and two indie shows adjacent to PAX. The feedback that you provided us in Meat Lab 1 helped us form a number of areas of focus to continue to work to improve the experience of our open field combat on planets one, two, and three. [previewyoutube=yIKJmHHe3gc;full][/previewyoutube]

Improved Events

When on planet your compass will direct you to four different event locations. Events are randomly rolled on each planet from a table of possible events which is galaxy and sometimes planet specific. We wanted to provide additional variety of events throughout the planets of our first galaxy and ensure they were easy and fun to complete with reasonable rewards towards meta progression. These events will still be marked with the beam of light language that we were using for all events in Meat Lab 1. If you see a blue beam of light, go check it out! However, not all events that are on the planet will be displayed on your compass. Minor events (which we call infestations) are marked by a large white circle on the ground with some themed props inside, like eggs or a machine maintenance box. Walking into one of these circles will activate the event and give you a prompt on the left of the screen of the objectives to defeat it. All events will reward you with currencies for upgrading. In a future update, well be scoring the player on how many of the possible events they found and completed and granting you a multiplier on those rewards.

Mutation

The flag bonuses granted by Mutations were powerful, but theyre largely invisible unless they were tuned to be very powerful, which could further be compounded by stacking multiple passive Mutations. Instead of reducing their overall power, most Mutations have been reworked to trigger from OnKill or various OnHit events. Additionally, ranks of Mutations will scale in power but not in their proc rate. You will now need to stack various items to more reliably trigger the effects of your Mutations.

AI Improvements

One of the first things you may notice once youre planet side is that enemies are more aggressive and more damaging. Additionally, a number of enemies have had their attack patterns entirely changed or have been given new weapons for their attack. Enemies with new weapons may apply additional negative effects if hit like burning or slow.

Balance

In general, SWAP/MEAT should be a more challenging game than what you experienced in Meat Lab 1. Many of the permanent movement speed improvements have been removed and, in combination with the AI improvements, will result in the player receiving more damage and needing to rely more on using your Meat abilities to overcome various encounters.

Elemental System

Our elemental system is starting to take shape in this update with more items and Mutations to combine to increase damage done of each elemental type. Additionally, the VFX and SFX have been added to more clearly telegraph when something is affected by an element.

• Fire applies stacks of burning (damage over time) which can be consumed with Combust to deal a large amount of damage to the enemy
• Ice applies stacks of movement and attack slowing effects. This has been made more effective by reducing the amount of stacks required to completely slow an enemy from 5 to 3
• Slime applies a stack one debuff which removes all armor from an enemy
• Electric applies a stack one debuff that increases damage taken by 25% from all sources. This can be consumed to Electrify the enemy causing a long stagger

Combat Readability

A lot of new VFX (Visual Effects) and SFX (Sound Effects) have been added to abilities, weapons, and elemental interactions. There are a lot of scaling attributes in SWAP/MEAT and were continuing to find ways to show you that you are getting more powerful instead of telling you through stacks of items in the HUD. This is going to be an ongoing effort throughout Meat Lab testing. [hr][/hr]

Patch Notes

Gameplay

• Spider enemies are smaller, faster and more numerous
• Wasps now fire Slime projectiles as their primary attack instead of a short ranged melee attack
• Killing a Cerebral Hopper after it has stolen your meat will cause it to drop on the ground unless it has had time to digest it
• Increased range of Meatzords melee attack
• Added one Super Sample reward to each infestation event to ensure folks having difficulty identifying the location of the events which do reward Super Samples could still progress, albeit much slower
• Projectile collision has been updated. Hitting enemies with projectiles especially flying enemies should be much easier
• Reduce Rocket Launcher max active reload buff count from 5 3
• Reduce overall health of Harvester
  • Reduce Health of Harvester Nodes 2000 500
  • Reduce Health of Harvester Core 2500 750
• Rework Harvester Upgrades
  • Harvester Upgrades applied based on highest player level
  • 50 HP per Harvester Level; no percent boost
• Chain Lightning will now deal Electric damage
• Elemental Abilities and Elemental Damage should now be more pronounced
  • Added VFX and SFX to Combust (Fire)
  • Added VFX and SFX to Electrify (Electric)
• Players being hit by the Cerebral Hoppers tongue attack will now be slowed by 90% while the ability is being channeled
• Assigned Banner of Alacrity to Ninja Torso (previously Safety Vest)
• Assigned Safety Vest to Butcher Torso (previously Banner of Alacrity)
• Renamed Spider head to Wasp head

Invading Enemy Drop Ships

Weve added a primary and secondary enemy factions to the planet selection screen. This is intended to be an indicator to the player which types of enemies they will primarily be dealing with once theyve deployed to the planet. As the player spends more time on the planet, enemies of these factions will start to deploy in greater numbers through drop ships that are circling the skies. Right now we are faking this a bit because all of the enemies we intend to ship with are not fully implemented. For this test, the Franken drop ships (Glizzy Gliders) will be present on each planet regardless of the primary faction. As we continue to develop SWAP/MEAT youll begin to encounter new enemies from various factions, entire new factions, and their drop ships.

Mutations

A Pirate's Life for Me

Support Area of Effect radius wasnt very appealing and effects from receiving damage are not broadly fun, either, so this support mutation has entirely been changed to key into ability recharge rates with active reload. Remember that your secondary weapons use rate is modified by ability recharge!

• 15% chance on successful Active Reload to gain 100% ability recharge rate for 5s
• 15% chance on successful Active Reload to gain 150% ability recharge rate for 5s
• 15% chance on successful Active Reload to gain 200% ability recharge rate for 5s

Blood Sucking

Melee in general is not a primary means of attack in our current weapon lineup so Blood Sucking has entirely been reworked to key off of Precision damage.

• Bloodsucking I - Precision hits have a 5% chance to heal 1% of max health
• Bloodsucking II - Precision hits have a 5% chance to heal 2% of max health
• Bloodsucking III - Precision hits have a 5% chance to heal 3% of max health

Bugging Out

• Bugging Out I - 15% chance on kill to grant 50 Armor for 10s
• Bugging Out II - 15% chance on kill to grant 100 Armor for 10s
• Bugging Out III - 15% chance on kill to grant 150 Armor for 10s

Demolition Man

• Increase radius of area damage by 50% and 15% chance on critical damage dealt to deal 50 Area Fire damage
• Increase radius of area damage by 100% and 20% chance on critical damage dealt to deal 100 Area Fire damage
• Increase radius of area damage by 200% and 25% chance on critical damage dealt to deal 150 Area Fire damage

Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden was scaling too many vectors of the player for a single Mutation slot. It has been reworked to scale attack speed if the player is reliably hitting weak points of enemies.

• 15% chance to gain Alacrity I on precision damage dealt for 5s
• 15% chance to gain Alacrity II on precision damage dealt for 5s
• 15% chance to gain Alacrity III on precision damage dealt for 5s

Meat Lovers

Meat Lovers Mutation line was performing and scaling too well when paired with fast firing weapons. This change makes the damage chance on hit and increases the chance of damage by reload bonus. The damage is constant but scales with rank of Mutation.

• Increase Magazine by 10 and +5% chance per reload bonus on damage dealt to deal 25 Fire damage
• Increase Magazine by 20 and +5% chance per reload bonus on damage dealt to deal 50 Fire damage
• Increase Magazine by 30 and +5% chance per reload bonus on damage dealt to deal 75 Fire damage

Meat Your Maker

• Meat Your Maker I - Defeating enemies boosts your damage by 1% for 30s up to 100%
• Meat Your Maker II - Defeating enemies boosts your damage by 2% for 30s up to 200%
• Meat Your Maker III - Defeating enemies boosts your damage by 3% for 30s up to 300%

Sentience

• 15% chance on kill to gain 15% Attack Speed for 10s
• 15% chance on kill to gain 25% Attack Speed for 10s
• 15% chance on kill to gain 35% Attack Speed for 10s

Item Changes

• Brawndo has been disabled

Art

• Spider Animation and Scale update:
  • New animation for Web Attack; updated animation for Melee Attack. Should read much more clearly
  • Scaled down by 25% so we can spawn more of them around you
• Scaled up Plasma Gun so it looks a little beefier
• Animation pass on Broadside Miniboss: Idle, Run, Cannon Attack, Slide
• Muscle Man Slide_R anim (was missing one and using Left variant for right slides)
• Lighting in the lobby changes to denote whether you are currently in a run or not
• New Shark Anims for Swim and Attack
• Gobble Gazer animation update, also with new scanning colors for more clarity

AI

• Wasps, Jetpack Robots and Butchers no longer orbit around the player, instead each moving in a unique pattern
• Spiders have an updated movement pattern too
• Enemy creatures will no longer attack each other unless attacked first, or after the baby has been rescued
• Frog enemies won't jump on the spot after you hit them anymore
• Meat Monster will use its laser attack more consistently
• Glizzy Gliders will use white spotlight when approaching a random drop point (while using red for player targets)

Audio

• Adjusted the sound attenuation of the Wasps' buzzing so they dont get loud so far away and align more readily to their awareness and combat parameters
• Mixed some sounds around Reload Minigame and Meat Loss; these should stand out a bit more during Combat
• Bumped the volume of empty meats audio
• Changed XP gain sound so its not as overwhelming (due to the sound being heard over and over as each XP pip was collected)
• New sounds for a number of Enemies: Sharks, Meatboys, Gobble Gazer, Broadside, Wasps, Beatrice (Army of Bee), etc.
• We now only play the event success fanfare sound if rewards were given to the player
• Added new sounds for Meat parts
  • Butcher Legs
  • Empty Legs
  • RangusEmployee Head
  • RangusResearcher Torso
  • RangusResearcher Legs
  • Empty Torso
  • Belly Grinder Torso
• Connected sound events to the Reload Minigame
• Meat Loss has new, louder sounds

Networking

• Disconnected players are automatically removed from the game and their slots are freed at the start of each new run
• The Host now has the option to kick players and free up their slots from the Main Menu Multiplayer menu
• In-game prompt to switch games if a player accepts a Steam invitation while the game is already running

UI / UX

• Moved Invite option on Main Menu into the Multiplayer submenu
• Controller UI Navigation improvements
  • Most buttons now have a consistent active, disabled, hovered, and focused color
  • Most menus will have a default button focused when they are opened
• Healthbar flashes when players take damage
  • If part is missing, healthbar flashes red for missing part
• Added Windowing options to options menu

Bug Fixes

• Fixed animation jitter of attached heads when Rocket Bot Torso is equipped
• Fixed an issue where damage types from weapons were not being correctly calculated and applied to damage dealt
• Fixed an issue where elemental damage dealt would not cause OnHit Effects triggered by elemental damage from being executed
• Fix issue where additional Disgusting Gelatin Salad items would not stack
• Gravity Well is fixed and pulls in enemies again
• Cheats are no longer exposed in live environments
• Projectile weapons should properly interact with the reload buff system, previously they did not count as dealing damage
• Equipment loadouts are properly saved between sessions
• Scale effect radius of elemental grenades on Explosion Radius
• Glizzy Gliders no longer drop meat when despawning after a successful drop
• Fixed an issue with aim at target logic, affecting spotlights and enemy aiming
• GMO Mutant Super Samples werent dropping in the Spiral Sausage galaxy. Theyve been added as a reward to the new Research Facility event
• Machine Super Samples werent dropping in the Spiral Sausage galaxy. Theyve been added as a reward to Stage Time
• Fixed issue where enemies were not taking damage from burning sources
• Players that are slowed from movement slowing abilities will now be able to use their movement abilities

We'll see you planetside!

Thank you, Meat Scientists, for your unwavering commitment to the Rangus mission. It's nearly time to explore strange new meats; to seek out new cuts, and new cooking methods. To boldly go where no meat has gone before. Remember to register for the playtest, invite your friends, and share your feedback on Discord.