When

This weekend I will be rolling out playtesting access to more people on Steam. The playtest will start at 4pm EST. Expect bugs, and maybe even some lag.

Control Points

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/1af1e2a42ee15ca406fda359ed4e1645b4556447.jpg\"][/img]

These are control points. When playing as the Chaos Insurgency or the Nine-Tailed Fox, your team can capture a control point. To capture the control point, you must make sure no enemies are in the same zone. Your team will be alerted when an enemy enters the zone.

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/bdd5c709a8fdcae6367774646ab32e52795e9975.jpg\"][/img]

After some time, your team will capture the point. Capture 2 control points to win the round.

Performance Improvements

We have made steps towards improving performance. One of these steps is pre-computing lighting information. As a result, you can set your Shadow Quality to Very Low (which disables most real-time shadows) and still have nice visuals.

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/aad7ae46506470e817300e004bfef760d603e5a0.png\"][/img]

Hello, Facility Personnel!

After we left you with exciting news a month ago, weve refined our approach to organizing the development of SCP: Echoes. Since July, weve made significant progress on the game: the Light Containment Zone has received a near-complete facelift, and a gritty new design for Heavy Containment Zone is underway. Weve also introduced a wealth of new props along with many general game improvements regarding core gameplay and sound design.

Map Changes and Additions

Out with the old, in with the new! Light Containment has received some love from our very dedicated level designer and artist, Bunglow. Shes been working hard, keeping LCZ consistently scary, gritty and more detailed. In these rooms, youll find tight hiding spots, and a plethora of new props to play with thanks to talented modeller and artist Shahir Zaman, as well as a new vertical sliding door seen in many rooms. Namely, the new LCZ checkpoints, created by Seernix.

Alongside the changes to Light Containment, the other zones have received some work as well. Heavy Containment now also sports a revitalized design and a few new rooms. Grimey yellow trimmings and industrial concrete line the walls of the most dangerous zone now, giving it the weight it deserves thanks to Pop_pop_icard. Entrance Zone has also seen a few changes with rooms now being properly set-dressed and a lighting overhaul that adds to the Zones more dark and sterile nature. We also have a new work in progress Intercom room, that serves as an important set piece for a new core gameplay mechanic

Gameplay Changes

In a step to move away from games that have inspired Echoes, we now have a new way to win over the desolate site from enemy forces- Zone Nodes. Zone Nodes are objective points within specific rooms, needing to be captured by either team that help towards the ultimate goal of capturing The Facility. The first team that clears and captures two zones wins the round.

Our intention with this gameplay change was to not only differentiate ourselves from similar games, but to remove the idea that all players of a certain alignment need to die before a round can end. With indicators that help pinpoint the general location of players, camping has much less impact on a round and the overall game design can shift away from constantly moving the player forward artificially. This change allows for us to be more flexible with the pacing and horror Echoes has to offer.

Keycard ranks have also been revamped, with a plentiful amount being able to be found within LCZ. The new rank names will be sure to immerse you as you pocket them desperately for survival- from Research Supervisor to Facility Officer, there\'s a keycard for everyone.

Audio Changes

With the hundreds of new physics props added, impact sounds have been given to many of them as well as new door and gunfire sound effects, all done by Audio Designer Skevandcodiene. The prop sounds were done using real life foley recordings, giving them that sense of weight and realism. So now you can really feel the impact of the box you threw as it bounces off of a very angry SCP-049.

Speaking of being chased by an SCP, many new chase themes and stingers have been added to the game, designed to put you on edge as you run through the halls of the facility from whatever mightve found you. Alongside those is a new track for Surface Zone, which have all been done by our talented Audio Designer Adlai130s.

With the chase themes and stingers, some other misc audio updates have been done by RoyalMintz, such as some crunchy new SCP-173 neck snapping sounds!

Miscellaneous Changes

With SCP-173\'s new room in Light Containment also comes the introduction of a new horrifying model for the attention seeking statue, created by Bunglow- who I shook information out of on how and why they designed the iconic peanut the way they did.

When designing SCP-173 I knew I wanted to do something unique, but still distinctly SCP-173. I wanted to keep a similar silhouette to the original design, with a rounder head and a thin body with the ridges on its upper torso- sort of mimicking the arms that the previous design had. For the legs, the tripod design gives it a more balanced look rather than just two little nubs. Then, I decided to make it look like SCP-173 had sustained some heavy damage, exposing its innards made of rebar. The rebar snakes in and out of it, like its own living organism, and I think it uniquely sets it apart from most interpretations of the sculpture.

As for our last major change, the main menu. Instead of the copy-paste one from before, we now have our own unique menu screen. Through the POV of your average Foundation worker, you sit at your desk and work away or draw on the whiteboard for the rest of your shift. Ambient, moody and a good way to immerse yourself before heading into a game.

Thats all for our August post! We hope you enjoy the changes when you get your hands on them. If you want a more in-depth look at changes and other information, join our Discord Community . Have a good day, and well see you next month!

It\'s been a busy past few weeks, and a lot of progress is being made on SCP: Echoes.

Animated Elevators

I made elevators actually respect physics. Just depends on which elevator we\'re talking about.

[dynamiclink href=\"https://youtu.be/WZ-uySwTew0\"][/dynamiclink]

Models

bunglow and Shahir have been making all sorts of models for the game.

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/849dff516953df6768c36c8835cb62d5ca1a045d.png\"][/img]

Map Editor and Generator

I have been working on improving the features of the map editor. There is now a way for maps to contain additional metadata for each room, allowing for anyone who wants to modify map generation code to easily read additional data.

I also added support for us to add non-single celled rooms to the map.

Here is a (terrible) example of a layout with a non-single celled room (towards the bottom of the picture):

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/63b902c20944abb08a1febcddab5f303e36fcd0a.png\"][/img]Note this image is a bit outdated now, as we have added a toolbar, inspector and categories for the rooms.

Surface Zone

pop_pop_icard made a very cool (but still unfinished) surface zone.[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45663902/84fa72b5677eb80cfe9134d251a5fd85c334ec42.jpg\"][/img]

What Else?

Lemon has made some level blockouts for heavy containment zone, so the area finally has something of substance. Can\'t forget, btelnyy has been working on implementing and improving interactions within the game by adding physics props. Some can be shot, some can be grabbed, and some can be pushed.

Conclusion

Hopefully we can roll out access to more people over the next month.

Cheers, Virtual

Replacing some assets with placeholders went a bit faster than I initially thought. With that said, this means we're almost ready to roll out the playtest.

I'm planning to roll out the playtest this Saturday (the 28th, around 6pm EST) or Sunday (the 29th, around 4pm EST) to a small group of people from North America and Europe.

Since I don't have a (friend's) server outside the United States or Germany, I'm going to hold off on accepting people from other regions (having high ping isn't fun).

If you are interested in hosting a community server for a different region, contact me (Virtual) on the Discord server via DMs (or public chats).

We will slowly roll out access to more people as time passes, as there is still a lot of placeholder, prototype and, unfinished assets that are in the game at the moment.

Keep in mind, some of the features are subject to change from the initial playtest builds.

Feedback Forum

Road to an Alpha Build

We've been working to get an alpha build into the hands of players, but there are some things we're still working on before we release an alpha build.

A general list will be provided here.

The current to-do list:

• Removal of SCP: SL assets

  [/*]

• Fixing many of the physics related bugs (Ragdoll lag, physics prop flying and exploits)

  [/*]

• Updating some of the user interfaces

  [/*]

• Finish the initial Light Containment Zone rooms

  [/*]

Future Plans

Everything here is subject to change, but is not something holding us back from an alpha build.

This is also not a complete list.

• More Items (SCP-500, SCP-207)

  [/*]

• More guns

  [/*]

• Radios

  [/*]

• Cuffs

  [/*]

• Melee weapons

  [/*]

• Achievements and rewards

  [/*]

• Server list filtering and tagging

  [/*]

Clips

Finally, here is a clip of a bug we found funny when testing physics props. Note that it has since been patched. (Thanks to closequarter for the clip)