What a year it has been. It is hard to believe weve come around to the anniversary of the Kickstarters launch. At every milestone and checkpoint, we look back on how far weve come and on our supporters -- you! -- who made this possible and we are grateful. The eve of the launch date is a moment to remember. Last year, Cory and I were staying up late, working on perfecting our by-the-hour checklist for post-launch and trying to keep a lid on our excitement. You all blew that lid right off, funding us before the night was over. And from there, it was a straight shot to impressive stretch goals like new game environments, expanded Matrix gameplay, and most importantly... cats!
As we hit the one year mark, were proud of our progress and glad for the stretch goals and rewards weve already delivered. But we know that weve had some delays and have the lionshare of rewards and stretch goals ahead of us. We will continue to communicate monthly with big status updates and keep you in the loop as to the games progress and projected schedule. We are always grateful for your support and your patience as we work toward the alpha. To repeat the statement from the last update, in case anyone missed it -- the Cyber Knights: Flashpoint alpha will not be ready during Q1 of 2021. We are making steady progress, but there are still months of work to complete before the alpha will be ready and at the quality we want to make the best use of your time and feedback.

Get your cyberpunk fix on our social accounts!

In addition to the @TreseBrothers twitter where we chat game dev and share highlights from all our games, we now have a Facebook and twitter account for Cyber Knights! Plug in to keep updated and get your regular cyberpunk fix. Were sharing concept art, gameplay previews, news & interviews, highlights from the forums & discord, shout-outs to other awesome cyberpunk creators, and more. See you on the net, Knight!

February Progress

As we mentioned in the January update, were dedicating each week to a certain aspect of the game and putting all our energies into bringing that system or area to alpha readiness. During February, we worked on these major features for a week each: (1) improved level flow, lighting and dynamic security challenges, (2) pre-mission advantages which you can buy from your network of contacts in order to alter the flow of a mission, stack up insurance against reinforcements and alarms, bypass map areas or challenges altogether, or compensate for a teams lack of skill in certain disciplines (hacking, stealth, security), (3) safehouse management, including the ability to smoothly add and upgrade modules, review and recruit from potential merc pool, install workshops for all types of crafting and hacking from home, (4) improved the balance of all weapon classes and the rules for how armor plating is degraded by weapon attacks, built out the Wounds catalog for exciting types of lasting post-combat damage and figured out the scheme by which wounds can be nullified by combat stims and cyberware. It has been a huge month. And every week, were doing so much more than what we can type here reasonably, including things like adding 50 hairstyles and 15 beards to the game, adding a full step-out-from-cover implementation for combat and vastly improving the AIs ability to respond intelligently to threats. And (see below) wiring up the games environment with more intelligence to respond with VFX and SFX that are appropriate to the materials in question. Bullets ricocheting off metallic crates send showers of sparks and play the right sound while those burying themselves in concrete billow out of a cloud of dust.

Mk2 and Hacking Missions

Previously we discussed how adding and cutting scope in the right places benefits the game. Our process of development and early gameplay testing often reveals previously unseen potential. In this case, weve found a place to further expand the Hacking Mk2 system into the missions system in new and exciting ways. The missions system features multi-map missions -- for example, you might first creep across the cargo yard or into the lower utility chambers of a facility before entering the second area, the main nano-factory where you must break into the third and final map of the manufacturing data center. While it is an addition of scope, we have now integrated matrix missions directly into this mission chain so that the mission designer has the option to replace a normal map with a matrix hack or offer the option for the Knights team to pick a matrix hack over a normal map. A hacking focused team might bring their hacker on the mission and bypass the first map altogether by hacking an exposed matrix line from the sewers below the facility to open a path directly to the main factory floor. This integration helps expand the Matrix Mk2 beyond being just amazing matrix-only missions from yoru Safehouse and on-map matrix hacks to gain limited control of map elements and digital loot. Now, the Matrix Mk2 stretch goal will shine in the main mission progression as well. Your stretch goal dollars hard at work! Picking a matrix hack over a regular map will be no less dangerous but allow teams with different operational capacity to handle challenges their own way. This approach to Matrix Mk2 missions also adds an additional set of pre-mission advantages, which we worked on in the first week of February.

Executive Producers / Patreons

Weve scheduled the 5th Executive Producers meeting for early March. With 4 under our belt, weve now reviewed the art process for the game, the multi-job system, stealth action and the games story architecture. As we get closer to alpha, well keep meeting with the Executive Producers regularly, gathering feedback from this valuable first line of players. With so much going on in the game's development, well be aiming to meet with the Execs once a month now until alpha.

Streaming on Twitch

You can find Cory (and sometimes Andrew) on the Trese Brothers Twitch where we are streaming game development, answering questions and talking about the studio Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4PM EST.

Rewards and Stretch Goals

With each update, we always include the progress bar infographic to ensure that all backers can easily see the status of every reward and stretch goal in a single glance. With this update, we're excited to share that we have completed the work for all of the backers 3D faces, hair and beards. I started prepping the wave of emails to share these but there are 60 of them and didn't quite finish the grind. Hopefully these are coming soon. So -- the 3D heads are basically done but we have the final step of game integration and sharing with backers. To the backers waiting, sorry for the delay.