Hello everyone and welcome to a special Broken Lines news blast!
Today marks our two month anniversary since the launch of Broken Lines and we thought that it would be a great opportunity to look over what has been going on since then and give a special thank you to everyone in our community.
A Look at the Launch
The best way to describe our emotions when we launched the game would be excitement. Afterall, Broken Lines was originally announced back in 2017! Though we stayed true to our vision of the game, the game looked VERY different back then.
Don't believe us? Take a look at this early screenshot of Broken Lines from back in 2017.
If you want to learn more about what the game used to look like, check out our first IndieDB article.
So, when launch day finally came around on February 25th, 2020, it was the cumulation of around 3 and a half years of development and we could not wait to see the reaction to the game.
Ultimately, we were overjoyed to see that the reaction that we got was fantastic and we had a great time engaging with everyone.
One of the surprise highlights of the launch was the reaction to our developer livestream. Did you know that originally we only planned to do a dev stream on launch day, and then leave it at that? But after seeing your reaction to our devs while they were live, we knew that we had to do a few more!
This gives us a nice moment to thank all of the content creators that covered Broken Lines, from livestreamers, to article writers, to video creators, and anyone else that we missed, thank you for covering our game. We did our best to watch/read as many as we could, and really enjoyed your reactions, commentary, and feedback.
Post Launch
Just because the game launched, it didn't mean that we could rest. Quite the contrary actually, with all of you playing the game we had a lot of feedback to sort through, and (thankfully only a few) a few bugs to fix as well.
Two special highlights from the post-launch period were:
Noticing that macOS and Linux gamers really appreciated having native versions of the game to play.
Getting a great amount of feedback when we asked you (the community) what you wanted to us to work on in the future - the feedback poll had almost 200 replies and helped give us a direction that we knew would be appreciated.
Major Updates and the Switch
This all nicely leads us to the here and now. Thanks to the feedback that you gave us in our first community poll, we decided that the best course of action to take would be to work on letting you customize the game - so that was exactly what we did.
Though originally we did want to provide you with full steam modding support, due to some technical limitations that were not realistic (we'd have to essentially re-code the game). So we did the next best thing and open up the entire game databases. This update gave you the power to change pretty much anything, from the behavior of the enemies to the balancing/power of the weapons to simple cosmetics like re-naming the characters.
What's more, with the update we also finalized and released the Chinese translations of the game. This was made specially for our Chinese players and we really hope that they are now able to fully enjoy Broken Lines.
Three days after the customization update, we hit another major milestone and finally released the Nintendo Switch version of Broken Lines!
So, if you're a big fan of Broken Lines and wanted to play the game on the go (or perhaps we should say, on the WeGo), you can now do it.
Looking to the Future
Now that we're all caught up, it's time to look to the future. Once again, we want to ask YOU (the community) for your input on what you'd like us to work on - and we're also curious to know what you think of the new customization options.
So, please do consider replying to our feedback poll here: https://forms.gle/BFfYWFfR5f6WtrUz7 And of course, you're always welcome to leave a message on the Steam discussion boards, at any of our Social Media accounts, or over on our Discord Server!
So, that's it for this news blast - ultimately what we want to say is a huge THANK YOU to everyone in our community, who reviewed the game, who played the game.
Broken Lines - Now available in Chinese
Fans of Broken Lines,
It is with great pleasure that we can announce to you that we have completed translating the game to Simplified Chinese.
Important Dates and Information
On April 17th, 8am Beijing Time we will update Broken Lines to add in Simplified Chinese support.
If you have any questions or need help, please direct it to our dedicated Chinese Community Manager in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/926580/discussions/0/1751275054058912775/
We look forward to opening our game to the Chinese gaming community and hope that you will enjoy playing Broken Lines!
Broken Lines Content Update - Customization
Good news everyone,
The first major Broken Lines update is here, bringing you the ability to customize your game the way that you see fit. What's more, we've also worked on the balancing from our end, fixed a handful of bugs, and added in the Chinese (Simplified) translation of the game!
To learn what we've changed, added, and fixed, please see the update patch notes this post.
The Request
Since the launch of our game, one of the most popular requests has been for us to allow you (our players) to customize your game by letting you name the characters, change the power of the weapons, and so on.
At first, we did explore adding in full modding support, however, due to technical limitations (we’d have to essentially re-code the entire game) that was not possible. So we went with the next best thing - letting you edit the game databases (via the XML files) to put in custom values for, well just about anything!
Special thanks goes out to our devs who were porting the game to the Nintendo Switch for finding this solution.
Customization - What is it?
We weren't kidding when we said that you could customize just about anything. As the XML files are not hidden/obfuscated in any way, you will now be able to change the core values and names for:
Weapons and Items Name, Price, Type, Usage, All Stats.
Soldiers Name, Portrait, All Stats, Starting Traits and Hidden Traits.
Enemies Name, AI Type, Weapons, Extra Equipment, Abilities, All Stats
Abilities, Traits, and Status Effects Usage count, Type, Duration, All Stats
Campaign Structure Starting rooster, Starting inventory, Abilities and Resources, When the shop appears, Random events, Accessible levels.
Shop Content and price multiplier of different categories
Events Content of all events
Levels Name, Description, Texts, Composure loss on retry, Level Evaluation, Level Rewards, Abilities awarded on completion.
Texts All text in the game including UI text, item and ability description, event texts, soldier comments, and so on.
Important Information
Customizing the game will be fun, however, there are a few things that you need to be aware of.
When customizing the game, you will not be able to unlock any new achievements.
Customization overwrites the game’s normal files. Therefore, we recommend that you back up all files before changing anything.
In case something really goes wrong, you can reset everything back to normal by using the “verify your local cache” option from steam.
Customizing the game may potentially create bugs, especially if you change ‘too much”.
An example of this would be if you change specific events that take place within a level. This may result in the game getting stuck if the level progression depends on a character being present/alive.
Please note that though we will try to help with any potential bugs, there may be situations where we cannot help you due to bugs that arise from your specific customizations.
So, do you want to learn how to customize your game? Check out our guide here.
We hope that you will enjoy this update and we cannot wait to see what sort of customizations you will add to the game!
- Your Broken Lines Team!
Broken Lines v1.0.3 Patchnotes
New Features
Chinese Localization has been added to the game
Suppression will now be better explained in the bootcamps
Customization support has been added to the game
All of our databases have been opened up for editing - making it possible to customize the game
Supplies in Izkors shop will now always cost the same
Most of the bolt-action rifles have had their accuracy and damage slightly improved
(Mauser 98 and Mosin-Nagant, both non-scoped and scoped variants)
Shadows in all of the levels have been rebaked to fix various lighting issues and improve the visual quality
Checkpoint loading time has been reduced
Bug Fixes
Characters would sometimes get stuck in/behind cover
Knocked down characters sometimes had their target icons positioned weirdly
Certain types of cover would not display the correct destruction particles when destroyed
Russian players would not be able to load certain levels
Walls in Strength/Mischief (levels) could be fired through
Controller focus could be lost when ending a level while opening the combat log
Certain tooltip labels were not localized correctly
"Checkpoint reached text" is now localized correctly
Certain levels would not complete correctly if too many soldiers had died
Ability targetting would sometimes glitch out when used inside houses
Some objects would flicker slightly when zooming in and out
Scrolling in the combat log would zoom the game view
ToggleUI would show as "Label" in the keybind settings
Hailey's death event would not trigger due to strict event requirements
Some empty/mixed up tooltips texts have been fixed
Broken Lines on macOS and Linux
Attention Broken Lines community,
It has been brought to our attention that there is quite a lot of interest in Broken Lines coming from macOS and Linux gamers; we regularly get asked if we 'plan' to support these Operating Systems.
The answer may surprise you - we already do. Though it may have flown under the radar a bit!
If you happen to be a Tux fan, or simply prefer the feel of macOS, we've got you covered with native ports of the game.
In all, we support the following Operating Systems:
Windows (Windows 7 or higher)
Linux (any 64bit distro)
macOS (OSX version 10.13.6 +)
So, there you have it. We hope that you'll enjoy playing Broken Lines - no matter what OS you are on!
- Your Broken Lines Team
Your chance to tell us what YOU want!
Hello everyone,
Now that Broken Lines has been available to you for a while giving you all a good chance to play the game, we’re beginning to look to the future!
As you may have noticed, we (the Broken Lines team) have been as active as possible on the discussion board, listening to your thoughts on the game and helping you out where possible - after all we just want you to have a good experience playing Broken Lines!
As we’re now looking to the future, we decided that it would be best to give you - the community - a chance to make your thoughts heard on what we do with the game.
So, we’d like to invite you all to take part in our community poll.
Explanation/How this Works:
This poll is split into 7 sections. In the first section, you are asked to rank what aspect of the game you feel we should focus on the most.
The subsequent sections of the poll then takes you through multiple ideas for each aspect (listed in section one) that we’ve heard from the community and asks you to rank them in terms of what you would like to see.
If you have an idea that isn’t listed, don’t worry - at the end of each section, you have the chance to write your own idea for the topic.
At the end of the poll, you have a further free section where you may write any ideas that you feel does not fit into the previous sections.
Finally, you will need to sign in to google to take part - however, no email addresses/personal details are stored by us.
Important This poll is to give us a direction and provide us with structured feedback on what the community would like to see us add to the game.
At this point, we cannot promise that the most popular idea(s) will be worked on, as we first need to judge the feasibility of the ideas.
A Message from our Game Director and Producer - Hans von Knut
Greetings all Broken Lines players!
With the latest Patch “v1.0.2” now named The Gleeful Garand the Broken Lines excitement train keeps on rolling. Please do check out the Patch Notes as we have added several new features, fixed the balancing in key areas, and of-course fixed the most troublesome bugs.
If you have already checked out the Patch Notes, we've got two special messages for you!
First, the Game Director and Producer of Broken Lines, Hans Von Knut, has a message for you all!
Second, today at 15:00 CET we will once again be streaming on Steam, YouTube and Twitch! This is your chance to get a live response to any and all questions that you may have!
A Message from the Broken Lines Game Director and Producer
Hello all you Broken Lines players!
We want to do our best to make the gameplay experience the best that we can for all of you so I want to explain how we work on the Patches!
To make sure that we prioritise what needs to be worked on in the best way possible, we have been following all the the Steam forum discussions, the Discord Channel, our Facebook, Twitter, the various gaming site reviews and of-course the many Youtube comments about the game as closely as possible. This is simply so that we can figure out what has bothered you the most.
So we are proud to have just launched the first major patch since the launch of the game - a patch that has been created for you!
The patch focuses on several issues, most importantly:
We have increased the number of viable builds for your squad which allows you to focus on the direction much earlier on in the campaign. This includes rebalancing the content of the shop and buffing the semi-automatic rifles along with some of the less frequently used abilities.
We also heard a lot of comments about the behaviour of all soldiers (yours and the enemies) so we have made them “smarter” when panicking. This results in a slight nerf to the effect of suppression in general, thus making you a bit less dependent on SMG’s.
The way that we communicated the story and goals during the levels also led to some questions so we improved a lot of the placement, timing and prerequisites of events and win-conditions in levels.
Finally we come to the bug fixes. We’ve heard your cries of pain, so after looking through all of the reports (thank you to everyone that reported the bugs) we have put a huge effort into removing some of the most bothersome bugs. Floaty animations when in panic, geometry issues and visual “ugliness” in some levels, some “soft blocks” that forced levels to be reloaded are just some of the bugs that we fixed!
Of-course, that is not all - we are already starting work on the next patch. So if there is anything you are missing, then please write it in the discussion. We will keep digesting all the feedback and work hard on making the game as good as possible, for all of you.
Thank you for your time - and have a good weekend with Broken Lines!
Broken Lines Update v1.0.2 "The Gleeful Garand"
The second update for Broken Lines is going to be released today, so here are the patch notes.
Please note that saved games with in-level checkpoints may reset to the beginning of the level (no composure cost though). This is unfortunately necessary and we apologize for the inconvenience.
New Features
A UI size option has been added to the game settings menu and can be used to toggle between default and large UI Please note: The big UI may not play well with 4:3 resolutions - all other resolutions should be just fine.
The difficulty selection box now has a 'custom' option which will open the settings allowing the player to customize the difficulty, once this window is closed the game will start the game.
The target lines have been slightly modified to show 'cover' status even when out of range of an enemy.
Checkpoints are now clearly marked with a full screen fade-in notice.
Added the wait information menu to "Wreck"
Balancing Changes
Garand and Gewehr43: now does less damage but fires faster and does more suppression damage.
Assault training Ability: time between volleys slightly increased
Sneaker Ability: Increased threat reduction even further, no longer disappears when fired at.
Eagle eye Ability: Now actually increases spottable range by 80%
Several “less used” abilities have been buffed slightly (e.g. “Drunken” and “Chicken” had ROF penalty removed).
Bug Fixes
Panicking characters should now seek cover correctly
Rotating the camera when looking over the edge of a map into the void will no longer cause chaos with the camera
"Ambush" should now work correctly when loading the checkpoint
'Wounded' state is no longer incorrectly removed when loading a checkpoint
Button prompt for mission outro 'continue' button should now position correctly
Increased animation speed for the panic run animation
Events should now trigger correctly at the "Greed" entrance
The gate should now open correctly in "Retribution"
The antenna box in "Contact" should now be more noticable
The roof on the big building at the end of uncertainty should now once more be grenade proof
Settings menu should reset settings correctly now when exiting without saving
Pacifist Ability now correctly shows the accuracy reduction
Covered Ability should now show up in your inventory after "Greed"
Several levels have been tweaked in regards to colliders and nav-mesh.
Controller Specific
Features
End level box can now be minimized
Soldiers can now be selected for the squad from the customize menu
Bug fixes
Selection focus should no longer be lost when pressing 'up' on the pre-campfire night scene
Equipment stats should no longer show over the character biography
Patch 1.0.1.7
The first Broken Lines hotfix patch has been released today.
This patch fixes an issue with the controllers that caused the cursor to lock in the center of the screen.
We will continue to watch the discussions section and are making notes of all other bugs that are reported.
If you do encounter a bug, as well as reporting what it is/what it does, please can you find a way to add your game's output log to your description.
Suggestions on how to do so:
Simply copy and paste the content of the output_log.txt file in your reply
Upload it to a file hosting site (e.g. google drive) and put a link to it in your message
The output log file can be found in this directory: \Users\\AppData\LocalLow\PortaPlay\Broken Lines
Thank you very much, The Broken Lines Team
Broken Lines - Now Released!
💣⚔️ BROKEN LINES IS OUT ON PC! ⚔️💣
It is now down to you to be the unseen hand that will guide this ragtag group of soldiers to safety while uncovering the secrets of the mysterious masked enemies.
