Contagion VR: Outbreak
September Update
There has been a pretty wide focus as of late, so we wanted to compile all that’s been worked on since our last update. We have made huge improvements and additions to CVRO.
We now have a moving car for mission 4, thanks to Alex and Jason it looks like so much fun! We may even see them in free roam in the future. It is a bit wonky with the levers. May even change the intros with Outbreak and Vacancy.
https://youtu.be/jC4O5gbhfUE
Mission 4 map layout is complete, Jason has been streaming almost daily to show his work and how huge Mission 4 is. Currently, He is going through to optimize performance in level. Soon moving to scripting and dialogue with Alex and Mike’s help. Please feel free to follow Jason in the twitch link below!
Https://twitch.tv/cr1tlord
Back in August we have submitted our build to Sony. There are a few steps to pass in order to release to PSVR. With each update from Sony, Lawrence, Brian and Mike have adjusted the build from Metadata, art assets, sony builds. Sony is specific with what is included, and we have adhered with each step. We are now currently in QA testing. We are hoping to release this month. It’s been a pretty bumpy ride, but it's moving now much faster. We are proud and excited for when we are finally fully approved! Mike has prepared a new trailer for this release!
With this update, we are releasing a patch which should clean up the last few smaller nasty bugs we had. For example, the Riot boss in Vacancy will chase you now like he used to. In addition to bug fixes, we have also implemented a handful of smaller features and quality of life improvements. For example, In the main menu level you can now select the level monitors from across the room rather instead of having to be right next to them. Another cool thing, certain weapons now have the gripping hand physically attach to the charging handle/bolt/etc when going for a reload. And coming up in the near future, Alex has prepared a few new weapon art assets that should be making their way into the game. We have also been prototyping some new loading screens which will improve the starting experience.
The tutorial has been made mandatory for first time players. To skip it, all you have to do is click on your watch and click on main menu. If you already have played the game, you will not be affected.
Mike worked with some reps to bring back a Chinese (simplified) draft localization for the tutorial and missions 1-3. We will be looking to add in localization for other languages in the near future officially and are building a budget for them. This will likely apply for future Monochrome titles.
Original Contagion update:
After PSVR Release we are planning to hire some help!
What comes first?
Bug fixes and crashes.This is priority. Following the major bugs we will try to re-add Steam workshop compatibility. Some tweaks to Zombie players, and if possible to clean up exploitable objectives. We will try to see if a vote mute option is available for some of they more vulgar players. And if a player is using some sort of wacky hack, to add in a vote kick option. Though a lot of this is still in concept phase, and will be determined by the staff we bring on to help fix Contagion. We are crossing our fingers that we can find a Source Coder that can accomplish the above as soon as able. Firstly, we are currently looking at the ZPS(Zombie Panic! Source) team to help us out. We love these guys and they have been some of the best guys to work with ZPS. That also means we want to give the tools for the ZPS team to succeed and make their workflow incredibly easier.
When will the fixes come?
We are shooting for as soon as possible.
Lastly, we have come across one of VA’s recording their playthrough of Outbreak, we truly enjoyed it and want to encourage anyone who has footage of their playthroughs to post it on our steam forums or our discord. We already have tons of footage and love seeing more, so please feel free to post them! We also enjoy fan art and fiction!
https://youtu.be/2edyVlN4t8k
Discord.gg/Monochrome
A call to the community!
Hello Survivors!
It would be super helpful if we could touch back on the subject of reviews real quick.
We feel this is vital to ensure we address what you feel most needs attention in our game.
Good reviews help generate sales which we can funnel directly back into new content for you - and honest, constructive negative reviews are important so we know where we are going wrong and can improve!
If you haven’t taken the time to review our game yet, we would be very much obliged if you could find a minute to do so.
Also, if you have previously given a negative review it would be invaluable if you could try and replay the game to see if we have resolved the issues you faced, and update your review to reflect how you feel the current state of the game is.
One last thing, if you stream or record current footage of Contagion VR: Outbreak, feel free to post it to our discord! We do watch them and love seeing some of the reactions folks have.
Also, we are a fairly friendly bunch of guys, we don’t bite. Well mostly, so come on in and feel free to hang around our channel.
Discord.gg/monochrome
Many thanks, and have fun out there in the apocalypse ;)
-The Contagion:VR Team
4th of July Update!
Hello Survivors!
For those in the states, Happy Independence Day!
https://gfycat.com/sophisticatedacrobaticgrouse
We have a new update for you! Amongst other things, the main changes are:
Charlie:
-More polish to Mission 3
-Fixed a load of edge-case bugs with the puzzles
-Charlie zombies work better with distraction and pathing
-Charlie hiding places have been completely reworked
-Charlie AI majorly improved in dealing with hiding cabinet, as well as many bug fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements;
-Many charlie puzzles have had improved functionality and reliability;
-UV light weight puzzle now should work all the time (no longer should get into unpredictable state with regard to secret door opening);
-Ladder combo lock now has highlighted dial numbers so you can actually tell what number is "active"
-Cabinet hiding framework has been massively improved (hand in hand with the AI improvements). Now employs change that zombie will bash down the doors if it sees you go into one.
-Added random-chance ambient sounds for more spookyness
-Compass now has extra arms that point to the clocks, as well as improved visuals to show what color matches what number on the clocks.
-Changed clock color from purple to red. Should a lot easier to see (in contrast to the blue clock) in-game now.
Vacancy:
-Fixed Riot boss not attacking
-Fixed misc event manager stuff for Vacancy
-Rebalanced survivors and AI, now easier to tune
-Added more ammo to the bus, added shotgun to the finale table, Changed ammo spawn for deagle to magazines via box ammo spawner.
Misc:
-Fixed objective marker actor leaving behind old markers
-Menu can now no longer ever be activated by left hand
With that said Grand Prix Summer Sale is still happening! Only a few more days, so make sure to take advantage of the sales! Good things are coming, so game on!
Hotfix 6.0.2
Happy Friday! Got another quick fix ready for everyone. This should fix the last of the game breaking issues for Mission 3. The team is still working to make sure the game is as polished as we can make it. These are updates and fixes released this hotfix:
General Updates
-Mission 3 item hand grips all items correctly
-Mission 3 subtle hints added for some puzzles
Bug Fixes
-Tutorial ammo spawns correctly
-Mission 3 final chest emblem spawns correctly
-Mission 1 waypoint marker correctly triggers near finale
-Mission 1 can no longer wiggle past gate
As always keep reporting any bugs you encounter to our discord, that has been a huge help. Thank you to all who have been playtesting and streaming it has been an invaluable asset! Also, let us know any suggestions or ideas you may have in our #FeatureRequest channel. More to come soon!
Discord.gg/Monochrome
Hotfix 6.0.1
Hello everyone, over the weekend we worked some bug fixes and we are now live with the hotfix. This patch should fix the following issues that popped up last minute.
Patch notes:
-added UX pass to tvs in charlie
-fixed emblem bug in chest
-fixed tv noise issues
-changed pill materials
-cleaned up charlie level collisions
-disabled grenades rotating
-changes some doors in charlie
-consolidated rifle ammo types
More to come soon! Please let us know in the discord if you encounter any other issues.
Discord.gg/Monochrome
Major Update 6!
First on deck is mission 3! Mission 3 once again changes things up a bit and introduces some new gameplay experiences. We don’t want to spoil it for you so we hope you give it a try, and report back to us and let us know what you think! One fair bit of warning, you’ll need to put on your thinking caps for this one, and if you find yourself in a pinch with nowhere to run, you can always try hiding! ;)
Next up, we’ve also completely reworked the tutorial. We were never really happy with the original tutorial, and considering changes to the core game and our need to reduce scope, we felt it best to start from scratch and rework it completely taking other platforms into consideration. We’re extremely pleased with the result, and even if you are already familiar with the game, we hope you’ll check it out and let us know what you think, as well as tell us if you feel we’re missing anything!
We’ve also been hard at work reworking the shooting range. The original iteration was not quite in line with the vision we had it mind so we scrapped it and started over. There’s currently only a few different challenges to play, but the framework is there for us to expand it in future content updates. We hope you give it a try and report back to us and let us know how we’re doing!
Core mechanics are something we’re constantly trying to improve on. This update is no different, as we’ve made a pretty significant change to the player inventory system. Previously players had a total of 9 attachment points on their body (not including the backpack). We’ve logged a number of users feedback around this, mainly with trying to grab something off your body but something else getting in the way. We’ve done a lot of tweaking and tuning, but nothing was solving the issue so we decided to simply reduce the number of attachment points down from 9 to 5, as well as change some of the rules for items and where they can be socketed. Melee and 2 handed weapons (shotguns and rifles) now both can use the chest socket. Naturally this does mean what you decide to carry will require a bit more thought, and utilizing the backpack more important as your total inventory space is more limited.
Some other better quality of life improvements we’ve made to firearms are that we’ve finally added some feedback when fire select is manipulated. Important objects in the game such as inventory quest items and ammo boxes also have a new shader effect applied to make them more noticeable in the world. It was also decided to enable ammo counters on the magazines while inside the guns by default, as you can now look at the gun while it’s loaded and see how many rounds are left and decide if you wish to reload early or squeeze off that last round first. You can disable this by enabling immersive mode for those who find it distracting and wanting less visible information.
Mission 1 “Outbreak” we’ve never been completely satisfied with the ending. We had attempted to have multiple endings, but each of them left us feeling none of them really brought any sense of accomplishment or closure to that story as such we have implemented a new ending which also adds a new gameplay sequence. Finally we can look forward and start working on mission 4 now that Outbreak has that final sense of closure we were originally trying to achieve.
Finally we want to apologize for the long delay since the last update to this one. We’ve spent a lot of time getting ready for our release on Playstation 4, and as such it ended up slowing the progress of this update. The good news out of all of this is that the game is EXTREMELY well optimized at this point for PC as well as for Playstation. We hope this update is well received and all the improvements we’ve been making are noticed.
We’re very grateful for the ongoing support as we get closer to moving out of early access, we would appreciate it very much if those who have been critical of the game in their reviews, revisit and update your review based on the current state of the game. We take reviews seriously, and refer to them often as a way to prioritize bugs and features, so we would greatly appreciate you helping us in that regard by updating your reviews. From all of us at Monochrome, we thank you for the continuous support, we’ll see you next update!
https://discord.gg/monochrome
Update 6.0 Changelog
New Additions
- New mission 3 “Charlie”
- New mission ending system (story credits)
- Ambient music system (all maps)
- New tutorial
- New shooting range with challenges
- New usable turret gameplay (Outbreak)
General Updates
- Player inventory socket improvements
- Visible ammo counter on magazines in guns
- Mission 1 ending reworked
- Mission 1 balance pass
- Mission 2 reworked dialogues
- Mission 2 difficulty balance pass
- Riot Boss rebalance, damage feedback (helmet)
- GPU and CPU optimizations
- GUI elements polish
- Audio polish campaign (weapons and environmental)
- Flashlight reworked (no longer uses batteries)
- Player movement system recoded
- New Vacancy clerk dialogue
- New Vacancy player, clerk and Ken dialogues
- Cleaned up Outbreak dialogue audio
- Low health post process improved effect
- Improved search icon
Bug Fixes
- Survivors when grouped don’t launch into space
- Weapon ammo correctly spawns + despawns on belt
- Soldiers when killed or culled no longer leave ammo floating
- Gibs from broken doors despawn correctly
- Jumpscare door no longer interactable during animation
- Sky clouds correctly animate
- Flashlight emissive correct value when on
- Vacancy last survivor audio fixed
- Firearms can no longer spawn from searchable in apartment
- Vacancy clerk dialogue fixed
Known Critical Issues
- None!
2019 Devblog #4
Jason
Things have been quiet on the public front, but behind the scenes it’s been anything but. We’ve all been working extra hard trying to finalize mission 3, as well as making massive performance boosting optimizations to the entire game. PlayStation VR release is definitely getting closer, but we’ve still got some work to do on that front yet.
All these performance boosting changes can definitely be experienced soon in our next major public update which will include mission 3. We’ve also finally gotten around to bringing a better sense of conclusion to the ending of mission 1, having decided to completely rewrite, and redesign it in its entirety. It’s currently in testing, but we hope to have it released to the public build shortly.
https://media.giphy.com/media/fxC90ZdFd5LeLlRTco/giphy.gif
We also decided it was time to rework the shooting range level, and make a better effort to bring that up to a much higher level of polish than its original design. That too will be available in the next upcoming major update.
Alex
It’s been a while! It's hard to encompass everything that's gone on since the last blog, but this last week I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on PSVR stuff. For the past few days I've been going through all the actors that use AK components (a Wwise [our audio engine] specific Unreal object that allows us to do stuff with sound) and tweaking things to squeeze out every last ounce of performance. Thanks to some discoveries by Lawrence, we've learned that the way we had been doing things were A) needlessly computationally expensive, and B) not the right way to even do them. All in all, this is great news for the PSVR build and will translate to good news for the PC side; less CPU wasted on this stuff means more zombies running around.
Brian
These last two weeks I’ve been focusing on optimizing Wwise for our PS4 release candidate. I’ve set new volume thresholds, specified voice limitations, updated all Spatial volumes and portals, as well as cleaned up level audio and placement. Things are coming along nicely and excited to get this submitted shortly!
Lawrence
This week I have been managing the PSVR optimization, we are getting really close to meeting the hardware-budget and have already got some of the levels running at 60FPS on PSVR with the regular PS4 console. Many of these optimizations are being merged back to PC build and as such will drop the CPU demands of that as well. Also, we now officially support 3DRudder on the PS4 port of the game.
Paul
Last week I’ve wrapped up the third mission [Charlie] and shipped it to the Beta branch. While it is in the hands of our testers, whom are trying break it in any way they can I am on a “bugs watch” squashing any bugs that may come into light.
Additionally, all of us within Monochrome agreed that the ending of the first mission did not feel like it provided enough closure and conclusion to the story. Therefore, I spent this week inside the city map of mission 1, implementing the scripting and game play changes that will hopefully bring a better sense of conclusion we all hope for and wanted from the beginning.
Minor Update: Mission 3 + PSVR News
It has been some time since the last update. Though with it, we have some news. First off, we apologize for the two week radio silence. The team had to focus on Mission 3 while Lawrence finally was able to get a first PSVR iteration to work! Great news! Keep in mind, bug fixing and optimizing is continuous. We will try to include several fixes and new features with each update.
Next update expect to be able to melee zombies with rifles and shotguns. ;)
Mission 3:
Without giving too much away, this will be a slower and eerie mission compared to the first missions. Paul has finished with some of the main aspects of the missions features. Brian and Alex have begun polish passes on art and sound. We expect the mission to be sent out to begin play testing by the end of this month. With an internal goal of Launching in early April!
PSVR:
The PSVR port of the game is now fully playable with PSVR headset and Move Controllers. It just requires optimisation and fixes to bring this title to a state where it can be enjoyed by all our very patient fans on the playstation ecosystem. We are all busting ass here to get this submitted as soon as possible without sacrificing quality for sure!
https://i.gyazo.com/17f73ceba2d95685ecef92da056e54a9.mp4
Within the next few weeks we will be finishing the final steps to releasing the Mission 3 and PSVR. If all goes well we may well be supporting another, up and coming controller as it seems like such an essential peripheral for the PSVR experience.
Current Controls (subject to change)
Post PSVR:
Original Contagion bug fixes.
Now we don’t want to leave you all in the dark, but we are looking into hiring a source coder to fix game breaking issues and restore steam workshop or a decent alternative for the Original Contagion. Mike will then attempt to put in more mod maps into the official escape servers make sure you subscribe to them! In the future we might make an Official Community made map server per region that way we don’t force any new players to play Community content on all Escape/Hunted Servers.
Mission 4:
Vertigo has been put on the shelf, so to speak. In its place, Jason has already started the level design and initial script concept for this new map. Currently, the map code name is Patient Zero. Expect more updates for Patient Zero in the future. Main work will start pending PSVR release.
Good things are coming folks! Just a matter of time.
Minor Update: Demo edition!
Demo update:
In this latest update, we had some time to put back into the demo version. We want the demo to reflect the full game in all of its essence. Along with optimizations and new weapons, we have only included the first mission for the Demo. You will now see that the demo is now slightly extended.
The team is very committed to ensuring a very comfortable playthrough, and as such we added several features from the full version to the demo. Grab assist as we have named it, is now available to use for those hard to reach items. All you have to do is point your controller at the item and once the item glows blue, press the grab button.
Included in this update is our newest checkpoint save system. Make sure to fill up on your ammo and supplies as you hit checkpoints. If things get too intense, try taking off your HMD for our new pause feature. That’s right, you can now pause by taking off your headgear.
You may notice some changes in the audio as well. This update was overdue, and we have now pushed majority of our audio to Wwise. The game is still in early access, and we will continue to improve on the game. Please leave us any requests or suggestions on forums or Discord where we are most active!
https://discord.gg/monochrome
Stores:
In other news, we have recently been accepted into Viveport and the Oculus store. We are one step closer to PSVR launch. Currently, we are looking to get as much gear as possible to the rest of our team. It does help if every member of the team has access to the different VR sets. The process to getting to PSVR will still take some time, and we do hope you guys are as hyped as we are. We will have a playtest application for PSVR users at some point so keep an eye out for that!
Mission 3:
We are already cracking away, still some time until we can push this out. This map will be different than the other missions. My recommendation is that you take your time in this next one. You might even get lost, so be sure to remember your way as much as you can. On a final note on Mission 3, keep and eye out for clues. And when you hear the footsteps… Hide…
2019 Devblog #3
Jason
This week I’ve been doing a bit of research before I get started constructing the world for mission 4. It’s amazing how much progress the entire team has been making of late, and we’re all feeling very optimistic about the future of the game! Mission 3 is well underway, speaking of which Paul has really been putting in crazy hours to get ahead of himself so much so that we decided to give him the day off today!
I’ve done a bit more optimizing of the project, tracking down 2k and 4k textures and downscaling them as much as possible. I’ve also started redesigning the main menu level and how in a future update it will be implemented in the game that better positions us for our upcoming Playstation VR release. Sorry no media from me this time around, next week I guarantee, see you then!
Alex
Since the last update I have been working on reworking the underpinnings of free roam. We have settled on a design and now we're implementing it! So far it's pretty basic but it should be a good foundation to add all manner of bells and whistles in the near future. Along with that, there's been lots of little bug fixes across the board (most of which are not really user-facing for the most part, so not very sexy to write about here)
A sneak peek into the next mission though! Or, at least, a weapon you will get to use..
Brian
I spent this week focusing on improved Audio quality of our current weapons of which many you have yet to see. I also applied unique haptic curve feedback for each individual weapon so you can get the most out of your gun play. I am also working on applying haptics and unique audio to the mechanics of the weapon as well from magazine interaction to fire select. It is our goal to make all our Melee and Firearms as enjoyable as possible. Also I scaled images for our Oculus Store……………….
(legit, he did. -Lawrence)
Lawrence
This 168.3-hour chunk of our planet’s orbit (apparently we use “this week” too much) I have been preparing our game for shipping on a whole variety of platforms! I have the PS4 dev kit set up and just waiting for a few things from Sony and Epic and then I’ll be starting work on the long-awaited PSVR release! We have already submitted the Oculus build which is pending approval, and are very close to the Viveport submission. Things are moving fast around here!
Paul
I spent my time assembling new core mechanics for the upcoming mission. Unfortunately I can’t really speak about specifics of these things because we want to keep it a secret until it’s closer to release! That said, I’m happy to report that new mission is looks promising and provides a fresh perspective to the game and is already halfway there. If no further delays occur, Mission3 should hit test builds early next month and public build not long after!