Changed up hotfix naming to something a bit more elegant. This hotfix really isn't fixing anything seriously game-breaking, but there were enough little things that it couldn't hurt to throw something up there.
Fixed
Missing diaries after coming back from "free-roaming" the City into Apartment
Hand grip on radio was not correct
Both hand grip rotated after dropping items with one opposite hand
Glock hand grip animation not correct
Added
PT-BR localization to subtitles
Clear Saves to Main Menu (just in case you need want to for some reason, you can just overwrite them, but this will clear every single save)
This has been a long time coming. I want to first thank all our playtesters that worked hard testing out the Closed Alpha
You can read more about the benefits of becoming a playtester here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/676840/announcements/detail/1705064322646254341)
Thank you also to those that went in and tried out Update 3 Beta and gave us feedbackːsteamhappyː
Everyone's valuable input and bug reports were instrumental in getting this update out.
Is it perfect? Nah, I'm sure something snuck by us, but this is why we're in Early Access and we're going to use that excuse for as long as possibleːsteammockingː It's pretty nice though, lot of bug fixes, polish, user experience improvements and even a feature request or two were added.
Verfiy File Integrity
If something is really funky with your game (like Rift users with funky grips) and since this is a huge update, it may not play nice with your current files after updating. Please first try to verify your files, if that doesn't work, uninstall and reinstall the game.
If none of those options work, please let us know ASAP! Thanks!
Toggle Grip And More On Your Watch Menu!
Just a friendly reminder, you have a menu on your watch, use it :) Has things like Toggle Gripping (so you don't have to hold onto things always), Movement options and also some Input options, in future updates this menu will get bigger and you'll be able to do more things with it.
Slot Saving
For some, this was the most desired feature to get added into the game. I get it, the first mission is pretty long and there is a big dialogue sequence that sometimes just sucked doing over and over again. And then there were some of you that just died...a lot.
Well, here it is :) To learn more about it and how to use it, I highly recommend you read this: https://steamcommunity.com/games/676840/announcements/detail/2681220278460090735
Tutorial
For others, there was a big issue just getting started in the game. They had no clue how to play ːsteamsadː ! It was too crazy and too much to remember from just some tooltips and screenshots of controls. We heard you and we agreed! We had planned on doing something a little less than what we ended up with...but I don't think anyone's going to cry about the extra effort put into itːsteammockingː
The Tutorial can be found where the Outbreak mission diary was. The Outbreak mission diary has been moved to the kitchen. Eventually these diaries by the way(other than Tutorial), will be scattered around and you'll have to play finders-keepers (once found, they are shown in your apartment). Well, that's our original thought anyway.
Just pick it up and press TRIGGER to use any diary.
Localizations
Thanks to all the new localizers, we are proud to present the first of many iterations of localization in the game.
Firstly, the subtitles will only appear in the Tutorial, this was a good test to see how the workflow would work out, and it worked out wonderfully. The next step will be getting the first campaign mission localized and then elsewhere we may have missed.
The following are available currently:
English
Spanish
French
German
Portuguese-PT
Japanese
Chinese-Simplified
Chinese-Traditional
Russian
The following will be coming soon:
Portuguese-BR
If you want to help localize into your language, please jump onto our Discord (https://discord.gg/monochrome) and go to #forms-and-surveys channel and apply.
If you notice any issues with localized text in your language, please jump onto our Discord and go to #localization-errors
LIV Mixed Reality Support Added!
Currently only available for Vive users
Find out more about it here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/676840/announcements/detail/1712943720180394413
Future support for Rift will come in an update.
Outbreak Mission Endings
There was a lot of confusion and it overall felt very rushed when we originally pushed that out. We spent a lot of time fleshing out the endings (there are three of them!) to the Outbreak mission. It should feel more polished and make more sense. If there are any issues still with understanding each of the endings, please let us know!
Grips and Inputs
Did another pass on all major HMDs: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality.
All grips have been adjusted in preparation for User Defined Custom Grip Angles in the near future. They should feel pretty good overall for each controller though.
Everyone's hands/wrists are different so we want to make sure that you can play the way that feels more natural to you. So stay tuned for that.
WMR had some input love, again for preparation of a future update. WMR are basically mimicing Vive controllers. In the future they'll be an option (or just straight a up switch to the thumbsticks)
New Zombie Archtype: Soldier
The soldier zombie has more health than a regular civilian zombie, and his helmet makes him a bit tougher to deal with since helmet shots will inflict zero damage to him, so you must shoot him in the face to land a headshot. As you might have noticed, the soldier zombie might be carrying more than just the Contagion virus! The soldier zombie has a random chance to be armed with a primary weapon, a pistol, a grenade, ammunition, or all of them at once! Pick his pockets while he’s still “alive” or after you’ve dispatched him, the choice is yours.
Watch Alarm <25 HP
For all those that seem to die a lot, this feature request was added.
It is as simple as it sounds, if your face is being eaten up by zombies and your health is reduced to under 25 health points, the alarm on the watch will go off letting you know that you are about to die and you should probably run away or consume some pills, or both.
Experimental No Hands
Currently only works for melee weapons, you'll see the hands disappear. The reasoning behind this was due to how strange it looked with the hands visible (since they never would reflect how you truly were holding the controller with a bent wrist for example)
And So Much More!
I have probably forgotten a lot of things that we all did, this update reflects roughly 1.5 months of work from the various members on the development team. Audio quality was improved all over the place, animations and logic for the zombies and other NPCs were tweaked.
I'll update this announcement as needed.
The Future
Update 4 will be a smaller update and will come out a lot faster. We might not (probably) push out Mission 2 with it. Instead, it will come out in Update 5.
Stay tuned for announcements and sneak peaks!
Dev Blogs
You should definitely have our website bookmarked and tune into our "weekly" (not so much) dev blogs and news that you may miss out on since they don't get posted on Steam.
I might be tempted to write the whole list down here later, or will post it in Steam Forums.
But there were a crapton of bugs fixed. Still a few pesky ones around. Little by little they will all get wrecked.
Reviews
If you haven't already posted one, please consider doing so!
If you have and it's old, please consider updating it to reflect the current state of the game! Thank you!
Discord
As always, if you have any bug reports, feature requests, feedback or just want to chat it up with over 1500 fellow Contagion VR: Outbreak Survivors and the developers, jump onto our Discord: https://discord.gg/monochrome
Twitch
Join Victor on Twitch, Hurricane Florence is out of the way, so he will be back at it daily! Watch live development streams: Provide feedback on the game, help shape the game in real-time by providing suggestions or ideas, or just ask questions!
It's been a very busy week, between getting everything ready to finalize the launch of Update 3, and some of us preparing for Hurricane Florence on the East Coast.
We'll have a proper Dev Blog out this week, but wanted to show off a little bit of something coming in Update 4
Resource Gathering
So this is a very early version of the gathering, but basically, you'll be able to find these resources scattered throughout the Free Roam areas. Once found and grabbed, they will "magically" be added to your inventory.
We've had discussions about a "gathering bag/pouch" where you dump the items in. But for this first pass, we want to make it easy and simple to gather.
Just stock up until you have enough of the resources you need to start crafting or repairing something. More on crafting and repairing in the near future.
Enjoy ːsteamhappyː
Update 3 Beta is LIVE !
Summary
Alright folks, after testing it a bunch and confirming nothing game-breaking, pushing this out to Beta. There's some polish needed in a few areas but Slot Saving is fully working, Tutorial is good, and Outbreak's finale is more fleshed out!
So basically, these candles are one-time use only. You grab the lighter and press EJECT to open up the Lighter, then USE to light the Lighter. Light up the candle, wait a second for it to burn and then the Slot Saves will appear. Pick one (remember which one) and viola, all your stuff is saved at that point.
Going to want a lot of feedback for this system. All your loves, hates and what not. Post them in the right Steam Forum subsection and/or Discord (https://discord.gg/monochrome) channel please!
The Ready Room will have all the items that you had socketed either on your body or in your backpack as well as what's held in either hand when saved. On load, you can then recover those items.
The Ready Room gives you time to get reacquainted with what you had on you when you last saved. In the future, it will have some more useful information.
To leave, just go out the door and it will pop you back to the candle you last saved at.
Tutorial
It's where the Outbreak mission diary was. Outbreak was moved to the kitchen table.
Please help us help you!
Opt into Beta, try it out, give us feedback on the new Slot Saving system, the Tutorial and also the Outbreak mission endings. Together, with your help, we will make this the best VR game ever created.
https://discord.gg/monochrome is the best place for real-time discussions with not only fellow Survivors but also the developers!
Reviews
If you haven't already posted one, please consider doing so!
If you have and it's old, please consider updating it to reflect the current state of the game! Thank you!
Preparing for Update 3's Beta Release On Twitch
Summary
It's finally time to get Update 3 into Beta! Unless I find some crazy game-breakers, it'll happen today! Watch me add a few of your feature-requests into the game and test out the build!
Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/victorburgosgames
Feature Requests
As always, if you have something you want in the game, please request it either on the Steam Forums under Feature Requests or on Discord: https://discord.gg/monochrome
We do listen/read all your valuable feedback and ideas ːsteamhappyː
Updates
Edit 3PM EST: While testing the build, I caught a pretty significant bugːsteamsadː, hopefully fixedːsteamhappyː. Putting it into Closed Alpha and testing a few times and making sure we're good before pushing it out to Beta. Hold tight.
Closing Up Shop...
Summary
It is with great sadness that I have to say that we will be closing up shop...
the Alpha Branch Shop that is...
ːsteammockingː
I had hoped by opening it up to the public, that more of the community would jump in to try out new features, help us out with bug reports and allow us to release updates faster. But over the past month, only a few fine folks have done just that. It was a decent experiment. It failed. Moving on now.
If you would like to help us out with testing the newest features and content, you will have to sign up to become a tester.
Early Access Tester Program
Step 1: Join Discord: https://discord.gg/monochrome
Step 2: Go to #forms-and-surveys
Step 3: Fill out Beta Playtester request.
Step 4: Wait until I've reviewed it to be accepted into the program
Benefits To Becoming A Tester
You get access to the latest content and gameplay features exclusively before anyone else!
You help refine gameplay through your valuable input before the public has had a chance to
You will meet and interact with some of the most passionate community members that have been instrumental to the development of the game
You will be credited in the game, allowing you to add it to your resume/CV or just so you can show your name off to your friends and family
In the future, get access to special in-game rewards as well as some IRL ones (swag)
Close one, one remains and a new one pops up
While we're closing up Alpha. Beta will still remain, just know that it is going to take a long time to get new content over to Beta in between updates. Just a look at how long it's been since our last "proper main" update (and we've been working hard since release). It's been about 6 weeks. Alpha had been updated almost everyday, if not at least every other day. But sadly, the lack of testing and bug reports does hinder our ability to just "publish new content" without a backlash as we developers have to test/bug report our own and it takes away from new content development.
LIV-Mixed-Reality branch has opened up for LIV usersːsteamhappyː. Public/Beta branches will not offer LIV support in the future. It will be completely separate from the main Main/Beta branch due to how LIV works. It is actually less performant overall, so if you are not using LIV, do not jump onto this branch.
Discord
https://discord.gg/monochrome
Come chat with us and over 1500 fellow community members about the game. Talk about features you want added, or just chat randomly in off-topic.
Twitch
Jump on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/victorburgosgames to see daily live streams of the game's development. Today I'm a bit behind, but I'm striving for 12PM EST to 2PM EST daily. Roughly 2 hour streams from now on. Almost did 600 hours last monthːsteamfacepalmː. Trying to cut back ;)
Special Thanks
For all those who actually clicked...the click-bait title...and read through it, I thank you very much.
[H1]For Those Still Unsure[/H1]
The game is not cancelled. Only the Alpha Testing program.
Update 3 and Beyond AMA, Grip Improvements and More
Summary
There seems to be some confusion as to what the future holds for Contagion VR: Outbreak, especially for Update 3, which is coming very soon. So I'd like to answer any questions you all may be having and put a few things to rest if possible. Please jump onto Twitch and let me know while I work!
In between chat I'll be working on some things for Update 3, including improving grips for all controllers as well as take a glance at what's left for the Tutorial and other things.
Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/victorburgosgames
Introducing LIV Support in Alpha!
Summary
Are you a content creator? Want to try out Mixed Reality within Contagion VR: Outbreak?
We've just enabled LIV support for VIVE users on Alpha Branch.
Sadly, this will not work if using the SDK, it will cause a hard crash. The LIV UE4 SDK developer does not own a Rift and did not know about the crash until I posted about it. It looks like it will require me to force OpenVR onto Rift users who want to use LIV.
So what does this mean? We'll probably open up another branch just for those who want to use LIV (as it does hurt performance a bit anyway) in the near future.
Want to know more?
Check out this wiki: https://wiki.liv.tv/index.php/Main_Page
and their Discord: http://liv.chat/
Slot Saving in Alpha!
Summary
So, just updated the Alpha Branch with the feature-complete Slot Saving among other fixes to saving in general. There are other goodies to be had also in Alpha, along with some WIP stuff for the finale of Outbreak mission.
If you are brave enough, jump onto Alpha and help us squash bugs faster so we can push this to Beta (when the Outbreak mission is finished) ːsteamhappyː
I'll be working on the Tutorial "mission" for the rest of the weekːsteamhappyː, audio work is being done for the next Campaign Missionːsteamhappyː, more zombiesːsteamhappyː and animationsːsteamhappyː getting tweaked and finalizing Outbreak missionːsteamhappyː.
Stay tuned for our weekly dev blog coming soon!
Weekly Devblog #3
Summary
Each week you can take a sneak peak into what we have been working onːsteamhappyː
