Today we come with a fresh update, filled with fixes, tweaks and improvements, but also some new content. As you can tell, we have packed a lot into this patch, so let's begin with the TL;DR-Summary of what you can expect in this update:
Introduction of new local Co-Op mode
Introduction of gamepad support
New Weapons and Modules
New Garages & Shops
Various bug fixes and improvements
For more information covering the new content, please read this detailed overview right here:
Especially one of the features is something that we’ve been working on in secret in parallel to other tasks, not sure if we can pull it off. Looks like we made it though, so it’s official:
You can play Glitchpunk in a local co-op mode - and with 3rd party features like Steam Remote Play or Parsec it is also possible to play with your friends over the internet.
So, what's exactly new in version 0.3?
CO-OP MODE
We introduce a hop-in/out cooperation mode where an additional player character spawns and both of you can complete the whole game together. After the according option is activated in the settings, Player Two can drop into the game anytime by using the dedicated button on the desired input device. Important note regarding remote co-op: Since the input is bound to the local limitations of the host, the co-op mode can either be played via shared keyboard or gamepad(s). Dual Keyboards aren’t supported on OS level without 3rd party software. The second player can do most of the stuff that the first player does, with minor exceptions of custom logic related to hacking, character upgrades, and some of the missions. Still, the second player benefits from the same stat power-up modules, and abilities, can recruit mercenaries, buy and use weapons and items, drive separate cars, etc. Just remember that if one of you commits a crime, then both players are being chased!
Despite being a local co-op mode, you can play with your friend over the Steam Remote Play feature or Parsec services. Those two have been tested and greenlit by us - if there are any other solutions you’re using, feel free to test it and let us know so we can share the good news on our Discord. Some software might work better or worse, depending on the internet connection and various other factors.
2. NATIVE GAMEPAD CONTROLLER SUPPORT
Some of you have been fighting for this since the festival demo in early 2021. At last, there it is! Please remember to make sure you have the generic gamepad profile selected for Glitchpunk (you can access it in Steam’s Big Picture mode). For the day of release, the default profile for Glitchpunk set by us should work for you exactly as intended, although if you have selected another profile by yourself, then please remember to switch to one which doesn’t remap keyboard input to the gamepad.
3. NEW MODULES AND WEAPONS
Three more special weapons make an entrance:
Grenades are perfect for throwing behind corners or dropping under your feet while running away from a chase.
Heavy machinegun, bombing heavy, deadly shells that will easily dispatch of any vehicle and drop even toughest enemy dead with just a few shots; an all-around weapon, but not the cheapest one,
Lasergun, bringing an absolutely devastating power, gibbing living creatures, and bombing cars within seconds; with great power comes to a great price though, so try to not die too quickly after buying one.
We also drop some more modules, a few of which will play a bigger part in future cities’ mission logic. As for now feel free to test them and provide us with your feedback regarding their usability and balance. First, we introduce two new hacking modules:
Mimic, allowing you to steal somebody’s identity for as long as you do not attack, get close to the person you stole the identity from, or if you run out of focus. This way entering enemy gang territories, avoiding the police, or stealth missions become much easier.
Buddyguard makes your worst enemies become your best friends, at least for a few seconds. Useful both as means of easier dispatch and short-term support in street fights.
Besides that, three more modules provide passive upgrades:
Kinetic Overcharge, increasing instakill chance when dealing melee damage. Gibbing your opponents with bare fists becomes a reality!
V-Optics increases both focus limit and itss regeneration speed, so you can hack stuff longer…
.. and you might want to pair it with Triple Chipmunk which gives you more hp than any other module ever did.
4. NEW VEHICLES AND GARAGES
To bring some more variety to the streets, we bring you three more new, fully driveable vehicles:
Scooter delivery bikes from which you can buy some stuff directly, just be careful to not scare their drivers off or you might not get the deal they offer,
a big coach bus which can carry as many allies as you want,
and a retro sedan for those who’d like some more retro-futurism in their garage.
Speaking of garages, we got some new car upgrade shops for you:
two types of mines, including classic proximity bombs and hacking beacons. They affect both characters and cars, so that you can stop any kind of chase, be it with deadly force or just to slow someone down.
Escape tunnels leading to various parts of the city, so you can get there quicker for a small price. Very useful during police chases.
Dismantle shops, where owners put up a big sign showing the exact model of the car they want and how much are they willing to pay. In essence, it’s a side gig that can earn you some cash and give you a reason to learn more about different car models and the topography of the cities in Glitchpunk.
5. EVEN MORE OPTIMIZATION
Some updates ago we introduced a solution that was supposed to fix some issues regarding the performance that come from the amount of meshes and materials loaded at once. We decided to introduce then the level streaming, which decreased dramatically the amount of stuff in the memory at once, although it turned out that for some of you the constant loading and unloading of stuff, despite being asynchronous and using separate threads, caused massive hitches.
This is something we did not expect and we discovered that it varies between machines, so with this update, we introduce an option to toggle the level streaming on and off as you please, so you can select what works best for you. While it should work without exiting the game, we suggest restarting Glitchpunk just to be extra sure.
Besides that, we introduced a few smaller tweaks and tricks to make the game run faster. At the same time, we liked the idea of allowing you to take control of your experience with the game’s performance and have the freedom to either push it or turn down some gameplay effects. Today we introduce an option to customize the amount of traffic and pedestrians on the streets. It can be used to adjust between 50% and 200% of default values.
We hope that with these you will experience smoother gameplay! We do not stop at these however, more tweaks coming in the future.
- - -
Besides all of the above, this update comes with a big pile of tweaks, balances, and fixes. We tested this build internally for quite some time, but still - there might be some ways to break the game - we count on your creativity! As always, share your thoughts, reports, and feedback either on Steam Community Hub or, preferably, our Discord, where we respond much faster.
Cheers, Maciej, Lead Developer and founder of Dark Lord & Daedalic Entertainment
Massive Overhaul - What's new?
Hey everyone,
It’s about time to share some info about our newest update and get some hype going! I will do my best to provide you with the latest info on the development process. Let us know what’s most relevant to you and if there is anything specific that you'd like to know about this and future versions of Glitchpunk!
What's new in version 0.2? Well, a lot! OPTIMIZATION
With version 0.2 you can finally stop using your PC as a frying pan when playing Glitchpunk. We introduce a bunch of major optimization fixes on all fronts, from GPU to CPU. This was the biggest setback with the current version on Steam and we prioritized that above anything else.
2. NEW CHAPTER
A completely new area, Outpost Texas, comes as Chapter 1, whereas New Baltia stays as Chapter 2. Desert fortress with marauders, tiny camps, highway, and rocky canyons. The play area is the biggest and most varied one we’ve ever done!
It means new characters, new stories, new missions, and new cars. It should double up the existing playtime and provide a very different experience from Chapter 2. It's somewhat more classic in the gang setup: you will meet rebel hackers known as Entropy, evil Metacorp that controls citizen lives through subscription services, and Vultures, a desert tribe of natives who try their best to stay away from the intrusive technology.
Hope you will have fun with Outpost Texas! The icing on cake is, as always, a bunch of new radio stations with tons of amazing content from our wonderful sound guy, Mark from Pyjama Planet! Find out how many new weird voices can this guy make and share some love for his work on our Discord.
3. MERCENARIES
From local street brawlers armed with gas pipes at no more than two hundred bucks to expert assassins with Shadows Modules and miniguns coming from other cities worth several thousand - mercenaries are a major feature that changes how you will play the game. Just be careful to not get in their way too much, especially if you have a bunch of RPGs in your squad. You might end up solo again pretty quickly if your team composition is too random for a given task. A proper mix of melee and ranged mercenaries will be useful.
Mercenaries are also randomly generated, varying in looks, weapons, modules, HP amount, and price. After you finish the gang's storyline you will get access to a bunch of new high-class mercenaries at that gang's HQ. This makes every new run of the game even more special. Now it's easy to bleed out all your pocket money. But it's also fun, so why not?
4. DYNAMIC CAMERA MODE
Inspired by GTA: Chinatown Wars, this feature works especially well for vehicle driving. A completely new perspective is always a lot of work, so here’s where we look forward to your feedback the most. Personally, I play exclusively in relative camera mode since I really like the feeling of speed and the ability to look at the city from all the angles.
Of course, this new camera mode is not “better”, it’s simply different. You can enable or disable it at any time in the options menu. We do not force anything on you with this feature!
As you can see, we worked hard both on improvements and new features alike. And those are only the major changes of the new update. Tons of small UX fixes, balancing, and other improvements have already been made. Some bugs will still persist and that's why we work so hard every day to get rid of the most major ones until the release date - which should be very soon. Testing continues and every day spent in this stage will make your experience better.
What can you do to help us with making this and the next updates even better?
Share your thoughts, screenshots, bug reports, and every piece of feedback on our Steam forums! Every honest, detailed review, especially since we’ve managed to fix most of the glaring issues, is worth a ton. This game is getting much better thanks to your input.
Spread the good word about Glitchpunk! With this update, we want to make sure that anyone who would like some classical cyberpunk action experience knows about our game. It’s made by fans of the genre for fans alike.
Join our Discord! Our monkey dev brains like those member counters going up! On a more serious note, to have you there, where we can answer your questions instantly, share screenshots and info means a lot to us. Reports like this ane are a direct response to feedback from our Discord, just to give you an example. We hear you!
We are very excited to share all of this info, after such a long period of silence. Hopefully, you will enjoy playing Glitchpunk as much as we enjoyed preparing this big, very special update for you.
Cheers, Maciej, Lead Developer and founder of Dark Lord
Quality of Life Update
Hello!
It's been four long and very busy weeks for us at Dark Lord as we were cooking a big patch for you. Thanks to your detailed feedback on our Discord channel, today's update should bring big improvements to your overall game experience:
Bugs fixed:
Vehicles colliding with multiple actors at once no longer receive crazy amounts of damage at high rate
Finishing a final contract for a storyline of either gang will now add all the other gangs’ missions to list of “skipped” ones, which should prevent the bug with some missions appearing still after you finished the episode and decided to continue playing
Fixed buildings collision issues on South Island
Fixed issues with incorrect input binding (multibinding between the tabs left as it is)
Fixed motorbike drivers’ position
Timer SFX stops when game is paused (ESC)
golden supporter car respawns properly in the garage
Street lanterns do not collide with vehicles and do not cast shadows after they have been destroyed
Spots where cars spawned from the sky should be fixed
Relevant car mission marker should not persist between missions
Mission descriptions should always match current contracts available in the hubs
Tank no longer has the killing zone activated when it’s destroyed
Features:
V-sync setting added,
Change “Fog” setting to “Volumetric Lighting” to better communicate what this one is actually doing; also the behaviour of it changed, game should no longer be extremely dark with this setting set to “Off”
Introuced level streaming (let us know about instances of visible mesh loaing in some areas during the play!)
Changed the meshing in the hideout area in New Baltia to make it easier to park cars there
Added a Master slider to the Audio settings tab that controls the entire game's volume
Added a notification at phones with no available contracts
Enlarged the minimap NPC markers
One more step leading to the Hideout added in first mission for Ordo in New Baltia
Wanted level is being reset after car is parked in first Ordo mission
Tanks destroy the cars completely when driving over them
Meshed pavement around the Ordo church for better visibility of the paths and where to go when player just starts the episode
Car gets blocked in the last phase of Safety Measures to avoid acicdental driving off the trigger areas; it gets unblocked once the mission is finished
Balance changes:
Cars in riot mode can explode a few seconds after the spawn
Headhunt in northern New Baltia that required 100 roamer kills now requires 6 bounty hunter kills
Headhunt in north-western Plague Island area that required SWAT kills has been changed to 10 Raider kills (yep, there’s a trick to make this doable)
Jump damage threshold slightly increased to make falling from smaller heights less deadly
Moved the top-most passenger for Lord is my Shepherd to a different place a few meters away from his original location
Right after this update we aim to focus on the following:
new episode going live: Outpost Texas
further performance improvements
full gamepad support
Make sure to drop into our discord channel and tell us what you think about the current state of the game and hang out with us as we work hard daily on making Glitchpunk the ultimate top-down cyberpunk experience.
Cheers! Maciej, Lead Developer
Second Patch after Release
Heyho everyone,
Here are the Patchnotes for our latest Update. Many of you will be happy over one particular change that was already meant to be happening at release - anyway, hopefully this will bring us one more step further to the best version of Glitchpunk possible:
General Changes
Autosave will be triggered approx 2 sec after Mission Complete prompt
added save options to menu
added saving tutorial
DRM removed
fixed few areas where player can block himself, including the top 'lighthouse' area.
Starting Headhunts automatically disables 'Press R to restart mission prompt' and binding
Car teleportation during mission restart is no longer possible - mounting state will be now recognized as being inside the vehicle already
Dying during mission restart is no longer possible - player will be granted a temporary immortality during the screen transition
Fixed issue with ENTER not being recognized as input in PRESS KEY TO BIND screen
CLOSURE mission will now display proper mission objective
Fixed issues with missing objectives and arrows
Fixed general issues with input mapping
Police Behavior
Swat should be much more present on 4 wanted level,
Less police cars on low (1-2) wanted levels
First Patch after Early Access Release!
Hi everybody,
First of all, thank you for all the reviews and feedback! It was quite a busy time for us up to the release and shortly after - we are curently focused on the optimisation, as it's the most burning issue, but on the way we also spent time addressing some of the issues that we could provide to you to improve the overall experience.
Version 0.1.42
Fixes: - inifinite loading screen fix with added percentage track so you can observe the progress, - Fixed bug causing modules and weapons to duplicate on loading game for the second time in the same session, - Prevented lighting change on saving game/respawning, - Custom garages are not accessible by random cars anymore when closed.
Changes: - Level lighting improved, - All ending cinematics present, - Increased display time for NPC’s dialogues for Chinese.
We are currently focused on overall optimisation and bringing you the autosave feature as soon as possible. Just to confirm, you CAN save the game right now anytime when not in a contract by visiting the hideout, location of which is marked on the main menu map with a house icon.
Expect more updates soon!
Thanks, Maciej, Lead Developer, Dark Lord Penta, Community Strategist, Daedalic Entertainment
