We are excited to bring our first post-launch content update to all Gunheart players at the end of this month!
There will be a ton of new content in this one. Take a look below to see some of it. Plus, if you hop into the alphastaging build of the game today, you’ll be able to check out a lot of these features before the full update is released next week!
Not sure how to join alphastaging? It’s easy!
Go to your Steam library and right click on Gunheart. It’s the game you play the most so it should be easy to find.
Select Properties down at the bottom there
Go to the Betas tab even if you personally are an alpha
In that first dropdown, choose alphastaging.
Play the alphastaging build and check out cool new stuff before all your friends.
Potentially find that one of the guns or features is way overpowered.
Message me personally so that I may use it against my coworkers before Ray fixes it. Discord is a great place to tell me about this kind of stuff.
Note: alphastaging is its own separate build of the game, so your profile in alphastaging is separate from the one in public. This means all the guns and loot you earn in one will not go to the other. Alphastaging is great for hoping in to test out new features, but you’ll want to do most of your Gunhearting in public.
What were we talking about?
Oh yeah. New stuff. Here’s some of it:
Rig Mods Mods aren’t just for guns anymore! Rig mods give you awesome new abilities, and like gun mods, there are multiple tiers from common to ultra. I’ve got to tell ya, some of these ultra rig mods are just ridiculous.
Movement overhaul We’ve changed the core player movement to get rid of all snags so you can now freely move about everywhere in the world. We’ve also boosted air control to give you more opportunity to finesse those tricky jumps.
Horde Mode!
Lone Wolf difficulty You’ll need to get 3 stars on a mission for this to pop up as an option.
PVP updates! New weapon balances (shoot people across the map with the pistol while you still can). New health system for PVP including pickups for additional armor and shields.
Rig paint jobs!
Lots more!
New weekly missions!
Four new weekly missions now available for everyone!
We've added Liquid Space Fine, Harvest, Extreme Marksmanship, and A Little Irritating to the Job Goblin to mix up your bounty hunting! Weekly missions combine various mutators and modifications to offer up challenges outside of the campaign missions, so jump in and let us know what you think.
6/6/2018 Hotfix released
We've pushed a small hotfix this morning, below are the changes included in this build.
Load time improvements (currently seeing reductions in load times by 50%+)
Fix for intermittent hitches in mission related to navigation data rebuilding
Fix for hoppers occasionally leaping to their demise (as entertaining as it is)
Fix for inconsistent spawning of enemies in certain missions
Fix some shadowing and popping issues with the end of mission rewards kiosk
Update shotgun pellet collision settings so that it no longer affects teleport and visibility checks
Increased base population of boomfruits and made them invulnerable to explosion from other boomfruits
Fix for shooting range return teleporter sometimes breaking if attempting to teleport away during the normal process
Ensure weapon pickup sounds are always played when walking over a pickup, even if already acquired
Fix players sometimes spawning carbines incorrectly when first starting into Brainspace
Swap 'rhino rounds' for burst fire on pistols in PVP
Show other players' titles and levels in the quick menu when in Bent Horizon
Fix rematch dropping players to logo screen after PVP
Gunheart 1.0!
It's finally here!
Our biggest update yet is now live for everyone and marks the official end of the Early Access period. Here's a quick summary for some of the improvements you'll find with this version of the game:
Boost jump is here! We've added a double jump ability for all players which is enabled by default for PC players and can be toggled for VR players in the control menu. Navigate the battlefield like never before by weaving jump and teleport, making it incredibly fluid to move around the environments.
PC cross-play with VR is officially supported! With Gunheart 1.0 we're officially supporting playing the game either in classic desktop mode or in full VR. At any time you can jump into games with other players with any other platform, and if you choose to upgrade from desktop to VR you'll have all your unlocks and progress always available.
Brainspace introduction & tutorial! New players will be introduced to the Gunheart universe via PalCo's Brainspace interface. Here you'll learn the basics of controlling your rig before you're sent off into your first job on Planet Fortune. Watch out for those bugs!
New VO and music tracks! We've recorded hundreds of new lines of dialogue to add clarity and extra backstory as you journey through the campaign. Several new music tracks have been introduced to various missions as well to make your bounty hunting adventure even more exciting.
Lobby/region select now available on startup, giving you the option to join directly into your friend's games or to pick another Bent Horizon to meet up with other players. You can also opt out of this to directly auto-connect to the lowest ping region.
PalCo rig interface has been updated to make it easier to manage your look and also upgrade your core stats in a single interface. There were also a few cosmetic items that are now possible the unlock that previously were hiding away!
Shooting range has been upgraded with a combo scoring system that rewards coordination between multiple bounty hunters when trying to hit the top of the leaderboards. We've also added some more targets and spawning areas so be sure to explore the shooting range on your next visit.
Squash all the bugs! We've spent the last 5 weeks solely on fixing bugs and adding polish throughout the game. This is by far the most stable and fun version of the game, and we hope our Early Access fans can appreciate the journey we've taken all the way from last August. That being said we know there are still issues for us to address, so please don't hesitate to let us know when you encounter bugs. You can talk to us directly on Discord or in the Gunheart subreddit.
What's next?
We'll be paying close attention to feedback to see what issues need to be addressed in the next hotfix. Beyond that we have many new features and ideas we'd love to bring to Gunheart in future updates. Additionally we'll be cranking on the PSVR release for this summer, which of course will bring more polish and performance optimizations for all platforms.
It's been a labor of love to get the game this far and we hope people enjoy all the blood, sweat, and tears we've put into the game so far. We're excited for more people jump into the world Gunheart for the first time and we look forward to continuing to evolve this game over the coming months (and years?).
Thank you for your support!
April update is here!
It's that time again, time for another big update for Gunheart! Check out this handy summary video we put together or check out the details below in handy bullet-point format.
3 Star mission achievements. Earn up to three stars for each mission by completing specific objectives including speed runs or beating the mission on elite mode.
You are here. A new subway map-style mission selection UI gives users a better sense of how they are progressing across Gunheart’s Planet Fortune. No more scrolling through lists of missions guessing at how to unlock them, yay!
New Enemy variants! Wider variety of the hopper enemies, including winged hoppers who will fly to give themselves a better angle in combat. Keep your eyes up!
Tougher money pumps! You asked, and we delivered! Tweaked the difficulty for the money pump missions.
More bad guys! Adjusted enemy behaviors and spawns across multiple campaign missions. Enemies will be more aggressive, they’ll deal with fast moving players better, and when and where they spawn makes more sense. They … just … keep … coming!
Beating death heart! A new death screen appears upon player death including new UI and an awesome looking beating heart. It’s so pretty, you’ll want to die!
Get your brawl on! PVP updates! Brawl is much faster paced than before. Scratch that old school deathmatch itch!
Completely revamped how weapon pickups work in PVP. You can now strafe over weapons and grab them automatically, and then switch weapons in the quick menu.
Adjusted PVP weapon spawn locations and timing.
Adjusted PVP weapon balance and put different mods on the weapons you’ll find there. Players will also drop weapons on death now.
Tuned highlighting around enemies so you can more easily spot targets
Updated PVP spawn behavior
PVP health and shield behavior has been retooled
Iniquitous PVP map has been infected! Check out the new look, but don’t touch that stuff … it looks gross.
Money kegs for everyone - money is now shared across all players, and new Gold money kegs can show up in later missions which give 3x the reward.
Loot room tweaks - bring your bats for some loot smashing fun, loot eggs conveniently float up for smashing, and in-world pop-up makes it much easier to see what reward you earned.
Elite difficulty tuned - rewards are now doubled and there are no respawns by default, so either bring a friend to revive you or hunt for those precious life kegs (or both!)
Multi-tool is now smarter about grabbing objects quickly in a cone in front of your hand and will prioritizing what it grabs, making it much more reliable in the heat of combat as a defensive tool.
As always there's also ongoing improvements and bug fixes to audio, enemy AI, and locomotion. Jump on in, give the latest a play and send us your feedback either in the forums or on the official Gunheart Discord.
New Test Build Available - Preview the April Update Changes
We're getting ready to send out our Gunheart April update soon, and we've pushed some of the changes to the test server. Hop on alphastaging and send us your feedback!
New Weekly Missions Available
Just posted some new Weekly Missions! Go check out Disadvantaged and De-Ranged and Home with No Range. We played around with combat distance so you'll have to get out of your comfort zone. We're also testing the pun quality of our mission titles to see how tolerant you are. Good luck!
Want to win a Gunheart key?
To celebrate the FREE release of Ready Player One: Rise of the Gunters we've decided to have a little contest!
Here's the rules:
1. Be one of the first 5 players to pass 60 million on the leaderboard.
2. Be streaming when you get your score.
3. Tweet us your stream with #ROTG and follow our Twitter @vr_drifter
The prize:
A free copy of Gunheart!
Want some tips?
Check out this video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/252520880
April Update Sneak Peek – Seeing Stars
Hey Drifter fans,
I’m Hunter, and I’ve recently had the privilege of joining the team here at Drifter as lead producer. I’ll be helping out with our blog posts and updates until we find someone who is actually qualified. Be sure to stay tuned here for much more frequent updates about all of our projects. Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook are also great ways to keep in touch. Let’s jump right in and give you a sneak peek at some of the content we have planned for our Gunheart April update!
Games are fun, but they’re even more fun when you can prove to your friend that you’re better at it than them. Introducing a way to do that in Gunheart! The Job Goblin is getting a makeover, and as part of that, we’re adding a new three star system. Stars are earned three different ways:
complete the job
complete the job on Elite mode
complete the speedrun
Most of you out there should be able to get that first star pretty quickly, but you’ll find Elite mode and the speedrun to be formidable (based on the sobbing we’ve heard coming from the QA department). We’re doing a few other things to make the game more punishing fun for all of you.
You’ll find money pumps will be more difficult after the next release, so you better get in there now and take advantage. Soon you’ll have to earn that cash!
Oh and hoppers can fly now. Those enemies that have been running around with wings … they’ll use them now to shoot you better. We’ll probably keep calling them hoppers.
Considering all the dying you’ll be doing, we updated the death sequence. How can you call your game Gunheart if there isn’t a big, awesome beating heart prominently featured on your death screen? Well you can’t, so we have that now.
Last but not least, there is a host of changes coming to PVP this month. We’re updating maps, tuning weapons, adjusting weapon locations, and a bunch of other stuff to make shooting friends and strangers alike more satisfying.
This is only the tip of the iceberg for our April update. We’ll do our usual thing and release a video when the update goes live and tell you about all the other cool stuff.
March update is live!
We've updated the servers and pushed the March update for everyone. Check out this video from our Creative Director for a summary of some of the changes included in this version of Gunheart.
https://youtu.be/DfJSNRGRzAY
Here's the most recent patch notes for reference. Catch us in the forums or on discord to share feedback directly with team. Thanks for playing Gunheart, more goodness awaits!
New in-game menu
We've made a new in-game menu that allows you to quickly switch between weapons mid battle while also keeping all of the game options easy to access. You can toggle it by tapping the menu button, or use hold/release for quicker access mid-fight.
The quick menu also exposes all of the social gear which you can equip to each hand just like normal weapons. The pixel builder has been expanded with a color picker and we've updated the visuals so it's now possible to make much more colorful 'art' with it.
Strafe 2.0
For those who love smooth locomotion in Gunheart we've overhauled the strafe code to make it much smoother and less likely to get snagged into objects. We've also added the option to allow smoothly strafing off ledges if there is valid ground below. The goal is to make smooth locomotion as frustration-free as possible when battling the Anthromite hordes, and we appreciate feedback/suggestions on how we can further improve this mode of locomotion for everyone.
Creature polish
As you can see from the screenshot some of the Anthromite's have been updated with new skins. We've also tweaked their aggressiveness and combat distances to ensure they're always presenting a good challenge for players. Several of the creatures have also received an audio polish pass with more VO callouts and reactions.
New custom death animations have been plugged in, impact effects have been polished up, and we've also iterated further on their hit reactions. Headshots have never been more satisfying in Gunheart.
Physics upgrades + melee!
Throw any physical object into an enemy has a good chance to send them flying, and you can use your weapons in hand to smack them away as well. Weapons also have boosted impulses when impacting physical objects and we've also taught the AI how to smoothly recover from being knocked around (unless their dead of course...).
Grabbing a grunt with the multi-tool and sending him into his comrades is now an effective form of crowd control, which is particularly useful now that their even better at swarming players. Also swatting a Hopper in the face with a fish and watching them sail away is highly recommended.
Waypoints
We've replaced the old manual 'ping' functionality with a smart waypoint system that always highlights where you need to go or what you need to shoot. Our goal is to have it there when you need it while also avoiding cluttering up the view with markers everywhere. We're happy with how it's functioning in the latest build but would appreciate feedback if you ever find yourself lost in a mission and not quite sure how to proceed.
