Attention Republic soldiers, This is an update patch for the Reforged update. Overall, I think the Reforged update has been a huge success and I'm incredibly happy to see how many people have been playing almost all day since the update released. As expected with such a major update & so much of the engine being changed, from feedback I've managed to compile a list of many small problems that I'm now working to fix.
Multiplayer seems to have picked up a few more problems with disconnects, although I was able to address some multiplayer problems here, the next update will feature more.
There was some good feedback to come out was that turrets could single-handedly carry a base defense game because of their insane damage, to the point where a single tier 1 turret could carry a conscript difficulty game for nearly half of it.
And the big one, is that higher difficulties need a lot more balancing.
I estimate the next patch will be within the next few days as I work to cross off more of the list. After these patch updates fixing & balancing all the Reforged changes, I'll be working to release a roadmap to highlight future updates to the game, the path to full release, new content, new features, etc.
So with all that in mind, here's the first batch of patches hot out of the oven.
[B]Balancing Changes
Balancing: Zombie spawn rate now scales with number of players
Balancing: Reduced damage for all turrets
Balancing: Added perk level limits to difficulties so you can't play with too high of perks on lower difficulties. This was to avoid farming xp on lower difficulties using higher level perks
Balancing: Increased "Sprint Training" perk cost from 3,000 to 4,000
Balancing: Revolver reload speed increased from 1 to 1.5
Balancing: Revolver mag capacity increased from 7 to 9
Balancing: Revolver stored ammo increased from 84 to 126
Changed: [St. Ignace (A)] Multiple surfaces updated to act as metal surfaces. Bars near zombie entrance points marked as penetrable
Changed: [Lighthouse] Added various railings & pillars
Changed: [Lighthouse] Added invisible player blockers to prevent falling off
General Changes
Added: Shop markers between waves (during ready up checks)
Changed: Doubled crawler move speed, from 0.7 to 1.4
Changed: Slightly reduced turret "new target" sound volume
Changed: Last Stand no longer plays wave start music (which overlapped with the action music)
Changed: Made evacuation buttons warp-in faster on St. Ignace (A) & Lighthouse
Changed: Dying during ready up vote now respawns the player
Fixed: Non-host sometimes would not have their damage perks work until re-equipping their weapon
Fixed: Dying on wave 0 caused the player to neither respawn or lose the game
Fixed: Reduced player logs spam. This will be addressed further in the next update as its the leading theory as to why some maps have a higher likelihood to crash). As this is further improved upon in this and future updates, decent performance improvements will also come as a result
Fixed: Surface lookup sometimes finding wrong surface if names were similar (i.e "Metal" vs "Metal Thin"). This was causing bullets to not penetrate the chainlink fence on Backstreet Market
Fixed: "Leg Day" perk not doing anything
Fixed: Being able to place buildables inside each other if done while in their ghost state
Fixed: Perks using the 'standard perk' class incorrectly creating warnings in the console that they were missing an implementation
Attention Republic soldiers, I'm thrilled to be launching the Reforged Update as part of Incursion Early Access. It's time to kill some zombies in HD! In the last update I said "most of the things that needed to get done are now done". Well over a month later working many late nights on the game to the last minute proved me wrong.
Incursion Reforged is more than just an update, it's so much of an overhaul I decided to rename the game after it, separating it from everything that came before and everything yet to come. There's so much added, so much changed, so lets just jump right into it.
Graphics Overhaul
This update means Incursion is now running on Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). That means in-particular big improvements to the lighting and post-processing. Its also enabled the game to support many new amazing art assets for the weapons and maps.
4 Brand New Maps
With this graphics overhaul means deprecating the old maps and adding all-new ones for you to play on. All the old maps were made using primitive level geo with textures. The big change for this update was to have all maps be made by the artist who created the assets used. This means the levels added fully utilize the artists vision and creativity, and thanks to HDRP, can display with higher graphical fidelity than before.
Oh, and every map now features a short introduction cutscene explaining why you're there.
More New Content
Reworked big parts of the main menu
It seemed good at the time but when put side-by-side to the new main menu, the old one seems so flat by comparison!
Added Dynamic Crosshairs
Crosshairs now react to player movement (Idle, Walking, Running, In-Air) to show you how these will effect your weapons accuracy.
New Level-Based Tutorial
You can now access a level-based tutorial with the main menu "How to play" button. This offers a much better way to teach you how to play the game (replacing the old text-only tutorial).
The "Last Stand" Gamemode
No building allowed. You must run around the map to find the shops, surviving enough rounds to get to evac. A faster-paced & more action-packed gamemode.
And More
Weapons have received a total overhaul with all-new weapons with all-new stats. Along with this are all-new classes (Read below about the class overhaul!). And lets not forget, the newest members of the enemy group: the crawler & the runner!
Big Changes To Gameplay
Mid-Match Progression
The Problem? With the old mid-match progression, there wasn't really any player choice. There were weapon upgrades you worked toward and would always get in the same order. The Solution? Now there are 3 weapon shops (Light, Heavy, and Special) allowing players a larger variety of ways to play. Players can now freely choose their weapons regardless of class, to get the weapons in the order of their choosing, and unlocking the ability for players to equip primary or secondary weapons in either their first or second slot, allowing for any weapon combinations you want.
Classes Overhaul
The Problem? Classes felt repetitive. The Solution? Make classes their abilities rather than their weapons. The big up-side to this is unlocking player choice. Players are no longer stuck having to play with the same weapons for the entire match and are instead free to create the loadout of their choosing over the course of the match. Class abilities now and in the future are also intended to be even more powerful.
Out-of-Match Progression
The Problem? A lack of meaningful goals to reach toward between matches. The idea of weapons as being solely side-grades meant that if in-theory class weapons were all just as good but different, there wasn't much incentive to try and unlock them. The Problem? XP was earned toward the class you played so switching class meant essentially starting over all your progress. The Solution? With classes being their abilities instead of their weapons, loadouts were removed entirely. XP is now a global value that can be earned by any class. And perks have been added which allow you to buy & equip buffs (or debuffs if you want to make the game harder on yourself) that are automatically applied once you get in-game. You can equip more perks by unlocking perk slots. Perk slots can be unlocked by completing challenges (shown on the perk shop screen).
Perk Levels
With perks being added so too a proper leveling system was added called your "Perk Level". Your perk level just represents how powerful the perks you have equipped are (and therefore, how powerful you are).
So a Damage 1 perk (10) equipped and a Silver Skin (2) perk would give me a perk level of 12.
Difficulties are now also much harder, requiring a higher perk level to pull off. For example, Veteran difficulty is recommended for perk level 30 whereas Heart Bleed recommends perk level 50 or higher. It was important for me that any leveling system like this also let you play as a lower level so that you can play with friends or others without making the game too easy for yourself or them. So to play with a friend, simply equip less perks until you're around their difficulties recommended perk level.
Weapon Changes
Accuracy: Weapons now take into consideration movement when calculating their max spray. Standing still, walking, running, or jumping will now all effect how accurate your shots are.
Ammo: Weapons now have stored ammo that can purchased at an ammo refill station.
Remaining Changelog
With all of the big stuff out of the way, here are some of the other changes that have been made as well. (Not all changes are listed, just the ones I remembered to write down lol)
Added
Added: 9 new achievements
-> "Barely Functional Certificate!" (Complete the tutorial)
-> "So Hardcore!" (Beat any gamemode with the hardcore perk equipped)
-> "Time For An Upgrade" (Unlock a perk slot by completing a perk slot challenge)
-> "Level Up" (Equip your first perk)
-> "Advancing Ranks" (Have your total perk level be 20 or higher)
-> "Wanted Poster" (Find the wanted poster)
-> "Moon Vacation" (Find the Moon Base 18 Post Card)
-> "One Small Step For Blake" (Find the Deep Space planet poster)
-> "War Got Cancelled?!" (Find the King & Country poster)
Added: Health bar to enemies
Added: Difficulty XP bonus
Added: Multiple main menu music
Added: UI Ultrawide (21:9 aspect ratio) support
Added: More audio volume settings (Music, Main Menu, UI)
Added: Toggle UI on/off using F3 (experimental)
Changed
Changed: Starting a singleplayer game no longer uses the multiplayer server/lobby UI and instead lets you select a gamemode, map, class and then start right away
Changed: Red vignette around screen now pops in fully when taking damage
Changed: Improved & made more minimalistic the in-game UI
Changed: Player flashlights are now attached to your weapon
Changed: Player flashlights are now networked so other players can see when you have it on
Changed: Old game chat now clears when connecting to a new game
Fixed
Fixed: Exploit where users could give the server a fake Steam ID, which just allowed them to use another player's name in-game
Fixed: The game end screen disappearing & the "lost connection" screen appearing if the host disconnects before other players have finished looking at it
Fixed: High ping players being sometimes unable to guarantee the "Loaded into map" status with the server. This would cause those players to always show as still loading on the waiting for players screen
Fixed: The auto turret sometimes not detecting enemies when it should
Fixed: Save data (player progress) sometimes not saving when exiting application (Save data is now saved when manipulated rather than on application quit)
Fixed: Impact grenade not rewarding the player any currency when getting kills
Fixed: Impact grenade not showing damage text
Removed
Removed: Heartbeat sound when low on health
Removed: Requirement that all players play a different class to start in multiplayer
Summary
Overall, the Reforged Update was a massive undertaking but well worth it. I never expected to be doing such hard work (Essentially, a reboot!) after the game had already released but it meant a lot to me that this game be closer to what I knew it could be.
I hope everyone enjoys it and sees it as a big improvement. If you ever want to play on the old version of the game you can opt into a beta branch called "classic".
As for my plans for the future, I plan on releasing within the next couple of weeks a roadmap which will be all the planned future development. Overall, I want to continue to add to & polish the game at a more sustainable rate (No more reboots lol) so that I might get it to full-release. This update was definitely a gigantic step in that direction.
If you have any comments about the update, or things I should add in the future, please let me know!
Attention Republic soldiers, After many long hours of development, Incursion will be launching the Reforged Update on August 19th! It will be available right here on Steam as a free update. And if you didn't already know, this will include reducing the game price to $4.99 along with a 10% launch discount. So if you're looking to get the game, consider wishlisting it & checking back in now and then.
So far the development process has gone better than I could have imagined. I can't wait to share the full experience of the Reforged Update with you all. I'll make sure to include more details when the update releases but you can look forward to a total graphics overhaul, running a new rendering system, almost all new art assets, totally new maps, totally new weapons, and a new gamemode "Last Stand".
A big part of the update was re-imagining how mid-match & out-of-match progression will work. And I'm looking forward to expanding on all those changes with the update.
Attention Republic soldiers, In this third Incursion Dev Report, I'd like to share some updates on the Reforged update. Progress is going great and I'd say most of the things that needed to get done are now done. I'm also happy to say I hope the next announcement after this is the branch key for players to opt into the first version of it & help playtest it.
WHAT IS LEFT TO DO?
Design Decisions: I haven't quite decided how I want to balance weapons for mid-match progression.
Adding Steam Support: Whiteout Engine 2 was branched off from Incursion prior to adding Steam support so it needs it to be re-added. This will also give me an opportunity to perhaps do it a bit cleaner this time as well.
Re-Adding Content: The heavy zombie & exploding zombie from the original game need to be added back in.
Level Intro Cutscenes: When working on the new levels it really struck me as wanting to have some sort of cutscene or setup for each level, so adding those I think will help immersion by framing each level in a scenario, as well as give me an outlet to pour out some world lore I've been building up.
Co-Op AI: I want to have better singleplayer support for the game and so have been working on bot support for the game that the host can choose to turn on or off. I haven't decided whether or not this feature will make it into the initial release of the Reforged update, but I'd like to try.
Tutorial: If possible, I'd like to get a proper custom map tutorial made so players can get accustomed to the game with more than just text before entering a match.
Gamemode Touchups: There are now 2 gamemodes, both of which are at 90% completion. There are some minor touch-ups & polishing I have yet to do though.
Buildables: I haven't yet added back in the buildables from the original game. But the programming for them still exists so I'm hoping this should be relatively straightforward.
MOVING FORWARD
Everything so far has been going really well. Things look & play great, most of the programming has been wrapped up, and it's looking on-track to release with 5 all-new maps, 15 all-new weapons, a new gamemode (more on that at a later time), and lets not forget the 2 new zombie types: Crawler & Runner.
I want to get this update out for testing as soon as I can, so the plan is to publish a beta branch that players can opt into to help test. Once players have had a chance to give feedback & we've worked out any potential bugs, then releasing it fully to everyone. So, I look foirward to sharing more progress in the future. Hopefully the next thing I write will be the public branch key for anyone to opt into the test.
Dev Report #2 - 'Remastering' the game in Whiteout Engine 2
Attention Republic soldiers, In this second Incursion Dev Report, I'd like to share some of the exciting stuff that's happening with the game, my progress so far, and plans for the future. This will require a little bit of explanation but bare with me because it's all good news.
WHAT IS WHITEOUT ENGINE?
Whiteout Engine is a series of development tools & game features I wrote on top of Unity as a way to develop games more quickly. It's not something I'd normally recommend, but having programmed many games up to this point, I think I was ready to do it & it'd be a massive help with more quickly making games in the future. It began shortly after starting on Incursion where I wanted to develop a first person framework that would allow me to more quickly prototype & create games without having to program everything from the ground up every time.
Although development was always focused on the game Incursion, any tools/systems I made along the way I spent extra time & thought to ensure they could be generic, modular, and independent as to be able to add them to the engine & re-use them for future projects. For example, when programming a game all logic/UI would usually go toward the rules of that game. However, for this project, knowing I wanted to re-use the engine, I made sure to separate the game-specific logic into gamemodes. This way in the future should I ever want to change, remove, or add entirely different game rules & logic, rather than having to chase down the various parts of the project responsible for that code, I can simply add/remove/change gamemodes.
WHAT IS WHITEOUT ENGINE 2?
A couple months prior to the release of Incursion, I had thought I was finished working on it (in hindsight, it definitely needed a lot more work!). So I copied the project (branched off), deleted all the content specific to Incursion and focused on improving & working on the engine itself. This was great as it let me improve major parts of the engine without needing to worry about breaking existing content. I ended up rewriting or improving so many different features & aspects of the engine that I thought it was appropriate to call it "Whiteout Engine 2". Some examples are, improved gamemode logic, expanded weapon system to allow programming of different weapons other than the standard weapon logic, added faction support which eventually led to PvP support, adding dynamic crosshairs, adding playtest systems so I can playtest maps/gamemodes without having to go through the main menu, simplifying & adding mapping tools, automating more tedious aspects of development, along with various bug fixes. improving code, and much more.
PORTING THE GAME
With the release of Incursion, I think I've identified some key points of improvement for adding long-term replayability to the game. But it would involve reprogramming some pretty big sections. I stopped to think about it, and I asked, what portion of Whiteout Engine was actually Incursion? Stripped of all Incursion-specific content, the engine still has its weapon system, its AI, its gamemodes, networking, all of its main features. I figured that only about 5% of the programming was specific to the Incursion game (i.e the gamemode & special enemies), the rest was still features/parts of the engine itself. So there'd be little to reprogram, which means most of the work could be focused on programming the new features I want, adding content, and polishing.
So with this in mind, I began work on porting Incursion to Whiteout Engine 2!
The updated engine is now running Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) which allows me to achieve greater graphical fidelity than before. Working on the port, it started with stripping out the old features from the engine I didn't want anymore (for example, I've gotten rid of class-specific XP and instead made so you earn XP from any class that you can spend how you want). After that I started writing new features and porting models/animations over from the old engine. Except now armed with the improved tools & features of Whiteout Engine 2, I'm able to make them better than before. For example, zombies now feature greater model variety & different animations. This new system of variations has also let me work more easily on new zombies such as crawlers.
MOVING FORWARD
Working with Whiteout Engine 2 is a blessing. Since this isn't creating a game from the ground up, but rather working with an existing framework with weapons, AI, etc, as well as the fact that much of the content can be ported over (i.e enemy visuals) progress has been made very quickly and I'm hopeful to have a beta branch of the update within the next few weeks. Assuming that goes well, then pushing the update to everyone. Remember, this also isn't just a port to better looking graphics or to a new engine, but changing some big systems in the game to try and improve things. If you want to stay up-to-date with the latest updates on the reforged update, I recommend joining the Discord.
Attention Republic soldiers, This is a small patch & content update to address the last content update (EA-2) which added achievements. I wanted to add some more basic achievements to go along with the previous batch of achievements.
Changes
New Achievement: "Headshot God" - Win a game with 100% headshots
New Achievement: "Hard Battle" - Lose a match
New Achievement: "So Close!" - Lose a match within 3 waves of victory in Wave Defense on any difficulty
New Achievement: "Baby Steps" - Finish a match
Fixed "Survivor" achievement being unlocked when in a singleplayer match
Fixed all headshot-related achievements being earned when losing a match
Fixed server using cheats to set Sv_AutoKillNPCs to 'true' being a permanent change to the client, which would result in it still being 'true' when hosting a new match
Moving forward This update was mainly to tie up any loose ends with the previous updates so I can with a clear mind focus on the next big update which I hope to be a major content update. It'll take a bit of work & time but I think it'll be well worth it for what I have planned. Now that we're moving past the honeymoon phase (first two weeks post-release) I'm happy to start focusing on more long-term plans for updates.
Attention Republic soldiers, In this first Incursion Dev Report, I'd like to highlight the changes made to the since since launch, as well as share some short-term & long-term plans for the game, as well as outline some of the known issues.
LAUNCH
The game launch so far has been a mixed bag but overall positive. By far the biggest feedback I've received so far has been that the game needs more content. This is definitely the best kind of feedback I could expect as it means that people like what's there, that it's a solid foundation, that it's fun, it just needs more stuff. This is great to hear, and it was great that with all the new people playing the game, no major game-breaking bugs have been found. There have been some refunds, which seem to have issues with the game crashing / not starting. Unfortunately, no one suffering from these two problems has joined the Discord or anything so that I might diagnose and fix them. So if you are suffering from the game crashing on startup, please don't hesitate to get in the Discord so that you might help me fix it!
The game itself feedback I'd consider positive since the main feedback is adding content, which I can do over the course of time. The reason the launch is a mixed bag is that, although people find the game fun, it seems the total playtime isn't that high which would indicate that there's not as much replayability as I'd like. The sale numbers have also fallen short of my expectations, which I think mainly is due to a lack of marketing as well as not having the Steam page up to gather wishlists long enough. This is my first time releasing a paid game and I'm a little too used to the "free players" that comes with free-to-play releases which get tons of players just from the new list on Steam's exposure. So now that you know all that, lets talk about moving forward.
Moving forward
I'd like to lean more heavily on studying & references moving forward. Really take notes and pay attention to how other games have their menus setup, how they encourage long-term progression, replayability, etc.
I also have some big decisions to make in terms of the graphics. I'm looking into doing a massive graphics overhaul, but the current system was heavily influenced by focusing on optimization & supporting low-end PC's as that was a lot of the audience who came to this game from my previous game. But it might just be the case that going after higher-fidelity is necessary, I haven't quite decided yet.
So overall, moving forward, I'm going to be working on adding content, particularly looking into how to achieve greater replayability, and if I think it'd be the right decision, moving toward higher-fidelity graphics. It's a big challenge ahead, but over time I'm hopeful we can get there.
Attention Republic soldiers, this update adds 16 achievements to the game!
Added 16 achievements
Victory - Win any match
Solid Team - Win any match in multiplayer
Veteran - Win any gamemode on veteran difficulty
Nightmare - Win any gamemode on nightmare difficulty
Heart Bleed - Win any gamemode on heart bleed difficulty
Hard Fought Coin - Earn 10,000 XP in a single match
Headshot Master I - Win a game with at least 10% of kills being headshots
Headshot Master II - Win a game with at least 25% of kills being headshots
Headshot Legend - Win a game with at least 50% of kills being headshots
Buildin' a Sentry - Deal 10,000 damage or more in a match with your buildables
I Am The Sentry - Win a match on any gamemode without moving
Survivor - Survive a multiplayer round in Wave Defense as the last one alive
Bulldozer - Earn 5,000 XP or more from damage in a match
Hunter - Earn 500 XP or more from kills in a match
Exterminator - Earn 1,000 XP or more from kills in a match
One Man Army - Earn 3,000 XP or more from kills in a match
Moving forward I think adding steam achievements to the game is a good way of having some more long-term objectives for players who want to do that. But I think the lesson overall from feedback moving forward is going to be working on long-term content & replayability. So I'm going to continue to work on the game in an effort to move more in that direction.
Attention Republic soldiers, this update is aimed at wrapping up common issues as well as adding some quality of life improvements.
Changes
Added chat messages for commonly changed server settings (i.e, when the server changes the map)
Improved player flashlight to no longer light up the back of the gun and instead a subtle, more realistic, lighten to the side of the gun to simulate light bouncing as well as subtly lighting up the surrounding environment outside the flashlight cone
Added to player settings the option "Invert Mouse Y"
Matches where server cheats are used will no longer reward XP
Improved performance for transitioning from the splash screen to main menu (This should solve crashing on startup for some players)
Fixed the Impact Grenade ability hanging in-air if the player who threw it wasn't the host
Known issues
Various position exploits on Train Station that allow players to not be hit by zombies
Moving forward Next update I'd like to start working more on new content. First I'd like to get some basics out of the way so I'll be starting with Steam achievements. After that I'll be looking into adding more core content, so stay tuned.
Small patch to fix problems found on initial release
Changes
Fixed area core not respecting train cart rotation on Train Station (which could cause the zombies to path inside the area core, effectively becoming invincible)
Moving forward
Now that day 1 is over, we thankfully have only found that one major bug. Over the next week, I hope to release updates to help improve quality of life and address some concerns brought up. One of the known problems right now is with the flashlight, particularly when aiming with the infantry class. That along with other improvements is planned to be addressed in the next patch.
