Sorry its been awhile but we have been working behind the scenes on some things. The pace has been very slow but we do have some progress to show. The previous timetables on updates can be thrown away. Right now we're focused on integrating the new lobby system and slowly squashing multiplayer bugs so we have a better base to go from when we implement Cops vs Robbers.
0.1.15 includes the new lobby system for multiplayer. In addition we made some improvements to better support 4 theives in multiplayer co-op. The van now supports a driver and up to 3 passengers. Players will no longer randomly spawn on the opposite side of the map. In addition, we've implemented the new van interior in the menus.
We also have some great previews to share of the upcoming high-income Oak Crest neighborhood. Our lead level designer Apothis has been doing a killer job and it's coming along great.
We hope you enjoy the screenshots. We'll be sure to share new updates with you all as we have them!
New Test Patch on Beta Branch
Hi Everyone!
Thanks for your patience since our last update. We've been hard at work doing some optimization and multiplayer bug squashing. We just uploaded our next test patch to the beta branch and would love to get some feedback.
Here are the areas of focus.
Optimization - We've gone through and compelted a major optimization pass on all of our games textures. We've pulled nearly 2GB...yes, that's GB, of texture memory out of some of the neighbohoods and reduced the entire game install size by about 1.5GB. This will hopefully help with some loading times for some systems.
Multiplayer Bugs - We focused on multiplayer bugs relating to the van in this patch. Most of the user videos we've seen, as entertaining as they were, showed bugs relating to entering and exiting the van. We have reworked the van passenger code and it should hopefully be a much more stable experience now as you're getting in and out.
Please try it out and let us know what you think and if you encounter any issues. As always, thanks for your support!
Patch 0.1.14 Release Notes
Hi Everyone,
We just posted another patch a few hours ago. This patch features some more van improvements with a brand new re-designed dash.
The new dash, aside from looking a whole lot better, will also now dynamically update for things such as your tuned radio station, dash light brightness depending on your headlights or high beams, engine trouble indicators for less than stellar driving, door open/close states, a working speedometer and animated shifter.
We also fixed raindrop particles disappearing when entering the van during a storm.
We'll also be improving the cop car dash in preparation for our cops vs robbers multiplayer game mode in a future patch.
We hope you enjoy the additional van improvements!
Klepto 0.1.13a Hotfix
Hi Everyone,
We've just posted a hotfix to address an issue with loading Fragbound Farms. Players should no longer encounter a grey screen after the neighborhood loads.
Klepto 0.1.13 Patch
Hey Kleptomaniacs!
We've just posted our latest patch. This includes an updated game engine so it will be a full download for you this time. Here's what's inside:
-new game engine, this includes optimized netcode which eliminates replication calls for unchanged data, this means less traffic being transmitted and better performance
-improved virtual cursor in desktop main menu and in game tablet, the cursor is now contained within the screen and you won't see a floating cursor that extends beyond the screen or tablet
-van roll prevention, it is no longer possible for the van to roll over and remain on its side or upside-down, it will now roll back and correct itself
-direct x 10 support has been added
-the game can now launch outside of the steam client and still connect to the steam api
That's all for now. Our work continues on the new cops vs robbers multiplayer game mode and the first part of our 0.2.0 release!
Dev Blog - 01.02.17
Happy New Year Kleptomaniacs!
We hope the holiday has treated you well and you've been enjoying the steam winter sale. Now that vacations are ending and we're getting back into the swing of things we thought it would be the perfect time you give you an update of where things are with Klepto.
We're still hard at work getting ready for our alpha 0.2.0 release. It hasn't gone as fast as we hoped but we are making steady progress. Our Oldtown redesign is just about done and our core gameplay for the cops vs robbers game mode is in place. Right now we are working out our scoring system and our functionality on the different ways we'll be ending a multiplayer round.
Our level designer Apothis has taken the jump into mansion design for our high-end neighborhood! This won't be in the initial 0.2.0 update but work has begun for this neighborhood.
Our 3D artist Alex has also been hard at work on designing the inside of our van. He's has started on tiered upgrades for the back of the van and will also be redesigning the dash so you'll have something more pleasing to look at while cruising around the neighborhood. The upgrades to the van will include addition hacking equipment and RF upgrades for wifi attacks. Here's a preview of the tier 1 upgrade minus some of the computer equipment.
Finally, as for our next patch, we are planning to upgrade to the latest version of the Unreal Engine. This will also provide some 3D mouse cursor fixes we have been patiently waiting for as well was improvements and optimizations to network code for multiplayer.
Thanks for your continued support and we look forward to bringing you more updates soon!
0.1.12b Hotifx
We just posted a small hotfix to fix an issue with users having problems exiting the van. Players were getting stuck in the van if they tried to exit while still moving. They got permanently stuck in the van even after coming to a complete stop. This issue has now been fixed.
Stay tuned for future updates!
Alpha 0.1.12 Release Notes
Alpha 0.1.12 is now available!
Happy Belated Release Notes Day! We went live with Alpha 0.1.12 a couple of days ago but we’ve been running behind on getting these release notes posted. Details below:
General
FOV fix when raising / lowering tablet
Fix for pedestrians standing inside each other
Fix for getting stuck when arrested while inside van
House Fix: House 830 in Murky Meadows back slide door inaccessible
Various texture fixes
Fix for spamming jump key to escape level barrier
Fixed collision issues on leaning fences
Fixed collision on meth lab’s tanker trailer
VR
Fixed the frequent HMD position/orientation resets caused by cars spawning into the level
No more ghost cars. Drivers are now in cars when playing in VR mode
Now that UE 4.14 has released, we’ll be focusing our attention on getting the project migrated over to take advantage of some added VR rendering improvements and UI interaction fixes. We’re also investigating the Vive locomotion issue causing a slight camera rotation when forward walk area of the trackpad is touched.
Alpha 0.1.11 Release Notes
Alpha 0.1.11 is now available!
General
This is a minor update containing the new house LODs for Murky Meadows (Fragbound Farms is still in progress). For the further LODs, these changes include a new single material low-poly version of houses to help reduce the amount of draw calls for better CPU optimization.
Before
After
For the closer LODs we've added the new parallax effect window materials. We've also moved the porch lights and mailboxes into the persistent level so these items will no longer "pop in" when house interiors are loaded.
We've also increased render distances and foliage LOD distances for the "Epic" graphics setting for render quality. This visual improvement may have a negative impact to your system's performance. This change can also be toggled using the Numpad +/- keys.
Multiplayer
We've added some error messages to the main menu to display multiplayer session failures. We're currently investigating the known issue of initial join attempts resulting in a Connection Timeout error.
Dev Blog 10.26.2016
Alpha 0.1.x
As mentioned in the recent Alpha 0.1.10 Patch Notes we’ll be scaling down on the weekly patch activity for the next few weeks as we put a greater amount of focus in finishing up everything for Alpha 0.2.0. However, game breaking bugs will always have our top priority so be sure to continue reporting these on our Bug Tracker.
Alpha 0.1.11 will likely be released sometime next week. This will contain some of the house rendering improvements detailed below along with some new error handling logic to aid us in investigating some multiplayer session join failures that seem to frequently occur during an initial join attempt.
Rendering Improvements
In a continued effort to improve the transition between level streaming volumes used to contain all of our house interiors, Nate has created a fantastic 2D texture with a parallax effect making it appear 3D to replace the current reflective window materials on the low-poly houses when interiors are not being rendered.
We’re also in the process of testing increased distances to populate house interiors from further away. This will further reduce the remaining “pop-in”.
We we’re excited to find out this week that Simplygon, the industry-leading 3D modelling optimization platform used by a majority of the AAA studios for generating LODs has opened up their platform to indie developers like us. We’ve wasted no time at all in getting started with this SDK. In the short-term, we’ll be using this to generate LODs for all of the current assets. This will help reduce any GPU bottlenecking.
Although the project does already have a lot of LOD states for various assets, the previous process for us to do so has been quite time consuming with mixed results in quality using the tools our limited budget could afford.
In the long-term, we’ll be able to bring in new lootable assets containing greater modeling detail and increased polycounts to allow closer inspection of these assets in game. VR players will benefit from that added detail the most most when we add in additional item interaction/inspection to the motion controls by attaching the loot to your hand first rather than automatically place into inventory.
Here’s Simplygon in action with our main thief skeletal mesh starting at the original LOD0 of 34K and smoothly scaling down to 2K. The poly count is in the upper left corner. Generating these new LODs took grand total of 10 seconds.
As mentioned earlier, the team has been hard at work on the Alpha 0.2.0 update. Most recently, we’ve been working on the new multiplayer gamemode, Cops & Robbers. The new lobby level is almost finished.
Briefing Room (Cop Team)
Alleyway (Thief Team)
We’re currently experimenting with some voice chat mechanics with some associated equipment upgrades to increase communication distance and stealth against both opposing players and NPC residents.
We’ve also got the stun-baton usage finished up. Excessive force is quite satisfying :)
Feedback
As always, please keep the feedback coming. We are always reading the forum posts and replying as frequently as possible. Be sure to let us know about any issues you’re having and continue sharing your suggestions!
