It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. We've reached the Alpha 2 milestone.
The game has undergone a huge number of changes since the Alpha 1 release. Better performance. New and smarter enemies. New weapons. New features. And much more.
We're also changing the name of the game to better reflect the world and the challenges you'll face. We've kept the existing title on Steam for now, but when you run the game you'll see Outbreak: Pandemic Evolution has become TRAPPED.
Check out the release notes for Alpha 2.0.5 and then take TRAPPED out for a spin. We hope you'll be as excited about where the game is going as we are.
GENERAL
At the moment, graphics settings default to Ultra Fresh which may be too much for many PCs. You may want to put most of your graphics settings at Medium or High (except for Texture Quality -- keep that one where it is). Also, setting your pixel resolution to less than 100% will make a huge difference in frame rate with surprisingly little impact on the overall look of the game.
BUGS
Fixed a problem where NPCs would despawn after reaching a certain distance from their original spawn point.
Some of the character spawn points have been adjusted to avoid putting players in danger as they spawn. Characters now respawn after death at their starting location.
Robot AI has been improved (more to do here). Robots are also fast enough to keep up with players now.
A huge number of visual improvements have been made to the environment. This is still a work in progress.
Consumables now work as intended. Some, like bandages, are instant.
Others, like antibiotics, confer a heal over time but do significantly more healing. Food items give more stamina than health.
Fixed a problem with ranged AIs being unable to target the dog mutants.
Made all flat surfaces able to accept placed items like land mines and turrets.
The player crouch animation now works correctly when you’re unarmed.
CONTENT
Added new mutant NPCs. These are dog-like creatures who run in packs and use a leap attack to knock players down.
Added a new shotgun-armed soldier. These enemies tend to show up at night and feature shorter range but much higher damage.
Added a new heavy weapons soldier. SMG armed and able to place defensive weapons as well, these enemies are extremely dangerous.
Several new areas have been added to the map, notably a large building in the southwest corner of the map. Be careful… seriously.
Revised turrets extensively. They now use explosive rounds. Turrets can also be spawned by any faction. Survivor turrets use yellow lasers. Military turrets use red lasers. At the moment, there’s no such thing as a mutant turret...
FEATURES
To configure the hotbar, hit ESC and then mouse to the button you want to assign. You’ll see arrow icons above and below each button as you mouse over them. Click the arrow until you see the item you want associated with that button. Then hit ESC again (or click RESUME GAME) to continue playing. Note: Button 1 will only display primary weapons. Button 2 will only display secondary weapons. There’s also a clear button just above the up arrow.
Added a configurable hotbar. No more rummaging through your inventory to find a bandage in the middle of a fight.
Crafting has been removed from the game and replaced with various lootable items placed around the map as well as revised loot drops from NPCs.
Entry to the base has been temporarily disabled -- we have plans…
The train and the power switch at the dam have been disabled. More plans...
You now need a walkie talkie to see capture points or other players on the map. You will only be able to see other players who also have a walkie talkie.
Game options have been simplified.
You may notice some new signs near the town. Watch your step when you see them…
NPC loot has been significantly revamped make sure to check those bodies.
Many new health/stamina items have been added to the game.
Landmines are faction sensitive. Currently, player-dropped mines are Neutral. This makes them work just like they always have. However NPCs can now place mines that will not trigger on any member of their faction.
NPCs now leash after chasing a target for a certain distance. This varies by type.
The loading screen now displays tips. Some of these will help with the newly added features.
Some soldiers can now use burst fire.
Weapons now automatically reload when you ready them.
TO DO
<*>Autodetect recommended graphics settings.
<*>Add a new scenario system with both group / individual player objectives, boss fights and much more.
<*>Player teams/alliances.
<*>More lighting, environment and animation improvements.
<*>Custom per-character models and animations.
<*>More rebalancing on weapons and gear.
WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT
Greetings Everyone!
It has been almost three months since our last update. So what have we been doing in that time? Well, we certainly have not quit on the title. You will see a new name for the game for starters, a better-optimized map with new locations, a new enemy, a streamed-lined inventory system, boss enemies, and a more precise overall direction for the game. OH YEAH, and we made the start game menu easier to understand as well. We will be moving out of Alpha 1.0 and moving into Alpha 2.0. We are rapidly closing in on the Beta version of the game with the final version expected sometime mid-summer. As always, hop on over to our Discord channel, talk with the dev team and get involved. If you have been following us since we acquired the title last year, you know just how far this game has come. Taking a dead Early Access title and seeing it through to completion has been an amazing and challenging journey, and we appreciate all of you have been on this journey with us. Expect the major update in the next one to two weeks as we finalize tweaking more development objectives.
Join us on Discord and play with the developers. We will be playing on the public branch, starting 6.5 hours from now.
https://discord.gg/WexvUzB
Alpha Update 1.5.8
A quick note.
After playing through the game with the community last night, it became abundantly clear that you should keep your score even when you die. So, we worked hard today to make sure that priority became reality. As of tonight, your score will be maintained even when you die in the game. This makes achieving the badges and a higher score possible.
Thanks
Forthright West Dev Team.
Alpha Update 1.5 - A Full Game Loop
Hello, Gamers!
So with this build, you officially have a game! What do we mean by that? Well, when we took over this project, the original version had no way to win the game. As players, you now have the ability to win by capturing all control points or lose, by having all players die with no other players alive. For single players, as of now, you will lose upon death. This will change in future builds for single player but please be aware of this for now.
Players can also be awarded badges for certain objectives done in the game. These will continue to be flushed out and made to look nicer in a later update.
BUILD NOTES
[OLIST]
<*>Scoring has been added to the game. At the moment, there are four scores: Kills, Damage, Capture, and Survival. Kills and Damage are pretty self-explanatory. Capture points are awarded to anyone within 150 meters whenever a control point switches to the Survivor faction. How many points you receive depends on how close you are to the control point. If you're right on top of it, you'll get a LOT of capture points. If you're farther away, you'll a much smaller number. The Survival score is in the game, but we're still working on it so it's disabled at the moment.
<*>In addition to scoring, we've started adding player awards for special in-game accomplishments. At the moment, it's possible to win two awards: Slayer (for the highest number of kills over 50) and Conqueror (for the most capture points in the game). We'll be adding many more of these in future releases.
<*>You can no longer capture a Military control point by grabbing all the gas cans from the power cart. Instead, as soon as all the guards are killed, the control point will switch to neutral and then, once a player gets close enough, it will switch to the Survivor faction.
<*>Control point power carts now contain random weapons. They can also contain the toxin you need to capture Mutant control points. So make sure you check them for loot.
<*>There are now two ways for a game to end. Capturing all control points for the survivors will win the game. Conversely, if at any time, all players are dead, the game will end in defeat. Note that we plan to introduce items that will affect winning and losing in future releases. We will also be adding a meta layer that includes leaderboards and achievements that will be driven by scoring, wins, and losses.
Play with the developers (24th Feb)
We will be playing in about 30 minutes. Tonight's test will be on the indev(elopment) branch. There is a new scoring system to check out, as well as game badges. The more feedback we can provide the better this game will become.
Anyone interested in joining the indev branch should jump on discord and give me a shout.
https://discord.gg/WexvUzB
Play Outbreak:PE with the developers again.
Last night's trial was a huge success. We had hordes of Mutants and the game appeared very stable. We're looking to try again with more people tonight. 10PM EST (about 2 hours from now.)
Jump on discord and I'll help get you setup on the indev branch.
https://discord.gg/WexvUzB
Play Outbreak:PE with the developers
For anyone interested we will be playing Outbreak:Pandemic Evolution with the developers tomorrow night 10pm EST.
Jump on discord for more information.
https://discord.gg/WexvUzB
Alpha Update 1.3 - The Largest Update Yet
Hello Everyone!
We have been seriously at work updating and fixing Outbreak. There are still some bugs that we are working on but you will find that the game has a ton of new content and substantial gameplay improvements. We view this game in a very early alpha state, so even though the game has been available on Steam for over a year, it has only been under Forthright's development since the fall of 2017. This update brings the game to a point where we feel confident that it is finally beginning to capture the fun and direction of our vision for the game.
We will be improving the AI in the coming weeks, adding new playable characters so that you can actually begin to tell the difference from each other in game, improving the UI and a whole lot more. Thank you all for continuing your support, your feedback and help! We look forward to bring an even better gameplay experience to you all in the coming months!
We do have a Discord channel for those interested as well.
https://discord.gg/sarMhNa
[B]CHANGES IN THIS BUILD[/B]
NEW CONTENT
[OLIST]
The in-game map has been completely reworked. Capture points are now displayed as Survivor, Military, Mutant or Neutral. This should make it much easier for players to plan their strategy and react to aggressive encroachment by enemy factions.
HUD compass. There's now a linear compass visible at the top of the screen. We'll be adding important game information to this in future updates.
DESTRUCTIBLES! Several objects in the game can now be destroyed. Be careful when you shoot things that look flammable. They probably are. And some of them do a ton of damage when they explode. Look for many additions and improvements here in future releases. We're aware that there's an occasional replication bug which causes clients to sometimes not see explosions. We will address this in the next update.
Military loot drops have been significantly revamped. It's now possible to get the MP7A1 or the Tactical Shotgun.
Player markers have been added to the in-game map. They're currently set to always display the player's Steam name, but we'll add a preference switch to turn them on or off at a future date.
GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS
[OLIST]
Multiplayer desyncs are fixed. These mostly manifested as client players dropping through the world or colliding incorrectly with world objects if they got too far away from the host player. Nothing like that should happen again. If it does, please let us know (we're aware that some world objects have their collision set incorrectly and plan to fix them in the next update).
Capture points now display correctly in-game for client players. You should no longer see neutral capture points displayed with the Military hologram and the Mutant goo.
Player spawning under the world is now fixed for all but the slowest machines. This is caused by a quirk in the Unreal Engine and we're working on a way to make this absolutely bulletproof.
Military weapons now illuminate nearby objects when they fire, making the military NPCs much easier to see when you're fighting them at night.
The map is now on a toggle. You don't need to hold down the 'M' key to keep it up on the screen.
The train should be much smoother for client players now. This is a work in progress as we're still tuning various factors to get to the best possible balance of lag tolerance, smoothness, and responsiveness. Note that on slower host machines the train is likely to still be quite laggy.
Spores spawning mutants under the world should be fixed, but please let us know if it happens to you.
The number of mutants spawned now increases with the number of capture points they hold. If you don't pay attention to their progress you may find yourself facing a very scary number of these guys.
Occasional spawning of a military NPC inside an inaccessible room at the dam is now fixed.
The power switch at the dam now has the correct number of states. Also fixed the switch's network replication so that client players can properly enable power.
Weapons, player health and enemy health/damage have been tuned. Feedback is welcome.
We've made numerous performance and stability improvements.
Overall lag tolerance has been greatly improved.
New main menu music track added
Alpha Update 1.2.2
Hello Everyone,
While we are still actively working on cleaning up multiplayer, we have some new toys for a few to enjoy.
BUG FIXES -The Infamous 'falling through the terrain at the game start' bug should be dead. If you receive this update and are still experiencing this, please post on the Discord channel.
-Fixed the orientation of holstered long guns and tweaked postioning of all weapons in 1P ADS.
WEAPONS -We added a Tactical Shotgun and the MP7A1 to the weapons complement. Currently, these are only available in Sandbox mode but will be integrated into the main game soon.
-Extensive tweaks of weapon damage and accuracy. The numbers are based on the stats of the real world weapons, although they have been adjusted slightly for balance. This is another area where feedback to our Discord channel is greatly appreciated.
WHAT'S NEXT
The primary focus on the next version will be cleaning up the Multiplayer experience even more. We have a pretty good understanding of what's causing the desync issues that many players have seen and we're working hard to resolve them swiftly.
