UPDATE 0.2.1.1026 - Hammerhead Vehicle, New Scenarios, and Bug Fixes!
NEW FEATURES
Added the new Hammerhead vehicle
Enhanced off-road experience with 4WD
Higher fuel consumption than the traditional car
Added ten new weather scenarios
CHANGES
Improved visibility of screen resolutions in the settings menu when the resolution is incorrectly altered by windows
Improved networking of the dominator's anchor state to prevent deployment issues
Improved game preloading phase by adding boot information
Removed four existing scenarios from the rotation
FIXES
Fixed an issue where players could survive a tornado by standing on top of an anchored Dominator
Fixed an issue where players couldn't exit vehicle if they entered while taking a photo
Fixed an issue causing characters or vehicles to stay in-game even after the player left the lobby
Fixed an issue locking the UI when entering the vehicle during probe interaction
Fixed an issue causing a loud noise while loading back to garage from a game
Fixed Zenith car seats improperly rigged, causing players to pile up in the driver's seat.
Fixed missing game textures making servers crash mid-game
Fixed John's ability to see his own eyebrows
OUTBRK: Development Outlook (December 2024)
Happy holiday chasers! This month we released OUTBRK version 0.2 that contained the very anticipated passenger princess feature to allow players to ride in the same car, a new car: the Solstice, a lot of new car and character cosmetic options, and more !
RELEASE OF THE PASSENGER PRINCESS UPDATE
0.2 was our most successful release to date! Our testers did a fantastic job to help us release a very stable feature right from day 1 and we’re extremely happy to see how our community engaged with the feature. This was a colossal amount of work to get this feature ready but seeing all the crazy moments that emerged from players sitting in the same car is definitely worth it.
MORE CUSTOMIZATION
Part of the 0.2 update, we dramatically increased the amount of customization content in the game, with a brand new car, new wheels, new bullbars including rally lights, a new hail guard, a new bubblehead, new shirts, pants, shoes, and an accurate replica of the Tower probe from CONVEX.
We’ve been working on this mega pack of content for a while and it feels fantastic to finally see it everywhere in the OUTBRK world!
INTRODUCING THE HAMMERHEAD!
We’re now happy to show the next car to come to OUTBRK: the Hammerhead!
SHOWCASING FAN CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIAS
Our social medias are buzzing with amazing OUTBRK content on a regular basis, and one of the great things we started doing more is showcasing the incredible content made by our players. Take a look at what we shared recently and drop a follow if you haven’t already! https://www.facebook.com/outbrkgame/videos/462760986622854
The team has been taking some very deserved resting time with our loved ones and preparing for a strong 2025 for the game. We cleaned up our Trello and prioritized our next developments for January. We’re excited to see our game grow, our team grow and our amazing players supporting us through this crazy journey.
Happy holiday from the OUTBRK team!
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/ Till next time, -The OUTBRK Team
HOTFIX 0.2.0.1006 - Fix for fuel replication, death on foot and more.
FIXES
Fixed shared ownership between protection items not linked to the correct corresponding items
Fixed an issue where fuel is not correctly replicated online
Fixed an issue with players surviving tornadoes direct hits when on foot
Fixed an issue with pasting group chase party codes with line returns or invalid characters leading to 'invalid code' message
MAJOR UPDATE 0.2.0.999 - Passenger Princess, Solstice, Customizations, and more!
Chasers, We're excited to bring you the 0.2 Major Update, packed with new core features and other big improvements. At the heart of this update is the highly-requested Passenger Princess feature, enabling collaboration on the chasing field like never before. Get ready to chase storms in style, navigate with precision, and explore all the other enhancements we’ve packed into this update.
NEW FEATURES
Added the Passenger Princess Feature allowing you ride as a passenger
Navigate from the front passenger seat with map pin control (Riding Shotgun)
Capture the action as a passenger using camera and report tools
Lock/unlock doors and eject players from your owned vehicle
Added the new Solstice Vehicle
Added new Character Customizations
Crop tops, tank tops, punk jackets, and exclusive Severe Studios apparel
Joggers along with shorts with and without leggings
Sport and skate shoes, sneakers, outverses, and western boots
Added new Convex Tower probe
Added the new Custom Wheels category with 10 unique wheel models.
Added several new bullbars in rally light and soft variants
Added a new soft hail guard net for all vehicles
Added shorter party codes for easier party matchmaking.
Added 10 new scenarios to scenario rotation.
Added new vehicle decals including: Sheriff Strafe, NZP, and The Eh! Team
Added new Ice Cream Dashboard Ornament
Added lightbar/strobe and rally lights to keybind menu
Added shared ownership between vehicles for hail cages
Added shared ownership between characters for certain items like shoes
MAJOR FIXES
Updated networking systems for smoother vehicle movement replication online.
Improved UI and input handling for the action wheel
Fixed an issue where vehicles took 2 seconds to start moving in reverse after pressing the input
Fixed an issue where vehicles don't get picked up by tornadoes if the player isn't inside
Fixed an issue with the danger effect showing up when tornado is on top of the player's vehicle even though the player is far away from it
Fixed an issue where players can see themselves for a brief moment when entering or exiting vehicle
Fixed an issue where players with high ping would get stuck between vehicle enter/exit states
Fixed an issue where players couldn't see other remote players on foot
Fixed an exploit allowing players to walk with the probe by opening text chat
MINOR FIXES
Fixed an issue with a background process reducing performance in garage menu
Fixed camera input sensitivity not scaled down properly on Y axis when zoomed in
Fixed issues with some scenarios having improper tornado behavior
Fixed an issue with some French translations messing up the UI
Fixed an issue with some camera positions during vehicle customization
Fixed an issue where players don't see the shadow of their head
Fixed an issue where players couldn't see other remote players on foot
Fixed F1 toggle (to hide UI) not hiding probe icon
Fixed fuel bar and probe data bar overlapping each other
Fixed an issue where the windshield wiper key bind set the speed to maximum instead of cycling through speeds
Fixed an issue with mouse not being locked to game window in tutorial
Fixed multiple issues with UI elements being accessible when they shouldn't
TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHT: Passenger Princess
Building the Passenger Princess feature was no small feat. It required significant networking adjustments to ensure seamless synchronization across multiplayer sessions. From designing map pin controls to refining vehicle ownership mechanics, this system expands the cooperative potential of OUTBRK while maintaining the fast-paced thrill of storm chasing. We’ve also improved the vehicle enter/exit flow to better accommodate this feature, enhancing the flow of multiplayer chases.
What’s Next?
As always, we’re listening to your feedback. Let us know what you think about the Passenger Princess feature and the other updates in this patch. See you in the chase!
OUTBRK: Development Outlook (November 2024)
Hello chasers! This month our development work has been focused on getting the Passenger Princess ready for release and continuing the development on the vegetation and performance optimization of the game.
PASSENGER PRINCESS
Any new feature that is heavily relying on syncing multiple players together and server events are bound to bring a lot of edge cases, thankfully, our testing team have been hard at work to find and document those issues for us to fix rapidly. If you’ve been following our Trello or Discord, you’ve even seen this work in our work channels on a daily basis ! Since the beginning of the month, we resolved more than 30 bugs or tasks related to this feature alone. We still have a couple more to fix before releasing this massive feature, and you can follow the progress on our trello board here : https://trello.com/b/nsBmMfIa/outbrk-game
NEW CLOTHING
Part of this same update we have a new car and new accessories that we have shown last month. This month we integrated new player clothing that will be part of the same update! Here is a preview:
PROGRESS ON TERRAIN AND VEGETATION
Last month we showed the start of the work on the terrain and vegetation, ending the newsletter on some exploration on the trees. This month we can show how far the vegetation progressed with some animated gifs of the OUTBRK biomes with new trees integrated and rigged for wind:
CLOUDS PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Our external VFX team, Catalyst, has made significant progress this month on optimizing cloud performance. Our goal is to completely remove the blue artifacts caused by the "cloud downsampling" setting while retaining its performance benefits. Achieving the performance of a high cloud downsampling value without any visual drawbacks is a major step forward for the game's optimization. While we’ve successfully implemented this internally, there are still some side effects we need to address before we can roll out this substantial improvement to all players.
WHAT ABOUT TORNADOES?
Our extensive research and development on cloud performance requires a technical artist to be fully dedicated to this feature, working on it full-time. While it’s taking more time than initially expected, rendering full-scale weather model data within a game engine is largely uncharted territory, presenting us with significant challenges at every step. Given that our tornadoes are still in a very early stage compared to our vision, we’ve asked Catalyst to allocate a second full-time artist exclusively for tornado improvements and development. Starting in early 2025 (the soonest possible), a second developer from Catalyst will join the team to focus entirely on advancing tornado technology, while the current developer continues optimizing cloud performance and looks. Together, they will ensure their unified visual and technical solutions meet our goals for both quality and performance.
WEATHER MODEL IMPROVEMENTS
Development of our weather model is still in progress, with some issues in the current version being actively addressed. We anticipate resolving these challenges soon, which will be an exciting milestone. In the meantime, we’ll continue running new scenarios using the existing model.
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/ Till next time, -The OUTBRK Team
OUTBRK: Development Outlook (October 2024)
Happy Halloween chasers! This month we’re sharing a recap of our 0.1 update, new car and car accessories coming soon, an update on the passenger princess feature, an update on the visual upgrade of our terrain and vegetation and welcoming a new member of our development team!
PATCH 0.1 RELEASE
On October 18, we released our biggest technical update to date, the release of the Group Chase and the permanent fix of the memory leak caused by the fix of the infamous lag spike that was present during the first few months of early access. We strongly encourage you to read our patch notes, including our long technical explanation of how we fixed the lag spike and memory management in OUTBRK here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1107320/view/4704662705448429833?l=english
One of the feedback about the Group Chase feature is that party invite codes are too long to share, so we’re working on a system to generate shorter invite codes. Here is a sample of what new invite codes will look like: thunder-wedge-coast-temperate-99
NEW CAR AND ACCESSORIES
The new car, the Solstice, has been fully integrated in the game and will be in an upcoming content patch deployed soon.
A whole lot of new car accessories will also be part of this content update. A new hail guard, new rally lights and a very anticipated customisation option; wheel rims. The rims are currently cosmetics only, we’re investigating which kind of impact, if any, we want them to have in-game.
PASSENGER PRINCESS
Our next big gameplay feature coming up is the ability to be multiple players in the same car, commonly called the “passenger princess” feature. The task is progressing well and can be tracked on Trello here : https://trello.com/c/nYSdo4pZ/1214-passenger-princess-feature Here is a first screenshot of two players in the same car, replicated over network (obviously work in progress).
PROGRESS ON TERRAIN AND VEGETATION
This month we’ve been working on improving the look of our landscape, terrain, grass, etc. This is a very long task and we still have a lot of work to do, but here is some screenshot of the progress so far (All screenshots taken in editor, not in-game, not final).
Landscape Grass
Forest Floor (No trees)
Arid Landscape (3 textures blend, no grass yet)
Coniferous Forest (3 textures blend, no grass yet, no trees yet)
Red Maple Tree (In vegetation modeling software, no representative of final product)
We reached a fantastic milestone that highlights the success of the release of the game; we hired our first full time programmer to join the OUTBRK development team, Mathieu (Hice) ! Mathieu has been working for us for 3 months as a 3rd party developer already and has done the keybind menu refactor and support on the memory leak fix for 0.1. He is also in charge of the passenger princess feature since the start of development of this feature. Welcome Mathieu !
NEXT STEPS
We’re still working on improving our weather systems with performance improvement and resolution upgrade. We have more customisation option for our character models and more probe models coming soon, and two new car models are in early production. We can’t wait to share more!
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/ Till next time, -The OUTBRK Team
HOTFIX 0.1.1.792 - Scenario Fixes, Random Deaths and Additional Bug Fixes
FIXES
Fixed a scenario with incorrect timestamps causing it to end as soon as players load in.
Fixed a scenario freezing half way through.
Fixed random death issue still occurring.
Fixed action wheel events not properly working in online games especially when using keybinds.
Fixed private party not queuing players.
Fixed volume slider not affecting UI volume.
Fixed controllers not recognized due to an addressables issue.
Fixed server issue causing players with high ping to not be able to properly enter or exit their vehicle.
MAJOR UPDATE 0.1.0.783 - Party System, Keybind System, World Fixes, and more!
MAJOR CHANGES
Added party matchmaking system with the ability to host private lobbies for larger parties
Added a new comprehensive keybinding system
Fixed memory leak eventually leading to a crash when driving (Long technical explanation about this issue at the bottom of patch notes.)
Added the ability to bind mouse buttons and other special keys
Added the ability to bind actions that were previously only accessible in the action wheel
Fixed all existing issues with the key binding system
Added visual feedback when a player is using their microphone
CHANGES
Added 20 new scenarios to the rotation
Added SevereStudios t-shirts
Added raccoon bobble head cosmetic named Cior
Updated the wording of offline play to solo chase and clarified progression saving
Increased timeout duration when server is loading the scenario for slower computers to still be able to load into a game
Increased previously played scenarios taken into account in matchmaking from 8 to 16
MAJOR FIXES
Fixed multiple issues causing players to randomly die
Fixed a rare memory leak occurring on some systems
Fixed an issue causing vehicles to vanish when exiting them
Fixed an issue preventing cars to be started on match start
Fixed an issue causing probes to give points when unintended
Fixed an issue causing errors on vehicle exit
MINOR FIXES
Fixed several floating roads and objects throughout the world
Fixed an issue causing one road to not be drivable
Fixed an issue causing the world signs not displaying the proper town name
Fixed an issue causing the towing feature to spawn players incorrectly
Fixed an issue with exterior being visible through the Magnitude's hood when driving
Fixed DOM3 windshield not displaying proper rain effects
Fixed an issue with the lightning emitter
Fixed an issue with a tornado having the incorrect flow
Fixed an issue causing "enter vehicle" prompt to not display
Fixed an issue causing bumpable objects to be movable by characters
When we first launched OUTBRK, we had some frustrating performance issues cropping up during gameplay. Players would experience occasional lag spikes, where the screen would freeze for up to a second—far from ideal when you're trying to enjoy a smooth driving experience. To address this, we cleaned up a lot of our scripts and assets. This helped reduce the amount of data being loaded and unloaded in memory, which significantly improved the situation.
However, as we dug deeper, we discovered a more persistent issue. Unity's default memory management system wasn't releasing scene content from memory after unloading it. Given the vast size of OUTBRK's open world, we had to split the environment into many chunks that would load and unload around the player as they moved. The problem was, the more you drove, the more RAM the game consumed, because the unloaded assets weren't actually being freed. This led to memory bloat, causing further performance headaches like game crashes or streamers having issues with OBS after playing for a while.
The Solution: Rebuilding Our Streaming System with Addressables
To solve this problem, we knew we had to overhaul our entire streaming system. Enter Addressables—a Unity feature that allows us to take control of our memory management. With Addressables, we gained the ability to load and unload specific assets on-demand, releasing them from memory as soon as they were no longer needed. This switch resulted in a much more stable memory footprint, allowing us to better manage resources and improve overall performance.
The Implementation: A Massive Undertaking
Switching to Addressables wasn’t a simple task. We had to comb through the entire game’s assets and reorganize everything to fit the new system. It involved an unbelievable amount of work and debugging, but the results made it all worthwhile. Not only did we stabilize the game’s memory usage, but we also gained the ability to further optimize our memory management down the line. As a bonus, this massive reorganization allowed us to reduce the game’s size on disk by about 20 GB, making OUTBRK more accessible for players with limited storage space.
OUTBRK: Development Outlook (September 2024)
Hello chasers! We've been working all month on the biggest OUTBRK update to date, so we're giving up an extended update on our progress and what is coming up after that.
PROGRESS ON PARTY SYSTEM AND MAJOR PATCH 0.1
PARTY SYSTEM
The party system is in great shape and almost ready to be released. It has been tested by our Quality Assurance team and we only have one remaining outstanding issue with some microphones configurations remaining to be fixed before being able to release the massive update we’ve been preparing.
KEY REBINDING SYSTEM
We reworked our entire keybinding system to fix the various issues players had when attempting to customize their gameplay experience. We also added various bindable actions that were exclusive to the action wheel menu, like wipers, lights, antennas, anchor, etc.
BUG FIXES AND MORE
We have identified the source of a memory leak causing crashes after a certain amount of playing time and we are currently testing a solution to eliminate it.
Various bugs have also been fixed like some world design bugs, random deaths, cars not starting or not controllable due to server issues, probes giving points when they shouldn’t, and more.
We’ve also added a black and a white version of a new SevereStudios.com t-shirt for characters to wear in game. We’re also testing the radio system to see if we can include it to the 0.1 update.
MORE CONTENT ON THE WAY
We’re working on adding more content to the game, here are some artist renders (not in-game yet) of what is to come in the near future.
CARS AND CAR ACCESSORIES
And a little teaser of the interior of an upcoming car.
CHARACTER ACCESSORIES
NEXT STEPS
PERFORMANCES
The team is still working hard on optimizing the cloud rendering system. We wanted the tech art team to put all their time and energy on doing research and development to improve the overall performances of the clouds and they are currently testing different theories to find a suitable solution. As soon as this is done, they will switch their focus on improving visuals and adding more tornado types.
WEATHER MODEL
We’ve made good progress on our weather model resolution upgrade which required us to set up a super-computer infrastructure. As previously mentioned, this will allow us to have a lot more details in storm structures, especially in the lower-levels. We are now very close to running our first model run with this improvement.
GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS
We are currently working on revamping some gameplay systems to give a better purpose to reports and pictures. We’re also making some changes to the probes system to make them more intuitive and fun.
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/ Till next time, -The OUTBRK Team
OUTBRK: Development Outlook (August 2024)
Hello chasers! This month was a very busy one ! We did a lot of major improvement to the game and set the table for even more cool stuff coming up.
RECAP OF MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS
Added 16 new storm scenarios.
We fixed the lag spike when driving, deploying probes, and entering or exiting a vehicle.
We greatly improved the matchmaking stability, fixing multiple issues such as needing to restart the game between matches.
Greatly improved performances overall. Users are reporting an average of 15-20 FPS gain with the same quality settings.
Improved tornado physics interaction with players.
Fixed random deaths occurrences.
PARTY SYSTEM
The work we’ve been doing on the matchmaking system is the first major step on the party system, and we’re already making great progress on building the actual feature to be able to create a lobby with your friends and join a public game together without having to do a countdown and click “chase” at the same time. Players will be able to invite Steam friends to their group, or invite other chasers via an invite code to join their lobby and chase together.
It's almost ready and we're currently doing multiple daily testing sessions to rule out any possible issues before we put the party system live for everyone.
We’re at the stage of evaluating the possibility to allow large enough parties to do “Private Lobbies”, but nothing to confirm yet.
NEW CONTENT
New content creators decals already integrated
https://www.twitch.tv/caseoh_
https://www.twitch.tv/chibidoki
https://www.twitch.tv/thorlar
Work In Progress
Rally Lights and Mesh Hail Protectors
Customizable Tire Rims
NEXT STEPS
We’re continuing the work on the Party system, testing, working on the UI, until we’re ready to deploy this major feature.
Our VFX team is continuing performance improvement on the clouds, mainly focusing on reducing the blue artifacts caused by increasing clouds downsampling.
We onboarded two 3rd party developers to resume the work on Character Customization.
We’re reworking our key rebinding system to be more permissive and more intuitive.
We are also currently improving our weather model to use more computer power and allow us to do simulations with a better resolution, which will allow a lot more details and better structure especially in the lower parts of the storms.
That's all for this development update ! Thanks for all your support, consider leaving a review on the steam store to reach more potential future chasers ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/ Till next time, -The OUTBRK Team
