We would like to share some news regarding our latest Patreon post, as well as make public our previous Patreon posts concerning the updated human models and the new Heavy Containment Zone Overhaul.
We are releasing a new Patreon post, showcasing some of the exciting level design and map changes included within the new HCZ overhaul. This post is available to all of our ‘Scientist’ tier ($5) and above Patreon subscribers. To read all about it, check out our Patreon.
Last month, we released a post covering the upcoming Human Models Rework, which presented all of our new human character models as well as a Q&A with the Art team about their inspirations and goals for the project. This post has now been made public, and can be viewed through the link below.
Lastly, this post from June offers a first impression of some reworked Heavy Containment rooms, and presents our progress on the animations and base statistics of the reworked revolver model. While we have released public teasers for both of these in the past, we are now making the full Patreon post public. We have also updated some images to better exhibit the new Heavy Containment Zone. You may view this post through the provided link below:
But until next time, see you in the dark. - Northwood Studios
Site-02 Transmissions #3 | Developer Logs
Intro
Hello again, everyone!
Welcome to the third installment of the Site-02 Transmissions. This post, however, is a special one. Celebrating the return of the Site-02 Transmissions, this month is a double feature where we’re releasing two separate Transmissions — spotlighting Community Highlights and the Dev Commentary sections. We will then be returning to a once-per-month schedule, starting in September, using this new separated format. This Site-02 Transmissions post, as the extra one this month, comes out soon after our previous post, released three days ago. Be sure to check it out here on Steam to see some curated SCP:SL art from the community, including an extensive real-life recreation of the Jailbird!
However, this extra post isn’t merely a stocking stuffer. In this installment, instead of covering very general activities of different departments, our Lead Game Designer, Cross-Conception, or ‘Cross’, is going to take a deep dive into the Game Design (GD) team’s actions and beliefs regarding the latest updates, as well as a few specific issues they believe the game currently faces. Additionally, this post features a special appearance from Lead Programmer, Beryl talking about the process of creating 13.5.1 and updates resembling it.
Here is a summary of this Developer Log Transmissions’ contents:
A commentary/retrospective on 13.5 and 13.5.1. Discussing the goals and reasoning behind SCP-1853, SCP-207, and Anti-207’s recent balance changes. A small Q&A with Beryl, giving a programmer's perspective on the update planning and implementation process.
A discussion concerning the Game Design team’s opinions regarding SCP-079’s Door Locking ability.
Elaboration on the goals of the ‘Reinforcement Overhaul’ spawning system as discussed in a recently-made-public Patreon post.
13.5 and 13.5.1 Retrospective
Quotes by Cross and Beryl
Cross believes that, overall, 13.5 was a great success — especially SCP-1853’s rework. She states it achieved everything the team set out to do involving 1853’s effects on gunplay and its escalating benefits, and that the Game Design team is happy with how SCP-1853 works now.
Another important change in 13.5 were the adjustments to SCP-207. The team believes they achieved their goal of making SCP-207 less abusable, however, they agreed with the mixed reception and concluded that SCP-207 “is far more fun when it’s increasing your speed, even if the damage is high,” resulting in the speed increase, which occurred in 13.5.1.
Whilst SCP-207 received feedback indicating its nerf overcompensated for its previous strength, Anti-207 (or, O-207-914) received — fittingly — opposite feedback that stated not enough was done to improve it. It still wasn’t useful enough, and rarely appeared due to requiring both the use of SCP-914 and the sacrifice of an instance of SCP-207 to acquire it. Because of this, it got the buffs it received in 13.5.1. Additionally, one instance of Anti-207 was added to the pool of pedestal SCP items to unchain it from SCP-914 whilst retaining the rarity that the Game Design team wants it to have.
We hope you enjoy its new Operational Guide entry, and we also feel a duty to remind you that matter and antimatter do not like each other.
To round out this section on 13.5.1, below is a short series of questions and answers about the 13.5.1. update, the process of creating it, and creating Hotfix/Patch updates such as this one, as answered by Beryl, Lead Programmer for Northwood. Please tell us what you think of these insider perspectives of the update process; if it’s well-received, we might touch more on our development process in a future Transmissions entry!
Why make a 13.5.1? What stopped you from putting these changes inside 13.5?
“There’s always plenty of features we want to implement, and, whilst we would like to ship everything we have planned all at once, the sad reality of development is that everything takes time. Because of this, we sometimes have to make the decision to leave some features out of a release. This is where hotfixes come in, giving us the opportunity to push said features out of the oven, alongside solving issues the community may find after an update is out.”
“Keeping this in mind, we make it a common practice to always have a plan prepared for a possible update after the last one. For 13.5.1, it originally meant pushing bug fixes or changes for the custom main menu music, SCP-1853, or SCP-207.”
“As programmers finish their tasks and projects, more helping hands are available to work on the big list of changes we would like to make for the game, which is why you saw unrelated changes making it, such as role colour touch ups, or consumable item improvements.”
What does the process of making smaller Hotfix/Patch updates look like? How does something like changing the speed boost granted by SCP-207 end up from your computer to the live game?
“As simple as something like changes in numbers may seem, the reality of game development (and more specifically, programming) is that sometimes, things don’t go as you’d expect, and a large majority of time it's due to things out of your control as a developer.”
“There’s no such thing as a perfect game engine, and sometimes you may implement a new feature or system, only for the engine to not react properly to it, forcing you to create workarounds that account for its limitations to make your vision a reality.”
“Alongside these limitations, we also have to account for our development procedures, which tend to include multiple iterations of quality assurance, solving as many bugs and issues as we may find, and maintaining the integrity of our codebase.”
“For example, during the making of this update, we implemented the O-207-914’s Operational Guide page in our in-development branch, but upon trying to bring those changes to the 13.5.1 development branch, everything broke completely. So we were forced to re-do the entire page from scratch for the release for it to function.”
What is it like to implement new items/item abilities and new systems — such as Anti-207 being the first item to not be guaranteed to spawn in pedestals? Is it difficult?
“With O-207-914 being in the spotlight, we’ll continue using it as our primary example. Although most of its recent changes may seem simple in hindsight, it required us to revisit some of our old-ish systems to make the changes that we wanted.”
“The SCP locker spawning system did not expect items to be added under specific conditions (such as a random percentage), which meant we had to make adjustments to our spawning & distribution system. So that you can get an idea, here is everything that needed changing in order to add said 10% spawn chance:”
“The AHP stat modules were also not particularly fond of a regenerating mechanic for them, primarily as it was not designed with it in mind. So we had to come up with a solution for this to occur in a timely manner, without compromising our programming standards. These are processes that take time to implement properly.”
SCP-079 and Door Locking
Quotes by Cross
In a Game Design meeting after 13.5's release, the team discussed SCP-079 and the feedback they gathered from the SCP's changes in 13.5. Cross says the changes achieved the team's goals of making SCP-079 less oppressive and unfair against civilians, as well as improving its ping range — but it also came with its fair share of valid criticism. Taking that feedback to the meeting finalised an opinion a long time coming — in Cross' words: "After a meeting with the other game designers [...], we concluded that no matter how you change door manipulation, the ability is fundamentally flawed."
She takes specific aim at SCP-079's Door Locking ability as a problem feature for the SCP. Below are five problems with the ability as provided by her, which are "only a few of the problems door locking causes."
"Door Locking is an extremely oppressive tool." Whilst SCP-079 can't sustain a door lock when the ability is freshly unlocked, the AP drain in higher tiers is easily managed by many players. So easily managed in fact, that the drain is inconsequential compared to the benefit it gives.
“Currently, Door Locking acts as SCP-079’s primary offensive tool, but relies solely on player cooperation between him and his team. This punishes players who are unable to use their microphone. SCP-079 has a general lack of offensive capabilities beyond this, resulting in players feeling that SCP-079 is too far a cry from the standard SCP-monster gameplay. Whilst you could, in theory, use a Tesla Gate on a player, this is extremely limited and occurs quite infrequently.”
“On the receiving end, players have reported that SCP-079’s door locking is too abrupt and unfair, compared to stressful or thrilling. There is no sense of surviving a threat — solely annoyance at being effectively cornered.”
“There is little counterplay or gameplay depth against SCP-079’s Door Locking. SCP-079 can press one button and result in the death of a player. This is neither engaging nor fair. While SCP-2176 exists, its availability heavily limits the anomaly, with it never having been designed for that purpose anyway. SCP-2176 is unable to be considered a fair solution to the problem at large.”
“In terms of future development, having an SCP wholly reliant on doors severely limits us from a Level Design perspective. It forces doors to be a necessity, instead of alternative options.”
The team feels that there is no way to clearly resolve the issues mentioned above by merely tweaking existing mechanics: "As a result, we have decided that a replacement for this ability is something worth pursuing in the future. Whilst we’re still working on a more permanent solution, we’d like for players to know that we acknowledge the issues at large with this character, and that we love the computer. Any solution we propose will need to solve all five of these issues, and once completed, the game will be far healthier for it."
P.E.A.R.S. 4 and the Reinforcement Overhaul
Quotes by Cross
Over a year ago now, we hosted our fourth Patreon Early Access Rebalancing Session (PEARS). These PEARS events are used to test more experimental or crazier features for the game — things which we aren't sure about, or things that will have high development costs, but also a risk of failure. Our fourth PEARS event was a respawn overhaul; it was a massive and fundamental change in how the game selects team respawns and when.
Upon creating the new system, The GD team set out with three main goals:
It needed to finally make the Chaos Insurgency (CI) part of the game’s family of factions, instead of the ‘cleanup crew/round end-er’ role that was the CI's original purpose before the GD team realised they loved the dynamic the team created in the round. The respawn overhaul made the entire CI team valid targets for the SCP team, and made them directly compete with the MTF team in order to respawn — both teams having to earn their respawn waves from a single, limited pool.
"Allow the game to come to a natural conclusion on its own, so that no matter how determined a player was to stall or camp, it wouldn't ultimately matter." That goal was achieved by creating an autonuke system called ‘Dead Man's Switch’ — an automatic protocol instated by the O5 Council to be used if Foundation personnel couldn't re-secure a site. It triggered when both teams ran out of available respawn waves and forced all remaining players onto Surface Zone for a final battle.
Another, smaller goal of creating a system like this was to create a more predictable and consistent round structure. Making sure rounds can't go on forever makes the game easier to balance. Factors like SCP balance can be fine tuned to have the right amount of strength for their job, instead of the GD team having to worry about balancing for potentially infinite players.
Ensure that players are consistently engaged with the game. Dying, then waiting for five minutes in the spectator screen to respawn with nothing much to do except Alt-Tab or yell at fellow spectators is a well-known problem. To address this, players in the respawn overhaul system are allowed to lower their own team's respawn timer through specific actions in-game, and players who die quickly after respawning are given a second chance through the implementation of respawn mini-waves shortly after the main one.
The system was very well-received back when it first debuted in PEARS 4. However, it was heavily flawed, and not just because it was somewhat buggy. One serious problem cited by Cross was the sheer overwhelming amount of things occuring at any given time, making the game exceptionally confusing and hard to understand. It also came with a host of smaller issues, including but not limited to:
The mini-waves had overpowered loot relative to what they were intended to do.
Respawn waves were too hard to earn. It was unbelievably difficult to earn enough points as a Class-D to earn a respawn wave before MTF, even for experienced players. The respawn timer for the Chaos Insurgency was also multiple minutes longer than MTF, making things worse.
The point scoring system gave points for killing uncuffed enemy civilians, incentivising killing Class-D on sight.
Somewhat recently, the Game Design team completed a rewrite of the system for its full implementation — something that Cross notes "cost me massively in terms of caffeine consumption" — and now they've been ready to start work on its full development. "We believe we have ironed out most, if not all, of the problems we were presented with. It's going to take a while to fully implement as it's a huge change with a lot of variables, but you can expect to hear more about it as time moves on."
Outro
This concludes our third Site-02 Transmissions post. We hope you enjoyed the return to the series. Starting next month, Site-02 Transmissions will return to a slower, yet hopefully more-timely-than-previous release schedule. We also hope you enjoy this new separated format for the series, as it allows us to make longer posts dedicated to showing more community creations and developer insight per post than the combined format from the first version. Be sure to look at the previous post on the Steam page to get a good look at some of the great art that community members make about the game.
If you would like to contribute to the discussion and send ideas or feedback to the team, feel free to engage with us on our socials! The Game Design team often looks at community suggestions on the Steam forums, the official Reddit, and the SCP:SL Discord. Whilst the team can’t respond to everything, due to the sheer quantity of suggestions, Cross says they try to read as much as possible.
Expect further news about the game on the Steam and X pages, as well as exclusive news on upcoming features or updates accessible on our Patreon — alongside posts now made public, such as the Reinforcement Overhaul post. Thank you for reading, and as always…
See you in the dark.
~ Northwood Studios.
Site-02 Transmissions #2 | Community Showcase
Hello everyone!
It has been quite a while since our last Transmission, and we are revisiting this concept to provide more consistent community interaction. From the feedback we received concerning our last Transmission, we have made some changes to the presentation by dividing the original format into two individual categories. One focuses on the art and creations made by the community, whilst the other is dedicated to developer insight regarding the state of the game and ‘behind the scenes’ showcases. We will be releasing these posts on a monthly basis, alternating each month, except in the event of something particularly important we wish to share.
This post is dedicated to the community, and showcases some of the art, animations, and 3D models found all across our social media platforms that were created by talented members of our community.
Art:
First, we have a 3D printed vial of SCP-1853 from Enderpearl20013, with a functional removable lid!
Here, we have an illustration from Kasi of two Nine-Tailed Fox waiting to be dispatched.
To close off the art section, we have a squad of MTF being dropped off by helicopter, by Bad.nic.aro.
Videos:
To kick off the videos section, we have this animation by Windop, showing a guards perspective of a containment breach. https://youtu.be/LpVumFARn3M Next, we have ‘Happy Nation’ by StudioHexyne, a short video showing multiple different perspectives of our game, with a bonus set of behind the scenes shots to show how it was made. https://youtu.be/wuyVm7cY5kg?si=dr65jb3eQhawL5a3 To conclude this Transmission, we have a fan-made Jailbird prop by Liu Studio, featuring both working sounds and lighting, weighing 1.68 kg and able to generate electric arcs! Powered by three 18650 lithium batteries, “For safety reasons, imitation is not recommended”. https://youtu.be/eJWL_7sW15M
Conclusion
We would love to hear your feedback concerning this new format of community highlights, as well as ‘Transmissions’ as a whole. It is our aim to continue these, and your feedback is vital in setting the standard for community content and to express what you would like to see from us moving forward.
Be sure to tune in within a few days for our third Transmission, featuring a developer commentary with our Lead Game Designer on some of the key concerns we have with our game and our goals for future updates.
But until next time, see you in the dark.
- Northwood Studios
New Steam Avatars are Here!
Hello everyone.
Starting today, you can find a selection of SCP: Secret Laboratory Game Avatars, which you can use by going into your profile settings on Steam.
Let us know what you think, as there may be more additions as time goes on!
We are currently still hard at work on the next update, and we’re eager to soon show you what we have in store!
Stay tuned, and see you in the dark.
~ Northwood Studios
What are your Development Questions?
Hello everyone,
Some of you may remember the Development FAQ Channel which was displayed on our Discord. This was where we listed and answered Frequently Asked Questions about the game.
Examples of such questions were:
Will you update/overhaul the models in the game? (Chaos Car, D-Class, Scientist, etc.)
How do you pick which SCPs will be added?
Will we ever see new guns or attachments?
Will there be crouching or proning mechanics in SCP: Secret Laboratory?
As the game has evolved and changed direction over time, many of our answers to these questions have since grown outdated. Due to this, the FAQ was archived.
To revitalise this channel, we've decided to collect and compile a list of new questions from our playerbase, relevant to the present development of the game. Through this, we hope to update both the channel and our general FAQ — which will later be posted on our other social media platforms.
We invite you to send in your questions via the link below: https://forms.gle/fAjaYRvCY2Nxjqh36
See you in the dark.
~ The Feedback Team
Update 13.5.1 is out now!
Hello everyone.
While we are hard at work developing 14.0, we’ve decided to release a quick patch to smooth out the changes made in 13.5. Additionally, we’ve included a section dedicated to developer insight at the end of the patch notes.
Enjoy!
Adjustments and Tweaks
Increased the speed bonuses granted by SCP-207. Health drain values have been left unchanged.
The first SCP-207 instance consumed now provides a 15% increase in movement speed (previously 10%).
The second instance consumed provides a 30% increase in movement speed (previously 20%).
The third instance consumed provides a 45% increase in movement speed (previously 40%).
Reduced the volume of Anti-SCP-207’s background audio.
Anti-SCP-207’s secret ‘life save’ mechanic now provides damage immunity for 1.5s (previously 0.25s). This effect is now audible to other players.
Anti-SCP-207 now saves a user’s life from SCP-939’s Lunge.
Anti-SCP-207 can now only be stacked up to two times.
When at full HP, Anti-SCP-207 now generates additional AHP, up to 75. This will decay upon removal of the effect.
Anti-SCP-207 now rarely spawns naturally within the standard No-7 lockers (a.k.a. ‘SCP item pedestals’).
Added an Operational Guide entry for Anti-SCP-207.
Jailbird now applies Flashed for 1.5s upon a successful hit.
Updated role colours for Chaos Insurgency classes.
Updated the role colour of the MTF Specialist class.
Painkillers, SCP-500, and SCP-1853 display progress bars and can now be cancelled before usage.
Adrenaline is now activated sooner after usage.
Bug Fixes and Technical Changes
Fixed an issue allowing players to damage 096 without becoming a target.
Fixed unlockable main menu themes having inverted locking criteria.
Fixed the Fog Status effect resetting when a different player lost the effect.
Fixed the Chaos Marauder and Chaos Repressor role names being swapped in Remote Admin.
Fixed some SCP-1853 danger events not unregistering properly.
Fixed some Discord Rich Presence events not unregistering properly.
Reverted changes to ICommand, removing ICommand.SanitizeResponse.
The Remote Admin console will now automatically attempt to close all unclosed rich text tags.
TCP_NODELAY option is now set on socket used for communication with LocalAdmin.
Made improvements regarding LocalAdmin to SCP:SL communication.
`snr` now takes an optional argument allowing server admins to redirect players to a different server upon round end.
Fixed `rnr` not working when fast restart is enabled.
Added the `nr` command, displaying any actions that will occur when the round ends.
Improved server console command handling.
Fixed predefined ban templates being duplicated when running `pm reload`.
Updated the PluginAPI.
Development Insight and Commentary
We wanted to offer additional insight concerning the ‘why’ of our recent changes to SCP-207 and Anti-SCP-207. No further gameplay changes will be talked about from this point forward.
We’ll start off with SCP-207. When we first implemented this item, features like stamina and prevalent medical supplies weren’t yet implemented, resulting in the item’s balance reflecting the then current state of the game. It was then left nearly untouched for years, despite the game evolving around it. Now, it’s hard to travel a few rooms without coming across some sort of healing item, be it medkits, painkillers, SCP-330 candies, etc.
SCP-207 was always designed to be a hazard to players. A ‘deal with the devil’ item that, while providing increased movement speed, would put your life on a short timer — use the item to run, escape, or die trying. Following the changes to speed and HP drain, we believe that we have achieved our goal of restoring the heavy risks provided. After receiving community feedback, we’ve decided to amplify the speed of the Cola across all tiers, providing a more fair trade for the health drain.
Moving on to Anti-SCP-207, this item was originally added as a low-cost development joke. It took a few hours at most, and didn’t detract from any larger projects that needed the time. It also allowed us to experiment with new systems that we could potentially pursue usage of in the future, such as the ‘life saving’ mechanic. Throughout recent updates, we’ve slowly improved the item such that we can integrate it into standard gameplay — this allowed us to make a low-cost experimental SCP item without needing to do all the work at once. According to the feedback forms we received, players felt the item was too difficult to obtain for it to be of any use. Now that we are more confident with the state of the SCP, we feel now would be a perfect time to implement the item as a rare specialty.
Thank you all! If you’d like to see further commentary sections in the future, let us know. Otherwise, keep an eye out for further changes to come.
Have fun, and see you in the dark. ~ Northwood Studios
A new Patreon preview has arrived!
Hello everyone!
It's been a hot minute since we last talked about some Patreon news here, so let's not wait any longer and dive right into it!
One of the things that have remained the same since the game’s initial launch are the human character models. This will change in the near future! You can read everything there is to know about the newly designed human character models in our July Patreon Post, which is now available for those who have subscribed to the ‘Scientist’ tier ($5) and above.
In April of this year, we also introduced our Patreons to a new project called Memorandums — revolving around a vast array of cut content that did not make it into the game. The first volume of Memorandums has been made public and can be found in the link below. https://patreon.scpslgame.com/posts/view/e73737f6-13e3-4a4a-b64d-282282cacf62
Lastly, our Patreon Post from March, which contains information about the SCP-1853 Rework and Reinforcements, has been made public as well! You can find this post at: https://patreon.scpslgame.com/posts/view/d752bab8-92ae-4916-8941-b5a34c683a86
We wish you a nice summer, and we’ll see you in the dark. - Northwood Studios
13.5 - Feedback Survey
Hello everyone.
Following the recent release of the 13.5 Update, we're eager to hear your thoughts and opinions on the recent changes.
We invite you to share your feedback through the survey linked below.
https://forms.gle/xH1HHBcvuRuseuNr8
Thank you for your continued support!
~ The Feedback Team
Version 13.5 out now!
Hello everyone.
We are excited to present the remaining SCP updates, as well as the anticipated 1853 rework and more in this latest release. Included in 13.5 are a number of significant balance changes for the remaining members of the SCP team. The following lists fixes and improvements to the gameplay experience of certain SCPs and those playing against them.
SCP Balance Changes
SCP-173
Base health increased to 4500.
Breakneck Speeds now starts on cooldown at the beginning of the round.
Tantrum can no longer be used during the Sustain period. Note: This is the amount of time where an eye indicator is visible on screen.
Developer Commentary: We felt that SCP-173 was finding LCZ (Light Containment Zone) elevators in the early game too quickly. As a result, a cooldown is now applied at the start of the round for balancing. We also noticed that SCP-173 could teleport behind a target and immediately use Tantrum, leading to an unavoidable death for human classes. As this led players to have a negative experience, this behaviour has been corrected while maintaining minimal impact to SCP-173’s general ability to place Tantrum.
SCP-106
Base health increased to 2300.
Maximum Hume Shield reduced to 600.
Increased M1’s initial damage to 40 (from 30).
Stamina will now drain when under the Corrosion status effect.
Removed the ability for SCP-500 to remove Traumatized.
Reduced cooldowns of Hunter’s Atlas and Stalk.
Emerging from the floor is now 0.2s faster.
Developer Commentary: After reviewing our feedback forms, we discovered that additional buffs added to SCP-106 were warranted. Introducing stamina draining will reduce circumstances where SCP-106 struggles to close the distance between itself and a target during extended periods of pursuit. Additionally, Vigor now acts as SCP-106’s primary cooldown to allow for a stealthier gameplay style.
SCP-079
The ability to lock doors is now achieved at Tier 3.
Updated Blackout.
Increased the cost to 40 AP (from 25). This cost is doubled on Surface Zone.
Decreased the duration to ten seconds (from 15).
Increased cooldown between zone-wide blackouts.
Reduced Tier 4’s AP regeneration.
Reduced Tier 5’s AP regeneration.
SCP-2176 now stuns SCP-079 for ten seconds.
Door-related buttons inside of the facility will no longer be visible to SCP-079 while the warhead is active.
Increased the distance at which allied SCPs can view pings.
Developer Commentary: We found that SCP-079’s ability to lock doors had the potential to be too oppressive during the early game and resulted in unavoidable deaths for Civilian classes. Additionally, we felt that AP costs had negligible impact in the later tiers. Following feedback from the beta, we have decided to no longer reduce XP rates from termination assists. We will be maintaining close observation on how SCP-079 performs going forward.
SCP-049
Base health increased to 2300.
Removed SCP-049’s innate armour bonus.
Increased Good Sense of the Doctor’s movement speed buff.
Increased Good Sense of the Doctor’s Hume Shield bonus upon resurrecting a target.
Increased the Hume Shield granting radius of Doctor’s Call.
Corpses now expire slightly faster.
Developer Commentary: SCP-049’s armour introduced complexity to the character that proved ineffective in creating a noticeable difference in gameplay.We decided to buff SCP-049’s health slightly to compensate. We have also improved SCP-049’s offensive capabilities to allow for more independent gameplay, and will be monitoring these changes closely.
SCP-049-2
Can now only be re-revived once by SCP-049.
Instances with an HP bonus granted by Good Sense of the Doctor will now revive with more HP.
Developer Commentary: A single SCP-049-2 instance that was repeatedly revived resulted in a total effective HP value of nearly 1500 for that specific player. The consequences result in the game not containing enough ammo to combat even a few resurrected players.
Improvements and Backend Changes
SCP-1853 Rework
SCP-1853 now grants the following buffs:
50% increase in item pickup speed.
20% decrease in weapon inaccuracy (ADS and Hip).
20% decrease in weapon recoil.
35% reduction in reload/unload time.
20% reduction in ADS enter/exit time.
20% reduction in use times of medical items, grenades, SCP items, and candy.
Removes speed and stamina penalties for held items.
SCP-1853 now operates on a system called Danger, strengthening its effects when the user is experiencing a life-threatening situation.
Danger caps at five, granting up to a 3x multiplier to its buffs.
The following conditions grant increases in Danger for 20 seconds, accompanied by an audio cue:
Encountering SCPs grants one Danger (+0.5 for additional encounters).
Encountering SCP-049-2 instances grants 0.25 Danger per encounter.
Encountering armed enemies grants one Danger (+0.25 for subsequent enemies).
Receiving damage grants 0.25 Danger for every ten health lost.
Being underneath the effects of Cardiac Arrest grants two Danger.
Being underneath the effects of Corroding grants one Danger.
Being an active target of SCP-096 grants two Danger.
Alpha Warhead being actively engaged grants one Danger.
Removed the ability to stack SCP-1853.
Developer Commentary: SCP-1853 gained an ‘underwhelming’ reputation for the majority of its inclusion. When we tested a potential rework in our Patreon Early Access Rebalancing Session and received very positive feedback, we were inspired to pursue further improvements. The result is SCP-1853 feeling much more reactive and engaging to use, along with a noticeable increase in strength than its previous incarnations.
SCP-207 Rebalance
SCP-207’s effect now caps after three consumed items instead of four.
Updated speed and damage values across all stack values. Note: The mentioned damage values are that of a sprinting player — walking and sneaking reduces damage appropriately.
Using one SCP-207 now results in a speed increase of 10% and a damage rate of 1.5HP/s.
Using two SCP-207 items now results in a speed increase of 20% and a damage rate of 2.5HP/s.
Using three SCP-207 items now results in a speed increase of 40% and a damage rate of 4HP/s.
Developer Commentary: SCP-207 has been noted to provide among the most beneficial impact to gameplay for a considerable amount of time. When we first added SCP-207 in 2019, its power level was tempered by the lack of healing items throughout the map and the absence of a stamina bar in older versions. As the game has developed and healing items are now more prevalent, we revisited SCP-207 with the intention of introducing suitable and relevant adjustments— using the item should pose a risk rather than effectively containing no downside.
Anti-SCP-207 Rebalance
Anti-SCP-207’s effect now caps after three consumed items instead of four.
Updated speed and healing values across all stack values. Note: The mentioned healing values are that of a stationary player — walking and sprinting reduces healing appropriately.
Using one Anti-SCP-207 now results in a speed decrease of 5% and a healing rate of 2.5HP/s.
Using two Anti-SCP-207 items now results in a speed decrease of 15% and a healing rate of 5HP/s.
Using three Anti-SCP-207 items now results in a speed decrease of 20% and a healing rate of 7.5HP/s.
Developer Commentary: Following the SCP-207 adjustments, we decided to update Anti-SCP-207 as well. Due to the speed-decreasing nature of Anti-SCP-207, we have increased its HP regeneration and, additionally, it will no longer be a one-to-one reflection of its counterpart.
Firearm Tweaks
Tweaked multiple aspects of the FR-MG-0.
Increased base weight of the FR-MG-0 to 9.2kg, previously 7.2kg.
Decreased the rate of fire to 720rpm, previously 750rpm.
Reduced the penetration of the FR-MG-0 to 60%, previously 75%.
Increased the damage of the FR-MG-0 to 24.4, previously 22.9.
AP Drum attachment now increases recoil by 15%.
AP Drum now increases penetration by 17%, previously 15%.
Short Barrel attachment now increases running accuracy by 20%.
Short Barrel now reduces damage by 6%, previously 3%.
Heavy Stock attachment reduces recoil by 16%, previously 33%.
Adjusted recoil pattern.
Logicer’s Short Barrel attachment now gives a 25% hip fire accuracy bonus, previously 43%.
The FSP-9 will now always become a COM-18 on Coarse in SCP-914.
Developer Commentary: As mentioned in our future update news post, our plans include large-scale adjustments to firearms. While these updates are still forthcoming, we are providing these smaller tweaks in the interim to assist in bridging the gap between these two updates.
Fixes and Improvements
Adjusted Adrenaline’s SCP-914 recipes.
Adjusted the Epsilon-11’s SCP-914 recipes.
Halloween and Christmas main menu theme options are now available year-round to players that have the achievement from participating in the respective Halloween and Christmas events.
Added the ability to upload your own custom main menu music tracks.
Reimplemented visual effect when a player is underneath Amnesia.
Jailbird now applies the Concussed status instead of Flashed.
SCP-096 can no longer acquire additional targets when actively charging.
SCP-939’s Lunge and SCP-173’s Blink should no longer kill targets behind thin walls.
Increased the Pocket Dimension’s music volume.
The Sinkhole status effect is now applied to players within the Pocket Dimension.
Fixed flashlight light sources appearing visually different between first and third person.
Fixed an exploit allowing SCP-106 to teleport to the wrong side of an elevator.
Fixed muted players becoming unmuted when reconnecting.
Fixed revival indicators lingering after a player’s respawn.
Fixed SCP-049 being able to respawn players in Overwatch mode.
Fixed SCP-079 being able to close doors/gates in specific scenarios while the warhead is active.
Fixed auto-nuke triggering at inconsistent intervals.
Fixed a formatting error when using the ‘Request Data’ feature in Remote Admin.
Cleaned up old code related to SCP-106’s Pocket Dimension exits.
Fixed an exploit allowing unsanitized names and text to mess with certain visual elements.
Fixed an occasional floating door button in the HCZ server room.
Fixed an incorrect monitor hitbox in TC-01.
Technical Changes
'AdminToyBase.IsStatic' property is now a SyncVar, allowing users to disable a 'PrimitiveObject' position updating.
Selected filters for RA’s player list are now saved across sessions.
Canceling the 'SCP106TeleportPlayerEvent' no longer grants SCP-106 a M1 cooldown. This can be overridden manually.
Added the ‘danger’ command to Remote Admin, which returns information regarding SCP-1853’s effects.
By popular request, added the ‘Fog Control’ status effect, granting the ability to change a client’s current FogType. Note: Not all fog types were made with this effect in mind. As a result, some fog types may not execute correctly when forced.
Implemented GPU instancing for primitive objects, improving performance.
Primitive objects now share materials when using the same colour.
Added ‘PrimitiveFlags’ property, allowing the toggling of certain features such as collision and visibility.
Removed the ability to set a primitive to a negative scale.
‘Cube’ primitive objects now use a ‘BoxCollider’ instead of a ‘MeshCollider’.
Cleaned up other primitive related code.
Added the Slowness status effect. This effect reduces movement speed by 1% per intensity, and can overflow into negative values.
Added `FogControl::SetFogType(FogType)` method for easier access to update fog for specific players.
Added rich text sanitization in all command responses. Note: commands may opt out of it by overriding `ICommand::SanitizeResponse`.
Updated category for some status effects.
That’s all for today — keep an eye out for further changes to come in the near future.
Have fun, and see you in the dark. ~ Northwood Studios
13.5 Public Beta - Feedback Survey
Hello everyone.
Following the recent release of the 13.5 Public Beta, we're eager to hear your feedback on the proposed changes.
We invite you to share your thoughts through the survey below.
