Here's the start of the long-awaited sound mix updates. We've done a bunch of work on the audio, and would love to get feedback from players, either here in the Steam forums or on the Discord.
Survivor voices and alien special announce calls, and other important gameplay sounds should be more prominent
Boosted and added ambient sounds to large portions of the game to indicate that the Isolode may not be in great shape
Added sound effects to the quick heal and player respawns
Balanced gun sounds to all be the same relative volume (Plasma Rifle MK1 and Prismatic Rifle should no longer be 3x louder than the plasma rifle. The SMB should now be slightly louder)
Reset relative volume levels in the control panel to account for the new changes
Computer beeping noises are back in Ep1. They’ll return to Ep2, Ep3, and Ep4 in a future patch
Spatialized a bunch of sound effects that weren’t being placed properly in the game world
Added hit sounds for alien hits on players. We have more to come on this front in a future update
Increased the volume of alien attack and aggro sounds
Added footsteps to players, other Survivors, and common aliens
Bug Fixes and Quality of Life Changes
Inputs and pickups should now work better for non-host players in high-ping situations
Added limits to the Brute’s leap/charge ability for gamepad players (for real this time)
Improved animation and ragdoll performance for all platforms
Removed a visual effect that was massively impacting performance on most levels (see if you can find it!)
When you spawn turrets in Versus mode, the turrets should more reliably spawn
Survivors should now call out properly when they’re grabbed
Update 48 - I See You
The Summer of Versus continues! This update contains changes to the Alien spawn system, addition of hit markers, Flasher melee fixes, and a whole host of bug fixes. As always, please let us know what you think in the Discord!
Versus Spawning Revamp
We’ve updated the Alien spawning queue to reduce the liklihood of back-to-back spawns of the same Alien for each player.
Hit Markers
We’ve added hit markers for both Alien and Survivor players.
Accessibility Settings
We’d added a separate sensitivity setting for aim-down-sight mode when using keyboard and mouse. Thanks to the community for requesting this one!
Flasher Melee Fixes
The Flasher melee fix is in now. If you’re playing the Flasher, you’ll be able to hit Survivors from behind.
Game Feed Update
The game feed in the upper right corner of the screen now highlights your own contributions to the fight. If you grab someone, get gooped, knock someone, or revive a player, it will be highlighted in the feed.
Bug Fixes
Each Survivor’s last strike status is shown on the HUD. When the next knock will kill a Survivor, their portrait will be black & white
The Director now caches results of more items. There are still some that aren’t duplicated properly
We’ve removed the in-flight air control from the Brute’s main jump attack
We’ve fixed a bug that was causing too much health to spawn in Versus mode
If you kill or knock a bot mid-revive or mid-heal, the action will now cancel correctly
Grenades and healing items will now only consume if their effect is actually applied
Network input streams will no longer fire twice as host. This should fix the double pistol shot bug for the host player
Modders can now disable IK in emotes if they choose
Removed the ability for survivors to see alien ghosts pre-spawn
Aliens can also spectate other aliens
Update 47 - Let's All Go to the Lobby!
Fixed Even More Lobby Disconnects - We believe that we’ve (for real this time) fixed the issue that prevents players who complete a game and go back to the lobby together from connecting to a follow-up game hosted by the same player. We’ve tested it extensively internally and are confident that the cases we know of are fixed. We’re also confident in your ability to find new edge cases, so please let us know if you fail to connect to the host from the lobby after this patch.
Fixed a Critical Hit Bug - We realized that critical hit damage was still being calculated based on the amount of health special Aliens have in the campaign mode despite Versus specials having significantly less health. We’ve dramatically reduced the impact of the critical hits and would love feedback on this change.
Ep2 Versus Fix - We’ve added a first-pass fix for the issue that let Alien players get stuck outside the starting airlock on Episode 2, Level 2 by preventing them from spawning there. We know this isn’t ideal, and we have a better solution planned, but it will take some time to implement and we wanted to prevent players from inadvertently creating a situation where they’ll have a bad time.
Update 46 - Flasher's Delight
New Flasher Horde Control
Flasher players can hold to collect common, which spawns them at regular intervals and collects nearby common aliens from the environment. When you release the horde, the common will aggro on the player you’re currently targeting, even through walls. If you don’t target an enemy when you release the horde, they’ll just target the nearest Survivor
Team Balance for Uneven Teams
Team balancing for uneven teams. Dictated by the number of players on the alien team, not the overall game composition
Smaller Changes
The last player standing can now start two-button holdout events
Modders can now disable different layers of the player skins (head, hair, body) in the settings for their cosmetic mods
Balance Adjustments
Buff to Plasma Rifle Mk1 Ammo - We’ve increased the number of rounds from 180 (essentially tripling the amount of ammo in the gun to account for its burst nature)
We noticed that the standard Common were slightly more effective than we intended in Versus. Given the relative increase in power of the Alien team as a whole over the last few patches, we slightly lowered the number of Common in the Versus game. We want player skill with the Aliens to be the main way Survivors take damage, not Common aliens
Slightly reduced the amount of damage the Flasher’s relative mobility and punch damage to balance out the increased power of the horde
Bugs
Fixed an animation glitch that occurs when the characters use their pulse
The Brute’s leap camera is no longer reset when you press both attack buttons at the same time
Xbox and controller on PC players will now be able to use the team select menu
Aliens playing the Grabber should be more consistently able to grab, regardless of ping or obstacles between the Grabber and its target. You can now grab over half-height walls, unbroken glass walls, etc. In short, the Grabber is working as expected now.
Network Adjustments
Added interpolation for the host so that lagging players movement doesn't look laggy. The host will now see what the other players see
Raised the network traffic limits so we shouldn’t hit rare race conditions that create lag for the entire server when someone is watching Paramount Plus
Bug Fixes and Quality of Life Improvements
Damage indicators for Alien team now show the rolling cumulative damage done to players rather than the number of hits applied
Invented PermaDing technology so that Alien players receive feedback on their performance across the veil of death. If you drop Goo, die, and respawn as a Grabber, you’ll get notified when your Goo from a past life impacts Survivor players
When you return to the main menu as a party after a game, the game will no longer put you in an invalid party state and prevents players from joining subsequent games
When you’re an alien and get sucked into a vortex grenade, your camera will drop into 3rd person mode to indicate that you, as a player, no longer have control of your movement. It will drop back into first-person mode when you regain control
We’ve added a UI effect for Alien players to indicate that they’re affected by stasis
We've begun a performance pass on the Xbox. We believe that we’ve fixed most of the stuttering problems that players have reported on the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Additionally, players on all Microsoft platforms (Xbox Series, Xbox One, and Microsoft Store) should see significantly improved performance for anything related to drive i/o performance
Update 44: Master the Faster Blaster
We just pushed Update 44, which includes a big change to the Blaster's reload timing, adds more scoring mechanics to Versus mode, and more.
Blaster Change
We’ve adjusted the reload timing on the Blaster to line up better with the animation. Please let us know what you think about this change on the Steam forums or Discord!
Gooper Adjustments
We felt the Gooper was more powerful than we originally wanted it to be, so we've made some small adjustments to reduce it's post-death and idle efficacy
We've switched the Gooper explosive dance from a press-to-trigger to a hold-to-trigger. We hope this will reduce the number of unintentional Gooper explosions
Idle passive goo created by the Gooper walking through the world now decays much faster
We reduced the Gooper health from 800 to 600
Get Points in Versus Mode For Capping Matter Compilers
Players in Versus mode can earn 25 points per player for collecting Matter Compiler Perks in Versus Mode. (The fixed MCs that always spawn in the finale don’t count, because the Alien team can't spawn while those MCs are being collected). Please let us know what you think about this change!
Bug Fixes and QoL Adjustments
Fixed a bug that prevented people from spawning during events like the Park or the Ep1 Finale
Players can no longer spawn as aliens in the airlocks
The end round animation now waits a few seconds to trigger so players have a better understanding of why the round ended. Also the scoreboard swoops in and looks cool now
If you jump out of the level while spawning as an Alien, you can press E while falling to respawn close to the Survivors
Added kill volume below the Ep3 finale. If Aliens fall out of the map in Ghost mode, they’ll die now
Updated German, Spanish, and French translations. They’re works in progress, so if you see something that feels weird, please take a screenshot and let us know in the Steam forums or the Discord
Update 43 - A Hotfix to Allow Immediate Reconnects
We just released update 43, which allows players to reconnect immediately following a disconnect or crash.
We've also identified the issue causing high performance PCs to crash between level transitions, and are working on a solution now. It's going to require an engine update, but we're hoping to have that fixed in the next patch.
Update 42: The Palindrome Update
We wanted to get a quick hotfix out before the weekend to solve a handful of issues introduced with the Matchmaking update and several Versus mode exploits that we discovered with the help of the community. We have a follow-up patch in testing now that will be out early next week that solves many of the situations that cause players to be unable to reconnect after a crash, disconnect, etc.
Alien players on four-player teams are less likely to have back-to-back spawns of the same Alien now. This is just the first phase of this fix, but we have more coming in future updates
When you enable Alien AI in Versus mode, the Alien AI players won’t spawn directly in front of human-controlled players anymore
When an Alien player falls out of the world, they’ll respawn as the same alien they were before. Players won’t be able to exploit this so they can select the alien they play every time
Players will no longer be able to recover health as alien players when they use the warp option to move closer to the Survivors. When an Alien players moves closer and respawns, they’ll return with the same health they had before they warped
Update 41: Choose Your Side!
Big news everyone! You can choose your Survivor preference (in all games) and team preference (in Versus games) from the main menu. Click the portrait next to your name to select a team and/or choose the survivor you’d like to play as. Note: this will let players create unbalanced teams in the lobby so they can play with their friends. When new players are added, the game will balance the teams.
If you see the dreaded “No public lobbies found” message, try creating a new public game and sitting in the lobby for a few moments. Someone else will join! It just takes a minute. And if you’re worried about starting a public game and playing with strangers, know that our game is designed to play really well with strangers. We do it every day! Communication is minimal, so voice is optional, and if your game goes well, you might make a new friend 🙂
Balance Changes and QOL Improvements
For the folks who like to play Intenser Mode solo, bots will no longer trigger Matter Compilers for you. You’re welcome
Survivor bots shouldn’t pick up health in Versus games anymore. That means players are responsible for healing the bots now. Remember that every bot is a fragile little bag of points.
Survivor bots should be more likely to help an incapacitated player than defend themselves
The new lobby system will now respect the campaign difficulty setting. That means you can play Intense or Intenser mode again. Intense and Intenser mode lobbies are not in the matchmaking pool for Campaign games, so you’ll need to bring your own teammates to play those difficulties
Bug Fixes
Host players should now go AFK correctly, after 90 seconds of inactivity
Players will no longer go AFK if they don’t shoot a gun at the start of a level for 90 seconds
Fixed several disconnect bugs. We’re still on the lookout for these, so if you encounter one, please grab the relevant log files and post them on the Steam forums or the Discord. They’re in %localappdata/Anacrusis/Saved/Logs on Windows
Fixed a couple of crash bugs that happen on level transitions. Please press submit on crash dumps if you have one. We can’t fix crashes without those dump files! (Leaving a nice message for Dan is optional, but encouraged.)
Adjusted the public game settings to encourage more players to choose public games. Steam players can now use modded content in public games in all queues. If you’d rather not see the modded content, then you can disable it in the Settings menu
Update 40 - Pre-Game Lobby Matchmaking Arrives
Matchmaking into pre-game lobbies has arrived. Here’s how it works:
When you press the Choose Mode button from the home screen, you first have to select the mode you want to play then select whether you want to Find a Game or Start a New Game. If you choose Start a New Game, you’ll be prompted to select an Episode and then you can choose between hosting a public game, which will be available for anyone searching to join, or private games, where you can adjust further settings and play with your friends.
If you choose Find a Game, you’ll first look for available joinable lobbies. If the game doesn’t find a suitable lobby, it will look for a joinable game in-progress. If it doesn’t find a suitable game-in-progress, it will ask you if you’d like to start your own game and take you to the Start a New Game flow. If you set that to public, other players will be able to queue with you.
A couple of notes. When you choose to leave a match or lobby, the game assumes you don’t want to be in that game anymore, so you won’t queue into the lobby you were previously in. If you want . We assume if you leave a match, you don’t want to matchmake into that game again. If you left accidentally, you need to close and re-open the game in order to match back into a previous game.
If you are kicked from a game, you won’t be able to rejoin that game until it’s over. If you kick your for lulz, you’ll have to restart your game. It’s hilarious to threaten to kick your friends, but it’s a pain in the ass for everyone if you actually do it.
Bugs
Vote kick now works properly in 8-player games. You’re able to see all players in the game and can vote to kick all of them but the host. You can still initiate a vote kick against the host, but it won’t succeed. If it did, it would end the game
Fixed several bugs related to vote kicking
Made some adjustments to bot task priority that should help them be better contributors to humanity’s survival
Up next in Update 41: Team and character selection are coming! Bots that don’t steal health kits from players!
