Hey there everyone! This last month has been packed with incredible progress that we're extremely excited to share with you all, and we also have quite a few exciting things to announce today.

Firstly, our rebrand/logo process is now complete, and more information will release next week about our process of allowing what was formerly R.A.I.D. to reach it's full potential.

SARIN

Rebrand:
R.A.I.D. has a new more memorable name that won't get confused with shadows or legends anymore! You may be wondering why make such a move now? The answer is that SARIN was a more fitting name given the context of chemical warfare's presence within the game, and also allows us to experiment a bit more with the realities of such a weapon. Another reason is the fact we're simply running out of time to finalize and establish the game's identity before things begin getting a bit more public.

New Cover Art
Over the next week or so, you'll see the transition from R.A.I.D. to SARIN on our social media presence and on our Steam page.

Animations:
Our animation revamp is well underway. With the Glock 17 now completed, we're moving on to a familiar family of rifles. Four new weapon animation sets are now in development and should be wrapped up by the end of the month. The AKM, AKMS, RPK, and AKS-74u will all feature some similarities when it comes to their shared animations, naturally. However, they will also attribute some uniqueness in how they handle and overall slight nuances in their detailed animations.


Work In Progress looks at the Idle and ADS poses for one of the variants.

Gameplay:
A lot of effort went into polishing and fixing many of the issues found in our First Person procedural animation system over the last month. Solves based around incorrect rotations in the IK twist bone have been found. We're now diving deeper into our movement and combat systems hoping to finalize any remaining flaws and polish up the rest. Further details will be provided on future plans in our roadmap shown below.

Environments/Levels:
The Frostbite location has reached nearly 50% completion over the last month and a half, meaning we will shortly begin Cassly (new level) preproduction very shortly as development on Frostbite comes to a close. The main focus within Frostbite over the last month and a half has been finalizing specific areas and getting main points of interest completed. The Town Square area is now nearly 100% final, with surrounding buildings receiving a lot of additional. Other locations that are now completed include the Coal Powerplant, the Docks of Pyramiden, and the Pyramiden Cultural Center.

Statue of Lenin overlooking the Pyramiden Townsquare.


WIP Interior Shots of the Coal Powerplant.

WIP Exterior Shot of the Pyramiden Docks.

Near final interior of the Theatre located in the Pyramiden Cultural Center.

Final Sports Gym located in the Pyramiden Cultural Center.

Overall, progress has continued beautifully on Frostbite, and we hope to conclude development over the next month or two.


Detachment

Gameplay:
Work has continued on revamping our movement system on the sidelines while development begins on Maniacal (more info below). Making the player feel like they're moving with heavy amounts of gear is crucial to the third person experience not feeling dated, but we also don't want to sacrifice user input for some 'cinematic' feeling experience, as Detachment is intended to be competitive.

Environments:
Over the last month, Peaks has begun and nearly finished it's production. Currently in the final art phase where final props and objects are placed, Peaks is shaping up to be a fantastic map. Pre-Production on the Office map will begin sometime next week.


Exterior Overview shots overlooking the central lane as well as the catwalk area.

Interior shot of the Central Facility.

Interior of the Air Traffic Control Tower.


Exterior ATC catwalk connector to the Central Facility.

Maniacal:
Big things are happening on the technical front here. Justin is currently building a DirectX 11 based MapEditor that will be integrated with Unreal Engine for the purpose of quickly and efficiently building and iterating upon environments. Examples of currently targeted features include a robust road editor, terrain creation and modification tools, and additional support for rivers as well as oceans. This has been a long time coming, and tech like this that is specifically built for the engine will give us the upper hand we need to achieve massive playable areas without sacrificing detail, quality, or performance. Later down the line, given the funding and manpower, this could possibly turn into our own proprietary engine that will allow us to move away from Unreal Engine and utilize our own toolset to create content more efficiently.


Roadmaps:
As promised last update and on our Twitter, roadmaps for planned future content are now available to the public. The Guilded page, while still very much under construction, is also available for people to view and check in on our progress to see what we're working on in realtime. The Discord will be open shortly over the next week.
https://www.guilded.gg/Paradigm-Studios



Progress is steady, but we still have a long way to go. We're excited to be diving into the development of a new engine, the rebranding of R.A.I.D. to SARIN, and beginning the community creation process. See you soon, everyone!

Hey there everyone! Its been 3 months since our last update, and we owe you an update without any of the fluff. Here we go:

R.A.I.D.
R.A.I.D. is currently going under another rebrand with as we get closer to yet another build that will help us find our niche. Getting to this point has been, for lack of a better word, disorganized, but we're on the right track now, and progress on all fronts has been nothing short of spectacular.

Work in progress Rebrand Artwork

Animations:
Our entire weapons set is being redesigned and rehauled from scratch. We're starting easy with a G17, and will continue through our list of weapons as we continue through the year. If you're wondering why we'd do such a thing, the answer is a fairly simple one and is a common theme with our past work, our animations were incredibly inconsistent in both completion and overall quality. To clarify, some weapons we're utilizing our procedural movement system while others were

G17 WIP Fire Animation

Gameplay:
As we've recovered over the previous months of chaos and the year's terrible start, the gameplay side of R.A.I.D. has received some much needed attention. We've finally cracked down on remaining issues with Procedural Recoil, and are now moving onto polishing all current features for our next gameplay test. We're just about ready to deal with specific features requested by the community, with nearly 80% of the "difficult" stuff now out of the way, with the last foreseeable issue being the handling of global persistence, which will be an issue we tackle a little further down the line. We should be able to show a lot more in June.


Environments/Levels:
We've made tremendous progress over the last few months with our environments, especially in regards to future map content and planning. Every future map for R.A.I.D. has been planned out and is ready to begin production as we complete additional content. Frostbite, based on the abandoned coal mining town known as Pyramiden, has become the focus of attention as Anvil goes through yet another environmental rework, once again to bump up quality levels across the board.

Foliage Testing

Road Workflow Updates


Work in progress props for Frostbite, such as town signs.

Frostbite has reached around a 25% completion point after just one month, including revisiting and overhauling specific areas that were completed in Version 1 and getting a bulk of the main town completed.




Work in progress screenshots of the Frostbite level exterior.
Interior's are now a work in progress as well, with temporary trims and assets being used as placeholders to give a sense of 'completeness'.

Work in Progress Interiors


Detachment
Progress here remains steady, with additional planning for both coop and story modes continuing. For a better idea of where we're at currently, we have all of the puzzle pieces laid out, and now its just a matter of putting them into place. We're still sitting on a multiplayer test, but aren't quite ready to show you anything yet, due to the same reasons as before. Everything is still quite chaotic for everyone on the team, and we don't want to add additional obligations to our already stressful days. Just so you're aware, there are plenty of other details that we cannot reveal yet, so hopefully what we can show you will suffice for now.

Gameplay:
We're currently reworking our character movement, looking to add some additional 'weight' to avoid any floaty feeling and ridiculous strafe spam during engagements with other players or even AI. In other words, we're looking to make the combat a lot slower, more methodical, and as a result, tactical.
The current codebase is receiving some additional revamps, resulting in something that we can actually build off of, unlike our prototype version at the moment.

Characters:
We're currently looking into revamping our asset characters with completely custom ones. This is still fairly early on as we're still establishing a workflow here, but we should have something to show soon.

World Building Tools:
Justin has been hard at work completely redesigning our custom tools used for designing our environments. These tools include our road 'conformation tools' and advanced actor placement, which allow us to easily utilize AAA workflows that make our environments look super detailed.


Some tests and feature showcases present within our V2 toolset.

Future Plans
This is where the fun begins. Over the course of the next month, we're going to attempt to release a bunch of information for everyone. All the way from our R.A.I.D. rebranding to a more personal look at Detachment development with Discord and even Guilded servers going up in addition to roadmaps for the development ahead, we're excited. Whether its June, October, or even next year, we have plans to get these projects in your hands, and it may be sooner than you expect. See you soon, everyone!

Hey everyone, and welcome to our first transmission of 2021! We have A LOT of explaining to do, specifically with our over 1-month late release date for the Detachment build. Despite our shortcomings, we thank everyone for being patient and waiting while we get everything together.

So.... where is this Detachment public prototype build that was initially promised before Christmas?
To answer this, its completed. The build, despite some major bugs we still need to address, is completed with all intended features and content. The real reason it is not in your hands yet is that WE weren't ready, and were quickly overwhelmed with issues/obligations by the end of the first week in January. In hindsight, these problems should have been easy to foresee, but that applies to almost everything. To state this simply, we didn't want to overreach and dive into something we weren't prepared to handle. We know that testing could potentially involve hundreds of individuals in our Discord, and will require constant attention and upkeep. We still aren't prepared to handle this, especially with the additional issues that arose over the course of January, some of which will be briefly outlined below.
January 8th: Frosty had his main hard drive and both backup drives fail due to a windows update.
January 18th: 1st Team Member Diagnosed with COVID-19 and forced to quarantine.
January 26th: R.A.I.D. Lead Programmer suffering, and unable to work, due to currently undiagnosed disease.
January 31st: 2nd and 3rd team members diagnosed with COVID-19 and quarantining.

Let's make this clear, these aren't excuses. We failed, and we intend to learn from this mistake. Internal testing will continue and begin opening up into closed testing over the course of this first quarter of 2021. We'll get into a rhythm of staying active while also making sure everything is ready to go for the end of the quarter. By the end of February, our Discord will be open and our Studio Transmissions will become 'Month in Reviews' as information about what we're working on will be posted, hopefully daily, with everything explained in more detailed posts at the end of the month.

Updates for this last month, naturally, are going to be quite lacking due to the events explained above and the fact we came back to developing from the holiday break on the 13th.

R.A.I.D.

Work continues on the maps Anvil and Frostbite, with roads and other parts of the environment receiving further polish. Anvil, specifically, has received some additional work on its environment set and lighting.


Frostbite, on the other hand, is receiving some reworks on its lighting, and is now completely blocked out and ready to begin greybox once our road tools are completed.


Utilizing our current vertex landscape conformation tools, we're already able to make AAA-quality road meshes fairly easily as seen below, but there is no reason that we can't make it both better and faster. Additional tools are now in the works to make this task much simpler, and more information will be detailed on that soon.


Environments will begin receiving a new approach over the next few months as something new is in the works. Areas of maps with their own additional look/flavor will begin getting separated into smaller levels, temporarily, to help identify what specifically needs to be made for each environment and what can be easily translated from existing ones. This is needed because all of the levels within R.A.I.D. will be around the globe and fairly large, so making sure we waste zero resources when making these environments will be crucial.


Detachment

Detachment progress has been fairly straight forward over the last 2 months. Since the build is feature-complete, we've been tinkering and improving the networking code as well as improve our overall integration with Steamworks. Other smaller tweaks have been made to the combat and movement systems. All that is left to do is fix some high priority bugs and prepare to bring the community into testing, which will be an ongoing process over the next few months.

A small majority of our focus going into map content as we wrap up the gameplay/networking. Ruins received some additional reworks, Quarry has a completed environment set and blockout, and the Harbor level is now 100% complete. Plans have been drawn up for 9 total maps completed by launch, and that number should only continue to grow as the year progresses.




We know this isn't the update you wanted, but its the update we have. 2021 has not been kind to us so far, but we have to keep pushing on and hope things will get better. See you soon, everyone! Stay safe and have a fantastic February!

Hello Survivors, and welcome to the November 2020 Studio Transmission. We're late, but what else is new? 2020 is coming to a close, and we hope everyone has had an awesome holiday season so far and is staying safe. Progress on all fronts has been nothing short of fantastic, despite many members of our teams going through some sort of roadblocks, both mental and physical, over the last few weeks.


R.A.I.D.

Work on R.A.I.D. has been steady. Our new map, Anvil, has received some additional improvements over the last month as we continue progress on our blockout. All of the road networks have been entirely mapped out and are now entering the final art phase where edges and decals are applied, with buildings beginning production sometime over this next week. At the current pace, section one of our Anvil map should be completed by the end of the year.


Images of Roads and Sidewalks in Production

Screenshot showcasing some new lighting conditions in Anvil.

Screenshot showcasing some new lighting tests done in Unreal's 4.26 Preview.

Character customization and Inventory have also been a focus of over the last month. Along with a new grab animation, we've began work on HUD elements made for picking up items/weapons. A new pickup system has also been tied into the WIP inventory system, meaning that the entire base functionality for the game is nearing completion. Once we polish up our inventory (hopefully in early December) we'll be able to move forward with the looting and character system, which will be the last base features we need to complete, leaving us on track for more open testing in Q1 2021 if everything continues going smooth after the holidays.

Short demonstration of the pickup system and the new grab animation.

Progress on animations has also been a priority over the last month. Over the last month, our procedural animation system has received some additional polish, making sure that Two new weapons, the MP5 and the CZ75, have finished production and will be added to our ever growing stockpile of weapons.

A look at the finalized MP5 animset.


WIPs of the CZ75 reloads, both wet and dry.

The Loop

Despite production being put mostly on hold, The Loop has been seeing some solid progress in the writing and design phase. Levels are now being blocked out and script revisions continue. As core characters and ideas are finalized in the script, we were able to begin character concept art, starting with the main character, Outlander. In addition to character designs, themes for the soundtrack have come much closer to completion.

A work in progress of the Outlander concept.

Detachment

Work on Detachment has been at it's fastest as of late. We've began utilizing our new knowledge of the design limitations using the third person camera, now implementing them into our workflow, now working on any map redesigns that need to be updated. Two new experimental levels, Quarry and Ruins, have entered production, making our total map count 4 as of right now. We approached the design of these levels in two distinct ways. Ruins is utilizing marketplace/Quixel assets to reach a visually "complete" stage in hopes of making the process of designing levels a little faster and more appealing as we go through internal testing. Quarry, on the other hand, is going through the more traditional route, going through the standard content pipeline. We hope to test both of these workflows and see which one, or even possibly both, will yield more favorable results in testing.


Screenshots of the WIP Ruins level.

Screenshots of the WIP Quarry level currently in the blockout/greybox phase.

Some internal performance testing took place on our deprecated build over the weekend, yielding average framerates (at 1080p) over 300 FPS in some cases when using the new RTX 30 series.

Screenshot taken on our Harbor map with a 2080ti.


In addition to working on a class customization system, Detachment has been mostly receiving some polish as we prepare to roll out our final prototype build.

Work in progress Detachment Main Menu

We're nearly ready to begin key distribution of Detachment, but we have some final checklists we need to run through before we do so. Firstly, we need to deal with an unexpected complication with our Steam API/Steam ID integration, which allows everyone to have their information (Steam name, leaderboards, stats, etc.) all saved and based on Steam account. Additionally, we need to finish polishing our user interface, making sure everything looks and feels perfect. Finally, we need to conduct an internal stress test, making sure that everyone can play the game with multiple server instances running at once with no hitches. Once we have tested and ironed out all of these issues, we will allow users into our Discord, where they will be able to claim keys and begin testing. We hope this update was enough to satisfy everyone for the month of October and November. See you all soon.

Hello Survivors, and welcome to the August 2020 Studio Transmission. Welcome to our biggest update to date! We had so much content to show you this month, that we're going to need to split the update into two, so a second report will be coming out sometime between now and the end of September further detailing Greenlight, game builds, and further updates on all of our projects.

R.A.I.D. progression has seen some massive changes over the last month. Starting with the map, Oretin, we've not only completed Version 1 for the alpha build, but we've also been able to complete a version 2, with improved roads, optimizations reducing draw calls and loading times/increasing performance, and a visual overhaul of the scene. Some of the more noticeable visual changes include the introduction of overgrown structures such as houses, interior dressings, and some material updates! Version 3 will include a complete map redesign that will adjust to our new workflow updates and will take advantage of everything we've learned up to this point. Continuing with environments, we've revisited Frostbite one more time for some additional lighting updates, and have begun working on a smaller third map, Anvil, which will explore more workflows and ways that we can bring map content over the course of potentially weeks rather than months. Moving onto animations, we've ran through a bunch of quickly reanimated weapons (for diversity/testing) over the course of August, 6 to be exact. These procedural reanimations are not going to be final, and are simply placeholder content we'll be throwing into builds/other projects as we wait for actual assets to be completed, but they should look good enough to serve their purpose. New weapons include the SVD, Sako-85, CZ-75, 590A Mossberg, MP5, and the AK-5C. On top of these new weapons, our new freelance animators ran through and finalized some "finished" artwork, such as the SKS, Mosin Nagant, and the MK-18. New weapons will continue to get released as we approach our new Alpha test, including the G18, a P250, and a P90. If you're questioning why we'd release some temporary assets, its so we can get one very important feature of R.A.I.D. underway, sound. Sound can make or break a game, and having some temporary animations/weapons released gives us the opportunity to get feedback in a live testing environment. Initially, this gets us much farther along in the weapons pipeline, as we can set up all of the audio/animations and have it tested in engine before the final assets are completed, meaning that when they are finished, we should be able to just import the weapon into the engine and it should pretty much ready to go.

Images of the new interiors for the Oretin Map!



New SKS weapon and reload loop!

A look at the AS-Val in game!



Images of some of the new temporary weapons!

The Loop is currently taking a step back out of focused development for the next few weeks. As we continue to revise scenes, make script changes, and actually create all of the necessary assets, not much can be shown in time for our event and, simply, it just needs more time to cook. This also gives us more time to focus on the more important tasks at hand, being R.A.I.D. and Detachment.

Detachment has seen some final polishes over the last month. Justin has been hard at work finalizing up the level for the prototype, Harbor, taking the time to populate the world and make everything feel perfect. When we release this prototype, we want it to feel 100% completed, as sending out an alpha build for people to test issues that are obvious issues is redundant, and in our opinion, lazy. Moving into the updates, much of this last month has been dedicated to updating our asset library, creating updated 3D models/textures that will match a AAA quality Standard. Looking at gameplay, we've looked into some options for HUD elements as well as UI. Several optimizations have also been made, and tools have been designed for the engine to allow faster iteration time. These tools will, in the future, also be available for use in R.A.I.D.! Overall, this last month has been mostly polishing and updating everything for our OPEN prototype test within the next few weeks. We cannot wait to get this project into your hands, its been long overdue.


Semi Flatbed Trailer Asset




Some Additional Street Props

A quick work in progress shot of the new Harbor Map, specifically looking at the spline road detailing process!



Well, we're here to announce our showcase, Greenlight, is now being showcased in the month of September as we wish to not only navigate around other major releases that may bury us, but we also want to showcase a lot more titles other than our own. We understand that the indie space is a very mixed bag when it comes to actual talent and competence, and that's why we're bringing everyone we can together for an event we'd like to make as massive as possible. More information will be disclosed about Greenlight in our second August-September report. See you all then!

Hello Survivors, and welcome to the July 2020 Studio Transmission. We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe during these difficult times. Progress is going well, and we're so excited to share a bunch of information, any game builds we have available, teasers, and trailers with you all over the rest of the summer. The second July studio transmission will go into more detail about timeframes and what is going to be shown as we get everything ready on our end.

Progress on R.A.I.D. has begun an overhaul. Beginning with gameplay, the inventory is getting some UI modifications (which we can't show as they are still in early stages). Additionally, we've nearly completed our First Person Procedural Animation system, which allows us to save time and money on animations (don't need to keep remaking walk, run, sprint, ADS, etc.). Ideally, we should be able to showcase these new systems in the second July transmission. The test map we prepared over a few days has been scrapped since we now have the time to complete the larger map it was going to be a part of, Oretin, for the upcoming Alpha test. Oretin is a 7x7 (49 sq. km.) urban-oriented map, featuring a lot of verticality in addition to a sizeable town towards the center, encouraging all types of gameplay. This map will feature a little bit of everything we want in the game and is a fitting addition to our growing collection of levels. As a first step toward the completion of Oretin for mid-August, we have begun redesigning many of our old structures, revisiting many houses and buildings we've completed over the years. These redesigns help bring everything up to our current standard and also allow us to experiment with different styles. Weapons are also beginning to receive some special attention, with many getting some additional animations or being completely revamped, such as the M1911 and the AS VAL, which are still in progress and unfortunately cannot be shown. Unfortunately, this is all that can be shared for now as we keep features hidden for our reveal in August, which will be discussed further at the tail end of the post.


A WIP blockout of the smaller city, Oretin.

Exterior shot of one of the houses completed in the rehaul process.

Interior shot of one of the redesigned houses.

Moving on to progress with The Loop, we have also continued environment passes as well as making any last changes to the storyline/script, and hope to showcase a cinematic showcase sometime soon that will utilize some test performance with motion capture as well as some of the environments we've worked on. The first level, Genesis, has gone through a complete redesign, focusing more on the world and characters while allowing some more exploration, additionally allowing the player to experiment with controls. Gameplay-wise, everything is still in very early stages and we will not be able to showcase much within The Loop for some time until everything gets ironed out. The Loop certainly has a long way to go, but it has certainly come a very long way over these last few weeks.


A screenshot from our test scene for the visuals showcase.


Images of the Genesis level overhaul.

Detachment progress has been better than ever, with the facility map now being designed and completed as seen in the last post. The Ruins and the Facility levels have gotten a visual revamp and manages to look even better compared to how it was first shown the last month, and still have a long way to go. Several levels are now being blocked out and are being prepped for detailing. A potential story overview has been laid out so that we can pitch it to any backers when the time comes for crowdfunding and stretch goals. Gameplay has received the most attention, with all final kinks being ironed out, an example being the camera transition between walls and doorways from over the head to the shoulder. These seemingly small changes are important because we need to get everything ready and polished for our Prototype release, which will feature a one life deathmatch mode and all of the base functionality we will need to complete the game. Over the next few days, we shall release a gameplay clip showing everything we've been working on these last few months, along with the date of the already mentioned reveal event coming in August.


Ruins level visual revamp, showcasing the softer lighting, updated post process effects, and new particles.

A quick look at the block out of a new level, Harbor.

The August Reveal event will showcase all of the Paradigm Studio's projects we've been working on as well as our partners and any other indie studios that wish to attend the showcase. We will be revealing games, showing teasers, trailers, gameplay, and everything in between. This event is big for us and is only possible because of our supporters as well as our partners who've invested their time, and in some cases money, to helping us succeed. More information will be available in early August. We hope everyone in America had a fantastic Fourth of July, and hope everyone continues to stay safe during this crazy year. See you in a few weeks, survivors.

Hi there everyone! In this short post we're going to be looking towards the future.

Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has supported us over the years. It has been what has kept us going all this time. I know that we have not been the best with communication, release dates, or anything of that nature, and I apologize. Not to make excuses, but sitting down and collecting everyone's work for the month and writing a several paragraph update takes time and certainly isn't something fun to do, so I (Frosty) have been posting updates sometimes daily on Twitter. However, everything is finally coming together. Sometime in June, we're going to be beginning marketing for all three of our titles, R.A.I.D., Detachment, and The Loop. As we pick up speed, we're also going to be beginning playtests for R.A.I.D. and Detachment come July/August. We're going to be moving everything that would be highlighted and showcased in this update over to the June transmission and be bringing back our old video format from a few years ago. This video will explain what all these games are and where they are at in development currently, showing any and all video footage we can. In addition to that, it will also explain whats been going on with potential investors, current funding goals, and our forming partnership with Darlington Group for the development of Detachment. All of these changes and things are taking all of our games to the next level. I'm so excited to share all of this with you! See you in June, everyone!

Didn't think I'd leave you here without a few teases did ya?

Detachment Facility Environment Showcase/Character Movement Showcase.

The Loop Shipwreck Environment.

R.A.I.D. beach environment for the testmap, Arrowhead Lake.

Hey everyone! Welcome to transmission 04-08-20, it's been quite a while, and we’re glad to finally come back and show you some stuff we’ve been working on recently. We hope everyone is staying safe while everyone is socially distancing themselves, lets get into it. R.A.I.D. has been progressing quite nicely with new 3 levels now being created, systems being implemented, weapons being rigged and animated, and so much more! The Loop is also sprinting through development with combat being constructed and fleshed out, story being blocked out/scripted, and levels, in some areas, hitting the final art phase.


R.A.I.D. has shown remarkable progress over these last few months. Although we don’t have a playable build just yet, we will be having a video coming out in the coming weeks that showcases new weapons, new gameplay, and the new levels. Beginning with gameplay, we’ve been working quite a bit on some of the core, such as our ActionSystem which allows for interlocking of subsystems without dependencies and our Inventory System, which now causes everything that implements an item interface to add an Item Component and is correctly handled. If you don’t understand any of that, we don’t blame you, more will be explained in the mentioned videos. Another area we continue to revisit is animation and our third person perspective. We've continued to improve poses, animation blending, and have added foot IK.

New third person perspective rifle pose.

Test Level showcasing FootIK.


Moving on to the levels, we have Fair Isle, Frostbite, and a new unknown location working their way through development. Fair Isle is hitting its overview and optimization phase, nearing the end of the pipeline. Frostbite and the Unknown location have finished early blockout, an environmental pass, and are beginning final construction.

Frostbite map, night scene showcasing foliage.

Factory Interior lighting pass.

In addition to these updates with the locations, 4 new weapons are also being worked on. The RPD Light Machine Gun, the SKS semi-automatic carbine, and the PM (Makarov) pistol are now being rigged and animated while the Kar98k has completely finished reanimation, with all weapons being in our next playtest among many others.

RPD Light Machine GunModel

SKS Semi-Automatic Rifle

PM Makarov Semi-Automatic Pistol

Completed animation on the Kar98k

Moving on to The Loop, we have made outstanding progress in both planning/scriptwriting and environments. In the May transmission, we will be showcasing actual gameplay and some early prototypes we've been working on. As of right now, the Genesis environment is entering its final art stage, meaning its receiving any remaining props and details that it may need to reach completion.
Genesis exterior area.


Genesis interior cave area and elevator.
Our talented Concept artist, Raebel Christo, has completed some concept drawings for Titan, one of the specialists you'll meet during your journey, and the Outlander's staff, a weapon you'll construct within the game. More information regarding gameplay and story are coming soon.

Early incomplete concept art for Titan.

Outlander staff concept art.

We hope this shorter update satisfies everyone, we know that the winter break along with the new pandemic situation has strained everyone in one way or another, and with us being located all over the world, times have been difficult. Progress continues on our three projects, and we plan to push progress as well as teasers/marketing out during the summer. Stay safe everyone!

Hello, Survivor, and welcome to The Paradigm’s first broadcast transmission update. This new “devblog” type of format will be updated every month and will cover all the events happening inside the studio for all of our projects, in hopes to bring light to projects you may not know about as well as keep you informed on the progress of our existing ones in the most efficient way possible. If you are wondering where the video is: we wanted to get everything finished before we show off something


Beginning with R.A.I.D. we are happy to announce a new game mode for the Early Access Launch called “Deployment.” This game mode is for those not interested in the helicopter pickup aspect of the game’s primary game mode, “Extraction”.

This new game mode will have select locations on the map that you can choose to exit the match from. This will allow players to play at their own pace as they don’t have to wait or rush to get to the rescue helicopter. Within this new Deployment mode, we will feature 2 map playlists that you can choose from: the Extraction playlist, which will feature the larger maps used in the base game mode, as well as the Deployment playlist, which will section off portions of some of the extraction maps and include its own exclusive maplist. We have just begun working on three new levels that will be included in both playlists.

The first map, Frostbite is a 4 by 4, 16 sq. km frozen wasteland inspired by cities in northern Russia. The two new maps exclusive to the Deployment mode, Suburbia and Ministry, are in too early of a state to show as of yet but will be, along with Frostbite, showcased in the next update. As for the original map, Fair Isle, we continue to progress on the major map overhaul. Its current state is very barebones and is very much a work in progress. More will be shown in the upcoming video later this month.

Moving on to animations, we are happy to show you the new weapons being put through the animation pipeline: the Strelitzia, the Valor, and the SLDR, totaling 15 finished first-person animation sets. The addition of the pistol, as well as marksman rifles, will certainly be a welcome addition to every player's arsenal in future alpha tests.
On the topic of alpha tests, we bring you the most important improvements, the Gameplay. To begin, we have rewritten the entire weapon system to help integrate the new prediction framework. This new system will serve a double purpose of:
A: Compensating for lag.
And B: Giving the server an idea of your future position, removing the stuttering players you might have seen in previous builds.

Another system we have been working on is the Inventory. Although the Global Inventory, which will keep your items persistent, isn’t complete yet, the player character inventory, as well as hud, will also be ready to make their debut in the next alpha test. With many of these new big features, sometimes it’s easy to forget the smaller details, such as the improved third-person animations, new bullet impact visuals and sounds, a new pickup system, and much much more. More information regarding the patch will be located in the upcoming video on The Paradigm's YouTube channel.

Now, it’s time to talk about The Loop. We have finished the storyboard and writing stage for the entire game trilogy. This means that the story has a thought out beginning and end that will be told over the course of three games. Unfortunately, we cannot reveal much about the story to avoid spoilers, as from beginning to end, it will be packed with meaningful content and vital information that will progress the story.
We also have begun the body and facial motion capture process along with hand-animation being tested on our prototype character models, which we should be able to really show off in early 2020. Gameplay-wise, we have a working melee prototype which is focused on movement and timing rather than the classic stamina system seen in most games. As of right now, however, the development focus has been directed at making boss fights, a cinematic system, and a dialogue system where choices may impact the ending of the game.
Once every feature hits a tier zero implementation stage, we will be able to show much more with a playable demo that will be available when the Steam store page launches. For the environments of The Loop, the levels are all over the place in terms of their stage within the pipeline; with some being in grey box blockout stage, and some entering their final art pass as you can see. For the project so far, all goals have been reached on time and there has been no further delays since the initial one. If things continue to go on track, we should be set for a full release sometime mid-next year.


To all current participants in the upcoming and active events for R.A.I.D. or The Loop, please remember that there is no photography, video, or audio recordings permitted in any event until instructed by a crew member that you may do so. Failing to comply with any of the agreements you signed will result in an immediate termination of your Steam key and will prohibit you from any further alpha testing.
Ending with some final notes, we want to make sure everyone is absolutely 100% clear with what happened with the “Hawkeye to Paradox to Paradigm” name change. The reality is, we simply made the mistake of going with a name that was too broad and already used. This led to a challenge when establishing our trademark since other companies exist with similar names that are in the same field. The name has changed one last time and is here to stay, meaning we can finally move forward with the trademark establishing process. In addition to moving forward, we are happy to say that we have introduced two members to the team and are now sitting at 14 people working with us at The Paradigm. With the addition of a new programmer and a new level designer, we will be able to efficiently work on up to three projects at once, leaving room for an unannounced project that will most likely be teased in 2020.


Overall, progress on both R.A.I.D. and The Loop, as you can see, is faster and more organized than ever. To all our community members, we want to thank you for supporting us and giving us the ability to create something for you all to enjoy. We hope you have a great holiday and we’ll see you next month. Take care, Survivors.

*CONNECTION Established*
Connection was successful! Welcome back, *UNKNOWN*!

"This is the Curator. Who is this? Where are you? Welcome to the…*ERROR*"
*CONNECTION LOST*
Connection rebooted! Welcome back, Divulgence!

Hello survivors, and welcome to the bi-weekly dev blog for R.A.I.D.! We have quite a bit to show you this week and we are nearing another testing phase with a tier zero “feature-complete” phase. This means that all basic features and necessities within R.A.I.D. like inventory, player movement, weapon mechanics, an extraction system, and much more! This patch will definitely not include a persistent inventory or the hideout, both of which will come in a patch closer to release.

Gameplay:
We have been finalizing tier zero of the action framework which will allow you to pick up and store items. These systems are essentially still being developed and finalized meaning we do not have anything to show as of right now. However, we are also now working specifically on grenades because they are an extremely, if not the most difficult and complicated part of the Action Framework since they are throwable projectiles that can inflict damage on other players.

Level Design:
Another big thing we have been looking to improve is our asset usage. We have begun making entirely custom buildings and other structural pieces of the map. This will allow us to create exactly what we want and prevent limitation by the creations of others. Currently, we have started to overhaul some of our foliage assets (grass), military base assets like trenches and wall fortifications as seen below. Over the next few weeks, you will be seeing areas like the factory and sawmill that will be made from the ground up. We are also now waiting to actually work in the main level until we have the locations blocked out on a flat plane allowing for lighting experimentation and optimizations to be made much easier ( AND FEWER ENGINE CRASHES ).

The new taco shrine. Will be in the map in a random house. Have a look.

Lighting demo showing off some new military assets.

New military wall fortification asset set.

New "main" grass model.
Animating:
Weapons that have just started through the animation pipeline include VALOR (Scar Equivalent), the SLDR (0.50 Cal Rifle), and the LKM-31 (Vector Equivalent). By the next dev blog, all three weapons should be ready for the showcase as well as the weapon pickup animation.

Quick renders of the trainyard building interior.
Final Notes:
Much like our recent announcements with The Loop, we are now making attempting to set our goal towards more “ marketplace asset free” games, which will include R.A.I.D. As a first step towards our goal of creating more models, we are going to begin making unique points of interest custom. We hope this “sorta late” update satisfies you all this week.
*END TRANSMISSION*
*Connection rebooted! Welcome back, Curator!*
"… hope you find our facilities comfortable as you will be spending the rest of your days there."

Seems to be a monolith of some sort. LOCATION: UNKNOWN
Goodbye, Outlander.
*END TRANSMISSION*