So we made it! We've reached our destination! Here is a round 50 report before your eyes! <celebrating_cat_funny_hat.gif>

We filled 49 previous reports with our sweat, blood and the tears (of joy) we shed during our struggle over Chernobylite. All this to provide you with the most polished game that we hope will give you a lot of fun.

As you may have also noticed, we’ve recently jumped into December. It means we're getting closer to the end. But that doesn't mean we've slowed down. In addition to fixing the bugs you report, we are working hard on the most crucial elements of our game (THE HEIST!), And we are also preparing Chernobylite for the raid on consoles of the current (yet) generation and the one that has just arrived. So there will be more things to come before the premiere.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2905347823303760277

That's it for the introduction. We invite you to read the 50th report, in which we also included some behind-the-scenes curiosities. ;)
For starters, traditionally about the major and minor changes and fixes we're working on to make playing Chernobylite fun, not a chore. Errors can be really diverse, and these sometimes never cease to surprise us.



Of these smaller fixes, it's worth mentioning that we’ve taken care of the disabling of save and load options in the pause menu (if the player didn't have any "daily saves"). We have also turned on the pause menu during the dialogue - thanks to this, when you have to leave the game unexpectedly for some time, you don’t have to worry about missing an important thread in the plot.

In addition, we’ve fixed investigation boards order when hints or notes were collected in a random order, removed the adrenaline tutorial once slow-motion option ended, made the active weapon hidden if it was moved to storage.

From the bigger things, we can say that we are working on some essential animations and effects in the game. Below, one example: the effect of destroying a black stalker shield.

In our editor:



In-game:


Here we want to show you the backstage of Chernobylite development. However, it will be something completely different from what you have seen recently. So get ready, because we have a little surprise for you that comes with it.



As you know, we went to the Exclusion Zone many times because of the project with our luggage stuffed with photographic and video equipment. It was the perfect opportunity to take a lot of photos and videos, which were later used to create the world of Chernobylite. The trips to Chernobyl also allowed us to create assets that serve as narrative elements. Including the most important ones, related to one of the key characters in the game.

Tatyana Amalieva is a very mysterious and ambiguous character that the player gets to know at the very beginning of the game. Igor Khymynuk's fiancée, who worked with him at the Chernobyl power plant, disappears on April 26, 1986, the day of the disaster. 30 years later, Igor travels back to the Zone to look for her.



To portray Tatiana, we needed a suitable place, some props (including clothes), and most importantly - a model. And so our graphic designer Joanna became Tatyana. It’s her character that you see at the very beginning of the game's intro. And she will be happy to tell you what it was like in the Exclusion Zone and about working as a model!

The first trip to the photo session took place in November 2017. The team spent a day in Sławutycz and two days in the Exclusion Zone. - It was a very intense time. Wake up early in the morning, pack costumes, equipment and travel by train to Chernobyl. I was very excited because I had never had the opportunity to pose in such a specific place before. It was a big challenge - says Joanna.



As she claims, from her first trip she remembers mostly the peace and silence, the unique atmosphere and mystery of this place. - The centre of Pripyat made the biggest impression on me. The Ghost Town, which had a population of around 50,000 inhabitants before the catastrophe. And now nature has taken over the power in this place.

The first location where photos were taken was the Duga radar. Unfortunately, the conditions were difficult and the weather was not favourable. - I was only wearing a summer dress. I've never felt so cold before - Joanna admits. Subsequent sessions and recordings took place, among others, in the centre of Pripyat, the Amusement Park, the City Hospital No. 126 in Pripyat, the Pripyat Café, and the Kindergarten in Kopachi. During these few years, the team managed to see a large part of the Exclusion Zone.



The trips were also an opportunity to bring a lot of anecdotes from there. In one of them, the heroine was Joanna, or rather Tatyana, played by her. - Two years ago, during the session at the Polesie Hotel, we heard the voices of coming tourists. We made a little joke. I was wearing Tatyana's ghost costume, I was holding a doll in my hand, I was throwing my hair over my face. I slowly started walking towards them. When they noticed me, their reaction was indescribable! You never know what is hiding in an abandoned city. ;)





- We travelled to Chernobyl every year, I was there 4 times. We’ve also planned a trip for this year, but… you know. 2020. The pandemic thwarted our plans. I hope that we will be able to return there in the future - she adds.

It's time to answer the question of what 3D scanning of a character looks like from the inside. This happened in the company using photogrammetry. - It's a very interesting experience to be surrounded by 114 cameras. The most difficult aspect is to keep the chosen pose for some time - says Joanna admits. And she adds: - I stopped in time as a 3D model! It is an amazing feeling and a souvenir for the future.



Did you like Joanna’s / Tatiana’s behind the scenes story? We have MUCH more like this coming, so let us know if you’d like to read about it!
Take care, stalkers!

Before we get to the heart of the agenda, we'd like to announce something important. Our game is voting for the Steam Awards! As Chernobylite was released in Early Access in October 2019 (over a year ago. Where did that time go...) we are starting a nomination for the award in the "Labor of Love" category. We bow down and ask you: if you've had fun playing our game so far - vote for Chernobylite!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2905347189776333118

And remember that by voting you earn a special Steam badge! If you want to have the highest tier of this badge, you have to write or update a review for one of the nominated games. Of course, we would love if you'd do this for Chernobylite <3



The game has changed much since we've started Early Access, so if you wrote us a review 6, even 12 months ago, Chernobylite is a totally better game now. So hop in, play, see for yourselves and tell us what you think about the current state of the development!

Ok, no more grovelling! Here come our weekly specs!
We will start the report with significant changes that may not be noticeable to the human eye, but are actually crucial to the smooth running of the game.

The problem that we want to solve is that the game lagged after showing a dozen saved games (or more) with all these elements at once. We are trying to work out a solution that will fix it - we have a few ideas on how to do it so we’re testing them right now. We decided to do a little reorganization of the new load game menu by reviewing the user interface, screenshots next to each save and metadata. Such as current level, current quest, save timestamp, playtime duration, etc.


By jcden77

In addition, we are working on other improvements, which, although they are minor, have a huge impact on the gameplay and on how much you’re enjoying the game. This includes improving interaction with very small objects - this is not the pixel hunt level of old point'n'click adventure games yet, but we would like to avoid it anyway.

Also fixing the sound of footsteps that did not work well in some places, and the marker placed by our comrades who were in the wrong places or a bug that made the traps react to dead bodies. In addition, there are also some grammatical errors in the dialogues that we and you picked up.

The list of these minor bugs is much larger, so expect the bigger list when the update (Hotfix) will arrive on Steam.


By svid.vp
Our favourite little devil, a.k.a. Chernohost, also didn’t escape our attention. And there is always room for improvement. ALWAYS, believe us. For example, sometimes this enemy happened to be invisible, like Bilbo Baggins after putting the One Ring on his finger. It’s hard to fight a group of Chernohosts, so imagine being attacked by… nothing. Or at least nothing visible.

Another bug was keeping Chernohost glued to us all the time. Literally! To say that it looked weird is not enough... Apart from that, we are increasing and widening these creatures’ view range and - most importantly - we are giving them the opportunity to aggro their comrades. In the group, Chernohosts are the strongest, so if one will see & attack you. And the rest will probably do the same.



Time for a visual-auditory experience. We are currently working on the sounds made by falling bullet scales. We want the sounds to reproduce the fall of the scales not only to the ground, but also to other surfaces, such as heavy metal, glass, crystal, deep water and shallow puddles. Again, this is important to us because we want to make the game as real as possible.

Though we couldn’t show you that today, as we can’t publish any videos in Steam News, we will prepare some behind the scenes in the next month. You’ll probably be quite surprised how we can produce such sounds ^^

Among the more important visual fixes, we are working on the extremely annoying scene where you meet Tarakan in Pripyat Port. Why “annoying”? Because it doesn't work the way it should! Due to this, the quest cannot be finished - it has as many as four endings, which already mixes the whole thing up.

As for the other things, on the screenshot below you can see that we are testing various solutions in the Farm that can help us solve the problem of bad display of objects from a greater distance.



We are also working on different versions of new game objects (in this case: trees). No textures at the moment.



And finally, a package of assets from almost all sides. Enjoy!



Take care, stalkers!

The Steam Awards are here again! We are taking part in the voting too, as a game released in Early Access in October 2019, so you can find us in one category: Labor of Love. If you had fun playing our game - please vote on Chernobylite!

And if you played months ago, check out how much the game has changed:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2935744583752568383
However we are not "there" yet, meaning we still have some work to get done, we're not long before the awaited premiere. We have over a year of work behind us and finally reaching the point where we will be able to say "okay, guys, we have it!". Of course, still many things will change for the better, there is still some content to be implemented (like "The Heist").



But on the other hand, we can clearly see how much the game has improved since the pre-alpha state. And that's not an easy thing to say when you work on something day after day after day! We are proud of what we have achieved, we are proud that we will be able to bring Chernobylite to both current and next-gen consoles, we are proud that you like the ideas that we invented and the changes that we made.



So guys, if you want to show us your support - please write us a review and vote on Chernobylite during this year's Steam Awards!

xoxo,
Cherno team

Localization:
- We added a big update to Ukrainian localization and a smaller one to Turkish localization.

Another set of bug fixes you report to us. This time they may not be blocking the game, but they are very annoying. We realize that these are not all problems, but we will gradually solve them. There is still a lot of time until the premiere...

Decisions and story:

• Sashko now correctly changes his attitude if you changed your decisions in "A few things from an old hideout"
  
• Sashko will no longer react negatively to Igor for releasing Kostya from prison if Kostya died earlier
  
• Sashko now has no change in attitude due to the Ferris wheel crashing down if the player chose to kill Kozlov.
  
• “Checkpoint Assault” will no longer require player input every time you return to the Fractal Timeline
  
• If a player during "Big Fish" shoots down the helicopter, Mikhail should not leave the team. The decision influences and correctly scales with his loyalty.
  
• Olga should no longer be "lost" when we rescue her from prison.
  
• During Hack Nar Server, the decision was the opposite of what it should have been. We fixed it.

AI and combat:

• Soldiers should now react correctly to the death of an ally killed with a silenced weapon. When they hear the body fall, they will check it out, and when they see their ally die
  
• Weapons should now be properly filled with ammunition if it has a magazine other than the default.
  
• Bolderer's AI was created before EA started. It passed a deep update, which should solve many problems, such as correct path searching, using portals, problems with animations, or sensitivity to eyesight and hearing.

General:

• Event marker on the compass should now correctly change the transparency scale with distance.
  
• Fixed a collision on the passage that prevented you from entering one of the stashes behind the chernobylite wall in Pripyat Central
  
• High-tech equipment in Igor's room should now have the correct textures
  
• In some quests, an old placeholder was showing on TVs instead of Tarakan. We fixed it.
  
• Hermit we encountered on the related quest was very dark. We improved its lighting.
  
• Events with gas clouds should no longer spawn in sectors where the main quest is taking place.
  
• When entering the fractal world, the cutscene for putting on the helmet should always start correctly
  
• During training with Tarakan, it was possible to block yourself if we started a dialogue with him holding a weapon in our hand. We fixed it.
  
• We have fixed a very rare issue that was causing problems with sharpen postprocessing.
  
• Fixed issues with poor texture quality on some elevations.
  
• Fixed lighting issues during mission "Weapon Transport"

We read your opinions, and we know what you most expect ("where is The Heist?!") and you tell us what needs to be improved and what else to work on to make life in the Zone better. As always, your insights were valuable to us, as evidenced by the following corrections that we are preparing for you.
By the way, we have found quite an interesting bug ourselves that turned out to be… somewhat spooky. Although Halloween is long behind us, we think you will like what we’ve found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUwMsc7zhpM
Let's start with the changes that will include Shadow - the monster with huge paws that lurks in buildings in the Zone. There will be quite a few of these changes, but thanks to them fighting him will be… maybe not so much a "pleasure" (let's be honest, meeting Shadow who pops out of nowhere was never pleasant), but definitely more balanced.

This includes faster reaction to the attack and its involvement in the fight (Shadow will not wait for your move, but will attack right away), a significant change in range and angle of view (thanks to this, he doesn’t pass a meter from the soldiers without noticing them). Plus, we make him react to sounds and damage and get rid of a few annoying bugs (e.g. blur effect, which sometimes stayed with the Shadow permanently).


Another big and quite important change concerns the spawning of soldiers on the map.
To put things simply, we wanted to generate enemy squads randomly, but for them to have similar “strength”. The spawning process had a difficult time choosing which enemy to spawn in the squads. And that changed the balance we wanted to achieve - having e.g. 3 regular soldiers + 1 stronger in a group instead of 2 regulars + 2 stronger ones.

* spawner - a spot on the map where enemies are, well, spawning* distribution - a word used to describe the process of spawning the enemies* perfect distribution - spawning the enemies in the best way possible* weight (of the soldiers) - “value” of a particular enemy type, which is necessary for the spawning process to decide which to spawn

Overall, we're working to drastically change the soldier spawning system to be more honest and random, rather than rigid, mathematical. Thanks to this, we want to avoid some weirdness related to seeing too many"crafting" on the map of soldiers of the same, weak type.

Let’s start the tech-talk now! There are spawners placed on the levels, which tell what and how many soldiers should appear in this particular place. Depending on certain variables, we choose one of the predefined levels of "difficulty" that describes the distributions of the types of soldiers. For example: when the NAR squad spawn, we want half (0.5) to be regular soldiers, one-fourth (0.25) sergeants and one-fourth (0.25) elite.

The perfect distribution is that the same group of soldiers will be spotted every time. The problem was that it did not always work as it should, so it happened that in subsequent draws, spawners "produced" only regular soldiers. Simply put, we want to improve this system to allow better, non-biased randomness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQeSlF3AAQ
Here’s a broader description of the problem:

Perfect distribution on the example of a spawner who "produces" four soldiers: two regular soldier (4 * 0.5 = 2), one sergeant (4 * 0.25 = 1) and one elite (4 * 0.25 = 1). From a mathematical point of view, everything is fine.

The problem arises when we cannot make a perfect distribution. Example: we have a spawner who has to "produce" three soldiers each time: regular soldier (3 * 0.5 = 1.5 = 1), sergeant (3 * 0.25 = 0.75 = 0), elite (3 * 0.25 = 0.75 = 0). This is a rather poor solution.

Therefore, we are ultimately working on a solution where we make a distribution based on a value that describes the probability of a given type of opponent in relation to other opponents. On the other hand, for the remaining soldiers, whom we could not replace, we use the principles of perfect distribution (i.e. a draw takes place: 50% chance for a soldier to appear, 25% for a sergeant and an elite).
In other words: every time there will be the same distribution of soldiers depending on the difficulty level. In case this is not possible, instead of spawning the weakest, we spawn them randomly by chance.


We introduce you changes not only visible to the eye but also audible to the ear. We plan to add to the game footsteps heard when walking on very wet surfaces, such as puddles, as well as the sounds of browsing and crafting weapon upgrades. We especially care about the implementation of that second element, because that's what you deal with most often. The sounds of walking on puddles can be considered a modest addition, but it increases the realism in the game.

Similarly, we approach the issue of adding an alert to opponents when the body hits the ground. A body hitting the ground produces an appropriately loud noise that will alert enemies that something disturbing is happening around the corner.

Taking this opportunity to discuss the in-game sounds issue, we have a curiosity for you. This has to do with an interesting, yet very terrifying bug we came across. On the Red Forest map near Olga's Village, you can find wild pigs. If you shoot any of them, it will squeal before it dies ... and that squeal will still be heard even after it dies. We're correcting this bug so that pigs don't bite your conscience from the underworld. ;)


We are also working on slight improvements to the level design. Mostly these are minor bugs that have been spotted by you (e.g. on several levels the meshes appeared too late). However, we are also working on major fixes that will improve the gameplay.
First, there will be plates with the names of the rooms in the prison for better orientation. This is a large spot where it's easy to get lost.

Secondly, in Pripyat Central, Pripyat Port and Kopachi events have been tweaked so that they don't get blocked. As you know, some places are now blocked by Chernobylite walls or locked doors which require you to use a lockpick. We had to move one of these rooms in Kopachi because there was another event in the same room that we shouldn't block in this way.
Take care, stalkers!

We know it’s 2020 AND Friday the 13th. But nonetheless, we’ve got something interesting for you! And let’s just agree that the last few weeks have been extremely exciting, both for us and (we hope) for you. Two weeks ago, we released the Mega Patch with loads of new content and fixes. By the way, thank you for being on our streams & streaming yourselves after the release of “The Woman in the Red Dress”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUwMsc7zhpM

In addition, not so long ago we’ve announced that Chernobylite will appear on current and next-gen consoles! That’s a huge step for us, but we're not slowing down! Here's what we have prepared for you this time.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2937997018931496466
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2935744583752568383

Usually we try to name people who helped us find and solve given problems. This time, however, you were flooding us with various bugs - on steam, on discord, even in private messages. It would be really hard to name all of you, so we'd like to thank the whole community instead. You make the game better! Now let's move on to fixes:

General:

• Fixed a bug that caused a modified weapon to disappear from the quickuse menu
  
• Fixed a bug where weapons found sometimes had upgrades that should not be available yet. You will get a thermal sight and an automatic shotgun system, but not yet ;)
  
• Attachments found with new weapons are now properly unlocked for the entire archetype. So you can easily move the sight from the newly found shotgun to the one we use.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused characters on the timeline to appear poorer in "ultra" settings than in "medium"
  
• One of the rifles was broken and did not appear correctly in inventory. After the number of reports I have the impression that everyone found it ;) We fixed it.
  
• Sometimes a door closed with a lockpick had ... A second door locked with a lockpick. We fixed it.
  
• On some computers there could be a problem with the sharpeing that greatly degraded the graphics quality. We have fixed it, or at least limited it.
  
• Problems with physical materials meant that soldiers were sometimes able to shoot through tires or sandbags. We fixed it.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where soldiers would start firing at the player instead of starting a conversation with them.
  
• Fixed a bug where soldiers killed with silenced weapons would not interrupt their custom animations.
  
• Fixed an issue where one of the crystals on Fractal Timeline remained red and blocked the passage.

Item management:

• Fixed issue with item duplication if half stack was once swapped with full stack and player tabbed out of inventory.
  
• Fixed issue with item disappearing if its grabbed and player tabbed out of inventory when there is no more room for it (it should drop on the ground now).
  
• Fixed issue with disappearing upgrades from weapons when its swapped with different item.
  
• Fixed issue with disappearing upgrades if item was grabbed but player tabbed out of inventory.
  
• When you held a weapon in your hand and then threw it out of the inventory or disassembled it, it still remained in the hand. We fixed it.
  

Base:

• Fixed a rare softblock that was triggered by trying to harvest vegetables
  
• Fixed a bug that allows you to get infinite resources by interrupting the Recycler work
  
• Fixed a rare bug that blocked progression when you accidentally trigger the build system while sleeping.

So, we’ve got an intense week behind us, right? New Mega Patch, which introduced many new features, tweaks & improvements, but also something REALLY BIG! We mean consoles. Finally, we were able to officially announce that Chernobylite will appear on the current generation and the next-gen!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2935744583752568383
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1016800/announcements/detail/2935744583749181154

So, what has been going with our work lately?


What does it mean for us? And more importantly, what does it mean for you?

We are an indie studio, based in Poland. Our Chernobylite team consists of around 30 people, so though we are not a tiny team, we are still quite a small group. This means we have to plan really carefully our steps during the development process, as many studios in the history of game dev overcalculated their workflow potential and stuck with more than could handle or even ditched the project.

That’s not going to happen with us, as we may be small, but we definitely have the necessary experience. That’s why you sometimes hear from us words like “to be confirmed” or “we’re not sure yet”. If we know we can make something happen (like the co-op mode), we would definitely tell you that. We have to be really careful not to promise you any feature we can’t deliver.

On the other hand, if you have followed our work for a longer period of time, you probably see that we’re adding much more to the game than previously promised. This is the outcome of two things: your feedback, which is extremely important to us, and our own ideas which we found possible to realise during the development process of Chernobylite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUwMsc7zhpM

So for you to know - our goal is not only to deliver what we have promised but to make the game as good as possible, even if that will mean more work. Sometimes it just takes more time!

After this long “intro”, let’s talk about the publisher. All in! Games will help us with several things. The most important one is the console versions of Chernobylite. We will definitely use their help to deliver our game into as many consoles, as we can. Of course, right now we’ve only promised the current generation and the next-gen, but we don’t want to cut off other possibilities. It’s just a matter of “can we do it right?” and “can we do it now?”

As for your questions that will probably arise: no, we don’t have any dates yet (we’re working on a timetable right now), but we do know it will be 2021, as soon as possible. No, we didn’t determine any pricing yet, that kind of detail needs a lot of attention and more time. We also don't specify which consoles will be included and which won't. Never say never, we just don’t have anything to say about other possible versions yet.



Okay, but here we are, talking to you via Steam about console versions of Chernobylite. Seems weird, right? Not exactly, as one of the outcomes of our cooperation with All in! Games will be bigger opportunities regarding the localizations. So most probably, our game will be translated into more languages than we have previously aimed for. This includes Italian, Japanese, Chinese (simplified) and Portuguese (Brazilian). We got a lot of questions about those languages, so we’re happy to meet your expectations!
With the last Mega Patch number 7, called “The Woman in the Red Dress”, the weapon arsenal was extended. Now you will be able to create a new gun and a flare.

This gun is Big Fu… oh, wait, no. That’s Chernobylite Blaster! If you’ll get your hand on that one, you’ll definitely feel the power of science! At least that sort of science which is focused on destruction. Let’s just say Igor is really happy about it and we hope you are too!

Remember the Blaster takes time to charge, the projectile moves kind of slowly, so think carefully when and how will you use this powerful weapon


The second one is a tricky weapon. It’s throwable and can be used to get access to new areas around the Zone. Anti-Chernobylite Burner won’t be easy to craft, but it’ll open multiple new opportunities for your character to both find some goodies during his missions, but also to just have more fun of exploration!

One way is to throw the flare on the obstacle...


And other is to just press “use” button when close to the obstacle


We couldn’t stay indifferent to your recent positive reviews. Thanks so much! Of course, we understand & respect all your feedback, even that negative, but we want to assure you that the game will only get better. And we’ve already said multiple times that we are in the final stage of the development process.



But if you enjoyed the game so far, we want to ask for your support - please write the review or update your previous one, especially if you wrote it months ago (the game has really changed for the better since then). We welcome all feedback, all opinions.. Really, every one of them matters to us!

Take care, stalkers!

General:

• We fixed a camera control issue that was showing up when quitting crafting tables with esc. Thanks @vannPL and @leroxik from Discord for finding this.
  
• The "A few things from an old hideout" task when ordered by Sashko (instead of Tarakan) did not end correctly. We fixed it.
  
• When we failed Olivier's training too many times (takedown or shadow), Olivier started shooting at us. We haven't laughed that much in a long time, but it was absolutely not our intention. We fixed it.