Before the read, if you have not already, make sure you check out last Fridays BTS video!





Our programming team is steadily preparing for the implementation of new features and additional improvements. Aside from bug-fixing across the board, work has progressed on enhancements for indoor lighting and the Cruiser motorcycle, and the base-building turret is nearing completion. The dropship has also been further refined. The dropship encounter that is triggered with the cargo drop is being developed, and the ability for them to release tear gas on players is also in progress. Encounters are being fine-tuned, particularly those in high- and mid-threat zones. Work on quests is progressing smoothly, and we can’t wait for you to try them out. Last but not least, development on armed NPCs continues.



The level design team has been preparing for new foliage distant LOD's and landscape rework across all B and Z sectors, as well as the D2 sector. Progress has also been made on the sawmill main building and the stone mine platform and machinery. Base-building palisades and other elements, along with a master material for all the elements and the new snow textures which will make it look much nicer.



The animation team has continued their work on weapon malfunctions and on the new trailer for the game, turret animations, and the dropship. Importantly, many bugs were squashed.

The hard surface team primarily focused on bug-fixing, alongside work on turret texturing, sport bike attachments, and the TEC1 relay and jammer.

The soft surface art team has been heavily focused on TEC1 NPCs and the trash ghillie suit.

Here's a quick look at the sport bike with attachments installed on him:





The sound team is currently working on sound design for the trailer and the MAC-10 weapon.



Nothing’s changed here. However, more and more new features are being provided for testing.



Our game designers are diligently working on everything related to the quest system, from bug-fixing to setting up quest rewards. They’re also establishing the workflow for the tutorial.

No Q&A this week as we have something special for you this week. We will be doing our first ever Dev stream! That's right, we will be streaming the game and answering your questions live on our Twitch channel. Our first Dev on will be the ever favorite Martin, our senior Game Designer. You have a question for him? Whether it is game related or what his favorite hair product is, leave it in the comments below and we will pick the best, polite ones. Make sure you are there!

We are all hands on the next bigger update with a lot of nice things coming your way, some of which you can already see through our Dev blogs. This, however, does not mean you will miss out on the regular Halloween update as we are still providing you with the much requested spookiness this season. For those of you that are with us for the first time here is what you can look forward to!




The haunted house is active again, and with it the ritual is here! If you need a refresher, here is the riddle to help you out.

“When the midnight darkness comes to pass,
the bullish sword will show the path.
Down you go, just follow the stairs,
if you're lucky enough, you'll meet your death.
Around the corner, you'll find a light,
the gates of hell will shine so bright.
Seven lit candles around a puppet's head
will without question resurrect the dead.
Add ten bones and a couple of eyes,
and you'll get the chance to stay alive.”

So explore the catacombs, solve the riddle, complete the ritual, and claim your prize!


What is a true Halloween without proper decorations? We have 3 new Jack-o-lanterns for you to craft and make your home a haunted house.



And do not be surprised if you see some flying around, they are friendly we swear.


As is tradition, with the seasonal update comes a new seasonal menu. So you can get in spooky season from the moment you start the game!





We have 2 new emotes for you as well! Both to scare and bamboozle other players. The Imposter:



Where you can roam around like a puppet until it is your time to strike!

And the play dead, for when you pray they will not notice you.



All that and more surprises await!

- Beda

You can't sit with us hombre.

• Link to original

Every girl I know has had the same nightclub experience.

• Link to original

Tough crowd.

• Link to original

Welcome to the zone traveler.

• Link to original

Highway to the danger zone.

• Link to original

Left if performance but right is style.

• Link to original

Tis but a flesh wound.

• Link to original

Nice.

• Link to original

That's not a knife, this is a knife.

• Link to original

Bearly made it out of there. (Yes the bear puns are back.)

• Link to original

And now for some videos,

First of all a shameless plug of our own creation, the Behind the scenes videos are back so check out the newest one!



Next up we have Fric with a nice little kill compilation. Do not have a clan war in the comments.



And last for now, congrats to Dr Grant on 6k subscriber milestone, check him out as well.




That is all for now, but who knows, these might become regular again.

-Beda

Our programmers have been hard at work on a variety of tasks. To start, they’ve been working on optimizations for post-processing effects, cloud shadows, and volumetric fog. Dropship encounters were also refined, and work has progressed on the armed NPCs. They’ve also continued to focus on the turrets, quests, quest world markers, and the cruiser vehicle. Additionaly the ladder-connecting functionality is being worked on. Last but not least, a lot of bug fixing was also conducted.



The level design team has really been at it! Last week, they prepared new foliage, made additional adjustments to the base building elements, and worked on landscapes for rock placements. The sawmill main building and hangar are being reworked, and distant LODs for the prison were modified, along with the machinery in the stone mine. Additionally, the team is making adjustments that will greatly improve indoor lighting in buildings.



The animation team has continued their work on the foliage, new pushing animations for bikes and the quad, and the new trailer. They’ve also put greater focus on bug fixing and preparing the Halloween content.

The hard surface team worked on the engine attachments for the quad, dirt bike, and cruiser, as well as on the malfunction graphics. Among other things, the tractor is being set up along with its dashboard and light emissions, and bike and RIS interactions are being improved. Also, work has continued on the turret models and texturing, which we teased in one of the recent dev updates, as well as on the rework of the improvised rifle and the TEC1 relay and jammer items.

The soft surface art team mainly continued their work from last week with the female inmate clothes, trash ghillie suit, and school bag, with added tasks related to the headlamp vertex color, armband slots, and high poly weapons for the tribal characters!

We have a small taste of the fan-favorite vehicle for you guys — the aforementioned dashboard of the almighty tractor!


(Here's hoping this speedometer will fare better than the RIS one when it launched...)



The sound team is still making sure that the sounds for the turret and for the quests pop.



These guys do what they do best — drink an inordinate amount of energy drinks, keep the cheaters at bay, and test out new features coming into the game.



Our game designers are keeping their heads down and ensuring that the quests are as awesome as they can be!


__________________

And now, it is time for Q&A:

• I'm fairly certain that's a regular person. There's no reason to put those fever dream gremlins as a reference.

• Combating cheaters is definitely our top priority. We'll make sure to eradicate the issue almost completely by the time we hit 1.0, but our current top priorities lie with fixing the most egregious bugs and introducing new features and reworks.

• Those will come a bit later. Our current focus is on the upcoming quests and new reworks that are coming in hot. We might have something in store for you in that regard very soon. ;)

• This will be part of the upcoming inventory rework. We understand the necessity for this improvement, and work has already begun.

• Those sound insanely cool and are definitely worth considering. However, they do seem like a big post-launch update, so it's best to be patient with this in particular.

See you next week!

Fratman

We promised you guys we will give you more news about the hordes as soon as we could, and on that promise we deliver. As you are reading this we have started testing new changes to the Horde system to adjust it properly according to your guys feedback and the issues we seen ourselves over time.

But not only us, as we want the community involvement in this as well. With the soft launch of Dropships we have some pretty good feedback, allowing us to adjust and tweak the feature before full release. So we are adjusting this approach to the horde changes, and all of our Alpha testers have access to the horde changes. And all of them will be adjusted according to their feedback.



The changes include both how and when the hordes get triggered and the puppet spawn proximity depending on the area. We do not want to share numbers at this point as the numbers are not what is important here, what is important is that it feels good and that is the feedback we want. To have it feel right. And on this we have our community and Alpha testers to rely on. For now let's have them check it out and break everything and adjust further as needed, and thank you all for your patience. You will hear from us soon!


- Beda

Our code wizards have been hard at work on a variety of things, ranging from the very technical, such as researching rendering performance and optimizing post-processing, to the very specific, like the headlamp, armband, and turrets. As for the upcoming features, work has also progressed on the new NPCs, and significant strides have been made with the implementation of the quest system and its corresponding user interface. The encounter system is also being further tweaked, with a greater focus placed on the basebuilding encounters. Last but certainly not least, it goes without saying that bug fixing also made up a significant portion of last week's workload.



The level design team is doing their part regarding the quest system as they are setting up quest books and quest boards on levels. Apart from that, work has also continued on several POIs such as the castle, quarry, and prison interior, as well as new distant LODs for the Tuđman bridge and the weapons factory. River banks are still being polished, new basebuilding wall concepts were explored, and much bug fixing and even optimization through asset cleanup has been conducted.



The animation team has been working on the foliage and tree canopies, as well as creating new pushing animations for bikes and the quad. Work has progressed on the new trailer and the end credits, bugs were squashed, and preparations are being made for the Halloween update.

The rest of the art team has been hard at work on the new malfunction UI assets, the RPK and AKM rework, and the texture polish for the improvised rifle. Turrets have undergone texturing, and new lights for the sports bike and the tractor have been developed. Also, the TEC-1 quest items that we mentioned last week? Well, take a look at them yourself at the end of this section.

The soft surface art team continued their work on the new female inmate clothing items and textures for the armband. They've also made significant progress with the garbage ghillie suit, and the masks and materials for the school bag. Additionally, we saw some high-poly screenshots of some interesting tribal-looking characters and their weapons...

As promised, have a look at the rough models for the TEC-1 jammer and relay items that will be part of the new quest system:





As with last week, the sound team’s work has continued on sound designs for the turret and for the quests.



The QA team has been testing new features and ensuring that cheaters are not running amok on the game’s servers.



Our game designers have been setting up the functionalities for the headlamp and the new push functionalities for the dirt bike, RIS, and the cruiser.


__________________

And now, it is time for Q&A:

• First off, shout out to the great franchises that you've mentioned! As for the turrets, dropships, sentries, etc., they are closely tied to the dystopian, near-future theme of the game. There's a literal implant in the base of your character's skull that can reanimate dead prisoners. The turrets themselves are added as an additional means of protecting your base from the dropship and other players when you are away from it.

• We completely agree with you, and you'll be pleased to know that the team is actively working on the quests (missions) and that we'll have them ready for the upcoming update. The update is going to be quite significant, and we can't wait for it to see the light of day! NPCs are coming with the 1.0 version.

• We completely understand your point of view, and you are mostly correct. However, since the majority of SCUM's in-game systems are greatly intertwined, a fix for an issue today might be compromised by the addition of a new feature or a rework of an existing feature tomorrow. Also, we want to push out these new features as soon as possible so we can release them, test them out internally and with the community, and modify/fix them so that they work properly when we hit 1.0. Make no mistake, we aim to fix the issues that have persisted and introduce a host of optimizations that will make the game run as smoothly as possible.

• We're aware of these occurrences with inadequate puppet spawns, and the team is actively working to fix them. As for the puppets phasing through geometry, it's a more complex issue, but we'll also get that sorted out.

• The inventory rework is on the table, and we'll have that sorted out in one of the upcoming updates.

See you next week!

Fratman

The programming team is working on a wide variety of features and tasks. They are working on everything from weapon malfunctions, armband and headlamp items, turrets, quests...and I even heard the sound of a familiar female AI assistant voice somewhere from their room. Apart from that, the team was also researching some of the level-of-detail discrepancies in the game and has been optimizing the rendering of the map. Last, but definitely not least, the team was also working on the base building ladder connecting and on additional anticheat functionalities.



Our level designers are still at it with some of the already mentioned reworks of the weapons factory and coal mine POIs. However, they've also been reworking the riverbanks and some of the base building elements, and have been setting some cliffs on the mountainsides.



Our animators are currently focused mostly on bugfixing and on creating a new trailer for the game. They've also completed the animations for the new SCAR weapon and are finishing up the end credits for the game, as well as the Halloween update.

The rest of the art team is working on a wide variety of things. Apart from bugfixing and overall optimizations, they are reworking the AKM and RPK weapons and are working on the Hellrider body for the Cruiser vehicle. Work has also continued on the base building turrets (shown in the screenshots below) and on reworking the dropship, as well as some TEC-1 quest items. The rear lights for the quad are being fixed, while new lights on the sports bike will be implemented.

The soft surface art team is working on the reworking the female inmate pants and shirt. While we're on the subject of clothes, they have also been working on a rework of the folded clothes as well. Work has also started on the armbands and on the armed NPCs.

As promised, have a look at the early work-in-progress screenshots of the turret in all its glory:











The sound team's focus was on creating sound designs for the turret and for the quests.



Nothing new to add here. Same as every week.



Work has continued on the design of the quest system, and work has started on the tutorial. They've also worked on the new weapons scope, as well as the armband functionality.


__________________

And now it is time for Q&A:

• As we've mentioned in the 'art' section, we're making preparations for the Halloween update which will go live sometime by the end of the month.

• There was an issue where some of the encounters that were expired were reactivated on server restart instead of being erased from the server's database. I know it's a bit technical, but that's the rough explanation.

• First off, you need to make sure that the dropship basebuilding encounter is enabled in the server settings and then your base needs to have the required amount of elements for the dropship to attack it.

• Do you have a mask equipped by any chance? When you have a mask on, then you are unable to eat. If that is not the case, then we'd like to kindly ask you to report it via the following link: https://scum.help.jagex.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new?ticket_form_id=22542144743185 As for the night, it lasts proportionately to the daytime (roughly 16:8). Nighttime provides an additional layer of challenge as you need to be adequately geared to do things during the night.

• The Brenner is a powerful being that cannot be killed as it literally has phoenix tears for blood. The idea behind him was to create a threat which cannot be defeated and which you can only outsmart or outmaneuver. That's why they can only be found in abandoned bunkers and why the ultimate prize is to get a sample of his blood which you can then use to heal yourself.

See you next week!

Fratman

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the dropship BB event would not start.
  
• Fixed the issue where you could not vault through some narrow windows.
  
• Fixed the issue where you could not install Motorbike battery after removing it.
  
• Fixed the issue where character foot would sometimes bug out.
  
• Fixed the issue where you could hear other players parachuting down.
  
• Fixed the issue where flying vehicle detection would sometime give false positive reports.
  
• Fixed the issue where #VisualizeVehicleTrajectory command would sometimes cause a client crash.
  
• Fixed the issue where players could sometimes pick up chests through closed doors.
  
• Fixed the issue where admin spawned Razors would follow admin drones.
  
• Fixed the issue where cut interaction would sometimes not work.
  
• Fixed the issue where you could not pick up weapons after removing weeds from the garden.
  
• Fixed the issue where puppets could spawn directly behind you.
  
• Fixed the issue where airplane would not apply parking brakes if a copilot was mounted.
  
• Fixed the issue where some character heads had too much texture brightness.
  
• Fixed the issue where red tool containers in abandoned bunkers could not be looted.

• You can now put only 100 items in trader cart per transaction/trade.
  
• Implemented higher bullet spread when shooting from vehicles, depending on the vehicle speed.
  
• Optimized encounter virtualization.
  
• #ScheduleWorldEvent BP_CargoDropEvent will now drop at the exact given coordinates.
  
• Added new commands to compensate the difference:
  #ScheduleCargoDrop
  
  This will spawn a cargo drop around the player that entered the command.
  
  #ScheduleCargoDrop steamid
  
  This will spawn a cargo drop around the player with the corresponding steamid.
  
  If there is no suitable cargo drop location with these commands due to BB flag area/restricted POIs you will receive a message. Couldn't find any suitable nearby location to schedule a cargo drop.

This will be a different format for this week as a lot of us are in the middle of moving offices to a bigger space. That means I also lost access to my notes for alot of it but still wanted to keep you guys posted, enjoy some photos of Matofski and Daruis looking at the mess we made.





In the meantime the rest of the team continues hammering away on their keyboards on both the new stuff and the bug fixing. As soon as I can access my notes again we will go back to our regular programming.

See you soon!

-Beda

You got a lot of news last week with the progress of the programming team, and mostly it continues on in this update as well. Work continues on quests and armed NPCs. With a little bit of bugfixing, mmore work on foliage simulation there is also something new brewing. Or better to say the return of the old. With the support of the animation team done, work has finally started on reintroduction of weapon malfunction. Will keep you posted on the progress.



Level design working hard on those optimizations and map reworks. Including sorting textures, replacing old assets, and touching up on POIS including airport, castle, etc.



Art team also optimizing as crazy. Animators working on new weapon animations, bugfixing and animating a new secret feature. All I can say is bases will be a bit safer.

Work continues on the cruiser bike, and new weapons. But also old weapons are getting a touchup.
2D is also working on some storyboard ideas as well.



The sound team work continues on ambient sounds and their implementation. With that it looks like we will be getting some updated guitar sounds as well.



QA/CM team doing business as usual: finding new bugs, testing new features, catching cheaters, and staying in contact with all of you. Also cooking up something that will interest all of you but more on that next week!



Questing system, questing system and questing system. It is almost as if that is all they do. They also been discussing the schedule on future updates.


__________________

And now it is time for Q&A:

• Brenner indeed does get stunned after a certain damage point for 10 seconds. Which should give you enough time to escape.
  
  It is a cool idea we toyed with as well, but it is a lot of work as well. So the priority right now is on finishing the features planned for the full release.
  
  Unfortunately not currently possible as it would break the snapping and stability system completely. We had those cases in the past.

• Yes indeed, It is still in the works and will be so until it is ready.

• Chopper is the one we can bring back the fastest at this point. And the faster we can bring it back the quicker we can get on other vehicles. New weapons will arrive as well.

• Something like it is planned in the future. In what form and how exactly is still something that is in discussion.

• As for the first one we agree that camo is an issue at this point, which is why it has been disabled for the past 4 years. What you are experiencing with trees and bushes sometimes is the anti 3rd person peaking happening but long distance. Optimizations that are in the works will take care of that problem.
  
  As for the other thing, will forward it to the QA guys to check it out.

Have an amazing week all!

Beda