Today's update focuses on improvements. SCP: Secret Laboratory is an asymmetrical game with many moving parts, and some parts of the game have begun to show their age. Additionally, some of our most recent additions, though well-received, show clear room for improvement, especially balance-wise. We've decided to do a polishing pass over different parts of the game to smooth out the user experience and make the game a little more fun for everyone.

So, without further ado, here's what we've been working on!

SCP-096 was the highlight of the Scopophobia update, receiving a full revamp in visuals, audio, and gameplay. So far, SCP-096's reception has been primarily positive. However, we feel that they currently aren't in a balanced state, and the poll we released on August 21 tells us that the community feels the same way. As a result, with 10.1, we've done a balance and polishing pass on SCP-096.

Going into this update, we've operated under the philosophy that SCP-096 was unbalanced, not overpowered. 096 performed far too well against groups of players, most of whom could inflict no permanent damage upon them, but they were too weak against small squads of experienced players who could easily kill them in a vulnerable phase without SCP-096 having any way to fight back.

Our goal is to shift some of this power around by allowing SCP-096 to remain powerful across the match, but never strong enough that they could ignore entire groups of people attacking them, nor weak enough that a small squad could terminate them without any way for 096 to fight back. As with all playable SCPs, we've endeavored to make SCP-096 feel like a powerful, threatening force in all scenarios, instead of having them being overwhelmingly strong in group fights and far too weak in smaller skirmishes.

• SCP-096's maximum rage time has been capped at 30 seconds.
  
• SCP-096 now has a HUD element that allows them to gauge how long they will remain enraged, as well as the remaining cooldown on their Charge ability.

Currently, SCP-096's baseline rage amount starts at 15 seconds. For every target they gain after they enter rage, that duration increases by 3 seconds. There currently isn't any cap on how long SCP-096 can be enraged for.

Our goal with scaling rage was to allow SCP-096's power scale depending on the size of the engagement they entered into, but in practice, this made them unstoppable in large fights, where 10 or more players seeing 096 meant that they would be enraged, in some cases, for well over a minute. In combination with 096's scaling shield, this meant that it was essentially impossible to inflict any real damage to SCP-096. It's our hope that our change to maximum rage duration will allow 096 to remain powerful in group engagements while still having to think about when to flee and when to fight.

We've also implemented a HUD element for SCP-096 that allows them to gauge how long they have left in their rage, as well as the remaining cooldown on their charge. Strategy is currently centered around 096's rage state, and SCP-096 currently doesn't have any way to know how long their rage will remain active except through intuition.

We feel that these adjustment will compensate for SCP-096's reduced survivability by allowing an intelligent player to handle engagements with more information, and granting them a better sense of when to decide when to retreat from an engagement.

• SCP-096 now becomes blind to non-targets as soon as they begin their windup phase, rather than once they become fully enraged.
  
• When you become a target of SCP-096, either by seeing its face or damaging it, you will receive a distinct audio cue.

SCP-096 is currently unable to see non-target players while enraged - this means that if you haven't seen 096's face or damaged them, then they will not be able to see you. However, even during their windup period, they can still see normal players, allowing them to kill humans who are hiding and looking away simply by looking around during the windup period to see where these players are moving to.

Our original rationale for SCP-096's target visibility is to make them a deadly threat to targets, but harmless against those who have not provoked it. 096 being able to see players during windup and kill them even while these players hadn't seen or damaged SCP-096 went against our philosophy, and it felt unfair to die to SCP-096 even when you had played correctly.

With SCP-096 becoming much more sensitive to sight in Scopophobia, we've seen many instances of players feeling that it's not obvious enough when they become a target, and in many cases, not even knowing when they provoked SCP-096. While it may not completely fix SCP-096's targeting issues, the audio cue should go a long way towards transparency to human players.

SCP-096's base health and shield have received significant changes.

• Base health increased to 1500 (up from 500).
  
• Shield regeneration reduced to 5 per second (down from 10/s).
  
• Shield scaling reduced to 70 per target (down from 200/target.)
  
• Maximum shield reduced to 350 (down from 500.)

With 096's rework, we introduced the concept of Hume Shield. This is a form of AHP (artificial health points) that absorbs all damage taken. SCP-096 currently possesses a maximum of 500 HS. With each new target, 096 immediately gains 200 current and maximum shield. Shield resets to 500 at the end of their rage.

Our intent with this system was to allow 096 to have a pool of health that would allow them to enter engagements with the certainty that they would be able to withstand some punishment, but it's become clear that our design fell short of this goal. SCP-096's shields are far too powerful against large groups, where they can gain over 2000 shields, and they're too weak against small engagements where the combined damage of armed players can quickly shred their defenses and kill them before they can fight back.

With this patch, we wanted to increase their baseline survivability while reducing their strength against large groups of armed players. SCP-096 should always feel some degree of threat from any engagement, regardless of size, but the large amount of shields received per target made this difficult. At the same time, human players should be able to inflict permanent damage to SCP-096 with coordinated fire and movement, but also shouldn't be able to kill them outright in a single rage cycle. A large baseline health pool is able to provide this balance adequately, and our playtesting has shown that it works well for SCP-096, too.

It's our hope that these health changes will allow SCP-096 to survive small and mid-sized engagements more consistently, while feeling more danger from larger-sized groups.

These decisions were made based on firsthand experience, player feedback, and the results from our survey on August 21. Many iterations were playtested, including every option presented in our survey, and we think this version of SCP-096 will be a substantial improvement.

As with all balancing, everything we've covered here is subject to change based on how well these revisions accomplish our intent of creating an SCP-096 that's more fun and less frustrating. We'll be keeping a close eye on the game and its community going forward, and making further decisions from there. Regardless of the result, we've learned a lot about how better to implement shield mechanics going forward, especially scaling ones.

Version 10.1 includes the following bugfixes and improvements:

• Players can now choose a ragdoll cleanup time in their settings, after which ragdolls will despawn. This system integrates correctly with SCP-049, who will see ragdolls for the entire time that they are eligible to revive.
  
• Ragdolls now teleport in elevators.
  
• Keybindings have been added for noclip and the client console.
  
• Keybinding names are now translatable.
  
• The Create Game button appears once more, but now only displays information about how to host a server. As with its initial removal, the tcs client console command can be used to show an option to host a local server regardless.

• SCP-096's swipe attacks no longer end early after breaking one window.
  
• SCP-096's legs are no longer stuck in the "falling" pose after jumping.
  
• SCP-096's ragdoll no longer gets stuck in the air, and correctly displays name and cause of death.
  
• SCP-096's mesh bounding box has been enlarged, and should now correctly render on all aspect ratios.
  
• Fixed items falling into the void when dropped between elevators and their connecting rooms.
  
• Fixed being unable to teleport to the Surface Zone's heavy gate when it's open.
  
• Fixed an erroneous anticheat death caused by the artwork in the Class-D cells.
  
• Fixed stamina depleting when aiming with the sprint key held.
  
• Fixed a graphical error on the player list when playing in a server with many people.
  
• SCP-049 can now correctly revive ragdolls after they've fallen a certain distance from their death point.
  
• SCP-049 can no longer revive old ragdolls of players who die, respawn, and then die again.
  
• Fixes towards doors occasionally appearing to be raised off of the ground.
  
• Re-implemented bullet casings ejected from fired guns.
  
• Fixed normal lighting remaining active in some rooms when it should be disabled for recurring October decorations.
  
• Fixed several issues in the facility guard ragdoll.
  
• Plants in the greenhouse no longer glow in the dark.

This section is for plugin developers and server owners. You can safely skip this if you don't care about changes to the game's code.

• Added a RoomInformation component to every room in the game, which features data about the room's type and zone.
  
• The HitboxIdentity component now uses an enum, HitBoxType, to track hitbox identity, instead of a hardcoded string.
  
• Arms now have their own hitbox identity, instead of being classified as LEG.
  
• Updated several third-party assets.
  
• The Surface Zone can now be darkened.
  
• Added several new server configuration options to automatically display broadcasts when decontamination starts, as well as the warhead being armed or detonated.

We've worked extensively on this update, and we're hopeful that it'll improve balance in several needful areas throughout SCP: Secret Laboratory. With these aspects of the game now hopefully complete and refined, we can continue work on our next major updates, which we hope to share with you very soon.

Thank you for your support, and have fun!

Hello Everyone,

Happy Halloween! Nostra here, Feedback Manager at Northwood Studios. On behalf of everyone here at Northwood Studios, we hope that you are enjoying our new Halloween seasonal update. With the new addition of SCP-330, new models, and new sounds, the Feedback Team would like to hear what you have to say. Thank you for playing our new update and remember: please don’t be selfish and just take two please!

See you in the facility,

~Northwood Studios

Today we are releasing a small balance update for our SCP: Secret Laboratory Halloween Event, which focuses on some slight adjustments to SCP-330 (the "Take Only Two" bowl of candies), as well as other minor tweaks.

The explosive candy was incredibly fun in the first days of the Halloween event, but its destructive power against SCPs was quickly discovered. Today's update limits the pink candy damage dealt to the SCPs while maintaining similar destructive power against other human classes. We understand if our decision won't be appreciated by all of you, but the Halloween update will continue for about a week, and the pink candy already affects the balance of the game to an extent where SCPs are afraid to attack humans classes. The exact changes are:

• The lethal explosion range is slightly decreased (by 15%).
  
• The maximum damage a candy can deal to humans is now 200 HP.
  
• The damage is tripled for Zombies (one candy can deal up to 600 HP).
  
• SCP damage calculation is new and improved! For every 100 HP worth of damage an explosion would deal to a human, it will take 10% of the SCP's max health.
  
• The spawn chance for the pink candy has been reduced by half.

We've buffed almost all candies, to make them more useful.

• [[b]Blue

[/b]] Stamina addition increased from 15% to 50%

[[b]Red

[/b]] Health addition increased from 15 HP to 35 HP

[[b]Green

[/b]] Unchanged, the Invigorated Effect is given for 10 seconds.

[[b]Purple

[/b]] Artificial health addition increased from 15 AHP to 25 AHP

[[b]Yellow

[/b]] Health regeneration is no longer linear, it now starts fast and decays over time.
[/list]

As requested, we have re-added Mr. Nutty chuckle.

It's almost Halloween, and you know what that means! As the end of October draws closer, it's time for the facility to get a little scarier. This year, we've prepared a temporary update for you, featuring reskins, new decorations, gameplay changes, and more.

These have been active since the beginning of October. During the month of October, the facility will have a spine-chilling flair, including darkened lighting, pumpkins, candles, and other season-appropriate decorations.

These decorations were implemented automatically — which is why you were able to see them before this update — but they’ve received some extra adjustments here. Keep an eye out later this year, too: Halloween isn't the only time of year decorations will appear in the facility.

Note: We're working on an option that would allow server owners to disable recurring decorations. This already partially exists as a configuration option, but it's not fully functional. For the time being, we hope it isn’t too intrusive!

Back in 2018, the Halloween update included changes to the in-game models of SCPs and several human classes. In 2019, Megapatch II may have taken the spotlight, but this year we've once again re-done some models for the holiday season. Most of them are brand new, but you may recognize some making a return.

We've also made some changes to several of the game’s audio assets. Players can expect to hear different sounds when they enter a round, and sound cues where there previously were none — keep your eyes and ears open!



This was by far the most requested change for the Halloween update. For this event only, you can find SCP-330, Take Only Two, somewhere in the facility. It's a bowl of wrapped, seasonal candies, and every one of them that you eat could help or hinder you in a different way.

Take no more than two, please.

For the time being, SCP-330 will remain unique to the 2020 Halloween event. Depending on future feedback, especially impact on gameplay, re-implementation and recurrence could be discussed internally. In the meantime, treat it like an interesting side feature for the holiday!



While making changes for the Halloween update this year, we continued working on and refining version 10.1, which will include SCP-096's rebalance and a plethora of fixes. We're currently planning to release this version very soon after the end of the Halloween event (ideally within a day), but this may change depending on testing results. Until then, enjoy the spooky changes we’ve prepared for Halloween!

We based this update on version 10.0.4. Many changes that are in version 10.1 won't be visible here. This doesn’t indicate that the changes don’t exist, but rather that the Halloween update is built on a version that we know is stable.

• Re-enabled the Halloween achievement, which is awarded at the end of the round
  
• Fixed some lights not correctly being disabled during October
  
• Disposed of a body in the vents

"The game isn't scary," we hear people say
"It just isn't dark; all the rooms are so bright"
But we heard your complaints, so starting today
We've made the game spooky, to fill you with fright

You've seen some already, they litter the halls
Candles and pumpkins and flickering lights
Now we've made them darker, and dirtied the walls
And packed the facility with fearsome sights

So many people in costumes, looking for treats
And for this next little thing, we think you'll be fans
A bowl packed with candy, filled with sugary sweets
But don't take too many, or you might lose your hands

Now fear the darkness, close up your door
Because the monsters inside all have costumes now, too
From doctor to statue to doggos and more
Cross your fingers, and pray they don’t find you

But you've been reading enough, it's now time to go
So flick off the lights and turn on fullscreen
It's the update for October, and we want you to know
That we wish you a happy and healthy Halloween.

Hey everyone!

Nostra here, the Feedback Manager at Northwood Studios. On behalf of Northwood Studios, we hope that you are enjoying Scopophobia and 10.0.3’s changes and improvements. In our ongoing effort to improve quality of life, squashing bugs, and adding new features, we would like to hear your feedback on our new small update. In the future, when 096 is re-balanced, we will post another form asking how you feel about the changes so please stay tuned for that. Below are the links to the form, translated into many different languages so we can hear voices from our non-english communities.

---

Thank you for playing SCP: Secret Laboratory, and see you in the facility.
~Northwood Studios

Today we are releasing version 10.0.4 of SCP: Secret Laboratory. This is a small update which is mostly focused on some anticheat adjustments.

Whilst not contained within this patch, we are aware of an issue concerning some missing files from the server build. We are currently investigating this and should hopefully have a fix ready soon. We would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who brought this issue to our attention!

SCP: Secret Laboratory is always changing. Version 10.0.3 is our latest update to the game, bringing with it some stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as introducing a new feature for SCP voice chat. You can find the patch notes below.

When playing as an SCP, voice chat is often critical to your team's success. Players use it to communicate their wins, their losses, and everything in-between. It also has other uses, like letting your teammates know that you've revived someone as SCP-049 or asking them for directions. It's a very important part of playing an antagonistic role.

Something we've noticed lately is the confusion that stems from memorizing your teammates. Every SCP is different, with the exception of SCP-939 being able to spawn twice in a match, and having to memorize what role each player fills can be stressful, especially in the heat of a fight or escaping from an engagement that went wrong.

To fix this, we've added graphical indicators to represent what class a teammate is playing. Whenever a player uses voice chat as an SCP, an image representing their role will display next to their name for all other SCPs. This should play a big part in eliminating the frustration of memorizing your teammates, and even allows teammates that don't speak to show their role by tapping their push-to-talk key!



This extends to all SCP classes, including instances of 049-2 or any SCPs that are created after the start of the round by server moderators or plugins. When a teammate starts talking, you'll immediately know who they are and what role they're playing.

Note that this feature is only available for SCPs right now - other methods of voice chat that display names, such as radio and spectator chat, won't display any icons. This was a deliberate choice, to preserve the uncertainty and paranoia created over radio. If you've been alone for a while, and you suddenly hear somebody asking if anyone is on the radio, you can't be certain whether or not they're an ally, or an enemy trying to lure you out.

Version 10.0.3 features a plethora of fixes and adjustments, which are as follows:

• Fixed SCP-096 being unable to leave the intercom room.
  
• Fixed the Epsilon-11's flashlight not appearing when dropped on the ground.
  
• Fixed the Hemorrhage status effect causing damage to stationary players who were holding their Sprint key.
  
• Fixed an issue causing ammo pickups to become "ghost items" if not all of the ammunition was taken from the pickup.
  
• Fixed a duplicate RID in the Entrance Zone.
  
• Improvements to nickname sanitization.
  
• Fixed an exploit causing SCP-079's power to not drain at the correct rate when using a speaker while doors were locked.
  
• Fixed the Motion Blur setting not applying in-game.
  
• Fixed non-civilian classes obtaining the "High on the Wings of Caffeine" achievement while passing the escape boundary with SCP-207 active.
  
• Fixed the audio effect played when attempting to fire with an empty magazine playing twice.
  
• The TIX INFO RA command now requires RespawnEvents permission.
  
• The game client should now work on Wine for Linux players.
  
• MTF Scientists now properly spawn with a disarmer.
  
• Added unique messages for escaping while disarmed, instead of showing the normal escape message for your team.
  
• Players no longer collide with generator doors, which fixes several out-of-bounds exploits.
  
• Anticheat improvements and fixes.

This segment is for plugin developers. You can safely skip these notes if you aren't involved with the creation of plugins or mods.

• Implements the ForceCuff syncvar on the Handcuffs class. When enabled, the player will be disarmed, even if no other players have interacted with them.
  
• Steamworks has been updated.

We're still working on the balance of SCP-096. Our survey, run in late August of this year, has been very helpful in diagnosing some of SCP-096’s problems and getting the community's input about them. We've now playtested all of the options we presented in the survey, and we'll likely be releasing a more detailed post soon describing our balancing process and our final decisions. In the meantime, however, keep an eye out.

This is a small update, but it may be a significant one. Being able to see teammates' roles as an SCP should provide a significant improvement to teamwork potential, and we've fixed several long-standing bugs with the game. We hope you keep enjoying SCP: Secret Laboratory!

Hello, everyone!

We hope that you've been enjoying Scopophobia's release so far. The team has been hard at work squashing bugs and making adjustments; we hope that the improvements offered in 10.0.1 have made the game more enjoyable for you. One of the most challenging aspects of Scopophobia was the rework of the title character, SCP-096. We've heard your feedback, and after extensive internal debate we have a few ideas we think you'll like. We've prepared a brief survey for you to fill out so we can get your thoughts on this.

A link to the survey is provided here!

A note from our Game Design Manager:


Thank you for your time, and have fun!

~Northwood Studios

10.0.1, our latest refinement version, introduced some new bugs that we've now addressed. While this didn't have any major consequences, it resulted in an issue related to SCP-096's health scaling, as well as locking 079 into place if they navigated into the containment hallway of SCP-012. 10.0.2 fixes these problems and a few more, bringing the following changes:

• SCP-096 can now charge through the heavy gate on the Surface Zone.
  
• Crosshair textures, as well as the texture of SCP-914’s settings panel, now remain legible even with low texture quality settings.
  
• Slight performance optimizations.
  
• Replaced several textures around the map with higher-quality versions.

These texture adjustments were erroneously featured in the changelogs for our last version, but didn't actually ship with it. We've included them properly in 10.0.2. You can find an example below - the left image is new, while the right image is old.

• Fixed an issue causing SCP-096 to not gain artificial health whenever they acquired a new target
  
• Fixed death reasons using the server's localization instead of the client's
  
• Fixed an issue causing doors to leave no destroyed versions when they were destroyed with a grenade
  
• Fixed an issue causing SCP-079's view to become stuck in SCP-012's room when navigating to it through cameras
  
• Fixed checkpoint doors occasionally failing to play their closing sound
  
• Fixes towards a bug causing SCP-096 to become locked in their "Try Not To Cry" state
  
• Fixes SCP-173 being able to move freely while blinded by a flash grenade
  
• Fixed flash grenades flashing players through walls, doors, and other objects
  
• Fixed item pickups not appearing in rooms whose doors are destroyed before being opened.
  
• Fixed being able to display the inventory screen before the round has started.
  
• Various anticheat improvements and several exploit fixes.
  
• Improved HTTP requests on Windows, and fixed HTTP requests on Linux servers.

• Updated NorthwoodLib.
  
• Doors now have a Vector2 variable called PrySpeed, which dictates the speed that SCP-096 moves through them while prying. This is used to allow 096 to move through heavy gates whose sizes are larger than normal (including the Surface Zone’s heavy gate.)

This was a much smaller patch than version 10.0.1, but was necessary to assemble and release a (slightly delayed) hotfix in order to address the issues it introduced. We're sorry for any trouble this may have caused, and we'll be trying to make steps to ensure that such an incident won't happen again.

Thank you for your continued support! It means the world to us. Keep your eyes open for upcoming tweaks and balance changes in the near future.

Hey - since Scopophobia’s release, we’ve been continually patching issues that have cropped up, as well as fixing some long-time bugs. Because the release has actually been quite stable, we’ve taken our time with it, but here is version 10.0.1, featuring the following changes:

Main Menu

• The "Create Server" option is now hidden by default.* The -scs startup argument will cause it to be visible on startup, and the new client commands cst and tcs toggle its visibility on and off. See the bottom of the announcement for more information on this decision.
  
• The News tab now properly displays news entries with more than 4,000 characters.
  
• "Light Rendering Mode” has been renamed to “Render Lights.”
  
• The option to play using DIrectX12 no longer appears if the OS is not Windows 10.

In-Game Menu

• Adds a Server Info option to the ESC menu, which displays the current server's pastebin info.

Commands

• Adds the "RIDLIST" client command, which displays a list of all room ids.
  
• Adds the "PLAYERINVENTORY" remote admin command, which displays all items that a player is carrying. Aliases: "playerinv", "pinv", "pinventory". Accepts player IDs as an argument.
  
• Adds the "ROOMTP" remote admin command, which teleports a player to a specific RID. ALiases: "rtp", "ridtp".
  
• Adds the "CASSIEWORDS" remote admin command, which displays a list of all valid CASSIE words.
  
• Adds the “STARTHOST” client command, which starts a local server. Aliases: “startserver”
  
• Improvements to the "CMDBIND" client console command.
  
• Remote Admin’s “HELP” command now opens a wiki page, instead of a Google Docs document.

Map

• Removed SCP-096's containment chamber's chair - its model was very inefficient, and resulted in a number of anticheat problems and glitches.

• Fixed an issue where, if overcharge was initiated shortly before the end of the round, it would occur in the following round.
  
• SCP-096 now properly unloads when a player is forceclassed from 096 to 079.
  
• Fixed an oversight preventing SCP-939 from seeing moving human players unless they were jumping. This should provide a significant buff to 939’s current performance.
  
• Fixed a variable issue which prevented SCP-096's shield effect from being visible.
  
• Fixed the scaling of SCP-096's ragdoll to match their actual body size.
  
• SCP-173 can now correctly move in darkened rooms as long as a player doesn't see them with a flashlight or NV scope.
  
• Fixed resolution related text disappearing.
  
• Fixed Pause Menu elements being positioned strangely on ultrawide resolutions.
  
• Fixed stuck spots involving pedestals in SCP-096's and SCP-173's containment chamber.

• Major anticheat rework: anticheat now only kills players as a last resort.
  
• Fixed players being killed when doors closed on them.
  
• Authentication thread is now exited properly.
  
• The Jump and Sneak keys now have functionality in noclip.
  
• Various other security-related fixes.

Note: These are only important for plugin developers and feature no significant changes in-game. This is by no means all-inclusive; our code is changing constantly, and these are only the most significant changes.

• Removes the PickupInfo struct. Synchronized pickup information (ID, durability, and so on) is now stored directly as SyncVars on the pickup script.
  
• Adds a WeaponModifiers data struct, used to track the weapon mods on dropped guns.

• The FlickerableLight system has been reworked. Rooms have a FlickerableLightController component below the root room itself. This replaces the string system, and handles synchronization automatically. Lights can be turned off in individual rooms with the ServerFlickerLights(float seconds) function.

We are, of course, not done making changes to 10.0.0. There are still changes we want to make, and those changes are on the way, especially regarding balance and 096 (which we’ve been extensively discussing internally to try and decide on a solution that’s healthy in the long-term and not just a temporary fix for 096’s issues.)

We’re also aware of an issue affecting the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese translations (among others) that causes some characters to render as blank boxes. We’ve run into some complications in fixing it, but we’re still working on fixing the problem on our end and will hopefully have a fix for it out ASAP.

Keep an eye out for some upcoming changes in the near future, and stay healthy and safe this August.

* This is because local servers have continually become more unstable, and supporting changes specifically for them both segregates the game’s code and is difficult to sustain with our current team. The option still exists for those who use it, but we wanted to make it clear that the option is not our recommended default.

If you use the Create Server feature often, we highly recommend you set up a dedicated server! Making a dedicated server is usually fast and easy, and you can host it on the same computer you use to play the game. You can follow one of our Steam guides for instructions, or download the SCP: Secret Laboratory Dedicated Server tool on Steam.