After getting a few requests I decided to add a pause menu. You may be thinking "what kind of moron would make a game without a pause menu?". I'm that moron, but let me explain.

I wanted to avoid situations where players could pause the game, and see all of the letters on screen, and effectively cheat, and I thought the runs would be short enough for most players to not really need a pause function. Turns out I was wrong. But hey, whatever, I've been wrong before and I will be wrong again.

My solution is... fine? I don't love it but it gets the job done. When pausing the screen goes black so you can't see the enemies. The dumb part is that to unpause its a two step process. You have to click "unpause" then click your Orb. The clicking of the orb is necessary otherwise you would instantly teleport to wherever your mouse position is, and the chances of you taking damage from that is like 100%. Your mouse HAS to be where the Orb is.

Anyway, you probably don't care about all of that. The only thing that matters is you can pause the game, unpause, edit settings from the pause menu, and quit from the pause menu.

I desperately hope this doesn't break anything.
EDIT: Its me from the future. It broke a ton of stuff.

Enjoy.

Hey everyone,

Here is a small hotfix for some issues that came up in yesterday’s patch

• Fixed issue with spear storage where you could add more spears than were visible
  
• Fixed textures on held story item when held by another player in multiplayer
  
• Increased range and brightness of spotlight
  
• Improved texture streaming on story notes
  
• Fixed story notes not being readable on lowest texture quality settings
  
• Fixed issue where recipe for crafting fire arrows would prioritize molotov’s if not enough arrows were on mat
  
• Fixed issue with the available recipe UI not properly showing the first time the player opens their inventory
  
• Fixed missing fish in streams
  
• Fixed an issue where yachts wouldn’t unload correctly when player was not near them

As always, please continue to post your bug reports and feedback in the Discussions area of the Community Hub.

Optimization and terrain

Hey everyone, since it's been a minute since my last update, buckle up for a longer than normal update on KF.

So as most of the main features are in playable states our next main task is to start putting all the pieces together to build the MVP (minimum viable product). This means we need to build out the starting HUB and first playable zone. I started with a simple block out in order to start gauging size/playtime/layout concepts. A block out is exactly as it sounds: gray boxes that serve as placeholders for art that will come later. When I dropped our current boat into the scene to start checking things out I noticed that our framerates were much lower than I anticipated. It wasn’t that it was super low (I was getting around 70-75 fps) but with so little geometry in the scene it was obvious that something wasn’t right. So that started a round of testing, basically looking into what could be the cause. Obviously it shouldn’t have been the boxes since they’re literally boxes with a default material. I quickly ruled that out, so that left me with only 2 other options. It was either our ocean shader (unlikely) or something on our boat was totally unoptimized. A quick check on the ocean confirmed that there was something wrong with the boat, which made sense.

The breakdown of boat checking was pretty straightforward but time consuming. Basically we had to turn off each individual component in the boat one by one to try and track down the culprit. Luckily Unity added a statistics checker to the Editor at some point in the last few years (I'm not sure when this was included, but boy did it turn out to be a time saver here). Previously we would have had an extra step of compiling and running the game then checking the profiler as we turned things off/on to look for large changes in frame rates.

The big offender turned out to be our tacklebox. The original plan for the bait crafting system was to allow players to use individual pieces of the bait in order to do some fancy component based crafting. This meant that our modeler needed to leave each small component of each bait object as a separate mesh/rig. Any of you that know anything about how a game engine draws things onto a screen can probably tell where things went wrong. In order to save some development time we had simplified the crafting system down to just set recipes, so the individual component pieces of a bait were no longer needed, but we neglected to combine the mesh components back up into single objects. So the tacklebox held a copy of each bait, which have many many individual meshes which was costing us many many more draw calls than were necessary.

Once we figured that out, the solution proved to be pretty simple. We could have cracked open Maya (the modeling software we use) and combined each bait into a single object there, but with our recent studio restructure we don’t currently have a dedicated modeler (I haven't touched a modeling program in at least 15 years). I did know however that there were several tools available on the Unity asset store that allow us to combine meshes inside the editor. So rather than re-teach myself Maya I grabbed one of the tools and got to work combining meshes.

I’m happy to report that after the completion of that task our framerates for the blockout scene are very high (I’m getting +/- around 270 pretty consistently). With that out of the way it was then time to start looking at how we wanted to build out the world.

The original plan for the world was a big open ocean with lots of little islands with secrets and fishing coves for you to explore. That’s still the plan, but without a modeler we need to get creative on how we’re going to bring that to life. Before she left, our awesome modeler who’s now over at WizKids made some starter islands for us. Which is what you’ve played around with in the demo. While these are great, without her around to make more, we’d be kind of limited to the environments you’d get to experience and I personally think that the world would get kind of stale pretty quickly. After a bit of brainstorming I settled on what I hope is a solution. Unity has a terrain system, which with a bit of tweaking I thought might work for us to unique/interesting islands out of.

So off I jumped into the “fun” world of Unity terrain. Yes I put quotes around fun on purpose. It’s… an interesting system to say the least. But after overcoming a bit of a steep learning curve, specifically dealing with keeping our new found gains in frame rate, I’m also happy to report that this is a solution that is working. My first few test islands are looking good. I’ve got a LOD system in and working, so now all the beautiful art that our modeler provided doesn’t slow our frame rate down to a crawl (that was an initial problem I had to work out).
So yeah, that’s where we’re at. Things are coming together. It’s a bit slower than I had hoped, but our progress continues. Thanks for keeping the faith. I know KF has taken longer than you or we want, but I’m grinding hard to land this beast.

Until next time.

Hello, stalkers! We have an important update 1.00.41.




☢️ Raid system added. Now you can choose the raid you want in the briefing room. Available after completing the first level. Attention: during the raid, you won't be able to save, and everything you collect will remain there if you die! Therefore, I recommend saving in the briefing room before going on a raid.
☢️ Added a raid location "Abandoned Village".
☢️ Added a raid location "Military Town".
☢️ Added a raid location "Tunnels".
☢️ Added a new anomaly "Slime".
☢️ Added a new anomaly "Star".
☢️ Added a new anomaly "Whirlwind".
☢️ Added a new monster "Hell Hound".
☢️ Added a new faction "Doomsday", currently only encounterable in raids.


🔸 Now, when you use an injection, your hand is not tied to the syringe, and you can continue combat actions. This should eliminate the FPS drops that some players reported.
🔸 Injection slots in the pouch have been improved. Now it's easier to place or take an injection.
🔸 Added exit confirmation in the PDA when pressing the corresponding button.
🔸 Weapons now have a shooting range, depending on their technical characteristics.
🔸 Minor fixes and improvements.


⚠️ Adding the "Sortie" mode. In this mode, the location will be chosen randomly and will offer higher difficulty, especially in fights with Zone factions. If in raids you can replenish supplies, in sorties it will be harder to do so. In sortie mode, you will be able to obtain new types of weapons, which are also in development.
⚠️ Trading.
⚠️ Repair and more detailed weapon customization.

Remember, stalkers: The Zone is constantly changing, and each of your ventures into it is a new challenge. Stay alert and cautious. Good luck! Many interesting things are still ahead of you!

p.s. With your permission, I'll take a couple of days off and finally get some sleep. Working 14-15 hours a day on the update is getting a bit tough.

RealFlight version 10.10.075 is now available as a free release for all Evolution users. It is a small update fixing the appearance of some custom aircraft.

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Improvements/Fixes

• [84276] Fixed a couple issues where some custom models had incorrect transparency and/or portions of their texture incorrectly appeared completely black

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How to Get It
Steam will detect the new version and automatically update RealFlight when it thinks your computer is not very busy. You can trigger the update manually if desired by completely restarting Steam. Right-click the Steam icon in your system tray and select Exit. Once everything closes, run Steam again, and the update should complete.

Here we are with a new hotfix guys!, WE HAVE FINALLY FOUND THE BUG DURING WHEELIE!!

We really appreciated the supportive bikelife community in these days and thanks to their feedbacks we were finally able to take the wheelies to a new level!


Changelog:

- Solved "no power" response during wheelies
- Improved wheelie balance point
- bugfix audio positioning in multyplayer
- Dust trail VFX optimization
- Bugfix the front suspension make accelerating the bike during stoppies
- Improved weeling jerk management in race attitude to have less sudden wheelies
- Improved turning on wheelie
- Bugfix bike not stopped on spawn point

The feedback form button for this playtest is enabled on the game's title screen (the link can also be found in your playtest email).

Here's an extra link to this feedback form: https://forms.gle/zetXBZ6CVeHgSXbY7


Please fill in this form if possible once you have finished playtesting. Your feedback is essential to the ongoing development of our game!

Reduced the difficulty of the final boss and improved event triggering in the Human Kingdom area.

Hi!

Firstly, a huge thank you for everyone that has been enjoying Risk of Rain Returns! All of us at Hopoo Games have been watching the streams, videos, tweets (X's??) and messages and have been blown away by the response to our latest game.

Today we have an update on an upcoming control feature, and patch 1.0.2 - mainly focussed on bug/crash fixes. Here's a full list of changes:

• Fixed Cremator being allowed to spawn in certain locations which it was intended to be blacklisted from.
  
• Made HAN-D trial description correctly say 200 pts instead of 125 required.
  
• Changes the following stage variants to fix abnormalities: Ancientvalley 2, Desolate Forest 3 & 5, Hivecluster 1 & 3, Riskofrain 2, Temple of the Elders 1
  
• Fixed a crash when an unusual gamepad type device is connected.
  
• Fixed an obscure crash that can occur when viewing the command menu.
  
• Updated some files related to input extension which should better blacklist certain devices that behave poorly when detected as controllers.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur at certain points if the game was closed.
  
• The game now appropriately responds to cutscene videos failing to load entirely. the intro will be skipped and ending will just be a black screen with text.
  
• Fixed a scenario in which the large healing chest could drop no item.
  
• Adjusted Highway Robbery trial to refer to Flashbang correctly.
  
• Fixed a frame-perfect crash when an Evolved Lemurian took flight and died at the same time.
  
• Introduced a save backup system independent of Steam Cloud.
  
• Fixed a possible crash with Miner's alt primary.
  
• Fixed skill descriptions being displayed incorrectly depending on your aspect ratio.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when making a server.

Known Issues (to be fixed in a future patch)

• Bandit, a Sniper challenge, and a HAN-D challenge currently do not unlock if you're a client in an online game.
  
• Permanent invincibility bug when losing a temporary Dios Friend.
  
• Certain users are experiencing a very loud sound when restarting the game in some scenarios / Providence Trials.
  
• If the game was set to fullscreen on a display that was disconnected, it may be unable to launch.
  
• Sniper's secondary skill not interacting properly with Backup Magazine.
  
• Overloading enemies' electricity has more range than intended.

Another massive thank you to everyone who has reported bugs; it's hugely valuable information and is massively appreciated! We've also heard your feedback on balance issues and will be addressing these in future patches. If you want to share feedback or have any other bug reports you can report them easily on our Discord.

We would like to also give you an update on one of the most popular pieces of feedback we have received over the last couple of days:

We will be implementing independent horizontal (not full 360) aim options in a future patch.

We will be writing this feature and implementing a version of horizontal-exclusive mouse aim that will function as follows:

Mouse Users
The game will have a setting to utilize your cursor position permanently as your horizontal aim direction. This can be disabled.

Controller/Keyboard Exclusive Users
The game will have two more mappable features so that controllers and keyboard users can also determine aiming direction independent of movement. This feature is also going to be optional.

We are developing this feature in direct response to community feedback - our hope is that it will provide a much smoother experience to players who prefer mouse input, without giving that option an advantage over keyboard/controller players.

As this is a brand new feature and is being developed alongside future bugfix/crash patches we cannot give a time estimate for this update, but we'll keep you informed as best we can!

Thanks again everyone!

- Hopoo Games

p.s. We've also launched an Official Wiki! The community is hard at work filling the pages - https://riskofrainreturns.wiki.gg/wiki/Risk_of_Rain_Returns_Wiki

Fixed various minor bugs that were reported on the forums. Thank you for the reports!