It's that time again! I have been hard at work improving HEXION. Focusing most on my energy on the social aspects of the game, and on features that enable team-work and tactical decision making. The new voice and UI systems are a big part of that!

Furthermore there's a ton of quality of life improvements, and some minor gameplay enhancing features, such as the new "portal-like" teleporters!

Make sure you come join us on Discord! Our awesome moderators are in full swing arranging games, tournaments and the likes.

• World UI (AR-Layer). Displays information such as: Hit, Kill, Players, Interactables, Objectives etc
  
• Added new audio for certain UI Feedback
  
• Added footstep + dash audio
  
• Distance-Grab: Point with an empty hand and teleport objects directly to your hand (max 5 meter distance)
  
• Teleporters now transport all matter, such as: Arrows, Weapons, Grenades
  
• BOTs now have a proper damage model. Body has damage resistance, and the eye takes critical damage
  
• Completely reworked voice systems (see below)

• Fully reworked the voice-networking to use Steams Peer2Peer api
  
• Switched from always on, to push to talk (menu button on non-dominant hand)
  
• Added voice chat to lobby (before entering a game)
  
• Added Team-Voice system, for talking over distances (hold the backside of your hand close to your mouth and talk)

• Increased the drag-threshold in the UI menu (makes shaky-hand button presses easier)
  
• Reworked the flashbang effect
  
• Dead players are now always shown
  
• Increased the networking tick-rate
  
• Improved the system for when players are inside geometry

• Respawn positions are now correct when standing off-center, and the play space is rotated ingame
  
• Weapons should no longer be able to penetrate geometry when dashing
  
• Audio spatialization engine no longer crashes randomly
  
• Player are no longer interpolated towards their respawn position

• Weird ownership behaviour can occur when two players grab the same object in a small timeframe.

Next big upgrade on the list is Full-Body Avatars - looking forward to showing you all some sneak-peek footage soon!

See you ingame! :reheart:

The last few weeks have been real fun! I finally got around to implementing a few of the "major" ideas we've had for the future direction of HEXION. I'm really happy with how the new game-mode (UPLINK) turned out, it's a lot more action packed than Overheat, but without the chaos from Team-Deathmatch. We still need a lot of polish on the new stuff, especially on the audio side of things, but I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

• New game-mode called UPLINK! (explained below!)
  
• A ton of new additions to the BOT AI - They can now choose to chase players, go for the current objective, stand their ground and fight, fight while moving and a lot more. Overall way more dynamic AI
  
• Buy-Zones, players now have to stay within range of spawn to be able to buy
  
• Permanent buy-time. Used in warm-up and in the new game-mode.
  
• Map-specific power-up. A giant player-controllable Mech on the map Europa (available in all game-modes) - it's a bit OP against BOTs at the moment tho! :)
  
• Knife has been replaced by a Plasma Saber. It can be toggled on/off on the reload button - and has the ability to deflect shots (expect arrows), and it can penetrate thin walls to kill unsuspecting players!
  
• The sniper scope can now be toggled between 12x and 6x, by clicking the reload button on the off-hand when holding it with two hands.
  
• Added Healing-Stations to all maps - simply hold a part of your body inside the glowing green ring, and you will regen HP

The goal in Uplink is to keep control of the center hex, until your upload is complete. The first team to reach 100% wins. It's faster paced than Overheat, and a bit more forgiving - while still being very teamwork oriented!

• Respawn on death
  
• Max energy for item-purchase on respawn, buy a full loadout and head into battle!
  
• Each spawn has forcefields that block the opposing team from entering / shooting

• Toned down the haptics on the teleportation
  
• Dead players can now locomote through dynamic geometry like doors and forcefields
  
• Rebalanced a lot of the BOT difficulty settings, they should be more fun to play against on all levels now (might be a bit harder overall now tho)
  
• BOT AI can now see through glass, and understand that they can't hit you through it - they will instead try to flank
  
• Made some minor changes to the geometry on Europa - added some much needed cover in certain locations.

• Fixed a bug that often caused BOT's to mess up their pathfiding
  
• Deathmatch item-spawners are now correctly disabled for clients in game-modes that aren't using them
  
• The lobby UI will now be correctly unlocked when a client has left a game

Next up is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but have had to postpone for several reasons - I'm going to focus on getting fully native WMR support. Once that is taken care of, I'm going to switch my focus towards how we can enable our playerbase to better setup planned games.

Furthermore, I'm currently working hard on our next iteration of the player avatar. The goal is a full-body avatar, with good IK while being fully physics simulated. This is also a prerequisite for our new interaction system, that will enable us to do cool interactive reload systems and more!

As always, I'm very open to hearing your thoughts, critiques and ideas - just hit me up on Discord for a conversation :reheart:

This patch took a bit longer than expected, but the results have been worth it! I've wanted to rework the locomotion for a long time, to a more conventional, non-hex approach, which required a totally new approach to our level-design, and a ton of work - Here are the fruits of the last months labor!







I wanted to do a colder environment for these, way too hot, summer months - and thought that the icy moon of Jupiter would be a good fit! The map is intended for our first new game-mode "Domination" which will be available in the next patch! But it is available for play in both Team-Deathmatch, and Team-Elimination right now.







Mars is a complete rework of the former map "Compound". It has the same overall layout as the old map, but everything has been improved. New environment, better pathing, and waay better performance.

Note: All the maps still use somewhat basic geometry for the structures - this is temporary while I'm still iterating on their layout based on the feedback we get! They will receive a major art-overhaul at some point in the future.

• New maps (look above!)
  
• 100% Reworked locomotion: "safe" teleportation, and artificial locomotion now uses a proper nav-mesh instead of the semi-hacky hex solution from before!
  
• Performance improvements! This one was a major point for me, since before it was virtually impossible for even high-end gpu's to max out the graphical settings. This is no longer an issue, as performance has been majorly improved on all maps!
  
• Created a minor system to control fog in various locations, dark areas will now be properly dark!
  
• Added door-sensors to keep them from squishing your head when stading in their space.

• The skybox shader has been majorly improved, to ensure better cohesion between the environment and the fog.
  
• The glass shader has been reworked completely
  
• Gravity has been simplified, now everything uses earth-like gravity - but I've made it an option for the host to change between: zero / low / normal
  
• Reworked the way the player torso behaves, it now has a more stable position.

• Weapons / Hands will now be pushed out of walls if they collide after respawn / teleport.
  
• Certain players should no longer experience invisible terrains, I swiched from a third-party asset to our own, more performant, less bug prone solution.
  
• Client side BOTs now also have velocity dependant audio.

I really appreciate the patience you guys have shown us so far! During the last month I have received a ton of great ideas from you guys, a lot of which has already made it into our immediate roadmap! There's a lot of demand for interactive reload, which i personally can't wait to get started on.


The next thing on the list, is our new game-mode: Domination. It will be our take on the classical "hold-the-point" mode. Furthermore the next patch will include our first map-specific power-up, which I really think you guys will enjoy!

This patch won't take nearly as long as the previous, since it's mainly programming, and not as much 3d-modelling and performance work. I expect it to be done early next week!

Looking forward to hearing your impressions! :reheart:

The day has finally arrived, and it's time to throw ourselves before the wolves! We are incredibly excited to share all of our hard work with the world. And we look forward to working with you guys in making HEXION the best it can possible be, during our Early Access!

• Solved a unity "feature" that caused the UI not to function when the application didn't have focus
  
• Player bodyparts will now teleport to the correct position if they get too far from the networked position
  
• The HUB scene is now a bit easier to understand, and we added a tutorial video for creating / joining games.
  
• Extended the buy-time in Team-Elimination 10 seconds beyond when the doors open.

• Lobby visibility / player limit settings are no longer locked after creating a lobby, they can now be updated anytime.
  
• Fixed a weird bug where lobbies with player limits lower than 6 wouldn't show up in the server browser
  
• Fixed a bug where players sometimes couldn't join a different team
  
• Fixed an issue with the auto team-balancing
  
• Made some changes to the bow mechanics based on player "AMAGI"'s feedback - the bow now doesn't need to be pulled as far back to reach maximum power, and I have increased the maximum velocity a bit.

• Video tutorials in the HUB (these can be toggled off in options)
  
• Automatic SDK switching between Oculus and OpenVR
  
• Added Oculus controls overview
  
• Implemented haptics for Oculus SDK users
  
• Held equipment weight now influences locomotion speed / teleport recharge rate. (only applies to weapons being held, not your inventory)
  
• Added option for HMD-directed artificial locomotion
  
• BOTs are now able to play the Overheat game-mode (with both defensive / offensive tactics)
  
• BOTs now request backup from each other when engaging an enemy
  
• BOTs have been to etiquette class, and now try not to bump into players / other bots
  
• Spawning is now handled with less randomness. It tries to spawn the player in a random location, where he/she can't be seen by any enemies. (this doesn't yet work for simultaneous respawns.
  
• UI: Added confirmation screen on critical buttons, such as disconnect / exit etc.
  
• Hosts can now restart / apply new settings to, the current game.

• Added some indicators to the grenade-tutorial
  
• Updated the shader on the Ingame-UI, now has blurred transparency
  
• Teleportation now uses charges (balanced so that you always can move small distances, but have to wait a tiny bit to go far)
  
• Artificial locomotion is now significantly faster per default.
  
• Added walking to Artificial locomotion when aiming down sights.
  
• Hand directed locomotion now uses a gun-angle offset on the controllers forward.
  
• The Vive/Oculus controls UI, is now shown as default screen in the HUB (if tutorials are enabled)
  
• The lobby UI will now disable incompatible maps to the chosen game-mode
  
• Weapons are now reloaded on respawn
  
• Joining players will now always auto-balance in regards to real players, not bots.

• The player avatar in the equipment UI is now correctly lit
  
• The game now stays more consistently in focus, to keep the UI functional (can still loose focus in some cases tho - you have to alt-tab back to the window, to re-enable the UI controls)
  
• Fixed a bug where BOTs could exit spawns prematurely if the doors were occluded from the hosts perspective.
  
• The scoreboard no longer bugs out, when switching between teams quickly
  
• Improved the BOT AI a lot to better avoid getting stuck (it can still happen tho, but rarely)
  
• Knife no longer deals damage when in inventory .. woops

• Voice logic is still disabled while we diagnose the issues, which means that long-distance team-speak isn't enabled, and that you can hear dead people O_O (this is a priority for us, and will be fixed ASAP!)

We're still nowhere near finished with the game, and have a lot of cool stuff planned for the near-term! First and foremost I'm hard at work on a new map. A sort of AI Temple / Shrine located on Europa - this map will also bring a major rehash of the locomotion system.

We are working towards a locomotion system that is more beneficial to the median player, which means that it won't be hex-based anymore but instead use a more traditional nav-mesh system. This should make artificial locomotion and non-room scale teleportation feel a lot better!

Furthermore the new map will also include a new game-mode: Domination, as well as our first Power-Up (not in a traditional sense, but I will reveal more as we get closer!) - expect update in 2-3 weeks from now.

As for long term plans we have a public Trello where you can follow our development plans, and get some insight into what we are working on live.

We're getting close to the point where I feel comfortable going live into Early Access - just a few things left on the to-do that I feel are essential. The last couple of weeks have been extremely fruitful, and a lot of cool new stuff has made it into the build!

• New HUB / Main menu, with fully revamped tutorials and practice area (The aesthetic is now way closer to what we want, and it's more extensible than before, for all the content we have planned!)
  
• Native Oculus SDK integration. A lot of our players have requested this, and I'm happy to oblige. NOTE: Automatic SDK switching isn't functional yet. Use Steam Launch Options and add: - oculus (this will be fixed asap)
  
• Added option to select which hand (or both) should use artificial locomotion (that way you can still have a hand dedicated to snap-turning / dash / drop.

• Equipment / Buy menu is now only accessible in either practice, or during buy-time in the game-modes: Team-elim and Overheat.
  
• Throwing velocity / angular velocity are now calculated natively on both OpenVR and Oculus. (Feels way better)
  
• The inventory now fills its slots in regards to the chosen handedness. Right -> Left if Right-handed and vice versa
  
• Changed the glass shader to be more visible
  
• Removed a lot of the voice logic in this build since we need to stress test the basics before implementing the fleshed out system

• The cascading disconnects should be fully resolved now
  
• Rounds no longer end when a new player joins mid-match
  
• Updated the audio spatialization engine. This should fix a lot of the .dll crashes, but please send me crashlogs if they persist!
  
• Fixed a BOT networking sync bug, where the respawn event didn't fire on clients (was caused by some of the optimization in the earlier patch)
  
• Fixed the lighting bug on the player avatar representation in the equipment UI
  
• Players can no longer use articifial locomotion + room scale to walk through thin walls (like in spawn)
  
• Player view is now always obstructed when inside geometry

• No haptics when using the Oculus SDK. They use a completely different system, so it needs a bit more time
  
• The new HUB is still missing the video tutorials, and the visualized control scheme is Vive only at the moment (will be added in next patch)

Also a little side note. I have made a public Trello if you want to see our Road map in more detail, and follow the development live

This was mainly going to be a hotfix for the Voice issues, but I got caught up in some improvements that I have wanted to do for a long time.

• A ton of Voice fixes! It should handle delayed / backed-up data a lot smoother. And I found a critical bug in the interaction between our voice system and our audio spatialization engine (this could very well be the cause of the lag accumulation!)
  
• Added a fancy new inventory visualization in the equipment / buy menu
  
• Reworked the UI notification system / game-state messages, to a cleaner more versatile implementation.
  
• Added audio narration to a lot of the game-state changes: round won / lost etc.

• Clients now have more attempts to connect to a server before giving up
  
• Moved the "back" inventory slot to a more comfortable position
  
• Player can no longer pull out their own power cores (this kinda interfered with the back inventory slot, causing unintended suicides.. woops)
  
• The item-grab system no longer distinguishes between items and off-hand grips, it just select the closest - always. (It was painful to shoot the bow in some positions before, if you had grenades in the chest slots)
  
• Inventory item-drop now has a more forgiving calculation and radius.
  
• Raised the voice audio quality a bit
  
• Nerfed the flashbang angle a tiny bit (will soon make angle-dependent durations!)

• Client disconnects can no longer cause a cascading disconnect on other clients.
  
• Automatic weapons now stop firing when dropped (networking error)
  
• Lobbies now disappear correctly after the host has left
  
• A failed server connect will no longer result in a permanent black screen
  
• Clients will now always catch the "game-server" event, when a lobby host enters a map
  
• The match UI no longer messes up it's players after having disconnected / reconnected

• The game still crashes occasionally, when loading scenes. We know it is related to the audio engine .dll's, and are committed to solving this before going into Early Access!

We've had a pretty busy few weeks in the office, with some external projects to secure funds for development on HEXION. But I'm finally back full-time on the good stuff!

This update is mainly focused on resolving some of the issues we saw during our last stress test (also mentioned in the delay notes).

• Major networking improvements to all traffic except voice. I reduced the traffic by over 50% - but it still remains to be seen if it solves our issues. Testing will commence asap!
  
• Added teleporters instead on elevators, on the map "compound"
  
• Added option to select your dominant hand (influences spawn weapons)
  
• Added new options for trackpad turning - now has 30,90,180 degrees and a smooth turning option.
  
• New skybox shader, which has better horizon fog

• Reworked the inventory system! It is no longer tied to the UI, but instead a pseudo "on-body" interface. Grenades in front, 1-handed weapons on the sides, and 2-handed weapons behind head/back.
  
• Changed trackpad controls for locomotion players, removed the toggle between locomotion mode / teleport mode. You now just have to press down on the pad to drop/teleport/snap-turn. (note: this is still not the perfect solution, since you will take a small step when pressing)
  
• Removed the quickswitch system, and replaced trackpad left/right with the snap-turning controls instead.

• Fixed teleport marker rotation issues
  
• Lobby visibility + player limit now get locked when creating a lobby

• Joining a game just as the host is entering, can result in an infinite loading loop
  
• We have experienced some crashes related to our audio engine - we are still investigating this. (did a minor fix to this, but still unsure if the problem is completely gone)

Hey all!

While we are extremely excited to get HEXION into your hands, we have chosen to delay our Early Access launch a few weeks. (New launch is sometime in May)

We have received a ton of feedback during the last couple of weeks from our testers, as well as experienced some critical networking issues first hand. And have taken the most pressing issues to heart. While I'm a firm believer in the essence of Early Access (cooperative development and such), I still want the game to be mostly bug-free and enjoyable before releasing it into the wild!

Here's some of the stuff I'll touch upon before release:

• Networking optimizations / bug-fixing
  
• Rework the inventory to be "on-body" instead of behind a UI
  
• Improvements to how the game handles handedness
  
• Replace all elevators with teleporters (we don't think they fit the style or speed of the game)
  
• Improvements to snap-turning
  
• Improvements to the control scheme (mainly for artificial locomotion players)
  
• New hub / tutorial. The current one is not at all representative of what we want long-term. So I'll replace it with a way more streamlined (although "lite" version of the final vision)
  
  

This is a pretty minor update, but we thought it had some essential features, especially for our artificial locomotion players!

- As a side note, the Cloaking Field Grenade is coming along nicely. Just need to fix a minor shader issue, and then I will begin implementing. It should be ready within the next two weeks!

• Added trail fx for teleporting / dashing
  
• Reworked the AI bot audio (now velocity sensitive)
  
• Added respawn audio

• Artificial Locomotion can now handle height changes (you can go onto ledges / drop down onto the ground)
  
• The server browser will now show all active games, regardless of region

• Player ghosts should now appear correctly during warmup
  
• Lobbies now get removed immediately after the host has left
  
• Bots now get re-added if a "real" player leaves the game
  
• Fixed the positioning of the teleport-marker
  
• Improvements to the AI path-finding, they now rarely get stuck

• Joining a game just as the host is entering, can result in an infinite loading loop
  
• We have experienced some crashes related to our audio engine - we are still investigating this.

Hey everyone, its been a hectic couple of weeks since the last update. We had make a trailer, launch our steam page and other marketing shenanigans. But lukily we also had time to do a bunch of improvements / upgrades to HEXION!

There's still a ton of work to do, but we hope you enjoy the update (and if not, please let us know!)

• Oculus controller support
  
• Removed requirement for oculus 360 degree tracking, now has snap turning for oculus users.
  
• Added new teleport indicators, to better determine direction
  
• Added ‘Dash’ as a new (and default) teleport transition, you can still switch to fade in options, for more comfort
  
• Teleports are overall much faster paced now
  
• Added video tutorials to all training rooms in the lobby (only for Vive controls atm)
  
• Sniper crosshair is now team colored instead of black
  
• Added temp material to airlock doors + simple reflections

• The knife now always has damage enabled (except to self)
  
• Knife & Grenade thrown velocity has been upped to 1.5x
  
• Pistol damage has been reduced to 30
  
• In-game voice now tries to use p2p networking, to lessen the server load (if it fails it falls back to client-server-client model)
  
• Reworked the UI positioning to work better with artificial locomotion
  
• Changed the UI shader to now be visible through geometry
  
• The lobby now also has baked occlusion for better performance

• Fixed occlusion issues with the elevators
  
• Fixed visual bug in the sniper parallax scope shader
  
• Removed artificial locomotion delay after teleport
  
• A ton of minor fixes that aren't worth mentioning

• Joining a game just as the host is entering, will result in an infinite loading loop
  
• Player ghosts do not appear during warmup
  
• Dash transitions seen on other players aren’t super pretty yet - we will add some cool trails and stuff soon!

We look forward to seeing you In-game!