Welcome back to another SCP: 5K devblog. In this post, we will be discussing Update 0.17, the “Discover Program”, as well as showcasing some of the upcoming work that the team has put into the game.
The Discover Program is a fresh take on our preexisting Wave Survival mode, and we decided to try something new here that we have not done before. Not only does this update contain brand new content, including new SCPs, levels, and more, it also will have a substantial impact on how we generate the remainder of the campaign and push SCP: 5K towards 1.0/full release.
Update 0.17 will have major foundational significance towards how we plan to complete SCP: 5K. Before diving into some of the new content that will be coming with this update, it is important for us to first describe what exactly this new mode is, and why it is so pivotal for the development of the project.
At its core, The Discover Program is effectively an upgrade and overall replacement of our existing Wave Survival game mode that we have had in the game from earlier builds. Wave Survival was initially C07BC added into 5K as an additional piece of content that players who completed the campaign could continue to engage with after completion so that they still had something to play afterwards. The premise of the original Wave Survival is simple: spawn into an arena, defeat enemies in increasingly difficult waves, unlock and upgrade weapons, and see how far you can get. This mode, however, had not really changed much since its inception, and updates/revisions to it have actually been a highly requested piece of feedback in the community for quite some time.
Due to this demand, for The Discover Program we wanted to take this a step further and not only provide a similar experience to the original Wave Survival, but also improve and expand upon this concept. Instead of just taking place in one large room, players—assuming the role of D-Class test subjects—will now experience the mode in 10 unique and distinct chambers (with more to come). We have also created two new SCPs for this update: SCP-914 and SCP-1114-D.
Players will now have moments between rounds where they will have an opportunity to interact with SCP-914 to (potentially) upgrade and MMBNE improve their weapons, and prepare before the next chamber.
Additionally, players will also participate in various objectives and challenges via our new event bus objectives system (more on that later), which will add additional depth and variety to the mode beyond just simply eliminating enemies. Accomplishing these tasks will earn players credits, which feed back into the prep stages between rounds where players will have a chance to interact with SCP-914, as well as provide them with opportunities to purchase/unlock ammo and meds within XPZ97 the various chambers.
Last but not least, this update will also introduce a community-wide leaderboard that everyone will be able to participate in.
Now that we have established what The Discover Program is, we know many of you are probably still wondering: why is this important for SCP: 5K? Why build a new mode now instead of further development on Area-12/the campaign?
First and foremost, we want to be very clear: this is development of Area-12. While it may not appear that way on the surface, as it is a whole new game mode that only loosely ties into the main story (the events of The Discover Program contains canon details within the experience and occurs in Area-12 as far back as 2018, prior to the Raid in October, 2020), many of the underlying mechanics and features that make up the foundation for this update will also be used simultaneously in the campaign, as we continue to overhaul existing content and create the rest of the story and gameplay leading up to 1.0/full release. This also establishes a great opportunity for us to more easily receive and factor in community feedback in a more rapid fashion than we would otherwise with the campaign missions due to the scope and scale required to produce these experiences—it’s far easier to test new concepts, balance gameplay, contain and isolate bugs and other issues, and so on outside of campaign missions (which are often highly complex and much more difficult to adjust post-development).
Beyond this, one of our major goals for SCP: 5K is on having great replayability. It’s no secret that in its current state the game is largely a “one and done” experience: an update comes out, everyone plays it, and after one playthrough there is generally not much more to see until the next major content release happens. This is largely due to the fact that the campaign missions are somewhat rigid 29GG7 in the sense that enemies will spawn from the same places, objectives will always lead players to more or less the same locations, and so on. This is something that we obviously do not ultimately desire when all is said and done—we want everyone to be able to enjoy the game over and over again, and really drive up the overall value per hour of gameplay that players are receiving.
In order to accomplish this goal, we have created a number of new features and mechanics for this update that will not only be used in The Discover Program, but that will also find their way back into the overall campaign experience. Let’s talk about some of them more in-depth:
The “event bus” is a system that allows for easier communication between our game systems, generating more dynamic environments in return. We are now able to introduce far more game events into the game via this system, expanding what kinds of objectives we can create and that players will experience. Systems JL6E6 like audio cues, damage, objectives, achievements, etc. can now work more easily together in a much cleaner and more robust fashion than before.
The event bus itself can be described almost like a Discord announcement channel—when someone posts an event and announces it to the server, they are not DMing every single member individually to check if people will join, share it, etc. Instead people who have opted into the announcement channel will see it, mark interested, share it with their friends they might think are interested, join the event, ignore it, and so on (everyone individually reacts in their own way based on their pre-set desires). In the game, it works the same way: one system “posts” an event, and any other system that is listening and needs to be related to it will appropriately react in turn.
This system is still in its early stages, however, this mechanic now gives us the ability to more easily implement complex mission sets within the campaign later on.
One of the major story aspects of the Area-12 campaign is how the Foundation utilizes crates and various other shipping containers to store and transport SCPs in order to conduct the Omnicide. In Update 0.17 we have now introduced “SCP boxes”—it will now be possible for SCPs to break out of various boxes and other containers and surprise attack players. This feature will be first introduced here in the Test Chambers, and then later on it will also be utilized within the campaign to present more dynamic and randomized encounters for players as they progress through Area-12.
In Update 0.17 our AI systems received rather substantial overhauls underneath the hood, specifically accuracy and navigation.
Due to the addition of SCP-1114-D as our primary ranged enemy type in the Test Chambers (which we will discuss their specific AI considerations more in-depth later on in this devblog), we found it was necessary to transform WZ4PJ our basic soldier AI in order to accommodate for their unique requirements, which included improving our preexisting systems.
In Update 0.16 (Ghosts of the South Gate), our soldier AI primarily picked an angle that was close to but randomly offset from the player, we added a bit of dispersion to their fire so they weren’t laser accurate, and then we increased that accuracy/reduced dispersion over time as they honed in on players. With the old system, we found that enemies like SCP-1114-D felt like they would land too many “cheap” shots due to how many of them can spawn on any given wave and based on how their navigation works, and so we decided that a redesign was in order to account for these scenarios.
Our new design has three main goals in mind: reliability, configurability, and tactical play. Reliability focuses on AI only being able to hit players when we expect them to, i.e. no more “lucky” headshots. This process involved adjusting and improving animations so that they were more consistent, and incorporating checks before every bullet is fired to ensure a round could actually connect given the position of the weapon’s barrel. For configurability we wanted to make sure that every enemy type could now have its own unique settings/configurations, as well as support for varying degrees of difficulty (all of which can now be applied on the fly). For tactical play this encompasses everything related to environmental factors and how it applies to accuracy (for instance, if you have your flashlight on in a dark room you are more likely to be shot). Currently only SCP-1114-D in the new mode uses this new system, however, once we have sufficiently refined and balanced it based on everyone’s feedback we will be applying it back to other enemies in the campaign in a future update.
The next major focus for AI development was on navigation. In the past and throughout the campaign, a lot of the time the circumstances surrounding AI involve the players stumbling upon them as they progress through the levels. Conversely, in the Test Chambers the enemies need to come to the player instead, which wound up highlighting a number of navigation/pathing issues for the AI that we were able to adjust and fix.
When the AI navigates across a level, they do not actually perceive the game world the same way that players do—AI utilize what is called a “navigation mesh” (or navmesh), which is an abstraction of the level that tells them where they can (and therefore can’t) go. In an ideal situation the navmesh should always be right, however, it is not uncommon that it finds itself in a scenario where the navmesh will say the AI can go to a location but then the physics tell them they cannot, and so they wind up getting stuck. When this happens we typically either have to adjust the navigation settings to keep it more in line with the physics, or we look to the level designs to add 9JZTB a manual blocker at the point of navigational friction (in this update we did both).
We still have a number of AI navigation related issues, so we are not quite out of the woods on this yet, but further improvements will be coming down the line in future updates. Everything should play fine for this update, but players might notice a few instances where AI could get stuck in some tricky navigational logic loops that we still need to iron out, have trouble handling doors/doorways, etc.
SCP-914 is a large clockwork device weighing several tons and covering an area of eighteen square meters, consisting of screw drives, belts, pulleys, gears, springs and other clockwork. It is incredibly complex, consisting of over eight million moving parts comprised mostly of tin and copper, with some wooden and cloth items observed. Observation and probing have showed no electronic assemblies or any form of power other than the “Mainspring” under the “Selection Panel”. Two large booths 3mx2.1mx2.1m (10ftx7ftx7ft) are connected via copper tubes to the main body of SCP-914, M5NGV labeled “Intake” and “Output”. Between them is a copper panel with a large knob with a small arrow attached. The words Rough, Coarse, 1:1, Fine, and Very Fine are positioned at points around the knob. Below the knob is a large “key” that winds the “mainspring”. - The SCP Foundation (Wiki)
SCP-914, also known as Clockworks, is a large, room-sized device that “refines” objects that are placed within it. Operators of Clockworks are able to determine the “quality” of the refinement by adjusting the knob in the center and twisting the key.
SCP-914, coupled with our scoring and team rank system, serve as the main source of progression in The Discover Program as players make their way through the testing chambers. Placing a weapon into SCP-914’s intake compartment and adjusting the dial setting yields a randomized weapon as output. Increasing the team rank by completing chambers and challenges will increase the pool of possible weapons players can receive, with more powerful weapons “unlocking” at higher ranks. Players will also find that their weapons can have more attachments at higher ranks as well. Using SCP-914 costs credits, which are earned as players progress through the chambers and complete challenges (same with the team rank). These credits can also be used to open mercy boxes with supplies within the chambers themselves.
Players are advised to take caution though—SCP-914 is temperamental: if its pressure builds up too high, players may receive faulty results in the output. It’s up to the user to weigh the risk and reward, and decide whether or not to use their precious credits to roll the dice. The higher risks grant the highest rewards, and players may find some interesting and powerful weapons if they attempt to use the ‘Very Fine’ setting.
SCP-1114-D, also known as the D-Crash Dummies, is an automotive crash test dummy that has both an inactive, as well as active anomalous state. For The Discover Program, SCP-1114-D represents our primary ranged enemy type, as we wanted players to fight something different and anomalous rather than the existing guards or other D-Class (especially since this is who everyone will be playing as).
The Mannequins are a rather unique enemy with unusual considerations that required us to approach them differently than we would our basic soldier AI in order to create the right type of challenge. SCP-1114-D is not “tactical” in the same way that our other soldier types are in the sense that they prioritize more aggressively pushing and advancing players instead of taking cover and preservation of life. This of course presented an interesting situation where it sets up a cool effect (the enemy approaches the player from afar without representing an immediate threat), but at the same time they felt too fragile and easy to kill while simultaneously being too deadly/lethal in large numbers. In order to address these caveats, we landed on several design choices: prioritizing dismemberment, giving them the proper audio cues to inform players that they are present and moving towards them, and adjusting their accuracy to keep them challenging while also not feeling “unfair”.
In regards to dismemberment, the Mannequins have high durability torsos with vulnerable limbs (which fits with the SCP entry as they are made of a vinyl exterior and steel skeletal construct with aluminum/bronze joints). Players will not be able to just mow them down and be done with them. They will instead need to prioritize removing their limbs to either disarm them (literally and figuratively), or prevent them from advancing. Disarming them is also not always a guaranteed way to eliminate the threat—disarmed Mannequins will still be able to rush and charge at players initiating melee attacks in lieu of having a firearm (assuming they still have legs!).
In order to address them feeling a little too powerful at range (and especially in numbers) we also decided to add laser sights to their weapons so players can tell if they are being aimed at, and we also made significant updates QVEYD to the way AI accuracy works (which we covered in-depth earlier in this devblog).
Last but surely not least, SCP-1114-D also comes complete with their own set of delightfully horrific audio—featuring a creepy laugh—to notify players that they are in the chamber, and they are coming for them.
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Thank you for taking the time to read the devblog. We have some exciting new developments coming down the pike that we will make additional posts about later, but for now we will leave you with this—we hope you all enjoy Update 0.17!
-Goomes, Community Manager
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