Major Update #5 - New Weapons, Enemies, Attachments, and many Improvements!

Small Soldiers,

Major Update #5 is here, bringing a wealth of improvements, fixes and new content, all based on player feedback. It’s been an extremely tough year and a half for everyone, but we’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come with Hypercharge. Thank you for your support and for sticking with us. It truly means a lot. I may sound like a broken record, but you, the fans, are an integral part of the development-process. Developing a game is a team effort, and we most definitely make a great team!

With all that said, we are a tad behind schedule on certain features/updates, such as, Survival, and although we’re working as hard as we can, there’s only so much we can reasonably achieve, especially given our team size of five indie devs. The key thing is that we’re all well and healthy. We want to make sure we polish development and avoid rushing out content for the sake of it.

As always, we're constantly monitoring your feedback and ideas. If you'd like to help us further improve Hypercharge, feel free to share your thoughts on our Discord server or Steam Forums.

Honestly, there are a ton of fixes that we’ve likely forgotten to include, and probably some improvements. Anyway, have a look what’s in store for you below:

ADDED

• Added NinjaJoe enemy
• Added Tiny Trotters enemy
• Added new Freeze Ray weapon.
• Added new Radar weapon attachment to help get a sense of incoming danger.
• Added menu option for players who only want the Radar on the HUD and not physical
• Added Namepack icons and unlock page to better represent what packs are collected.
• Added Boss’ health bar to the top of the screen when fighting a particular boss enemy.
• Added new icons to the Play menu that better represent their function.
• Added new VFX to weapons and enemies.
• Added new VFX to the enemy-breaking system. Springs, screws and sounds are emitted when enemies (even destroyed ones) break apart when damaged.
• Added crosshair-scale option to the menu for players who wish to change the scale of the crosshair elements for different resolutions.
• Added icon for bonus maps in map selection.
• Added many improved footstep SFX materials to the environments.
  (Keyboard in the first level, for example)
• Added new name stickers end of round UI element to replace text version.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved gameplay for KidsBedroom, Bathroom, Hallway, Garage, Kitchen
• Improved gameplay for Plague game mode to now be zone-based instead of ‘who can find the best camp spot’
• Improved pathfinding and navigation jump areas in many levels to improve bots and new enemies.
• Improved ArmyMen enemies with fun new character identifier sound.
• Improved performance of many background tasks that the game runs, to help reduce stutters.
• Improved performance of many VFX in the game without affecting visual quality.
• Improved performance of the VFX system by doing more aggressive pre-culling of quick-offscreen particles.
• Improved performance of animations of off-screen players and NPCs.
• Improved Chopper SFX when idle and fixed the bomb trail cleanup.
• Improved Lightmap optimization in multiple levels to decrease load times.
• Improved Bot pathfinding and decision making in some areas.
• Improved UI flow by moving the Max Bots option to the Game Rules menu.
• Improved Difficulty icons.
• Improved animation system by using better animation compression settings for more complex animations.

FIXES

• Fixes for BroBot and Ninja pathfinding.
• Fixed memory leak related to UFO pathfinding
  (fixes crash on level load for people with <=8GB RAM)
• Fixed motion blur not enabling on some levels.
• Fixed some game stats not being cleared out for bots when changing levels.
• Fixed lots of reported player-stuck areas in many levels.
• Fixed lots of pathfinding issues and areas where bots became trapped.
• Fixed bots disappearing in Plague mode.
• Fixed soldiers missing weapons and/or improperly firing.
• Fixed break particles and breaking system bugs for experiments and Meanbots.
• Fixed glitch with players first person weapon sometimes being invisible.
• Fixed dead cores sometimes counting incorrectly for stat tracking.
• Fixed missing footstep sounds on Soldiers and Experiments.
• Fixed muzzle-flash angle on Grenade launcher and Minigun.
• Fixed missing Point of Interest locations on maps so bots want to travel to new areas more often.
• Fixed missing move-target points so that some AI can better navigate some areas.
• Fixed camera shake and animations happening to Spectators or EndOfRound cameras.
• Fixed falling radial blur FX affecting the Weapon and Player.
• Fixed broken tutorial achievement.
• Fixed certain sounds happening after enemies are dissolved or frozen.
• Fixed crash related to small tanks falling out of the world and being destroyed.
• Fixed power node particles not clearing up properly after battery insert.
• Fixed Radar, Build Cards and FirstPerson weapon offset when playing in different split-screen modes.
• Fixed TryMe button being able to be activated on locked stat pages when using a controller.
• Fixed bots stealing certain pickups if players are too nearby.
• Fixed bots teleporting randomly back to the spawn area in Airhockey Shuffle.
• Fixed potential crash in Garden with bots trying to pick up collectibles.
• Fixed potential crash related to generating a suitable spawn point in PvP.
• Fixed chopper getting too many perfect headshots on players.
• Fixed matchmaking errors dialogs not returning focus for players using controllers.
• Fixed it so that when a Boss enemy is killed, the kill-stat is given to all players in the game.
• Fixed SimpleAI controllers binding to expensive pathfinding event calls with the potential to crash on cleanup of enemies like Tanks.
• Fixed Shed not having Bonus Map text in its description.
  (No buildables allowed, similar to AirHockey Shuffle)
• Fixed missing physical material FX on certain meshes in the world.
• Fixed hard Meanbots spawning on levels in lower difficulties.
• Fixed issues with plague timers and logic when lots of network players join at once.
• Fixed Lawnmower collision and associated nav proxies on Garden, Garage, and Shed
• Fixed collision issues with experiments.
• Fixed decals and VFX being created after the game has ended.
• Fixed HUD indicators being on-screen during death and scoreboard.

Ninja Joe
Their home world destroyed by Hypercore tech, the elite Ninja Assassins, the Joe’s, have joined forces with Major Evil to rid every planet of the untameable power that obliterated their people.

Tiny Trotters
Healing their friends with love! In his efforts to keep army morale alive, Major Evil picked up the trade of stableman, and raised his cute and adorable Trotters. Fed on an endless supply of AA batteries, they love their master’s creations with their whole hearts and will do anything necessary to keep them alive.

bRobot
After the first Hyper-War, Max Ammo feared the eventual return of Major Evil. Max created a trainer to keep his Defence Corps sharp and ready for combat, the bRobot! Skilled in Rugby and multi-purpose armament, the bRobot was an agile companion amongst Max and his squad. The bRobots have recently disappeared from their barracks and are now attacking their former allies!

Freeze Ray
A deadly weapon if used in the right hands. It's able to freeze and shatter multiple enemies, helping you stop them in their tracks before they can reach the HYPERC-CORE!

Radar Attachment
This high-tech gadget attaches to your weapon and helps display which angles enemies will attack from. It spawns in the environment and is purchasable via the shop. (Be sure to take a look at the bottom right of the second image to see what the radar looks like when you want it to show only in the HUD)

Improved Plague-mode.
We've listened to your feedback and realised the main problem with the previous version of Plague was 'campers'. It became very difficult for the first infected to track down and infect others players. Now, players must earn points by carefully making their way towards randomly activated zones and firmly hold their ground. The player who evades the enemy and accumulates the most points wins! What this means for the Infected, is that players can't camp in ridiculously hard to reach spots.(Please let us know your thoughts about this change)

Thanks again and and have a lovely weekend ahead! - Joe

Discord
www.twitter.com/HYPERCHARGEGAME

- Digital Cybercherries