Severed Steel Receives Its Biggest Update Yet — Press Release

Campaign Update 3.0

Major Feature Additions

12 new levels

The highlight of this update. Many level editor features were made to support the experiences the levels wanted to create. The larger scale of the newer levels necessitated optimization of AI behavior, the benefits of which also carry over to the base levels.

New cannon mode, meta grenade

Given the level reorder and properties of the initial campaign, players ended up entering the final level ‘The Wall’, with a brand new arm cannon type, immediately after unlocking it. The beam flamethrower arm cannon mode was initially also used in the ‘Estate’ level. The sudden confusing and underwhelming nature of the overcharged cannon necessitated the introduction of an improved late-game upgrade. The Meta Grenade has similar uses to the Plasma Grenade, but has more charges, no drop-off, faster travel speed, and more enemy damage. Rather than giving the player something different and unfamiliar in the final levels, we wanted to improve the player’s current ability to express themselves by increasing the usability of the standard arm cannon.

Adds Specialist NPC

A recolor of the standard enemy type, but with new guns, doubled movement speed and health, and crouches less often. The majority of enemy types in the game can be killed quickly, even without headshots. Making a tougher, faster, more aggressive enemy type fills a niche that the old enemy roster didn’t have. Their dropped weapons include a mix of new and underused guns, which mirror, but are an improvement upon, the standard enemy loadout.

Added suppressed deagle

The only previous sidearm type weapon that was suppressed was a fast, high capacity, burst fire pistol. A slower weapon with the same damage as the deagle provides a sidegrade option.

Added suppressed mac10

The smg class of weapons didn’t have a suppressed option, and a huge suppressor on a tiny gun looks cool.

Added sawn off shotgun

A requested weapon by bloody, the sawn off is dropped by specialists and heavies. High damage, low range, low capacity weapons are fun. It is capable of 1 shotting a heavy enemy if enough pellets hit.

Added lever action

Guns with manual actions are cool, a one armed protagonist who is also able to use such a gun is even cooler.

Tweaked music throughout campaign

Many tracks created by Floating Door for the OST were unused. Adding new levels interspaced in the campaign provided the opportunity to revise the existing bgm.

New achievements

Editor updates

Editor Trigger Volume updates

• Trigger volumes can make events happen
• Added more sound choices to campaign volumes
• Trigger once only trips if objective valid

Editor Prop updates

• Alphabetized id selection in editor
• Add new prop move action
• Added prop rotate action, can start and stop w/ action or start on spawn
• Added prop show action
• Shatterables can now take dmg before shattering
• Shattering object counts as destroying it for objective
• Add invuln related prop actions
• New no cannon damage flag (props take hp dmg but no cannon visual dmg)
• Add show health bar action for props

Editor Action updates

• Add unlimited cannon ammo action
• Added kill all npcs action
• Added disable AI action
• Added bgm related actions: DropPitch, RaisePitch, StopMusic, PlayMusic, PlayIcePrison, PlaySolarpunk
• Added lighting related actions: some ambient light events, KillLights, RestoreLights
• Add new spawn wave action
• Added Portal turn off action
• Added kill all npcs action
• Added disable AI action
• Made rectangle selection more accurate
• Can set delay between campaign events
• Door and campaign markers snap on spawn
• Added more guns to editor spawns
• Enabled basic checkpoint setup

Stunt Balancing

• Added 0.5 seconds to jump and double jump startup

Jumping from a flat surface gave a small amount of stunt, about 0.15 seconds, at the beginning and at the end of the jump arc. Both trigger because of the passive stunt status granted when being above 850 units of speed. The additional forced stunt time of 0.5 seconds allows the player to stay in stunt mode until near the apex of the jump. This allows a larger and more forgiving window to transfer from sliding or standing to wallrun, behaves more similarly to the stunt time granted from walljumping and doublejumping from a walljump, and overall allows for safer vertical movement.

• Kicking door gives 1.0 seconds stunt
• Leaving fan gives .5 seconds stunt
• Stunt timers now check that they won't interrupt an already longer running stunt timer before activating

Level Balancing

• Cleaned tutorial
• Added heavy to cafeteria
• Removed heavy from cybermed
• Added fan to prison
• Updated party mansion campaign
• Added checkpoints to party mansion
• Extended museum objectives
• Extended garden objectives
• Updated Wall geometry

Enemy Balancing

• Gave jetpacks backpack VO
• Jetpacks now use burst fire at all ranges
• Increased jetpack deceleration
• Decreased jetpack move cooldown time
• Mech now shatters any blocking props
• Added more weapons to ceo office, boosted boss health by 200
• Boosted mech hit sound
• Boosted triple threat and ng+ simultaneous npc limit to .5 starting number

Weapon Balancing

Many weapons felt underwhelming. Visual tweaks in randomized gun attachments and audio tweaks in gun sounds help distinguish them from each other. All smg type weapons, the most commonly used type in the game, received both a base ROF buff as well as a ROF buff while in bullet time. The DB12’s 2 shot burst fire was seldom useful, changing it into a full auto weapon fills a role not yet seen in the shotgun weapon type. The L86, as a weapon that is only placed in levels and not dropped by enemies, felt ineffective and boring, with rifle tier damage but horrible accuracy. Increasing its accuracy, ROF, and giving it the same ROF buff smgs have in bullet time makes it stand out as a powerful gun to use.

• Boosted smg ROF in bullet time
• Boosted eon rof by 50 and reduced mag size by 5, increased shot pitch
• Changed R-shotgun sound to match other shotguns more
• Increased db12 mag size by 4
• Tightened bulldog spread, altered sound to match other shotguns
• Doubled deacon volume
• More eon randomization options
• More advanced rifle randomization options
• Reduced bulldog mag size
• Db12 now automatic, reduced mag size
• Boosted l86 rof to 1000, reduced mag size to 60, gives smg bullet time properties
• Reduced l86 dmg
• Boost smg rof
• Adjusted p90 rof and sound
• Randomize zip sights
• Randomize ru2 sights
• Randomize m4 sights and grip
• Scale up up m4 model, combat rifle model, r-shotgun model, l85, 92f, db2
• Beef up db2 sound
• Moved db12 shoulder position
• Adjusted shotgun grip and sound

Quality of Life changes

• Doubled backpack charge radius
• Tweaked gamepad look/move options
• Added gamepad deadzone to l and r stick
• Elite’s cloak turn off if they are last standing
• Clamped slide tilt maximum
• Boosted cam follow speed while kicksliding in air
• Added shatter sound to shattering props
• If player has wide pulse cannon selected they still get to use meta for post museum levels
• Hide hand when no gun (hide ugly fingers)
• Added .7 seconds persistence to weapon ready state

Bugfixes+Optimization

AI Optimization

Many of the new levels are larger and have higher enemy counts than previous levels, using enemy spawners was necessary to reduce CPU load, tweaking and optimizing spawner properties became necessary. Many older levels did not feature extremely long sightlines, so AI detection and behavior was adjusted to reduce excessive CPU use from AI pathfinding to distant players.

• Performance tweak to enemies spawned in during level, no longer spawn in immediately awake
• NPCs return to spawn and sleep when cant find player
• Reduced NPC sight range for all except sniper
• Turn off npcs sight when player is far away
• Lowered max npc count for auto waves
• Capped npc rof
• Fixed being able to kick open locked doors when enemy was behind
• Throwing weapon no longer immediately detonates objects
• Fix ui bugs with trigger volumes and props
• Explosion debris decal now displays in all angles
• Fixed issue where objectives would become physics objects
• Markers with ids no longer used for random spawning
• Fix for first events not working on lvl reset
• All objects with id get deleted on lvl reset now
• Props with id dont get physics check
• Invuln props don't get cannon edits
• Fix for chunks getting unhighlighted when shot
• Fixed shockwaves letting player pickup gun from far away
• Ensure health bar for props removed on death and unload
• Fixed mech from hurting self with rockets
• Fix for player climbing up stairs when diving
• Slide legs now properly tilts depending on camera direction
• Removed kick prompt from prototype
• Hide rtx toggle when no rtx launch is chosen
• Fixed double doors exploding when kicked
• Fixed bug where explosives would drain double hp per hit
• Fixed bug where firefight music wouldn't play if title track was still fading
• Fixed explosive rounds not penetrating glass
• Fixed bug with waves spawning on markers w/ id
• Fixed replaying levels with checkpoint
• Attempt optimize fire
• Fixed issue when gun preview would drain frames in gameplay
• Toned down spark and plaster particles
• Reduced plaster particle lifetime
• Reduced memory usage of some ui elements