Update 5.0 - The MODerately Extravagant Update

Player-Created Mod Campaigns

This is a huge update for The Anacrusis, something we’ve been working toward since well before launch. With Update 5, we’re finally ready to share our first two user-created mod campaigns! That’s right, with Update 5, you’ll be able to play Cosmos Bridge, by Jim Partridge, and Stray Bay, by CJ Sharkey! The mod campaigns are available on all platforms and just like the rest of the game, they support full cross-play, so you can play with your friends regardless of platform!

(If you’re interested in creating mod content for The Anacrusis, join our Discord and sign up on the Mod Tools beta form. We’re adding new folks to the beta for the tools every day now.)

To celebrate, we’re kicking off our first Steam sale and a Steam Free Weekend. That means it’s a great time to get your friends into The Anacrusis. Because we have full cross-play, whether you’re on Steam, Xbox Series X or S, Xbox One, or the Microsoft Store, you can play with your friends on whatever platform they play on. And everyone who completes episodes during the free weekend will get some special treats--custom sunglasses for each character as well as the fabled cat turret skin!

We kicked off the first week of this patch cycle with an internal game jam, where we broke up into several different teams and each worked on some new aspect of the game. Some of that work will ship in future updates, but this update, we’re shipping…

New Weapon Modifications!

We built a bunch of new weapons modifications in the game jam, and we love the way they work, but we aren’t exactly sure where they fit in the game. To help us understand better how they fit in our combat sandbox and get the earliest-possible feedback from players, we wanted to get them out where you can play with them ASAP. Some may become main weapons, some may be special weapons, and some might be majorly reworked, but for now you can access a handful of them in special matter compilers you’ll find in the Episode 1 and Episode 3 finales as well as in Holdout mode.

• Phatsma - This one’s simple, it’s a souped up plasma rifle that adds area of effect damage on hits

• Stasis SMB - When you shoot an SMB round through a stasis field, it slows anything you hit waaaay down (but it also does a bit less damage)

• Router - This plasma rifle variant fires a big ball of energy that bounces between enemies. It’s like a ping pong ball of doom that is highly-effective against a horde, but weaker against specials

• Sunshot Blaster - Sometimes you just need to light a bunch of aliens on fire. That’s the Sunshot’s time to shine!

Holdout Changes

• We’ve redesigned holdout to provide a quicker, more-intense experience. To that end, players only get one life per game. Just don’t die, because if you do, there’s no way to get back in the game

• Holdout mode is now time-based rather than wave-based

• Added a new holdout map: EP3 Escape

• Added capture events to holdout. When the zone pops up, find it and get in to capture and get special weapons, mods, grenades, and perks

• Gated some audio that’s specific to holdout mode

• AI will no longer prioritize their own lives in holdout. They wont pickup meds or special items the player might be hoarding for later

Suggestions From the Community

• Added a “What's New!” screen

• We’ve added a first-pass vote kick system so you can remove malicious players from your game. When you kick someone, they’ll be unable to rejoin that server and all vote kicks are logged. With great power comes great responsibility

• Can complete more than one quest per game

• Added more static and physics-based props to Episodes 1 and 2. We’ll hit Ep3 soon

• The smaller, mini-pulse is now directional and costs less charge, but it only hits targets in front of the player. Additionally, we’ve added visual FX and animation to support both the full-strength pulse and the mini-pulse

• We’ve updated the analog stick control for controller players based on feedback. We’d love to know what you think about these changes, but you’ll need to reset your settings to default to get them

• Defaults for controller sensitivity and button layout has been reworked based on player feedback. We’d love to know what you think about these changes, but you’ll need to reset your settings to default to see them too

• We’ve updated the skybox to have planets. We haven’t named the planets yet. We were thinking Steve

The Rest of the Changes

There’s a bunch of smaller changes that go into every patch, so here’s a mostly complete list.

Adjustments to Bots

• Player Bots better understand health and health resources. They won't use Health Scanners when they have large amounts of temp health

Adjustments to Weapons

• The SMB can now one-shot common with a headshot out to 22 meters

• Added a Cat skin for the auto-turret

• Added geometry to the bottom of the auto-turret, which is visible if it’s placed on ledges

Adjustments to Enemies

• Major internal rework of enemy AI to support more behaviors in the future

• Brute should not charge if a target is already in melee range

• Reduce the range of the grabber to 25 meters, and make it decide to get into range if it is not.  This also fixes an issue where it was melee attacking at close range without doing damage.  Now it will only melee if it has a target grabbed

• Set the max distance a grabber's arms can travel to 30m.  This is 5m more than the max range that the grabber can initiate the attack

• Common will no longer vibrate when in a large horde near the player

Game Instructor Changes

• Fixed a few cases where Instructor hints would pop up when the "Disabled" setting was enabled

• The “Choose a perk from the Matter Compiler” hints will now go away after you’ve selected a few Matter Compiler perks

• New hint: "Go up" at the bottom of the mall

• New hint: "Try going this way" should help get you back on track if you don't make progress towards the end of the level for a while

Animation Changes

• Aliens are more likely to play a death animation than go straight to a ragdoll when killed

• Doubled the number of potential death animations aliens choose from

• Added weapon-specific death animations for shotgun/blaster

• Improved common death reactions

Potpourri

• Updated the Main Menu 3D background

• Server stability and performance fixes

• Removed chromatic aberration visual FX on adrenaline effect. This should reduce motion sickness for a large number of people. Please let us know if you still feel motion sickness when playing the game

• Optimized performance of the cloth sim on the survivors' outfits

• Fixed the head geometry exploding during certain animations, like walking through goo when injured or observing downed players

• Disabled mouse smoothing

• Added [redacted]

• Added [redacted] for [redacted]

• The Director will more aggressively target players that have become separated from their teammates, especially if part of the team has reached the ending airlock

Bugs

• Fixed a bug that caused some voice lines to be cut off early

• Bug fixes and adjustments to voice lines

• Fixed several audio-related crashes

• The player’s view should no longer get 'stuck' near or over enemies while trying to look around when using an analog controller

• Player bots will now consume temp health if using temp health makes more sense than using a medkit

• Vortex grenade will now break the Grabber’s grab if they’re in the affected area

• We’ve made several fixes which should improve stability in our in-game voice implementation

• In some instances where a player was unable to re-enter matchmaking after disconnecting the lobby they’ll be able to rejoin

• In certain scenarios, players would place two turrets directly on top of each other. That won’t happen anymore

• Fix for an issue where players are not able to buy the choice rewards for the formal skins on the season pass

• Fixed a massive performance slowdown when reviving a dead survivor

• Fixed occasional stuck loading on a black screen when entering any level

• During reload animations, ammo will be put into the magazine at an appropriate moment during the animation, rather than when the animation fully completes

• Hit Indicators will now reliably show crits