[h2]Intro[/h2] Hello again, everyone! Welcome to the third installment of the Site-02 Transmissions. This post, however, is a special one. Celebrating the return of the Site-02 Transmissions, this month is a double feature where we’re releasing two separate Transmissions — spotlighting Community Highlights and the Dev Commentary sections. We will then be returning to a once-per-month schedule, starting in September, using this new separated format. This Site-02 Transmissions post, as the extra one this month, comes out soon after our previous post, released three days ago. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/700330/view/4326355898838195742]Be sure to check it out here on Steam[/url] to see some curated SCP:SL art from the community, including an extensive real-life recreation of the Jailbird! However, this extra post isn’t merely a stocking stuffer. In this installment, instead of covering very general activities of different departments, our Lead Game Designer, Cross-Conception, or ‘Cross’, is going to take a deep dive into the Game Design (GD) team’s actions and beliefs regarding the latest updates, as well as a few specific issues they believe the game currently faces. Additionally, this post features a special appearance from Lead Programmer, Beryl talking about the process of creating 13.5.1 and updates resembling it. Here is a summary of this Developer Log Transmissions’ contents:[list] [*]A commentary/retrospective on 13.5 and 13.5.1. Discussing the goals and reasoning behind SCP-1853, SCP-207, and Anti-207’s recent balance changes. A small Q&A with Beryl, giving a programmer's perspective on the update planning and implementation process. [*]A discussion concerning the Game Design team’s opinions regarding SCP-079’s Door Locking ability. [*]Elaboration on the goals of the ‘Reinforcement Overhaul’ spawning system as discussed in a recently-made-public Patreon post.[/list] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/d636f2785c8ab30b0fcf0d4a3ac87e58224d3dfa.png[/img] [h2]13.5 and 13.5.1 Retrospective[/h2] [h3]Quotes by Cross and Beryl[/h3] Cross believes that, overall, 13.5 was a great success — especially SCP-1853’s rework. She states it achieved everything the team set out to do involving 1853’s effects on gunplay and its escalating benefits, and that the Game Design team is happy with how SCP-1853 works now. Another important change in 13.5 were the adjustments to SCP-207. The team believes they achieved their goal of making SCP-207 less abusable, however, they agreed with the mixed reception and concluded that SCP-207 [i]“is far more fun when it’s increasing your speed, even if the damage is high,”[/i] resulting in the speed increase, which occurred in 13.5.1. Whilst SCP-207 received feedback indicating its nerf overcompensated for its previous strength, Anti-207 (or, O-207-914) received — fittingly — opposite feedback that stated not enough was done to improve it. It still wasn’t useful enough, and rarely appeared due to requiring both the use of SCP-914 and the sacrifice of an instance of SCP-207 to acquire it. Because of this, it got the buffs it received in 13.5.1. Additionally, one instance of Anti-207 was added to the pool of pedestal SCP items to unchain it from SCP-914 whilst retaining the rarity that the Game Design team wants it to have. We hope you enjoy its new Operational Guide entry, and we also feel a duty to remind you that matter and antimatter do not like each other. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/6319f470807943f6100b7752c45965a8c96b3a3d.png[/img] To round out this section on 13.5.1, below is a short series of questions and answers about the 13.5.1. update, the process of creating it, and creating Hotfix/Patch updates such as this one, as answered by [b]Beryl, Lead Programmer for Northwood.[/b] Please tell us what you think of these insider perspectives of the update process; if it’s well-received, we might touch more on our development process in a future Transmissions entry! [b]Why make a 13.5.1? What stopped you from putting these changes inside 13.5?[/b] [i]“There’s always plenty of features we want to implement, and, whilst we would like to ship everything we have planned all at once, the sad reality of development is that everything takes time. Because of this, we sometimes have to make the decision to leave some features out of a release. This is where hotfixes come in, giving us the opportunity to push said features out of the oven, alongside solving issues the community may find after an update is out.” “Keeping this in mind, we make it a common practice to always have a plan prepared for a possible update after the last one. For 13.5.1, it originally meant pushing bug fixes or changes for the custom main menu music, SCP-1853, or SCP-207.” “As programmers finish their tasks and projects, more helping hands are available to work on the big list of changes we would like to make for the game, which is why you saw unrelated changes making it, such as role colour touch ups, or consumable item improvements.”[/i] [b]What does the process of making smaller Hotfix/Patch updates look like? How does something like changing the speed boost granted by SCP-207 end up from your computer to the live game?[/b] [i]“As simple as something like changes in numbers may seem, the reality of game development (and more specifically, programming) is that sometimes, things don’t go as you’d expect, and a large majority of time it's due to things out of your control as a developer.” “There’s no such thing as a perfect game engine, and sometimes you may implement a new feature or system, only for the engine to not react properly to it, forcing you to create workarounds that account for its limitations to make your vision a reality.” “Alongside these limitations, we also have to account for our development procedures, which tend to include multiple iterations of quality assurance, solving as many bugs and issues as we may find, and maintaining the integrity of our codebase.” “For example, during the making of this update, we implemented the O-207-914’s Operational Guide page in our in-development branch, but upon trying to bring those changes to the 13.5.1 development branch, everything broke completely. So we were forced to re-do the entire page from scratch for the release for it to function.”[/i] [b]What is it like to implement new items/item abilities and new systems — such as Anti-207 being the first item to not be guaranteed to spawn in pedestals? Is it difficult?[/b] [i]“With O-207-914 being in the spotlight, we’ll continue using it as our primary example. Although most of its recent changes may seem simple in hindsight, it required us to revisit some of our old-ish systems to make the changes that we wanted.”[list] [*]“The SCP locker spawning system did not expect items to be added under specific conditions (such as a random percentage), which meant we had to make adjustments to our spawning & distribution system. So that you can get an idea, here is everything that needed changing in order to add said 10% spawn chance:” [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/46898f82b8f2eecefb43f8eb8f7a0c1939dfa087.png[/img] [*]“The AHP stat modules were also not particularly fond of a regenerating mechanic for them, primarily as it was not designed with it in mind. So we had to come up with a solution for this to occur in a timely manner, without compromising our programming standards. These are processes that take time to implement properly.”[/list][/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/d636f2785c8ab30b0fcf0d4a3ac87e58224d3dfa.png[/img] [h2]SCP-079 and Door Locking[/h2] [h3]Quotes by Cross[/h3] In a Game Design meeting after 13.5's release, the team discussed SCP-079 and the feedback they gathered from the SCP's changes in 13.5. Cross says the changes achieved the team's goals of making SCP-079 less oppressive and unfair against civilians, as well as improving its ping range — but it also came with its fair share of valid criticism. Taking that feedback to the meeting finalised an opinion a long time coming — in Cross' words: [i]"After a meeting with the other game designers [...], [b]we concluded that no matter how you change door manipulation, the ability is fundamentally flawed.[/b]"[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/fff6e9bb80bb5c1abbcbf143038bb16e5083f835.png[/img] She takes specific aim at SCP-079's Door Locking ability as a problem feature for the SCP. Below are five problems with the ability as provided by her, which are [i]"only a few of the problems door locking causes."[/i] [list][i] [*]"Door Locking is an extremely oppressive tool." Whilst SCP-079 can't sustain a door lock when the ability is freshly unlocked, the AP drain in higher tiers is easily managed by many players. So easily managed in fact, that the drain is inconsequential compared to the benefit it gives. [*]“Currently, Door Locking acts as SCP-079’s primary offensive tool, but relies solely on player cooperation between him and his team. This punishes players who are unable to use their microphone. SCP-079 has a general lack of offensive capabilities beyond this, resulting in players feeling that SCP-079 is too far a cry from the standard SCP-monster gameplay. Whilst you could, in theory, use a Tesla Gate on a player, this is extremely limited and occurs quite infrequently.” [*]“On the receiving end, players have reported that SCP-079’s door locking is too abrupt and unfair, compared to stressful or thrilling. There is no sense of surviving a threat — solely annoyance at being effectively cornered.” [*]“There is little counterplay or gameplay depth against SCP-079’s Door Locking. SCP-079 can press one button and result in the death of a player. This is neither engaging nor fair. While SCP-2176 exists, its availability heavily limits the anomaly, with it never having been designed for that purpose anyway. SCP-2176 is unable to be considered a fair solution to the problem at large.” [*]“In terms of future development, having an SCP wholly reliant on doors severely limits us from a Level Design perspective. It forces doors to be a necessity, instead of alternative options.” [/i][/list] The team feels that there is no way to clearly resolve the issues mentioned above by merely tweaking existing mechanics: [i]"As a result, we have decided that a replacement for this ability is something worth pursuing in the future. Whilst we’re still working on a more permanent solution, we’d like for players to know that we acknowledge the issues at large with this character, and that we love the computer. Any solution we propose will need to solve all five of these issues, and once completed, the game will be far healthier for it."[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/d636f2785c8ab30b0fcf0d4a3ac87e58224d3dfa.png[/img] [h2]P.E.A.R.S. 4 and the Reinforcement Overhaul[/h2] [h3]Quotes by Cross[/h3] Over a year ago now, we hosted our fourth Patreon Early Access Rebalancing Session (PEARS). These PEARS events are used to test more experimental or crazier features for the game — things which we aren't sure about, or things that will have high development costs, but also a risk of failure. Our fourth PEARS event was a respawn overhaul; it was a massive and fundamental change in how the game selects team respawns and when. [i](The latest public iteration of this respawn system was published in March on our Patreon, but was made entirely public earlier this month! Check it out here: [url=https://patreon.scpslgame.com/posts/view/d752bab8-92ae-4916-8941-b5a34c683a86]https://patreon.scpslgame.com/posts/view/d752bab8-92ae-4916-8941-b5a34c683a86[/url]).[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/7ffa83120db48b6a9384256665b03cf2d53ee8fb.png[/img] Upon creating the new system, The GD team set out with three main goals: [list] [*]It needed to finally make the Chaos Insurgency (CI) part of the game’s family of factions, instead of the ‘cleanup crew/round end-er’ role that was the CI's original purpose before the GD team realised they loved the dynamic the team created in the round. The respawn overhaul made the entire CI team valid targets for the SCP team, and made them directly compete with the MTF team in order to respawn — both teams having to earn their respawn waves from a single, limited pool. [*][i]"Allow the game to come to a natural conclusion on its own, so that no matter how determined a player was to stall or camp, it wouldn't ultimately matter."[/i] That goal was achieved by creating an autonuke system called [i]‘Dead Man's Switch’[/i] — an automatic protocol instated by the O5 Council to be used if Foundation personnel couldn't re-secure a site. It triggered when both teams ran out of available respawn waves and forced all remaining players onto Surface Zone for a final battle. [*]Another, smaller goal of creating a system like this was to create a more predictable and consistent round structure. Making sure rounds can't go on forever makes the game easier to balance. Factors like SCP balance can be fine tuned to have the right amount of strength for their job, instead of the GD team having to worry about balancing for potentially infinite players. [*]Ensure that players are consistently engaged with the game. Dying, then waiting for five minutes in the spectator screen to respawn with nothing much to do except Alt-Tab or yell at fellow spectators is a well-known problem. To address this, players in the respawn overhaul system are allowed to lower their own team's respawn timer through specific actions in-game, and players who die quickly after respawning are given a second chance through the implementation of respawn mini-waves shortly after the main one.[/list] The system was very well-received back when it first debuted in PEARS 4. However, it was heavily flawed, and not just because it was somewhat buggy. One serious problem cited by Cross was the sheer overwhelming amount of things occuring at any given time, making the game exceptionally confusing and hard to understand. It also came with a host of smaller issues, including but not limited to: [list] [*]The mini-waves had overpowered loot relative to what they were intended to do. [*]Respawn waves were too hard to earn. It was unbelievably difficult to earn enough points as a Class-D to earn a respawn wave before MTF, even for experienced players. The respawn timer for the Chaos Insurgency was also multiple minutes longer than MTF, making things worse. [*]The point scoring system gave points for killing uncuffed enemy civilians, incentivising killing Class-D on sight. [/list] Somewhat recently, the Game Design team completed a rewrite of the system for its full implementation — something that Cross notes [i]"cost me massively in terms of caffeine consumption"[/i] — and now they've been ready to start work on its full development. [i]"We believe we have ironed out most, if not all, of the problems we were presented with. It's going to take a while to fully implement as it's a huge change with a lot of variables, but you can expect to hear more about it as time moves on."[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31380022/d636f2785c8ab30b0fcf0d4a3ac87e58224d3dfa.png[/img] [h2]Outro[/h2] This concludes our third Site-02 Transmissions post. We hope you enjoyed the return to the series. Starting next month, Site-02 Transmissions will return to a slower, yet hopefully more-timely-than-previous release schedule. We also hope you enjoy this new separated format for the series, as it allows us to make longer posts dedicated to showing more community creations and developer insight per post than the combined format from the first version. Be sure to look at the previous post on the Steam page to get a good look at some of the great art that community members make about the game. If you would like to contribute to the discussion and send ideas or feedback to the team, feel free to engage with us on our socials! The Game Design team often looks at community suggestions on the Steam forums, the official Reddit, and the SCP:SL Discord. Whilst the team can’t respond to everything, due to the sheer quantity of suggestions, Cross says they try to read as much as possible. Expect further news about the game on the Steam and X pages, as well as exclusive news on upcoming features or updates accessible on our Patreon — alongside posts now made public, such as the Reinforcement Overhaul post. Thank you for reading, and as always… [i]See you in the dark.[/i] ~ Northwood Studios.