Heavy Gunner Fan art by Vireyn


Hey everyone!
Since the next update is on the large side (well which one wasn't..) we want to give you some infos about what is coming up next. As we are getting slowly towards the 1.0 version, and are now finally tackling some of our long desired elements. This is a more technical blog with not too many spoilers, so you can safely read.

The Elephant in the room is the new base of operations. The old main-menu is completely replaced by the new base. This is a big operation and includes larger reworks of menu structure and the lobby structure.

Gameplay wise you can walk around the base and interact with different buildings and npcs.
Throughout your play time, you can unlock new buildings and the base will look more impressive over time. We also take this opportunity to add long missing elements to the franchise, such as NPCs, story elements, voice acting and more outgame progress.

Pic: Armory Building / Database

Since this is a lot of work, we gotta see how much we can really get done for the next update, but it is critial to take the next step, leap outside of our comfort zone and take things to the next level.
We don't want to talk or promise too much about it yet so we are keeping it short, but this is the main priority for Update 15.


We planned for a longer time to do some overhauls related to the handling of the UI and general technical structure of the menus. Before, all menus were basically attached together, but we are now changing things to be "atomic" (independent) and more flexible in structure. This is much healthier to develop, debug and add new features down the road, as they are completely detached from the rest, and you do not have any complexity from intertwining features.

Pic: WIP of a world map menu

This also allows adding new menus much easier or do any other tweaks. A similar thing is being done for the HUD. Eventually it might even be possible to mod or expand some of the menus in the menu with this improved structure, although no promises.



While you shouldn't expect huge questlines or heavy story elements, we are trying to get a basic structure and more worldbuilding with characters and more overall flair.

Voice acting might not be in the first version but we are planning to add voice overs for the NPCs in the base and also the events while playing, to add more flair and make things more immersive.

All our NPCs are being done with a intricate character sheet and a logical background. This not only lets us understand the characters better and create better dialog but also helps the voice actors to understand the characters. Maybe this might even be useful to create chat bots eventually. We also noticed that this helps fill in gaps in the story and logic behind the surroundings.

Character Sheet:

• Name
  
• Surname
  
• Job / Role
  
• Current Title
  
• Previous Job
  
• Age
  
• Gender
  
• Ethnicity
  
• Language Primary
  
• Language Secondary
  
• Occupation
  
• Previous Occupation
  
• Born
  
• Affiliation
  
• Family
  
• Height
  
• Weight
  
  
• Likes
  
• Dislikes
  
• Background
  
• Personality Keywords
  
• Strengths
  
• Weakness
  
• Lie / Belief / Want
  
• Need / Absolving
  
• Speaking Style
  
• Taboo Theme

[/i]
[/list]

Since we never really made humans before, we are also getting more in touch with making characters, animations and pipelines around such elements. It was only a matter of time until we needed human characters and now is the time to dig into these topics. This leads also into more questions about how clothing is setup, how it could or could not be switched, how hair and eyes are being done and such things.

We did a quick test out of curiosity with a chat AI based on GPT3.5, letting people chat with Zir on our Discord. This turned out to be very fun and working way better than expected, however the provider of the bot did not allow a lot of background story and it was very easy to change its behaviour by asking it to change itself, which allowed "hacking" it very easily. As a cause we removed it again, but we will definitely make Zir and more return as chat bots, hopefully with enough context to also give you in-depth info about game elements if possible.

The new base is also an opportunity and starting point for our future workflows relating to terrain, vegetation and rocks. We never have worked much with vegetation before and were digging into the pipelines and workflows. It turns out that our prior experience suits this very well and we were getting some great results in short time, however there is still much to learn.

This is a mixture of existing scans but some of the vegetation was also hand modelled by us, sometimes down to the very leaf, sometimes based on textures, sometimes procedually placed, sometimes manually cut out. There is really a wide variety of workflows in such vegetation assets possible.

Here is a hand modeled plant leaf:

And a handmade palm as example, which turned out quite nice.

Rocks are traditionally sculpted or hand modelled, but we did a procedual generation of the big rock set, which is based on a voxel volume system, using a mixture of shaders and displacers in 3D space.
Here you can see the input shape and the final rock highpoly model:

A bunch of work has been done on next-gening our asset creation pipelines. Our end goal is that you can just make a 3D model and have it automatically be UV mapped, pivot corrected, grouped, baked, textured and exported, while having an extreme reduction in textures used.

We are doing some solid progress on a pipeline using "Houdini", a 3D software which is often used to create such automations, and has already been helpful in creating some of the new assets, such as the huge rock formation seen below. This would require a lot of work to unwrap and optimize manually but the tedious steps could now be done in a couple clicks as example.

For the rocks, we created moss by scattering cubes, voxelizing them, and melting them together to form a moss on top of the rocks. Then in the end, a mixture of highly optimized plants are scattered on top of the rock, using around 20 different types, all using the same single texture.


We are now in the times of "Megascans" and freely available asset libraries (and soon AI generated 3D art), however most people make the massive mistake of just loading a trillion of redundant different assets and bloating their project.

Generally we do hand create all our assets ourselves, but for something like vegetation that might be out of our league, so we have to work with third party assets at least partially for the first time.

Often you do see videos where people just throw in 100 different megascans assets in their scene and it looks all great. Behind the curtains this is a disaster. Often importing a single assetstore asset is in the hundreds of megabytes on import. A single construction worker we bought was larger than the entirety of Synthetik 1. Such things need to be treated with extreme care.

Plant example from a popular library.
Looks good at glance, however there is 90% redundancy in there. And these would be 16 different textures just for one flower. Combined there are like 50 pieces, but realistically you would need around 6. Such things can go exponentially wrong if unchecked. The same counts for textures. Libraries lull you with 100 of variations of rock, while in reality you need to find and make the 1 perfect one.

We think assets are the same as lets say classes. Each needs a defined role and has to be carefully selected and optimized. We very carefully hand pick everything and often pack similar things together in texture atlases. All assets are also highly packed, so we reduce the texture count from 5 to just 2 per asset. For the vegetation on top of the rocks we packed 10 different ones together, so this uses 2 textures, while the Naive approach would have 50 textures in the project just for this. In the time of AI and huge free libraries, being able to pick well is going to be more important than ever.


We always had a history with using custom shader pipelines within Unity, and the past 7-8 years of making custom shaders in engine does really pay off. We started Synthetik 2 with a flexible master shader, which allows us to recolor and damage everything on the fly, however it still required some tranditional painting in softwares like Substance Painter and didn't look as detailed as it could, sometimes looking maybe too juicy or plastic looking.

It took many hours and iterations, we now have all the components of a great texturing job formalized and replicated in real-time in engine, so we now get amazing quality results, without having to do any texture painting at all. We are also able to fully change all colors or damage or material properties in real-time. Here is an example of the new next gen shader:

(Random video from latest discord stream)

We also employ new texture packing and made node groups which are resuable within shaders, so the new terrain shader, the new prop shader and the remade Unit shader all use the same textures, variables and nodes, making them a very unified pipeline. The rocks as seem before can use the same special texture from the ground layers to create new visual combinations as example. The best thing is that the new shaders require very few textures.

All in all, these new improved workflows make things easier to create, on much higher quality, with better performance and are easier to maintain and scale up.

We do not have a big focus on weapons right now as we have a quite huge arsenal already, however the next upcoming weapon is our rendition of the prototype G11, in resistance style. The image is not the latest version but you get an impression of it. It will likely get a feature where active reload enables fully-automatic, while non active reload keeps it in burst mode.

We have also designed resistance faction units for the new base, such as a Osprey inspired aircraft, replacing the old helicopter, a main battle tank and a smaller utility vehicle.


There are many networking changes in the works, we cannot talk too much about it, but it is a larger endeavor. In the end it should be easier to control and maintain, cost less and have better loading performance.


We are also taking the opportunity to change the Lobby behavior. We are adding something similar to a "party" where you will first join the party, then queue for the game, and you will also return to the party after the game, making the matchmaking experience much more streamlined.

You will see people in your party in your UI while inside the base of operations.
The class selection menu is also changed so you can see your party while changing your load-out.


You asked for some reward from the Last Defender, and of course something was missing.
In the future, you will gain a choice of 2 divine blessings, similar to how a class evolution would work.
With the new blessings you can start more powerful into loop. There are 8 different blessings, all with simple but useful effects. Some offensive, some defensive, helping certain builds, or in this case, give you a new chance with a new weapon to switch things up.

This hasn't been started yet, but the plan is that every map in loop (after the first one) has a cycling challenge modifier. This modifier is always single effect with a very strong implication, so if you want to get far into loop, you need to beat different scenarios. These do not stack but rotate.
One map might have very weak shields, one have no possible healing, or extreme jamming, things that will challenge your entire load-out and build over the duration of the loop.



That's it!
Stay tuned for Update 16 and have fun!
Team FFG



Cinematic Artwork from Happygull

[www.synthetik2.com]Hey everyone!
Update 14 is out and it's huge! We improved so many things for this update, it's crazy.
It started as a "spring cleaning" but then spiraled into a massive change for the game.
Check it out on our patch page![www.synthetik2.com]
[www.synthetik2.com]Have fun!
- Team FFG

[flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]Hey Everyone!
Update 13 is here with many great improvements. Attachments got a big upgrade, the new Endscreen makes runs more rewarding, improved co-op, our first pet class and a ton of other changes.

Make sure to check out the full notes![flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]
(The pet is attached to you, get it?)

[flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]Note: We added AMD FSR2 which is default enabled for now, you might want to increase the resolution to 0.9 or higher to have optimal image quality and it still has some hickups in loading screens, make sure to switch to DLSS if your GPU supports it. At 0.9 or higher, both provide better image quality than native.

Hey everyone!
We want to bring some more improvements at a faster pace, so here they are;

Weapon variants got an iteration and many have been improved, reworked or otherwise.
They should overall feel noticeably better and gives finding weapons a fresh new touch.
You can also now see a short description on pickup for better usability.

- Overhauled SAT Police Forces variants
- Overhauled Machine Military Forces variants
- Overhauled Human Raiders variants
- Overhauled Human Defiance variants
- Overhauled Soviet Brotherhood variants
- Improved Redguard variants (more to come)

The tutorial got many fixes and improvements.
We removed the obstacle course and added new things for testing and playing with the game mechanics. You can also call in enemy waves to test weapons and items, as well as go outdoors to test on respawning dummies. Overall the firing range should be much more interesting to test out mechanics and interactions, and offer a much better playground for learning and modding.

- New lore-conform android lab area
- Improved firing range
- Improved combat area
- Shops for testing
- Advanced combat area with attack waves
- Beach for chilling & high health dummies for testing

We did varied more coop improvements and fixes.
Dead players now can spectate
3 / 4 Player coop now has 15% faster shield delay
Improved server performance again
Fixed leaving the lobby breaking the lobby slots
Fixed loop having too many loop debuffs
Fixed being able to join a lobby while the game starts, breaking the lobby
Fixed weapon upgrades going above 4
Leaving a lobby now requries a prompt Coming soon.
Varied networking or coop related code fixes and improvements.

Players now have explosion damage resistance (50% from neutral / Enemies, 25% from friendly)
Class Evolutions can no longer roll the same evolution in the same run
Enemy Foam wheel ammo 0.5 > 0.25x dmg
Added Riot Gear upgrade to tinkerer shop
Reduced maximum damage number size
New ability in testing for Eliminator: Mangler
Fixed Refractor Sphere damage resistance scaling above 70%

LR300 now starts with 60>90 ammo, pickup 60>75
LG3 heat increased from 1>1.1
Devastator kit now increases it's spare ammo by 4% per room
PSR2000 Ninata now has a new perk
Judgement now has a new perk, recoil slightly reduced
Road Warrior slight model adjustment

We added one new map for the last area of the police academy with a garden theme.

Added controller sensitivity setting
Reworked settings drop down menus
Buttons in ingame pause and weapon menu work properly again
Buttons no longer reset the selection positioning when pressed
Removed double binding of the weapon menu

Removed content ID track from main menu
Improved some weapon models
Improved stat displays in varied areas
Loading the game no longer resets XP back to the previous saved state
Action recieved now supports categories
Fixed how flat damage, flat weakpoint damage, flat backstab damage applied
Tweaked afternoon lighting theme in Police Training Areas
Reduces impact effects on larger enemies which were overblown
Fixed Black Screens in loop
Varied 21:9 Adjustments

We Changed something about the starting of the game which might circumvent the starting issue some people are experiencing on the latest engine version, let us know. Otherwise please use the fix as described here on the forum pinned thread.

Elites don't drop upgradekills if they are stunned when killed

Have fun!
- Team FFG

Hey everyone! We are very glad about the super positive reception of U12 and want to quickly follow up with some more improvements.


The new AMD-65 is a hard hitting common assault rifle with brutal recoil and bleeding ammunition.

The classic coil gun is a fast firing and accurate shotgun with powerful charged shot stacks.

Do the famed roundhouse kick with the roundhouse boots. Applies shock combos aswell.

A new workbench with 3 strong weapon upgrade choices can appear in the late-game.

Using the power of 3D, hitting enemies now can cause oil splats on the walls!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


We made various improvements to server performance.
These changes aim to address the "desync" issues (invisible enemies, shop malfunctions, game breaking entirely, etc.). We need your feedback to determine if these changes resolve any issues you've experienced.

We continue to work on improving performance, but it's challenging to gauge the impact without your input since we cannot reproduce such problems in-house.

- In testing: new region selection when opening lobbies.
- Dropping items no longer resets cooldowns.
- Fixed lobby ready button mismatching the player.
- Various minor improvements.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Item and ability rarities have been adjusted. This results in healing abilities and items costing less to upgrade compared to other abilities. This change offers more choices in determining which items to upgrade, thus presenting players with more strategic options.

Further improvements to item and weapon shop rarities and some costs have been adjusted to be more logical. Varied costs are reduced a bit, but epics in the uncommon weapon shop now cost 200 more, highlighting the uncommon items.
Fixed the issue of the uncommon item shop having items of too low rarity.
Corrected the bug where scavenging yielded an excessive number of upgrade kits. We are still monitoring this.

Loop enemy movement speed reduced from 50% bonus to 30% bonus.
Loop armor bonus decreased from 40% to 20%.
Fixed the issue of players not receiving the loop debuff.
Further loop improvements and additional loot are planned for the near future.

New icons for weapon chests, item chests, players, pickups.

Variant Override added to the tinkerer shop.
Weapon tuning now provides +1 upgrade kit.
Mystery trader's power has been significantly increased.
Dodgy pills and Titanium legs have been upgraded to epic tier.
Grenade arm now also boosts ejection speed.
Chaos Technology Insertion now grants 2 perks.
Fixed issues with Ammo Refit.

A new workbench with 3 strong weapon upgrade choices can appear in the late-game.

Twin link has been reworked.
Cryo Cannon is now automatically triggered.
Various fixes and improvements to the Shield Dome.

Chrono Interceptor: Fixed and enhanced various evolutions.
Power Kick/Breaching Kick now reduces damage taken by 50% during the kick.
Riotguard Crisis Medical Kit: Removed acid shot to prevent friendly fire, added handgun benefits.
Fixed the issue with the nano launcher restoring 3 shots instead of 0 upon ammo pickup; it now restores 1 shot (currently in testing).
Blockade Breaker cooldown reduced from 14s to 12s.
Guillotine now accumulates 2 stacks in games with 3 or more players.
Guillotine ejection speed bonus reduced from 40% to 25%.
Guillotine now grants a 5% passive speed bonus.
Sniper speed adjustment changed from -10% to -5%.
Smoke Discharge now also affects the main player.
Various improvements to Demolisher abilities and kits.
Dragon's Masterkey is now correctly classified as a specialization ability.
Damage for certain burning effects increased from 50 to 100 (includes Masterkey, Plasma grenade, among others).
Protector's Badge now additionally provides 10 armor; duration clarified.
Visual effects reduced on Nitro Methadone.
Negative effects of Blade Reflect no longer scale.

Harpoon now stuns for 2 seconds and offers AOE suppression.
Enhancements made to the breaching shotgun's point-blank perk.
Squad-9 carbine received improvements and a new perk.
Acid Pistol ammo damage reduced from 0.5 to 0.3 due to new stacking mechanics.
Updated Tokko and C80, LR-400 visuals

Numerous improvements.
Introduced a new alternative style for the cooling floor.
Added a loop style for the cooling floor.
Removed traps in Cooling Chambers to optimize enemy pathing.

Several improvements to arena masters.
Dogs have been refined: they now have appropriate visual effects, are slowed after one hit, and deal 40% reduced health damage afterwards for 3 seconds.
Multiple adjustments to enemy specs and attributes for better balance and gameplay.
Improved enemy impact animations.
Reduced certain oil effects upon impact.
Fixed the issue where shields dropped by shielded enemies lacked collision.

Improved visuals for the bleeding effect.
Reduced gunshot sound intensity.
Reworked Acid debuff:
Can stack up to 2 times.
Offers up to -30/-60% armor reduction.
Fixed Chinese language showing wrong letters on class evolution.
Fixed other languages having certain wrong colors for UI elements.

We updated from 2022.3.6 to 2022.3.9, which might or might not fix some engine issues people are having on Integrated GPUs / GPUs below minimum requirements where the game does not start. Let us know if things work better now.

The end boss appears twice.
Oil splats can appear on players.
AMD65 ammo says it has 20% bleed chance, which is 30%
Certain particles have a wrong setting, making them look boxy

Modders, take note: stuns and root results can now only target the user, similar to the modify stat action. To target others, create an action or use our existing stun actions.

Patchnotes of the U12 hotfix in case you missed them: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1471410/discussions/0/3819669865031720617/


We are following up with another update by the end of the month.
Have fun! - Team FFG

[flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]Hey everyone!
The new MEGA UPDATE is finally out! This means CO-OP is live (Recommended 2-3 players, up to 4 supported). Evolution is a huge expansion style update to the game. Check it out on our website [flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]by clicking the buttons or image above! (Make sure to click multiple times since steam sometimes does not link properly)

This includes a new engine version so make sure to update graphics drivers and verify integrity of game cache in case you have issues.

Let us know what you think and have fun!
- Team FFG


Commando Artwork by Vireyn

Hey everyone!
We are steadily working on U12 which brings a lot of good stuff, however since we did not make it for the summer sale, we want to keep polishing and improving things a bit longer. We'll see about brining out a public test branch in the next weeks however.

U12 will add Localization(Beta), Multiplayer on the main branch, the new Class Evolution perk system from Boss drops and many other improvements!


Now let's check out some sick fan art!



3D Printed P25 by DannBox



Eliminator by Vireyn



Higgs by John S Richard




Riotguard by Ethos



Synthetik by the Darker One



Discord Emotes by Razpou



Machine by Lewdorphia



Lizard Fusion Handgun by Calvin



Stalking by The Darker One



Chrono by M4k



A700 by M4K



Gmod level art by Novsk



Last Defender by Notables



Demolisher by Weedplaid



Nemesis by John S Richard



Machine Hunter by Weedplaid



Gunner by ToddzHD



Deagle by Dom



Luana by ToddzHD



Chrono Trooper by Vireyn



Raider by WumBum



S1 Demolisher by Razpou



Soldier by FasterRiver72



Synthetik by Alhin Row



Convert by DatShraik



TKB-0111 by Savior RU



Chrono Cat Trooper by Halve Eleven



Orion by ClockEFFX



Lego Hovertank by John S Richard



Robot by Hardboiled Cat



Nemesis 3D model by vfrckkkf
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/nemesis-prototype-synthetik-legion-rising-b2e5c8355a964ea392bfa5a20f769b1b



Machine Glyphs by ChippChirp



Eliminator by Bl0wnie



Chrono Trooper by Tildead



Classes by SqueakCheeseTaker



Riotshield by Cinna Engelhart



G3 by Quhark

Random Weapon generator by Quhark
https://perchance.org/firearmgenerator



ComplianceBattery by SS



Gamedev by Calvin



Explosions by GreenOwlHead



Priest of Zir by Grump Maestro



M16 by Enge



Cataclysm by Dierizid



Zir Bodypillow by Razpou



Sniper by Vireyn



The Boys by DatGameh and Dust



Gea by Enge & Colored by Razpou


We also still have some great Synthetik 2 style HyperX Cloud Headsets left over, if you are here on this list and not on our discord and have not gotten any headset, please contact Shrike on Discord [discord.gg]if possible.

----

We are very glad for all the fantastic artworks and are working on the new iteration of our Universe Hub website to showcase all these and more.
Check out some previous art on our old hub here.[www.synthetikuniverse.com]

See you soon!
- Team FFG

Hey everyone!
We got a small news blog for you today.

CLICK HERE to read[flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]

Sometimes you need to click multiple times to be directed correctly to the website
Update 12 is also not far away and the test branch will start in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned!

- Team FFG

Hey, we've got some fixes and tweaks after the latest U11.

! First 3 maps enemy damage and health scaling from 10,20,30% to 0,10,20%
! Credits gain increased from 10 to 15 per kill
Weapon shop costs slightly increased
Weapon pickups on the ground are larger and show the weapon better
Removed audio speaker mode to be readded once engine update fixes volume reset bug
Combat start enables healthbars for common enemies
Bosses now have ambient sounds again

Eliminator gadgets got increased health (had reduced health due to a U11 fix)
Eliminator gadgets got exposed scaling and some scaling improvements
Riotguard changed level 10 perk for better difficulty scaling
Police breaching shotgun damage 4>3.75 (Still higher than U10 levels)
P20 Dual damage 1.3 > 1.2 (Still higher than U10 levels)
Changed Taser drones activation, longer cooldown
Nitro Methadone now has a bit better health gain

Pause menu controller/keyboard navigation got fixed
Input rebinding fix (ping key and others not always able to rebind)
Multi-kills within same frame kills track properly
(Demolisher credits gain might be too much now)
Pickups on same frame kill don't drop multiple times
Fixed Belt Feed scaling
Clarified Power bolt ejection working only in combat
Fixed Reaction SB Perk lasting too long
Fixed magic mag not being usable


[flowfires-fresh-site.webflow.io]Have fun!
- Team FFG