Hello Marines, and Merry Christmas!

We've just released a small update that has added the following:

XMAS MAYHEM:

- Marines and CTRs now have reindeer antlers and santa hats. These changes affect the Xmas Mayhem gamemode, Wargames, and all missions/challenges.

- Marines and CTRs now explode in a colorful display of glowing confetti particles to the tune of Christmas music upon death.

SANDBOX:

- The Sandbox map has been updated with a moving turret that fires a projectile at each of the display surfaces to show the differences of each individual surface. Please keep in mind that the turret can damage players.

- The Recon Drone can now be killed, and will spiral out of control upon death.

Screenshots are available on our Facebook page[www.facebook.com].

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your Team At Zero Point Software

Xmas Mayhem is now live and with it we've included our grenade prototypes. Regular Marines will get the default Christmas ornament-themed grenade that explodes into confetti (does not do damage at the moment). The TIM-101 gets the EMP grenade, which damages you and disables your suit's power. The grenade can be used by pressing and holding down 5, as if switching weapons. After throwing the grenade, you will return to the weapon you were holding previously.

We've uploaded this live stream of our impromptu Xmas Mayhem community gathering with the team to get everyone into the holiday spirit!

https://youtu.be/qYlaYpy-_9c
Other fun little changes:

- At the end of a round of Xmas Mayhem, firework rockets scattered around the map will launch up and explode into confetti.

- Spearhead owners get access to a partyblower, which makes a tooting/honking noise when you press the shift key. Keep in mind that blowing the partyblower does affect your stamina.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your team at Zero Point Software

https://youtu.be/rcefnXSyVk0

Welcome to the 2nd annual Masters of Halloween Wargames! You are invited once again into the eerie bowels of Hell with plenty of spooks and scares awaiting you. This year we’re bringing back the Hell Week game mode (no respawns after the grace period) and introducing some thematic changes to spice up the event!

The event will take place on October 30 at 6:00 pm UTC[www.tickcounter.com].

Join us on Discord[discord.gg] to chat with other players and find teammates. Participants are welcome to record or live stream the event and share it afterwards using #interstellarmarines.

Note: There is no sign-up. The server has room for 64 players total, so join the server quickly to ensure your spot!

• Form a team of up to four players, or go it alone if you don't fear the Hellbots!
  
• Join the designated Wargames server at the time of the event
  
• Enter Hell and exit out of Docking Bay at least once
  
• Be the first team with 30,000 Combat Points at once to win

• Team names on a screen in Hell
  
• Masters of Halloween Wargames 2019 Discord role

We will be streaming to YouTube and Twitch[www.twitch.tv] when the event goes live, so make sure to follow!

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your team at Zero Point Software

Hello everyone!

This little behind the scenes look is an excerpt of our game director Kim addressing the team during our developer meeting on August 2nd to give you an idea of what's been going on lately.

https://youtu.be/CrDV0APSdZE

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your Team at Zero Point Software

Hello Marines, we’re very excited to announce Update 28!

First, we want to thank everyone who participated in ITO Testing - you’re the best!

Update 28 has finally been wrapped up and released. In this update we’ve upgraded Interstellar Marines from Unity 5.1.3 (released August 2015) to 5.6.7 (released March 2019). This much needed upgrade allows us to utilize awesome new features and improvements, which includes increased performance/optimization, lighting improvements, shader upgrades, GPU instancing, PBR materials, API changes, deferred rendering, DirectX 11 support for Windows, and more.

These improvements will allow for Interstellar Marines to continue to be more immersive, enhance visuals, and set us up to begin adding new features and content.

Below is our brand new Update video which showcases the potential of the Unity upgrade and other cool features/content we’ve added to U28.

https://youtu.be/wtiOpE2LAYY

We haven't discussed and decided what we're going to do for U29 yet, so we'll post another announcement in the coming weeks with what we have planned.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your Team at Zero Point Software

Join our official social media and community groups to stay connected and chat:

• Discord Server[discord.gg]

• Steam Group

• Twitter

• YouTube

• Twitch[www.twitch.tv]

• Trello[trello.com]

(0.5.28 - Revision 1497)
Platforms available, 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows, Linux, OSX



ADDED Basic lean mechanics with audio by Eduard
ADDED Unity's new Post Processing v1 stack to all cameras
ADDED Motion blur settings
ADDED Reflection probe intensity is linked to weather state
ADDED Reflection probes are eased in on forced weather system
ADDED Screen Space Reflections setting
ADDED Exhaustion and damage post-processing effects (Chromatic Aberration and Tonemapping)
ADDED Jump penalty added to exhaustion
ADDED Performance optimizations
ADDED ECSChat server host defined in command line arguments
ADDED [REDACTED] to Resort (first iteration)


UPDATED Unity 5.1.3 (released August 2015) to 5.6.7 (released March 2019)
UPDATED Deferred renderer from legacy deferred renderer
UPDATED DirectX 9 to DirectX 11
UPDATED Metal on MacOS
UPDATED GUIDamageWarning made WARN flash 10x faster for better HUD immersion
UPDATED Settings on all audio clips to use "Compress on Load" and now only 2 large mp3 are still using "compress in memory"
UPDATED Operations Wargames so lights occlude correctly and reflection probes with adjusted values
UPDATED Intro Cinematic scene so IM logo is more lit and MEG spotlight shadows are adjusted correctly
UPDATED Option to LightHandler with be able to set emissive boot (glow output) on lights
UPDATED Sandbox added vending machine as emissive reference
UPDATED Starcrown and NGI with foliage fixes and adjusted location of door buttons
UPDATED General emissive materials
UPDATED Hell Guardians to be a bit faster and easier to kill
UPDATED Hell geysers to glow with orange lava
UPDATED Weapon sounds and sway
UPDATED Stamina recovery rate


FIXED Players may sometimes fall through the floor of a map (Unity 5 bug) FINALLY!!
FIXED CP counter bug when player has more than 15 mill. points
FIXED Fire button exploit
FIXED AR being able to shoot through walls

• The game will stop updating when switching out of fullscreen in Windows. If you are on a moving elevator or platform, this will cause you to fall through it. If you are in a Party, this will disconnect you from the Party
  
• View jittering may occur when jumping on lossy networks
  
• Other players will seem to float above or interpenetrate while standing on a moving dynamic platforms (network smoothing will exaggerate this effect)
  
• The gamepad implementation is early and experimental, so may cause issues (Disable Gamepad in menu if mouse/keyboard controls does work as intended)
  
• Standing in a doorway when the door closes may result in the player being pushed vertically
  
• The HUD names and kill messages will be clipped on aspect ratios that are less wide than 16:10

We will continue utilizing the ITO tester program to test progress on upcoming updates.

To become an ITO tester join our official Discord server[discord.gg] and post “!Enlist ITO Tester” in the role-requests channel. Then you'll receive access to the ITO testing announcements where you’ll find the code to unlock the beta branch in Steam.