Hello, Kindred! Welcome to the very first release notes for Bloodhunt.
We’re delighted to have our game in the Steam Early Access program and we hope that Bloodhunt will be a fun experience for you while we are working to finish it.
Let’s take a look at the biggest additions and changes that we have made since we finished our Closed Alpha, as well as giving you the heads-up on some known issues that you may experience while playing the game.
We have, of course, made many more tweaks and changes to various aspects of the game since the Closed Alpha, but as this is the first release of Early Access, we consider this release the beginning of Bloodhunt.
Please keep in mind that the game is still in a pre-beta stage, so not all features, such as player stats, are fully implemented.
Feature & Design Changes
Key Bindings
We heard from our players that you wanted more robust key bindings, and we have implemented a few improvements that we hope will help you to play Bloodhunt with the custom settings of your choice.
The movement keys are now rebindable – this was high on the list for players using certain regional keyboards.
The hot keys for using consumables are now rebindable as well.
We also fixed a bug with the Pickup/Interact/Feed button which happened if it had been rebound.
- We changed the Free Turn Camera default button from [Left Alt] to [N], because Left Alt sometimes caused issues with the camera when Alt+Tabbing, leading to the player not always turning as intended.
- The default key for the Gas Neutraliser is now set to [7] instead of [8]
- Added [V] as an alternate keybind to toggle the Map, along with [M]
Red Gas
We’ve received feedback that pacing, especially mid-game, can get a bit slow, so we decided to reduce the timers a bit!
With these changes, our intention is to decrease the number of passive playing styles towards the end of the game and to push everyone who has survived into one last, epic conflict! Let us know if these changes make the matches more intense!
Invite your friends
Players are now able to invite their friends in group mode!
Life steal has been added to melee weapons
We saw that the melee weapons were a little bit under-utilised during the Closed Alpha. We wanted to make it a bit more rewarding to use these weapons, which can be quite risky to use, so melee weapons now feature a life steal perk that converts 50% of the damage caused into health for the attacking player.
Anti-cheat
We feel strongly about fair play and, as such, Bloodhunt comes with an anti-cheat solution already during the Early Access phase.
This will help us to continue to develop our detection methods as we do our best to combat hacking and cheating.
Our anti-cheat solution will be updated continuously in the background and when that happens, you will be prompted by Windows to let you know that an update is available which will look like this:
If you accept it, you will get the latest version of the anti-cheat but should you decline it, you will get disconnected as the update is required to play the game.
Known issues
Traversal
While we have carry out multiple bug fixes to various locations where the player could get stuck or not traverse. There are still several places where this can occur.
We have also identified an issue where players who are returning to the Elysium from Prague may end up floating in the air, unable to walk around in the Elysium. Should this happen, you can either matchmake again or restart your client to be able to move around in the Elysium.
Text and Localisation
The game has multiple texts that are cut off or missing, and in some cases even incorrect, both in the menus and in the in-game chat UI. We are still working on fixing bugs related to this area.
Gamepad
Gamepad support is not fully implemented yet, and we are working on improving the gamepad experience. For now, we highly recommend that players use their mouse and keyboard if possible.
Inviting friends
While we are happy to have this feature available, please keep in mind that there are several issues to consider while using it.
- Players are currently unable to add their Steam friends as Sharkmob account friends. As a workaround, please add them as Sharkmob account friends for now.
- Players who have been invited to a different Elysium instance are unable to send group invites afterwards. As a workaround, please restart your game client before inviting if this occurs.
- Player names may not show up correctly in the Elysium social tab, even though they should.
- If a player changes group, they may end up in the incorrect Elysium session, if the player had already transitioned between different Elysium session previously.
We will be working hard to improve the experience when it comes to playing with friends and hope to release improvements in the near future.
Challenges resetting if the player quits a game mid-match
Bloodhunt counts its progression once the match has ended for the player. If the player quits mid-game the challenges and rewards progress will reset to the state it was prior to the match. This is as intended, but we wanted to make you are aware of this.
VOIP
We have identified an issue that is affecting our VOIP functionality when players change party members in their Coterie or when jumping between servers. If you are unable to connect to VOIP after playing a group game, restart your client and regroup with your friends to make it function again.
This is a workaround until we are able to solve the issue.
Reporting Issues
We would really appreciate if you could report bugs on our Discord server, in the #bughunt channel. You can join by clicking the following link: discord.gg/Bloodhunt.
A few days after Early Access launches, we will also conduct a survey via Twitter (Twitter.com/Bloodhunt). Please let us know what you think about the game. Thanks for reading and, as always, see you at dusk!
Sharkmob Team
