Organosphere V0.9.6.0

Achievement Hunters Edition

New achievement hunter friendly gameplay, tactical air strikes, mega score multipliers, new underground environment and so much more! This update aims to bring the game to a stable play without the need for more updates in the coming months until new major plans are made. [Detailed at the end of the list.]

NEW FEATURES

1. New Tactical Air-Strikes! Drop a tactical air-strike by pressing "X"[or whichever key you bind it to] and selecting the location. 3 payload ships will arrive from the arcadia and drop 6 bombs each totaling 18 explosives on your desired location. Requires a cooldown period and is limited per session but effective at long ranges.

2. Score Multiplier for all XP has been greatly increased. So all scores made now will be much larger than before, allowing the leaderboards to be shaken up a bit.

3. New underground Sewer Level, which can be accessed through one of 8 different manholes throughout the city, which will allow you to enter the sewers at that respective point. Inversely, each exit from the sewers will bring you up to the city at that manhole point. So it can be a great way to travel between locations in the city undetected by enemy soldiers.

4. Haibonium Triangulator now leads you directly to the source of the haibonium in the final city mission with a waypoint as long as the PDA is enabled, as numerous players found following an audio-only cue frustrating. Additionally, although it might make the last mission shorter it does make it more friendly to those who are hearing impaired. And there is still plenty of gameplay to be had hunting achievements and finding secrets.

5. New Tutorial Holo-Deck aboard the Arcadia, accessible from the main menu. A great place for new players to learn about the more unique gameplay mechanics of Organosphere and how to best utilize them in combat as well as familiarize oneself with the controls without the constant harassment of enemies.

NEW CINEMATIC & LORE IMPROVEMENTS

1. Improved some NPC voices on the arcadia space ship.

2. New end game cutscene.

3. New game soundtrack.

4. New loading screen images for the Arcadia spaceship.

5. New literature packed with lore aboard the Arcadia to read.

NEW ACHIEVEMENTS

1. Pain From Above - Perform a tactical airstrike on enemy soldiers. To get this achievement, you will need to destroy enemy soldiers using the new air-strike mechanic.

2. Sewer Count - Enter the sewers. To get this new achievement, simply locate one of the manholes in the city and enter the new sewer location.

NEW ACHIEVEMENT RULES

In order to not cause chaos with the system and people who already achieved the seasonal achievements, instead of deleting the achievements which can cause strange behavior in steam such as blank icons on the client page, seasonal achievements have simply been repurposed so that achievement hunters can acquire 100% game completion without needing to wait for holiday events or load a different seasonal build. While the achievements have been repurposed and renamed, any people who already achieved the original achievement during a holiday event will keep the achievement even if they have not met the new rules for it. This will be the last time achievements are repurposed as moving forward the game will now always be 100% completion achievable in a single season/build all year long. Thank you for understanding, and a big thanks to all the achievement hunters for helping me come to this difficult decision!

1. The winter headshot achievement now runs all year round which was previously known as "Winter-Wipeout" for acquiring 100 headshots during a winter event, now known as "Head Hunter" and can be achieved simply by acquiring 50 headshots regardless of season or event. The best way to achieve this is after completing the game using the spawned zombie soldiers as target fodder.

2. The "Beetle Buster" achievement previously for killing 100 Xmas beetles during the Xmas event, is now called "Beetle Barbeque" and can be achieved all year round by killing 100 of any insect type enemy with the flamethrower weapon attachment. (Or by using the flamethrower chainsaw weapon)

3. The "Christmas Box" achievement, previously awarded for locating all 12 Xmas collectibles during the Xmas event is now called "Book Worm" and is awarded for location all 12 pieces of lore/back story reading material aboard the Arcadia. Helpful waypoints in the mini-map will help you locate them as well.

4. The "Ke Dezemba Boss" achievement, previously awarded simply for visiting your spaceship during Xmas. Which never required much effort at all, especially since you already got the low-effort achievement "Arcadia" just for visiting the spaceship- is now known as "Swat Team" and can be achieved by shooting a wasp or mosquito with a grenade launcher. Try not to kill yourself in the process! (You'll still get the achievement though.)

5. The "Springtime Scavenger" achievement, previously awarded for finding 100 eggs during an Easter event is now known as "Scorpion Scorcher" and can be achieved by killing one of the large red scorpions using an exploding red barrel of fuel.

6. The "Mozzies Attack!" achievement, previously awarded for killing 100 mosquitos during a summer event (which is the only time mosquitos would appear in game) will keep its name, only that now mosquitos will be found in the new sewer environment Killing just 20 mosquitos at any point will now trigger this achievement. Players who previously killed 100 mosquitos during the last summer event will not need to kill any more to re-achieve the achievement, although they will still need to at least enter the sewers to obtain the new "Sewer Count" achievement.

Additionally, in non-seasonal related achievement changes:

1. The "Sam I Am" achievement, previously awarded for arbitrarily locating a secret pizza, now requires you to locate secret operative Sam. Players who already found the pizza will not need to find secret operative Sam in order to get the achievement again, but we still encourage finding him for some helpful provisions. (Character photo-scanned from one of our players who is always contributing towards testing, and can be found aboard the arcadia - the secret pizza still exists in the office however but no longer gives the achievement.)

2. Requirement for "Jackpot" achievement is now "Obtain a score of over 10,000,000 points" to match the new score multipliers. Players who previously obtained the achievement will not need to re-achieve it however, but its also worth noting that it is quite easy to achieve this kind of score with the new multipliers. (I managed to get 100,000,000+ quite easily in a single test playthrough without point farming too heavily and just sticking to objectives and achievements.)

3. The "Looting Spree" achievement now only requires 100 inventory items to be looted instead of 200.

4. It is worth noting that achievements can not be triggered during the tutorial, even though many achievement actions such as using your vehicle or performing air-strikes feature in the tutorial. In order to get the achievement they must be performed in the line of duty.

NOTE: Seasonal events will still occur, just moving forward they will only be for aesthetic and score purposes, as well as being activated automatically by the computers system clock. No achievements will be seasonal locked moving forward. Including the new Halloween event coming up.

ADDITIONAL FIXES/IMPROVEMENTS

1. Improved tooltips for bike spawn.

2. Tooltips now stay a few seconds longer.

3. Improved chainsaw blade audio as well as impact SFX.

4. Kill notifications now show accurate score representation based on current score multiplier.

5. Optimized flying insect movement code.

6. Increased size of laser sight attachment red dot reticle.

7. Improved rendering performance on Arcadia spaceship.

8. Discovery tooltips all uppercase for consistency.

9. Fixed issue causing the use of the freeze ray inside the nature reserve to prevent Green Peacekeeper achievement from being achieved.

10. Fixed issue causing achievement for exterminating all enemies in nature reserve to be unachievable with new nature reserve layout causing some enemies to be stuck.

11. Fixed issue causing freeze ray to freeze lake in nature reserve. As cool as it would have been if it worked properly. [Maybe one day]

12. Fixed issue of scorpions in nature reserve not freezing properly.

13. Fixed issue of scorpions in nature reserve not actually attacking you when within range.

14. Removed weird "Old Book" meshes with missing triangles found around the city.

15. Fixed issue causing "Fokken Prawn" achievement to be achieved if soldiers kill a Parktown prawn instead of you doing it yourself.

16. Fixed issue of soldiers killing Parktown prawns causing you to unfairly gain XP for their hard work.

17. Optimized scripting and method operand ordering.

18. Fixed internal exceptions relating to zombie soldiers having no death audio but it attempting to trigger anyways.

19. Added a more creative/descriptive post-game message after completing the game.

20. Fixed missing colliders on pharmacy door.

21. Improved A.T.V. lighting at night.

22. Fixed issue of end game boss health bar re-appearing over the loading screen once defeated.

23. Flamethrower no longer breaks open boxes or other such unrealistic flamethrower based actions.

24. Fixed issue of being able to call spawn vehicle action while it is currently spawning.

25. Fixed issue of location discovery text not showing the correct amount of XP earned.

26. Fixed a terrain area near the Haibonium pickup location with missing grass and improved some nearby foliage detailing.

27. Optimized city scene memory footprint.

28. Fixed issue of frozen shattered enemies spawning ice cubes with too much velocity that knocks you away if too close.

29. Error audio cue when trying to call bike spawner during a state that you cannot.

30. New inventory icons/artwork for mageu & chips.

31. Optimized game loading system so that it doesn't read the save file 3 times at once for no reason.

32. Made submit score on level exit as well in case player exits without remembering to save game.

33. Fixed some one sided glass in one of the building interiors that could only be seen from the outside.

34. New enemy models that fight alongside the final boss, I won't say too much about that so as not to spoil the ending for those who have not finished the game yet though.

35. Fixed numerous floating meshes and meshes obscured inside buildings that have no opening and were never seen.

36. Some new secrets and Easter eggs which which I won't list because they wouldn't be very secret then now would they.

37. And as always, many other small fixes, improvements and internal bug fixes too numerous too mention.

FINAL WORDS

As explained in the new rules for the "Sam I Am" achievement, most of the characters in the game especially on the arcadia are created from fans of Organosphere [and a few local legends] using our special photo-scanning technology, so if you want to join the crew as a character in the game let me know! There are only a limited amount of slots left.

This update aims to keep the game stable and enjoyable without the need for any major updates in the coming months as I have many other projects I need to work on. There are no future plans at this point to add any more achievements or game mechanics.

The next major update after this one will be after Halloween and focus solely on improving the games story telling, as well as adding better NPC animations and voice acting to the main quest givers located in the city, as well as adding more lore and better cutscenes to make the games story come to life better. Until then, happy adventuring and please do post all your comments, feedback and suggestions in the comments below or in the discussions forum, I will personally read every single bit of feedback sent through to me and do my best to take it into consideration.

With V0.9.6.0 now complete there are only 40 more updates [4 major 0.9.X.0 updates with 10 0.9.X.X patches each] planned until the game is considered "Complete" with the very final V1.0.0 version looking to be launched some time next year after many years of development. Thank you all for being a part of this journey!