news

Watch the Lawson Delta map reveal here.

...Or get a more in-depth look at the Lawson Delta in our latest Developer Diary.

• Skill-based matchmaking – With this update, we are introducing a new, skill-based matchmaking system. The new system is inspired by the Elo system used in chess, and heavily weights player vs player skill in populating matches to create a fairer experience.
• Movement inertia - We are introducing a new movement system that adds acceleration and deceleration to the core movements of Hunters. This system will stop players from abusing the ADAD buttons to dodge bullets/melee attacks.
• Anti Teaming - To prevent pre-lobby teaming, we have made various changes to the way that we group players into sessions.
• Weapon looting from dead Hunters - When getting downed or killed, Hunters now drop their weapon(s) on the ground. Other players can either pick up the dropped weapon(s) or exchange them for their currently equipped ones. Any looted weapons extracted from the mission are marked as contrabands and cannot be sold for money in the store.
• NVIDIA Highlights - Hunt now supports NVIDIA Highlights, which will automatically capture a short video of your kills and deaths. Now you can show off awesome videos to your friends!

AI

• AI should no longer spawn on top of geometry where they could not get down (for example: wagons and large boxes).
• Hellhound
  
  
  • Updated the locomotion behavior and animations of Hellhounds. Their movement is now more realistic
  • Hellhounds’ overall damage has been reduced. Bite attacks now cause bleeding damage
  • Hellhounds can now dodge melee attacks by jumping back and forth
  • It is now possible to cancel Hellhounds' melee attacks by hitting them first
  • Re-balanced the damage Hellhounds take as follows:
    
    
    • They now die to 1 headshot with long bullets at any range (With the exception of the Uppercut which is close to matching the Vetterli)
    • 1 headshot with medium bullets until long range
    • 1 headshot with compact bullets over short range (Increasing fall off over range)
    • Body shots now deal more damage
• Melee vulnerability balance pass
  
  
  • Some AI are weaker to specific melee types and resistant to others
  • Melee damage has become slightly more powerful against AI overall
• Armoreds
  
  
  • Weak to Stab damage
  • Resistant to Slash damage
  • Blunt damage stays normal
  • The knife and machete have similar effectiveness
• Grunts and Hives
  
  
  • Have neither weaknesses nor resistances
  • Can be killed with 1 heavy attack to the head by dedicated melee weapons
• Hellhounds
  
  
  • Weak to melee damage in general
• Meatheads
  
  
  • Weak to Slash damage
  • Resistant to Blunt damage
  • Slightly resistant to Stab damage
• Water Devil
  
  
  • Resistant to melee damage in general
• Butcher
  
  
  • Weak to Slash damage
  • Resistant to Blunt damage
  • Slightly resistant to Stab damage
• Spider
  
  
  • Weak to Blunt and Slash damage types
  • Stab damage stays normal
• More details can be found under the Gunplay section

Audio

• Improved Audio Mix (Zoo cleanup)
  Developer Note: The goal was to clean up the soundscape in the compounds to make it easier to identify the different sound sources, like the AI cast or an animal trap. While doing this we improved the attenuation to make sounds behave more consistently and realistically over distance.
• Added missing audio stingers to UI banners.
• Added ambient audio to the main menu.
• Decreased the volume of the audio played after bounty pick-ups.
• Added "Devil In The Churchyard" Instrumental Version (plays during matchmaking & mission loading).
• Added "Devil In The Churchyard" Ambient Version to play after Humming Theme in the Main Menu.
• Increased the audibility of fuse sounds (All Dynamite variants, Frag grenade, and Sticky bomb).
• Gramophone in the level can play a short version of the "Devil in the Churchyard" track.
• Fuse sound on explosives do less occlude within close proximity now.
• Reduced audible range of weapon selection and aiming.

Gunplay

• Increased the width of the Aperture sight to allow Hunters to see and track targets more easily
• Waterproof Dynamite now has separate aim helpers for ground and water danger ranges
• Improved fuse audio for explosives: Lighting up the fuse and the sizzle are better audible now
• Melee weapons balance pass
  
  
  • Blunt, Slash, and Stab type of melee attacks now have more separation from each other
  • World melee items like the Wood Axe and Sledge Hammer have been left untouched and will continue to be the most powerful melee weapons
  • Dusters can now kill Grunts with a single heavy attack to the head
  • The Knife still kills Grunts with a single heavy stab attack to the head and chest, but regular attacks require two hits
  • Throwing Knives now do slightly less damage than the Knife. Throwing damage has not changed.
  • Machete can now kill Grunts with a regular hit to the head. It requires three heavy slash attacks to kill an Armored for a total of four heavy attacks per full stamina bar
  • Cavalry Saber now requires two regular hits to kill a Grunt, but can also kill an Armored with just two heavy stab attacks for a total of four heavy attacks per full stamina bar
  • Bayonets now match the Cavalry Saber’s heavy attack damage, but consume more stamina for the attack for up to three heavy attacks per full stamina bar
  • Talon variants now match the Machete heavy attack damage, but consume more stamina for the attack for up to three heavy attacks per full stamina bar
  • The Romero Hatchet now matches the Machete but consumes more stamina for the attack, similar to attacking with rifle buttstocks.
  • Rifle buttstock attack damage is the same against Grunts, but has been reduced slightly against other Hunters, now requiring two hits to the head to kill
  • Rifle buttstock attacks also consume slightly less stamina
  • Pistols with attached buttstock do the same damage as rifle buttstock attacks
  • Pistol whip attack damage has been slightly reduced overall, making it less effective in melee and best used as a deterrent for AI before switching to a dedicated melee weapon
  • Sawn-off weapon attacks deal the same amount of damage as pistol whip attacks
  • The Romero Hatchet is identical to the Machete for both regular and heavy melee attacks, but consumes more stamina
  • Adjusted range of melee attacks based on the weapon's length (longer weapons have further reach than short weapons)
  • Improved hit detection of Wood Axe and Combat Axe melee attacks
  • Improved hit detection of Sledgehammer melee attacks

Developer Note: Melee combat has received a major update to improve internal consistency and better highlight each weapon's strengths and weaknesses against the AI and other players. There have been a lot of changes across the entire arsenal and list of enemies. Please tell us what you think about them!

Hunters

• Added inertia-based movement to counter ADAD button spamming
  
  
  • Hunters will no longer be able to perform super erratic moves to avoid getting hit by bullets
  • This system adds acceleration and deceleration to core movement for a more realistic feeling
• Added new jumping system
  
  
  • Removed melee stamina consumption from jumping
  • Jumping still tires the player - similarly to sprinting - and blocks regeneration of melee stamina
  • The Hunter's movement speed is slightly reduced when chaining together too many jumps in a short amount of time
• Added a new weapon state when jumping for a better first-person experience of the weapon moving on screen
• Players can now vault over objects with higher landing points than the Hunter's current position.

Developer Note: With this update, we are introducing a number of core changes to player movement to counter some of the more dominant strategies players have come up with to dodge bullets or make it easier to charge in for a melee attack. Some of the changes might feel a bit sluggish at first and will require players to get used to them over a couple of games. We have tried to strike a good balance between the necessity of adding inertia to player movement, while at the same time keeping the feeling and walking speeds the same. Players can still perform the same trick jumps, quickly peak out of cover, or dash around the world as they are used to. Tell us what you think and if you feel these changes work or what you would like to see changed!

Meta
Equipment:

• The Nagant Brawler Pistol (Single Action) has been exchanged with the Nagant Officer Brawler variant (Double Action).
  
  
  • The price has been lowered from $35 to $30.
• Icon consistency pass on all normal syringe shots to match the vitality shot.
• A free sample of the newly unlocked item(s) after ranking up is now given to you and can be found in your arsenal

Recruits

• Free Tier 1 Hunters have been added. The cheapest Tier 1 Hunter now always comes as a free recruit, but his equipment is marked as contraband and cannot be sold at the store.
• Recruited Hunters are now rotatable and zoomable in the menu.
• Unwanted Hunters can now be dismissed from the list of recruited Hunters in order to free up a slot. Their equipment is stored in the Arsenal for further usage, but players will not receive any bonus XP like they do when they retire a Hunter above Level 25.

Mission

• The solo event has been temporarily removed from the mission list. The solo mode will soon be replaced with Quick Play, which is an improved version of the solo event mode, to make sure our solo players can get back into the game asap.

Performance

• Optimized a handful of expensive game features.
• Made improvements to occlusion culling handling when multi-threading (should improve main thread slightly on low end hardware).
• Cleaned up handling of fullscreen/windowed modes.
• Some minor CPU improvements to post-processing.
• Improved efficiency of scene rendering order which may benefit GPU.
• Improved blending of LOD’s.
• Improved the way we handle flushing GPU commands that can improve performance in CPU limited scenarios.

UI

• Adjustments made to the Mission Selection flow for the upcoming Quick Play game mode.

Developer Note: In preparation for the upcoming Quick Play mode the mission selection screen has been changed and updated. The flow to enter a game may be slower and may require more steps than intended until the release of the new game mode.

World

• New Feature: “Crows on a line”
  
  
  • You can now find crows sitting on fences, walls, and some ledges.
  • Reduced the overall amount of crows, ducks, and adjusted possible spawn points
• New Feature: Cash register
  
  
  • Players can now find these randomly hidden away in compounds
  • Players can interact with them and loot them for money (same amount and chances as for looting dead Hunters).
• Chapel of Madonna Noire now has a second entrance from the graveyard side, increasing the total number of access routes to the Boss lair to three
• We did a consistency roof accessibility pass (some roofs which could be exploited got properly blocked - as it was always designed - and some roof got opened up for player access)
• The hunting tower got more cover all around - in the future a new variation is possible as requested by the community
• Some fences were not working properly when vaulting, they are now fixed all around the map.
• Decluttering pass in Port Reeker to make it more readable for players
• Water depth consistency pass across the entire map
  
  
  • The further you move into large bodies of water (the deeper the water gets) the slower your Hunter can move
• Lots of floating objects fixed all around the map
• Some updates on the art (like new roads textures, the industrial set got a small update, etc)

• Fixed a bug that could lead to multiple hunter kills being registered in a short amount of time while a player was affected by multiple damage sources at the same time.
• Fixed some issues that could cause the client performance to stutter occasionally.
• Fixed a problem where players could hear voice chat from other game sessions.
• Fixed an issue that caused oil pools not being visible on the ground.
• Fixed some navigational issues for bosses in Alain & Sons Fish.
• Fixed a bug that made night missions appear too dark sometimes.
• Fixed an issue related to stamina consumption when chaining heavy melee attacks with some weapons.
• Fixed an issue where waterdevils reacted to players from too far away already.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from jumping/vaulting while they were inside a waterdevil.
• Fixed a problem with steam invite problem that happened when two players invited each other at the same time.
• Fixed an issue where cloth on hunters and AI was switching between simulated and static cloth too often.
• Fixed a rendering issue that made edges around objects appear to be blurry.
• Fixed an issue were the butchers downed state got interrupted unintentionally.
• Fixed an issue that caused grunts to move towards the maps origin sometimes.
• Fixed an issue that caused grunts to spawn without finding a waypoint and therefore didn't move properly.
• Fixed an issue where inactive / fake grunts didn't have proper collision for throwable items.
• Fixed an issue that lead to objects not being rendered sometimes.
• Fixed an issue that caused top-up stations to heal too much if the player's current chunk was not fully regenerated
• Fixed an issue that let stamina regenerate while holding a heavy melee attack
• Fixed an issue that caused consumable collisions to occasionally not register (known as the “silent dynamite impact”).
• Fixed an issue where the sticky bomb fuse's audio would end seconds before the detonation audio starts

• Fixed some smaller UI issues.
• Fixed some icon inconsistencies in the shop.
• Fixed a number of loca issues.
• Fixed some animation issues.

• In rare cases, players can get an error upon launching the client which states "Default system texture "%ENGINE%/EngineAssets/Textures/White.dds" failed to load". Possible workarounds for this issue include updating your Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable packages (Update 3)[http://www.microsoft.com], or ensuring that the latest graphics drivers are installed. If this issue persists after trying these fixes, please contact support[huntshowdown.kayako.com].
• Lighting sometimes doesn't initialize properly causing the game to be very dark.
• There is a chance that some consumables will be lost after extracting from a mission, if the hunter had multiple consumables of the same type stacked.
• Clients can sometimes get kicked back into the menu screen while they are loading into a mission.
• Hunters killed by bear traps do not count as kills.
• The ammo received on pickup is inconsistent, depending if the weapon still has ammo left or not.
• Performance will drop when looking through windows if "2 pass scene rendering" and "2 pass lighting" are not enabled in the options.
• There is a rare chance that the player doesn't get a result screen after playing a mission.
• Flare gun projectiles are not rendered properly when hitting a surface.
• Some water reflections are not rendered correctly.
• Rare case of sounds not properly occluding.
• Rare case of sound not triggering on gunshots and explosions.
• Vegetation may flicker in specific location (stronger with HIGH shadow quality)
• Light sources like lanterns and the sun may be seen through geometry (walls, terrain...)