Scourge outbreak - Now for PC and MAC on Steam
Scourge outbreak are yours for 7,19 Euro via Steam.
We just heard that Tragnarion Studios has released their co-op,squad-based third-person shooter game "Scourge outbreak" for PC and MAC via Steam. And to make things even better. There´s also a 10% price cut on Steam at the moment.
Press release:
"This summer, Tragnarion Studios will be very proud to release “Scourge: Outbreak”; a co-op,squad-based third-person shooter built with Unreal Engine 3. Some people will already be curiousabout the similarities between screenshots from Outbreak and “The Scourge Project: Episodes 1 &2” (TSP), which we released on PC in April 2010. “Is this a new game? It looks quite similar to thelast one...” A lot has happened since the release of TSP, so we feel it’s important to clearly explainwhat Scourge: Outbreak is...
We must be up-front and admit that TSP hit the (virtual) shelves in a state less polished than wewould have liked. As gamers ourselves, we know what it’s like to play something that feels like itwould have benefited from more time in development. We were a small and, at the time, relativelyinexperienced team trying to compete against some very, very heavy hitters in the shooter genrewho have teams much larger than ours. There was a lot of pressure on us finish the game and get itout as quickly as possible, so the truth is that we struggled to meet the high expectations of shooterfans with the time and resources at our disposal. Nobody felt this disappointment as deeply as we did.
Once TSP was released, we turned our attention to two things. Firstly, we did our best to listen to the community and respond quickly with patches to address the most pressing issues, while makingnotes on improvements that we hoped to squeeze in for the console versions. Secondly, we beganworking on porting TSP to Xbox 360 and PS3.
However, we soon hit a serious problem. Xbox LIVE Arcade titles are restricted to 2 GB, and the PCversion of TSP was over 6 GB. Making the game fit into 2 GB was going to be a gargantuan task;one which would inevitably have far-reaching consequences. Cutting out any major chunk of the campaign would break things like story, pacing, etc, not to mention result in a much smaller game for players to enjoy.
Removing the PvP versus modes and maps would severely reduce our potentialaudience. No, we had to do this carefully. So, while part of our team focused on finding technicalsolutions for saving space, the rest of the team started analyzing the game to figure out which parts could be removed or modified without seriously screwing anything up. With a deep breath, we plunged in and spent the better part of two years fighting to save our game and make sure it didn’t remain a PC-only title forever.
Still, despite a lot of blood, sweat and tears (all literal!), we worked hard and used this time to make the game better. Much, much better."
Here’s just a small selection of what we were able to do:
- Added a totally new Tutorial level at the start of the game to better explain gameplay mechanics
and establish key plot points which were fuzzy before, as well as created new
cut-scenes and added new dialogue for a much improved plot narrative throughout.
- Checkpoints which weren’t fun were cut, and others which were under-used had action added to
them to squeeze in a lot more gameplay than they offered before. The gameplay in almost every
checkpoint has been revised and re-balanced to make it more challenging while at the same time
more fair.
- Re-vamped Friendly and enemy AI, improving combat behavior, path-finding, and fixing a
lot of bugs.
- Overhauled the weapons handling, added new weapon variants and made gunplay far more
responsive and gratifying with better hit feedback, stumble/death animations, etc.
- Made cover much easier and faster to use and added a ‘Cover Slip’ action.
- Adjusted Player movement speeds and added a (much needed) Roll action.
- Vastly improved gameplay fluidity, making all actions faster, smoother and far more responsive.
- Added unlockable Perks to the XP system, so gaining XP Ranks is now much more meaningful.
- Using new functionality in Unreal Engine 3, we totally re-did the lighting in the entire game, resulting
in far more vibrant and varied environments.
- Created a lot more landmarks and cool background vistas to aid navigation and add more
depth to the world.
- Revised the look of several playable characters and added a bunch of brand new enemies.
- Completely changed our approach our PvP modes, replacing all the original maps with new ones
to emphasize a smaller, more intimate and intense 4v4 squad combat experience. Now 4 friends
who have played the campaign in co-op can also be a full team in PvP modes, without having to
rely on strangers to win.
