Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar: SALVATION: 1.1 Release Update news

Hey, all! Today we're putting out a substantial update for Salvation. We've gotten plenty of feedback since we released the mod, and have aimed to address it. It's worth noting a lot of the feedback is about better executing on what Salvation should be, so by and large changes to the mod's difficulty are minimal tweaks aimed at rounding out the experience, not changing it totally. You can see an abridged version of this changelog in the video, or read on for a full breakdown of every addition!

Additions

- New cheaper particle effects for fire, allowing for more of it in general.
- Fire now "follows" you as you progress through some levels
- Some map changes to further show the progress of Grigori's efforts of burning the town down.
- Added a few more details to areas to indicate Gordon's actions when he went through.
- Set some more stuff on fire because it's fun.
- Player no longer has to trick the kick into punting held objects. Simply hold a prop and kick to send it flying now!
- Zombie torsos now get killed with a single kick.

Fixes/Changes

General:

- Kick speed has been slightly increased due to player feedback.
- Improved player guidence by opening some doorways to better show the player where to go.
- Gonome's damage reduced to make them a little less overpowered.
- Flashlight brightness slightly increased.
- Modified sound mixer so the music does not get made quite as silent now.
- Background map after completing Salvation now is considerably more destroyed. Truly an ash heap now!

Salvation01:

- Projected texture on ladder is less harsh.
- Gate zombie no longer hurts you after being killed.
- Player no longer gets stuck during level transition from Salvation01 to Salvation02.
- Made trigger for the first Annabelle sighting slightly further in to make it a little easier to spot

Salvation02:

- Vastly improved the framerate of Salvation02.
- Added a glow to the pyre after picking up the first gascan, showing the player where the intended spot for it is.
- Improved collisions in broken doorway for the pyre building.
- Reduced size of flashlight world model texture and Fixed a visual error that was appearing for some people.
- Fixed an error with a func_physbox causing an invisible metal prop to be in the church.
- Fixed a vent that could be seen through easily.
- Fixed zombie breaking out of a door the wrong way.
- Fixed a few areas the player could skip entire portions of the map.
- You now are required to go up to the roof overlooking the church hand hallucination.
- Made the path down from the roof more obvious.
- Added a few more pickups for ammo and health.

Salvation03:

- Ragdolls throughout Salvation03 no longer have collision with the player.
- Door at the start has been changed into a kick door, allowing the player to... kick.. it.
- The Gonarch's death sound has been moved a little earlier in the level.
- Flesh hallway has been made much easier to navigate.
- Kick doors in flesh hallway no longer collide with the player after being kicked down.
- Added many playerclips to prevent players from jumping out of bounds.
- Made babycrab ambush slightly later to give the player more time to run past them.
- Door in gonome chase hallway now locks after getting into the dark room.
- Removed lots of sections of the map that were leftover from RTBR.
- A few triggered sounds from RTBR no longer trigger in Salvation.
- Fixed missing phys clip around the pyre.
- The player can no longer see the phantom Annabelle before getting to the pyre.
- Fixed a softlock behind a dumpster.
- Made navigating the apartment hall with the fast zombie a little less cluttered.
- Fixed soundscape issue and savepoint being located at the top of a roof.

Salvation04:

- Explosion will no longer jumpscare the player and assault their ears.
- Gascan zombie's can should no longer float in midair.
- Fixed some major performance issues.
- Fixed a door moving the wrong way when kicked.
- Fixed a hallucination trigger being accessible from the other side of a wall.
- Moved the location of a voiceline to prevent overlap.
- Gonome is much less likely to get stuck.

Salvation05:

- Wheels on the car trap no longer rotate on the wrong axis.
- Made the gate up to the generator easier to navigate and look less janky.
- Fixed grigori's eye textures missing.
- Added a collision to the generator.
- First gascan now glows. Also added glow around the generator to instruct the player on where to bring it.
- Generator/Gate door now has sounds to indicate progress.
- Credits are now slower to last the same time as the music.
- Deathless reward is now presented before the credits.
- Optimised the map a bunch, implementing lots of culling methods.
- Zombies now pour out of the town on fire when the last can is put in.
- Moved Annabelle sighting.
- Zombies now pound on the Ravenholm wall.
- Reduced the spawnrate of fast zombies/gonomes.
- Added lights to the tunnel for better visibility.
- Added a few corpses to the map.
- Reduced HP of the 2 gonomes in the big building slightly.
- Modified credits to distinguish the Salvation team from the rest of RTBR (Though the RTBR team is still a huge part of Salvation).
- Slightly brightened the map tonemapper and environment light.

Closing

And that's it for our summation of 1.1! With dozens of changes, gameplay rebalances, and overall refinements, we hope many feel their feedback has been accounted for. If you left a review on the 1.0 release, consider replaying Salvation for 1.1 and amending your review accordingly, and in the meantime, we appreciate the response to our first spin-off's release. It's certainly striking a chord with people, and we're glad it's generating great conversation about strategy and tactics. We won't be advertising for recruitment in this update, so that's all for now. Enjoy the patch, and we'll see you again in the near future!