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Cepheus Protocol is an independently developed top-down RTS inspired by XCOM, Company of Heroes, and Parasite Eve.

A lethal virus has infected Treasure Island, San Francisco and it is up to Captain Winter, a U.S. Army soldier working with the Center for Epidemic Research and Control (CERC) to stop the mysterious and deadly Pangu Virus from spreading to the mainland.

In Cepheus Protocol, you control the fate of a whole city. Every choice you make matters as you must decide how it is best to combat the pandemic. Will you firebomb and leave no trace of human life behind? Or will you try and save everyone at the cost of your squad's safety? Featuring a full day and night cycle, the world changes with each new day as the virus evolves, making the infected more dangerous by the minute.

Building bases, recruiting new soldiers, and sending teams out in the field to battle the growing virus, all the while hunting down Patient Zero is the primary goal of the CERC. With replayability and challenging gameplay at its core, players must be mindful of the environment and the changing nature of the battlefield. Each soldier's loss is a man not easily replaced.

You'll have to use all the tools in your arsenal to research the plague and seek out Patient Zero, whose mastery over the virus grows with each victim she infects. Stopping her is paramount, or a city of millions could be lost.


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Happy New Year from our Team!

Discord

Factions & Civilian Management Delayed till February
So we started on Civilian Management during the first week of January and realized the more and more we implemented code for the Cannibals and the other 2 sub civilians factions we realized that a lot of core systems needed improvement from Hearing/Seeing to how the fog of war system is utilized to properly handle their implementation. While it is not preferable to have to do a bit more cleanup work from the community/gamer side of things in terms of content this is completely required regardless, as we expect Epic Games to release Unreal Engine 5 in the next 1-2 months and the changes we are doing now will overall make our job of shipping new content more efficient in the future.

Unrealengine.com



Breakdown of Civilian Management & Factions

Youtu.be
We expect Civilian Management to be implemented now sometime mid February with Pierces faction following shortly after and Natalie last. Now lets go onto all the fun stuff we've been doing for the last 2 months since the last letter to the Producer

Factions Concept Art
Anarchist Light Technical Vehicle


Anarchist Medium Armor Transport Unit

Anarchist Heavy Armor Battle Garbage Disposal Truck

Anarchist Transport Helicopter

Police Light vehicle

Police Medium Transport vehicle


Updated Factions Notes
Factions will work off a different currency system then CERC
As it stands right now for the factions we plan to make Pierce like the British from COH 1 highly mobile decent pop count. He'll never be able to outmass you but its all about positioning and determining the best time to attack he'll rely on vassalization of civilian groups and recruit out of them to maintain his losses.

Natalie has finally been decided after weeks of debate (Lowest pop count)and she will operate in disguise at random interior zones of the map we will be adding next . She will steal vehicles from the world and convert them to scrap to build vehicles from the four classes of vehicles she gets.
Her units will only reveal themselves when they are in a position of power or they are forced to. So you'll have to investigate in every game where she is occupying by locating where stolen cars from the map are being taken. There will be 3 possible locations per island she could be operating out of that will be hallowed out and given interiors Civilian groups will also occupy these spaces at times as well
Oh and Natalie can also steal vehicles from other factions to scrap them for her vehicles

We will be working to add in all about 2 dozen new weapons for the factions/civilians including melee weapons. There will be unique signature weapons coming to all Faction Leaders including Winters in the future.

Officer:
MP5a4/m4 var
R870
Glock 18

Swat:
M249
M4 Var
Vector
Riot Shield w/anygun.
Glock 18
AT4

Scout Sniper:
l96a2
Sig 716

------

Conscript:
pp-19
ak74u

Sapper:
Mp9
px4
rp7

Survivalist:
Ak-12 var
SKS

Mocap Operations have begun to replace all animations in the game with more realistic fleshed out movements.

Airsoft Gun Ref (NOT REAL GUNS)


Engine Cleanup for UE5 & Upgrading Core SystemsWe currently utilize an older system called "Pawn Sensor" in UE4 which is a much older method of handling senses like hearing and seeing and the system isnt very robust so we opted to make the switch to the Peripheral Sensor Component so it can better support unique structures/objects that aren't base characters derived from a pawn natively without any overriding of Epic's game engine code + be on the optimal track for what they are now focusing as their preferred AI sense approach.

In upgrading this system it will make revealing gas towers and taller structures and how they are revealed far more efficient.

This adjustment required us to rewrite a lot of systems and brought along optimizations that make our hearing/seeing code a lot more efficient since the underlying function calls were reorganized and are far more efficient. We also made the switch to convert all CERC units to a CrowdManagerComponent which is a more intelligent manner of making units path find around each other but is a bit more expensive. See Gyazo differences below.

We turned on CERC collision towards each other after this adjustment and now units can no longer walk through each other and should path find a lot more efficiently around each other. More work will likely be needed to overhaul this where its needed in the future but its a solid step in the right direction.

V2 (Unit Collision Enabled - Crowd Manager Active)

YouTube™ Video: Cepheus Protocol V2 Path finding adjustmentViews: 24A mysterious virus of alien origin is sweeping through San Francisco. It is up to the Center for Epidemic Research and Control (CERC) to track down and find Patient Zero before it is forced to enact...
V1 (Unit Collision Disabled - Crowd Manager Deactivated)
YouTube™ Video: Cepheus Protocol V1 Path Finding Old MethodViews: 6A mysterious virus of alien origin is sweeping through San Francisco. It is up to the Center for Epidemic Research and Control (CERC) to track down and find Patient Zero before it is forced to enact...
We also took the time to revise the wall placement/building placement tool


We revised the wall rotating tool for facing fences how you wish


Music Player has been improved and the Music Looping Bug is now resolved
YouTube™ Video: Cepheus Protocol Updated Music LoopingViews: 11A mysterious virus of alien origin is sweeping through San Francisco. It is up to the Center for Epidemic Research and Control (CERC) to track down and find Patient Zero before it is forced to enact...
Who are the LT's?
They are effectively Chelseys right hand in running her forces in Pandemic mode and each one is given control of a part of her army to expand as they see fit but ultimately answer to her. For their loyalty she has given each one a different mutation that will make each one play differently. Each one has a different backstory, from a Shadowy Organization called Fenrir (perhaps she's part of a recon force investigating Chelsey...), being the unfortunate Chief Surgeon at the Hospital Chelsey reported to duty before she lost her mind to an LT of Pierce they all now answer to their new master Chelsey through the Pangu Virus.

LT 1 for Chelsey is now done and awaiting implementing/ Animation Pass




LT 2 for Chelsey is now done and awaiting implementing/ Animation Pass




Male Infected W.I.P 01 (Will replace current infected versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)


Male Infected W.I.P 02 (Will replace current infected versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)


Male W.I.P 01 (Will replace current versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)


Gas masks will no longer be an upgrade in the future but be unlocked by default
Respirators are coming with upgradable filters. The filters when upgraded will increase how long you can stay inside highly contaminated zones. The CERC Scientist will naturally have a Oxygen limit that is 3-5 times longer then the other units and will not require any upgrades.



Female and Male Assault are done and are getting some last minute adjustments to their shoulder pads for extra protection


Other notable changes coming down the pipe.
Scout CarThe Scout Car that can be spawned from the CERC Tent/Motor pool will be replaced with a Scout Hummer and the Scout Car will be removed and added to an airborne call in tree when we revise doctrines and add more abilities for players. We want to implement a modular Hummer similar to the Atlas that is oriented towards Squad/Infantry Combat/Support since there are so many configurations we are also going to implement a Medical Humvee that buffs medics in their radius and stops them from running out of energy when they are in the Humvees radius.

Greg/leviathanWe will be revising the leviathans so they are more defensive in nature and a bit less frustrating hopefully. When players are turtling/hiding in a corner and have sealed off an Island/space they will seek to build tunnel networks and create sinkholes similar to the Locust from Gears of War to make tunnels for infected to utilize for sneak attacks behind enemy lines or emerge in populated zones and launch attacks. Luckily this update will not come till we have implemented a DNA research tree oriented towards tracking leviathans and killing them via special weaponry. To sum up the changes we will be adding a loadout to the Blackhawk that will allow you to "pulse" the ground nearby in a large radius and scan for underground movement/tunneling when the leviathan or a tunnel is discovered you'll be able to launch a new secondary attack from the Blackhawk that will fire a "bunker buster" type missile from its loadout on one of its wings underground to target his tunnels and him. It should be noted that this Greg hunter weapon can be utilized to finally put the Worms on notice and even hurt/kill them when they are sleeping under the ground to heal in-between battles.

M16 is getting a slight retweak to the grenadier barrel + M203 loadouts will be added

We are also discussing Melee Weapons & Secondary Weapons relating to pistols more details will follow in the future.

Letter from the Producer #1 [From August 1, 2021]

Letter from the Producer #1 [From August 1, 2021]

News

Thoughts on the current Direction and what we are doing to improve the game. [From August 1, 2021] Backlog Post.

Letter from the Producer #7 (Update on our Roadmap)  [From April 7, 2023]

Letter from the Producer #7 (Update on our Roadmap) [From April 7, 2023]

News

Cepheus Protocol Development Update. [From April 7, 2023]

Letter from the Producer #6 [From April 30, 2022]

Letter from the Producer #6 [From April 30, 2022]

News 1 comment

Cepheus Protocol Development for March-April [From April 30, 2022]

Letter from the Producer #5 [From March 1, 2022]

Letter from the Producer #5 [From March 1, 2022]

News

Hey guys! So this is a little series i wanted to start to talk about the development of Cepheus Protocol . Enjoy! [From March 1, 2022]

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 16)
Argeomer
Argeomer

This game is already on my Steam Wishlist :) It is one of my most desired games. Already planning on buying it for my brother as a Christmas gift
This game is something we all wished for, a breath of fresh air for the genre. Keep up the good work team!

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Guest
Guest

Amazing progress thus far! Hope to see more in the future, i do however have a question. What purpose does a unit's rank serve? Higher damage? More Hp. Or more abilities. It would be cool to have recruits become Veterans later on maybe with a slightly different look to them to differentiate them.

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Dark583 Creator
Dark583

Target Acquisition time goes down, gains health & the chance of missing is reduced , like in the game world yes?

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Guest
Guest

Thank you for replying, now i know how it will affect soldiers more, i just hope that the promotions, if a soldier stays alive for long to get them, do make a impact but not enough to be OP

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Dark583 Creator
Dark583

They dont ever become OP anyone can die quite easily with a bad order given!

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Guest
Guest

On the formations in the first nest near your base i have been having the issue where the soldiers if to many will teleport back a few feet and not engage any targets though they are looking right at them not sure if any one else has had this issue. i gave up on the second game after i figured i would charge in get more spacing but only 4 members out of 16 were actively shooting and every one had just topped off on ammo. after the commander when down while trying to retreat i gave up.

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Dark583 Creator
Dark583

Odds are you were moving a defense team outside an owned territory, your welcome to join our discord contact "Dark" the project lead and he'll personally help you out!
Discordapp.com

Are you sure they were facing the right direction? As formation and placement matter. This isnt the typical RTS where they knows everything within a circle they have to actually"See" and "Hear" the enemy

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DoDoCat
DoDoCat

Will be better if can make it as fps.

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Aubesangante
Aubesangante

The game feel unique because it's a strategy game, you already got plenty of fps/tps zombie game just play Dying Ligth or Prototype or any of the gazilion fps and tps zombie game.

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Guest
Guest

Weapons and crafting, Jagged Alliance had that in spades, this could be waaay better than that with the nice graphics. Also please have a deep lore

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