It's that time of the year again! That's right: Patch Time!

This time we bring you a new arcade level along with a good long list of fixes and tweaks. Let's have a closer look:

The "designed for PSVR" arcade level known as Panopticon finally makes its debut on PC! Can you reach the gold bar in the middle?

Pave your own path as you try to reach the center of this non-linear circular map. Brute force your way forward through action and agility or take the stealthy route and sneak around those pesky supervisors - all ways are valid!

Due to issues with some anti-virus software, save files have been moved from your "Documents" folder to "AppData" (more specifically: '%USERPROFILE%\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Neat Corporation\\Budget Cuts'). Upon first launch after updating the game will automatically move any existing save files, so just sit back, relax and play as usual.

If you manage to play through the game without getting any robots killed, you'll be awarded with this achievement! Drones are excepted in the occasions when they fly into walls and accidentally kill themselves, but watch out for Supervisors accidentally shooting each other when they were aiming for you, that still counts!

Some older versions of drivers for AMD graphics cards caused issues with our new optimized stereo rendering, creating an issue where only one eye was rendering correctly. To solve this we replaced all previous uses of Unity standard shaders and it should now be running smoothly.

The throwing code has been updated to use a pose buffer, so that we can trace back to the accurate point in time when the player released the object. This reduces cases of objects getting launched downwards because it used to release the object a bit too late in general. It also allows us to get rid of the hack we used for throwing when using Windows Mixed Reality hardware, so now throwing is more realistic on all hardware.

General

• Ending voice volume tweaks
  
• When restarting a level the game will only load the player's inventory so it acts like you just entered it from the previous level, for stability and consistency
  
• Vive Cosmos controller support
  
• Controller bindings more customizeable on Steam than previously
  
• Built-in deadzones for smooth locomotion and turning

Performance

• Reflection Probe performance boosts
  
• Physics performance improvements
  
• NPC animation performance improvements
  
• Decal spawning performance improvements

General

• New Arcade level "Panopticon" added (also mentioned above)
  
• Lowered arcade score sounds

General

• Valve Index hands rendering layer fixes & optimizations
  
• Invis cheat works in ending now
  
• Ending bugfixes
  
• Locked doors no longer openable by pushing them with physics objects
  
• Corrected fragment-shader stereo effects in some shaders
  
• Data Center elevator position fixed
  
• Shutdown elevator bugfix
  
• NPC dead body found reaction bugfixed
  
• Supervisor aiming at portal fix

Inventory

• No more infinite stabby crystals in credits scene
  
• "Expected" inventory items start in inventory rather than Lost&Found

Achievements

• Fixed "If I can't then none of us can" achievement
  
• Game completion related achievements bugfixes

Movement

• Fixed a snap-turning related state bug resulting in soft-locks in some levels
  
• Smooth locomotion works on rugs again
  
• Can no longer teleport through locked vents

We've worked together with the wonderful folks over at TheYetee to bring you this Budget Cuts t-shirt and sticker pack! Available only on TheYetee NeatCorp store![theyetee.com]

The sticker pack features all the wonderful characters from both Budget Cuts 1 and Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency (Can you name them all?? We sure can...... t)

We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Since we are a software company, we are able to support our devs in working from home during these times by providing software and hardware to help bridge the distance that we are all experiencing now. That way we can continue to provide games and experiences for people to explore worlds in VR that take them beyond their home.

During this period, we are very happy that we've been able to release content updates to Garden of the Sea, and performance patches to Budget Cuts and Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency
While it hasn't all been straight forward, and some of our workflows have had to change (or even slow down) in order to accommodate our new work style, we do consider ourselves very lucky to have a studio and team that supports us in being able to work from home during these times.

We made sure that anyone who didn't already have a VR capable PC at home could get their desktop sent home from the office, and that everyone got VR kits and hardware at home in order to continue work on our current projects - Budget Cuts for PSVR[www.playstation.com] (which will also get physical copies[www.amazon.co.uk] thanks to our buddies at Perp Games) and our (way too) early access game Garden of the Sea (which now also has its own merchandise over at TheYetee[theyetee.com]!).

Can you guess which setup belongs to which neatcorp dev?

We also delivered (from a distance) care packages to our developers which had snacks, supplies, and some fun projects that we could do together during our time off from work (like face masks for movie night, and snacks for an animal-crossing gaming evening!)

bonus neatcorp (neco! get it?) cats who are also "working" from home!

We are a group of VR gamedevs that live and work in Stockholm, and we now have a Creator Page on Steam! (wow yay!)

We believe that by being excellent to one another and embracing all the weird quirks that make us human we can create some neat games (hah see what we did there?), and hopefully have some fun while doing so! There's a huge passion for Virtual Reality at our studio, and many of us are die-hard tech enthusiasts who can't wait for the latest&greatest hardware to test and play with.

Although we've all individually made plenty of games and tools before we all joined Neat Corp, our debut title Budget Cuts is what brought many of us together for the first time. After that, it was inevitable that we would put our heads together and create Garden of the Sea and now Budget Cuts 2!

We couldn't have built all these games without all you wonderful VR gamers who believe in exploring worlds with the full immersion of virtual reality! Thank you!

We look forward to providing you with more updates on our games as we continue to build great experiences with you! Speaking of which, we would LOVE to get your feedback on our games, so please feel free to join our discord[discord.gg] and help us make these games the best they can be.

Cheers from all of us at Neat!

A couple of months back, we started a project to bring the performance of Budget Cuts (BC1) up to Budget Cuts 2 (BC2) parity. We soon realized that the most effective way to do this is to port the game to the BC2 codebase. This had added benefits, such as simplifying the ability to port features over as well! For example we now have the Mutators menu available in BC1, which includes Smooth Locomotion and other, perhaps more wacky, things!

(Pictured: a typical workday at Neat Corporation)

Most important of all though, is the significantly increased performance and bugfixes we gained from the port. This also brings us to the fact that BC2 is recieving an update at the same time, because not only did BC1 benefit from BC2 features, we also added some significant improvements which affect both games:

- Multithreaded AI vision system rewrite
- Single Pass Instanced Rendering
- Multithreaded custom physics force calculations

We hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoy bringing it to you!

Budget Cuts changelog:
(NOTE: it is a difficult task to write a comprehensive changelog in this case because of all the changes that have occurred over the year since the Arcade Patch, but I will do my best. Consider this "including but not limited to")

• Mutators! Replaces difficulty settings. Allows you to customize your experience in finer detail, as well as experience the game in new ways
  
  - Mutator: Homing knives (aka aim assist)
  - Mutator: Smooth locomotion
  - Mutator: Smooth turning (replaces snap-turning when enabled)
  - Mutator: Infinite Stabby Crystals (Grab the air for a free sharp object)
  - Mutator: Bullet Time (Triggers slowmo when guns are fired)
  - Mutator: Paltkoma (Triggers slowmo when eating)
  - Mutator: Gravity modifiers
  - Mutator: Enemy aim skill
  - Mutator: Enemy detection speed
  - Mutator: Bullet speed
  - Mutator: NPC animation speed
  - Mutator: NPC health
  - Mutator: Starting equipment
  - Mutator: Can use guns (player can use Supervisor’s guns)
  - Mutator: Unarmed Supervisors
  - Mutator: Fragile knives (see below)
  - Mutator: Translocator launch force
  - Mutator: Stealth Translocator (see below)
  
  
• HR level scripting reworked, plus new lighting and bugfixes
  
• Updated HR control panel graphic to match the real one player uses
  
• Faster loading times
  
• Valve Index support
  
• Vive Cosmos support
  
• Magnifying glass can tag enemies for seeing them through walls
  
• Controllers now use SteamVR Input 2.0, allowing nicer rebinding of buttons
  
• Steam Cloud savegame sync
  
• Distance grabbing and snap turning options separated from playspace type
  
• Distance grabbing improvements
  
• Some distance interactions (swipe cards at a distance and more)
  
• New updated roomba
  
• Translocator button bindings match BC2
  
• Better translocator landing logic
  
• Translocator head origin turns red if the target location is inside a wall
  
• Quick switch tools (tap tool select button to quick switch to previous tool)
  
• Multithreaded AI vision system rewrite
  
• Single Pass Instanced Rendering
  
• Multithreaded custom physics force calculations
  
• Portal uses scissor rect to significantly reduce drawcalls
  
• Spectator screen no longer has a border and takes up the full screen
  
• Sharp objects now break on impact with an NPC by default ("Fragile knives" mutator controls this)
  
• Sneak translocation removed (NPCs can only hear you translocate within arms length. Enabling "Stealth Translocator" mutator brings back old style)
  
• Significantly fewer cases of game not being able to start when pressing play in menu
  
• Items no longer pile up at world origin on load (in certain scenes)
  
• Screws are no longer missing after loading savegame
  
• Fewer random physics explosions with ragdolls
  
• Can no longer call numbers you haven't recieved on your pager
  
• Checkpoints now immediately save the status of the game, fixing various savegame bugs
  
• Inventory stability fixes, no more invisible items
  
• Most lensflares are now Flaires(tm), allowing them to be properly cropped by the portal
  
• Simplified grabbing of translocator in Genesis
  
• Removed useless "graphics settings"
  
• Wicked new loading bar
  
• Physics optimizations
  
• NPC optimizations
  
• No more lazy devs :)
  
• Updated sinister voice
  
• Unarmed state improvements for Supervisors
  
• Unity updated to 2018.4.21
  
• Various stability fixes
  
• Probably more :)

Potential worries:
Q: Where's my graphics settings?
A: The only thing this setting controlled was MSAA, and it's generally not recommended to play VR without MSAA so away it goes. It's still available in the config file if you want to change it anyway!

Q: Where's my difficulty settings?
A: They've been replaced by the new feature we call "Mutators". You can modify the game to your liking more finegrained than before, but if you really want to find the same settings as the old difficulties, here's a list:

Relaxing:
- Fragile knives: off
- Detection speed: Slow
- NPC Health: Very Low
- Aim skill: Weak

Standard:
- Fragile knives: off
- Detection speed: Standard
- NPC Health: Low
- Aim skill: Standard

Extra:
- Fragile knives: on
- Detection speed: Standard
- NPC Health: Standard
- Aim skill: Standard

Q: Why was "Sneak Translocation" removed from standard play? Why do knives break on NPCs now?
A: Consider this the Director's cut. See the mutators if you want to bring the old experience back

After a long development, Budget Cuts 2 is finally released and "finished"! (yay!)
We are currently working on porting the updates and optimizations from BC2 into BC1 - but unfortunately it's not as easy as just pushing a button.

While working on Budget Cuts 2, we made several significant updates to our engine and tools, which means it's a far more robust and performant base than the one we had for the original Budget Cuts. We've been looking at moving several of those updates and optimizations back to Budget Cuts 1 but it turns out it is actually better to port the content from Budget Cuts 1 into the Budget Cuts 2 engine - so this is what we are currently working on!

What does all this mean to you?Well, if you have Budget Cuts 1 you will be getting a patch in the near future which contains a lot of "quality of life" updates to performance, the save system, the AI, throwing, and several other "under the hood" systems as well as adding support for Smooth Locomotion.

We will give you an update once we know when this update will go live, but if you want to stay up to date on our development process we will be sharing more details in our Neat Corp discord server[discord.gg]!

Happy Knife Throwing!
//The Neat Corp Team

Budget Cuts 1+2 Bundle and Preorders are now live on Steam! Bundle your budget cuts today for that sweet discount!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12061/Budget_Cuts_Complete_Set/

Improved Windows Mixed Reality support:
We have added increased support for WMR users, including proper controller graphics, tutorials and fixes for throwing not working properly on the platform. For the time being throwing will not feel quite as realistic as on Vive/Oculus and will require a slightly different throwing technique from the player. The reason for this is that implementing it in a way that is consistent with the throwing on Vive/Oculus platforms will require a more significant reworking of the current system. We still aim do this for a future patch, but for now this one will at least increase the playability for WMR users significantly.

GDPR:
We have implemented Unity Analytics and Cloud Diagnostics that will gather anonymous data regarding player progress, errors and crashes in Budget Cuts. This data will be used to help us improve the game. If you really hate helping us improve the game, you can opt out by pressing the new GDPR button on the left side of the Main Menu panel.


Changelog:

• GDPR button added in Main Menu.
  
• Unity Analytics and Cloud Diagnostics enabled.
  
• Improved WMR support (controller graphics, tutorial highlights, control tweaks (snap turn with thumbstick), decent throwing).
  
• Fixed faulty ceiling/floor collision in some areas of Human Resources.
  
• In the rare case that a corrupt save file is detected upon loading, the game will instead generate reasonable defaults, including giving you mission critical items and reset your progress in said level. This will prevent cases such as players getting softlocked by missing screws and/or spawning outside the level.
  
• Fixed russian localization in Arcade Mode score screen.
  
• Fixed a few objects that couldn't be put into the inventory.
  
• Fixed bullet marks rendering issue.
  
• Fixed a bug that made tutorial sometimes not appear correctly.
  
• Fixed negative score that occurred in rare occasions in Arcade Mode.
  
• Oculus Native throwing improvements.
  
• SPOILER: Refactored ADAM to fix him behaving strange at times.

Since the release of Arcade Mode we have received feedback and bug reports, mainly from Oculus Native users. In this patch we have addressed some of the issues and wishes you brought us!

We also added a Level Select in the Main Menu! This will let you select any level you previously reached when starting a New Game!

Conveniently enough, the Level select also doubles as a HELP-I-AM-STUCK-IN-THIS-LEVEL-BECAUSE-STUPID-BUG buddy. We are aware that some users are experiencing bugs such as missing screws, ADAM acting strange, locked doors that can be opened by pushing them with physics objects. These issues are connected to the save system and have proven particularly difficult to address. As an emergency workaround for any such issues, we recommend to start a New Game on an empty Save Slot, then use the Level Select to start the same level you were playing when encountering the issue. This will sadly cause you to lose any objects stored in your inventory from previous levels, but should rid you of the save system issue (you will get to keep mission critical items, ofcourse).

See detailed patch notes below.

• Fix for audio issues on Oculus Native [oculussdk].
  
• Reworked throwing for Oculus Native [oculussdk].
  
• Introduced Level Select for Story Mode.
  
• Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese Traditional localization added to Arcade Mode.
  
• Fix for issue where you could use the translocator after level complete in Arcade Mode.
  
• Various smaller bug fixes.

Thank you for all your feedback, please keep it coming! :)