Friends! The first day of testing Entropos on an entirely new technical foundation is behind us. Yesterday was intense and difficult, but any physical exhaustion is more than made up for by the emotions — we’re genuinely happy! Not only because the game is finally coming back to life, but because the community is coming back to life with it.

And somehow, chatting in Discord while playing unexpectedly turned into an open five-hour Q&A session. There was a lot of information, so we decided to put together a short summary of the most important points.

New Website

Many of you have probably already noticed, but if not — we’re happy to announce it.

We’ve updated the game’s website and significantly expanded the Wiki section: https://entroposthegame.com/wiki/

On the Wiki, you can learn about many of the features planned for Entropos: from the arsenal to the character customization system and future movement mechanics.

We’ve also put together a convenient page with materials for fan creations, including faction emblems, artwork, and fonts.

Q&A

When is the next developer diary?

We know you enjoy our video reports, but development remains our highest priority. While preparing for the Pre-Alpha playtests, we unfortunately couldn’t spare the resources for videos as well — even our regular posts had to be put on hold.

Now that the Pre-Alpha is running again, we’re returning to a stable schedule of news and development updates. Our summer recap will be coming very soon — once we draw a line under this stage ourselves, update our plans based on your feedback from the playtests, and return to a more normal human schedule.

Lore

What story does Entropos tell, and how will that story develop?

Entropos depicts an alternate world standing on the brink of World War III. A world that had recently been striving toward unity begins to fall apart, descending into greater and greater chaos — and the game tells the stories of the people living through it.

While the game is still in development, we don’t plan to focus heavily on advancing the lore. You’ll be able to learn about the history of the Entropos world through articles on the game’s website, details found on the maps, and the traits of its characters. After release, we plan to add new factions, new maps, and special in-game events.

Read excerpts from the backstory of Entropos here: https://entroposthegame.com/ru/wiki/lore

Will there be unique or rare weapons in the game?

Entropos will feature a large number of weapons. Most of them are either weapons actually used by various real-world organizations, or weapons that realistically could have entered service but, for one reason or another, never developed further.

For example, the “KPDW” or the prototype AK-12 fit this concept. Experimental weapons such as the TKB-059, double-barreled shotguns, or competition pistols do not.

By the way, the list of weapons already announced for the game is available on our website — take a look: https://entroposthegame.com/ru/wiki/arsenal/west

Are paid DLCs, skins, or weapons planned?

We don’t like the idea of exclusive paid content — content that can only be obtained with real money.

We want the majority of the game’s content to be obtainable through gameplay. Some things will be easy to unlock; others will require much more effort, in which case paid progression may serve as an alternative, faster way to unlock them. At the same time, certain items will only be obtainable through in-game achievements, allowing them to represent genuinely high levels of player skill.

Main Menu Track

The new track will be released very soon — on August 31.

Main Menu Background

We’re working to make the game well optimized. A fully rendered 3D scene in the main menu featuring your own character would certainly look great, and that is planned. However, such a scene can place an unnecessary load on your computer while you’re simply sitting in the main menu. That’s why we decided to offer an alternative main menu option: a pre-rendered background video that can still look beautiful and atmospheric without putting the same load on your hardware.

But video also needs to be optimized properly. We’re exploring many different compression methods, and unfortunately all of them come with certain drawbacks. In one case, the video won’t play on Windows 10 systems; in another, it fails on computers with AMD graphics cards.

The latter issue, incidentally, was discovered during testing. As an emergency measure, we removed the background video from the game, but once we find a universal compression method that works across all systems, it will return.

Feedback

Running feels bad

Yes. We noticed this as well, and we’ll improve the animations in future updates.

The game will also eventually feature a quick dash mechanic, while equipment weight will affect movement speed, allowing players to reach positions faster.

Camera Shake While Walking and Running

Some players pointed out that the heavy camera shake while walking causes motion sickness. This is indeed an issue. We’ll refine the camera movement in one of the upcoming updates.

Shooting

Most players agreed that shooting in Entropos already looks and feels good. At the same time, some felt that the recoil was a little too weak, while others thought it was too strong.

One thing we can say for certain: the Reactive Recoil prototype passed the test, and bringing it to its final version is now one of our priorities. The final system will be somewhat better optimized, make gunplay more interesting, and further develop the concept of stabilizing long bursts.

As for the recoil strength itself, we believe it is currently about where it should be. The weapon makes you work to control it, finding a balance between “laser-like” shooting and exaggerated cinematic recoil.

Hit Registration

Recoil may also have felt stronger because of another issue: hit registration.

As we’ve mentioned before, Entropos does not yet have a fully implemented network prediction system. In simple terms, another player may appear to be directly in your sights on your screen, while the server sees a completely different situation and does not register the hit.

There is also an additional bug involving character hitboxes. Players reported cases where a headshot does not kill the opponent because the game registers it as a shot to the shoulder or chest instead.

These are all important issues and are already on our priority list. Some will be fixed in the upcoming updates, while others are larger tasks that will take more time to complete.

Maps

The maps received a lot of criticism — they are confusing while also feeling empty and visually unfinished.

It is useful for us to hear feedback from players who don’t see the maps from above, but instead experience them directly from a first-person perspective.

Tomorrow, we will upload an updated version of the “Hangar” map, with several improvements based both on your feedback and on our own impressions from the playtest.

Over time, the maps will naturally receive more detail, lighting will be properly configured, destruction will finally be implemented, and only then will we move on to fully developing their visual presentation.

Uncomfortable Crouching

The crouching animation is too slow.

After pressing the crouch key, the character takes so long to crouch that many players press the key a second time. At that point, the character begins doing its own thing, standing back up several seconds after finally crouching.

Point taken. We’ll make a new, faster animation.

Interface: Kills Aren’t Counted, Match Results

There actually isn’t a bug here — the game’s interface simply does a poor job of explaining how the scoring system works. So we’ll explain it ourselves :)

Entropos is designed as a hardcore shooter, and part of that hardcore atmosphere comes from deliberately limiting the amount of information available to the player.

Did you hit them? Did you kill them? Did they bleed out, or did someone revive them?

You’ll have to rely on sound, check bodies when necessary, keep medics away from them, and finish off wounded enemies.

Of course, Entropos is still a game. Information about the battle and your personal results is simply updated with a delay — once per minute.

The fact that you didn’t know this is our mistake. When you work on a game for months, some things start to feel so obvious internally that basic oversights can easily slip through.

The interface as a whole is not always intuitive, and your outside perspective has been extremely useful. Work is already underway: we’re discussing changes and implementing them in the interface mockups.

Interface: “Grey Players”

“Grey players” are not a bug. Players who have disconnected from the match are marked in grey.

They are given some time to reconnect, but even if they leave the match entirely, their results are not lost.

Once progression is implemented, match results will be awarded not only to players who remain until the very end, but to everyone who participated in that battle.

This means that whether you intentionally leave a match or disconnect because of a connection issue, your time will not be wasted and all of your progress will still be preserved.

Character Animations

Yes, they are terrible.

Running and walking look wrong — far too wrong — and of course they need to be fixed.

The problem is not necessarily the animations themselves, but the animation system, which is still unfinished and does not always behave correctly or trigger the correct animations.

For example, characters sometimes turn into “dwarfs,” while both first-person and third-person running may use an animation intended only for first-person view instead of being properly applied to the full body.

Not Enough Content

That is a fair criticism as well.

Believe it or not, we want to play Entropos just as much as you do. Actually play it, rather than test technical systems.

But at this stage, we need to understand whether the foundation we’ve built works at all: whether the servers work properly, what kind of load they experience, whether any critical problems appear after several consecutive sessions on a full server, and so on.

And the results have been positive!

The current stage isn’t even Alpha yet. This is only the beginning — the very first playable slice, the first update of the Pre-Alpha version.

The content is already prepared and waiting for its time: weapons, several more characters, and the first team equipment items.

With each update, we’ll introduce and test new mechanics and systems, run experiments, and then use the results to steadily add more content.

What matters most is that the direction is set, and together we’re continuing to follow it.

***

Thank you all for taking part and for your honest feedback. We still have one more day of testing ahead, along with a small update. See you in the game!