Notes:

Performance and crash fixes

Inverted Y now also works on control.

Inverted X option has been added.

Restart level key now also rebindable

Fixed a bug where double jump could only be bound to space



You might have to restart steam to get the update if you see this right when its posted.

WARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME VIA CROWD FUNDING, BUG TESTING, AND FEEDBACK. PLEASE ONLY PURCHASE IF YOU ARE ALSO PREPARED TO HANDLE PERIODIC WIPES, SERIOUS ISSUES AND INCOMPLETE CONTENT. PLEASE READ THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS PRIOR TO PURCHASE, MANY OF WHICH WARN YOU OF THE CURRENT UNFINISHED STATE OF THE GAME.



Greetings Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 34 access for all backers begins this Thursday, September 29, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 34 is our first chance since persistence to really analyze our current set of data and begin to execute major steps towards balancing and polishing Combat and the Economy. Additionally Crafting got a major expansion with 45 new recipes, including our first recipe built from difficult to obtain rares (Bone Armor) and a refactor of how food works that makes it much more relevant to game play.

Economic Balance:As described in my forum post, we are making several changes to provide more gold to casual players. Those changes include Daily Oracle Confessions (500 gold), increased experience and gold rewards for Path of Love Quests, Outlander Tracking Program (100 gold per town), Mail Quests expansion, and First Bind Point reward.

Combat Balance and New Skills: also received a lot of attention, with over 20 balance changes related to skills, taming, health / focus regen rates, and critical hits. We also added several new skills including new healing skills outside of Life Magic and new reactive skills.



Bone Armor: Bone Armor, a new type of armor, is crafted at a Tailoring table from bones refined at a Carpentry station (the first armor to involve Carpentry). It has the attributes of Heavy Armor (high Damage Avoidance) but it is actually classified as Light Armor, so when Masterworked, your modifiers will be Light Armor modifiers and your skills used with it will be Light Armor skills. It also has very high durability, making it ideal for Enchanting and Masterworking. However, the bones needed to craft it are exceedingly difficult to acquire. In addition to the normal Tailoring, Carpentry, and Smithing ingredients (leather, cloth, thread, wax, metal etc.) Bone Armor requires parts from Dragons, Phoenixes, Demons, and Tier 5 Skeletons.



Cooking and Food: We are finally making the eating of Food relevant to gameplay. Health and Focus regeneration have been slowed down (see Combat section below) and now eating Food is the primary way to increase those rates. We have also made it so food (and other consumables like Potions) can be used from inventory via double-click or right-click while you are not in combat. They no longer have to be used from the shortcut bar. In fact, food is no longer part of the deck system at all. We have also expanded the types of foods you can eat to include raw foods like fruit, not just prepared foods. These raw foods will offer very small, short buffs. Finally, foods will now be tiered in their effects based on the amount and types of ingredients. There are 6 tiers. In Release 34, we still only have Tiers 0–2, but we are planning to expand into the higher tiers in future releases. Normal Food will affect Health and Focus Regen rates while Fantastical and Special Foods will give more magical effects (but may also have negative effects).

Path of Love Polish: We continue to polish the Path of Love to bring it up to the level of a Lord British experience. In Release 34, our main focus was on the Necropolis where we added an NPC at the entrance of the Necropolis Barrens to warn newer players to keep to the road. Said road now goes from the entrance of the Necropolis Barrens to the Necropolis itself and is properly marked, and safer than traveling through the other parts of the Barrens. We also added a new spirit named Lacey (after our fallen community member) to the entrance of the Necropolis. The spirit talker you hired in Ardoris will now accompany you through the Necropolis and fight alongside you (note: not all spirit talkers are created equal) and warn you if you veer into dangerous areas. The difficulty of some of the monsters has been toned down (the terror of the poison spiders will live on in memory). Additionally, the ending is clearer as to what is expected to happen next, and the player can exit if they wish directly into the next part of the story. We also continued polishing Ardoris as well.



Halloween: Of course I have to mention our favorite time of the year: Halloween! We had to make sure that the game was filled with enough spooky content this year so we went over the top! The scary items range from ghostly pets to gross emotes, to ghastly costumes, all the way up to a Gothic (aka Haunted) Mansion!



Estgard (Unclone Polish): Estgard is on the island of Norgard and is part of the Path of Courage. Outlanders must pass through Estgard on their way to Valhold. Estgard was another cloned scene using one of our PRT/POT templates based off of the Forest 01 base template (aka “the PaxLair template”). In Release 33, we did an initial rebuild (aka "uncloning") of that scene where we added a plot-specific perimeter wall and a handful of other visual changes to have it more closely match the Viking like style of the island of Norgard. In Release 34, we did a more thorough rebuild of the area to bring it up to our visual standards. When we start focusing on the Courage Path in a future release, it will also get an NPC polish pass. NOTE: When we unclone scenes we do NOT change locations of player lots, NPC buildings, or entrances. We only make cosmetic changes of building styles, terrain, and foliage.



R33 Lot Deed Raffle Winners: The drawing will be held right before R34 goes live and we will announce the winners on Friday September 30 in Update 196 for the 675 Lot Deeds.

R34 Lot Deed Raffle: R34 will be our second Lot Deed Raffle and there will be another 675 Lot Deeds available. Raffle tickets will again be available for purchase. However in addition for those backers who do not yet own property, we are going to automatically enter you into both Raffles in Release 34! Anyone who has game access to Shroud of the Avatar, but does NOT yet own property at the beginning of Release 34 (September 29, 2016), will automatically be given a gift of 1 Raffle Ticket of each type to the R34 Raffle. To claim your tickets, simply login to the game, go to the nearest bank and claim your rewards. The drawings will be held on October 27, 2016 and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. Deeds will be delivered in Release 35.

And much more including more recipes, emotes, gear, pets, etc.! Click here for the complete R34 Instructions

[And did we mention that you should read the negative reviews that warn you about the unfinished state of this game before you purchase? Don't buy this game until you read them!]

We've released our first update:

- Added a new menu option 'controls' which describes the player control options

- Added a new menu option 'instructions' which explains the game rules and power-ups

- The winning player is now named on the Game Over screen

Enjoy

Dark Duo Games

Iron Horns is now playable in todays build! Help get some playtesting and feedback in!

Iron Horns takes "ram" ship litterally, its ability dashes the ship forward at high speed aborbing impact damage as it crashes through other ships.

Current Stats:

Active for 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 seconds
25 / 35 / 45% Ram damage reduction
120 cooldown

30 second ability reduction on shipwreck pick




Hope to see it in action this weekend during the next gaming session! September 30th 11am - 2pm PDT!

Best,
Robert Dunlap

Max_Whynd worked with DarkSteel to re-work Capital Light of Peace to better reflect the cost of creating the weapon. (Mini, lower-tech Ball-Lightning comes to mind.) Added tech 6 Capital-ship only splashing energy weapon which will drop from a boss in Arctia, tech 10 splashing capital-ship only weapon which will drop from random DG bosses, tech 14 multi-chaining mining weapon built from a new boss-drop bp in The Jungle.

I’ll be working on Anatolia with Auxilium and yclepticon to try to get it ready for testing and fine tuning. I’ve also asked one of our programmers to prototype a “Gunner Analyzer”, the purpose of which is to give Gunner’s resistances for shooting lots of targets. If things work out as planned, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, Gunner’s would be a viable way to hold the attention of AI while simultaneously becoming tanky enough to survive the onslaught. I should have more information for you all in the upcoming week or so.

Jeff's been finishing up some details about the new class system.

I've added Star Sonata 2 to Twitch, if you plan on streaming the game it will finally be available.

I’ve been busy making a list of content that’s eligible for rebalancing due to the Prawn change and the removal of MF2 (it's a pretty long list) that is planned for next universe. I’ve also made an estimate of how much the content in question should be nerfed. From my testing we’re looking at values varying from 20% to 40% depending on the current difficulty of the content.
I’ve also increased the times you can use the blueprints for Kalthi Depths commods such as Admixium and Perilium to 5 up from 3.

A couple of weeks ago we discussed changing how bot slots work, and these changes have now been done!From next patch, bots will take their tech in slots and the skills will give double what they did before. Players with Wild Man will get twice the number of wild bot slots instead of their slot cost being halved. Also the quantity of bots you could have is changes, slightly.

• Slots:
  • Trade slots: (Remote Control + Bot Research) * 2
  • Combat slots: Trade + 8 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild slots: Trade * 2 (if you have Wild Man)
• Reworked (slightly) the maximum number of bots you can have.
  • Trade bots: Remote Control + Bot Research - Minimum of two.
  • Combat bots: Half trade (rounded up) + 2 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild bots will name be named "WB" instead of "CB"

Mainly been tweaking Twisted content, ensuring everything is working and fixing any related problems players give Pixel feedback on.

Working to get the new class stuff ready for test server, it took a little longer than expected but should be available for testing very soon.

Trying to track the client freeze some players have reported and begun work on the next full patch.

Discuss in the Forum

Hello all.

We were hoping to have a video out today showing some controls and some updates that are coming. Unfortunately we're having an Internet outage in the area here and can't get online at the moment(other than mobile).

Before the larger update of build 11 we decided we'll release another patch for build 10_4 with some smaller but significant updates. We're just finishing up fixes and testing on those. We'll list those and publish the update as soon as we can get back online.

Thanks!
-DKG

Im working very diligently As is 378 Publishing to make sure that people know this game exists / will exist.!

A lot of Bullpucky happened over the past 15 days that really had nothing to do with
Game development (See the other announcement -_-)

This stuff happens though and unfortunately I have to sometimes wear my ‘Businessman hat’ Which I assure you is not a top hat or a fedora (they don’t suit my face) I felt compelled to release 2 statements, one regarding the lawsuit, and more importantly, this one regarding the game.


Im going to take this opportunity to open the community up for you guys, talk about a lot of the changes that have happened and what In particular I would like to hear in terms of feedback. All feedback is important of course, but there are some changes that are fairly drastic and I personally feel that they address many of the complaints from before, SO I am particularly interested in talking about that first.
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http://tyrfingcycle.com/wiki/doku.php?id=start&#gameplay Still needs a lot of work, but here are some important sub links
Bosses- http://tyrfingcycle.com/wiki/doku.php?id=bosses
Items/Gear - http://tyrfingcycle.com/wiki/doku.php?id=items

Follow Progress on twitter - https://twitter.com/TyrfingCycle



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The Combat in Tyrfing cycle is deceptively simple and the challenge comes from responding correctly to threats. Unlike the Vanilla build, enemies can spawn after the level is loaded and come from above, below or from behind.

To compliment this, the levels are more horizontally oriented, this also helps the fact that Hervor controls best on the x axis.

Jumping has been improved, and Hervor’s Downward acceleration due to gravity (my old nemesis…gravity) has been tweaked to make her feel less ‘floaty’



The “Blade Whirl” aka “Maelstrom” Move has been changed drastically.

- It has a wider area of effect (AOE) but does less damage.
- The move has been repurposed to deflecting bullets and stunning enemies rather than killing them.
- Enemies such as the Russers and Fallen who rush the player can be pushed back
With this ability.
- This move leaves the player open to attacks from behind however.
- The Nordic shield is (for now) removed from the content list. It is frankly redundant and pointless now that Maelstrom can deflect bullets.

The stages are much larger, and offer secret rooms that will be tied to achievements down the road.


Acid Release has been improved – Acid release has a wider reach and infects more enemies. In addition to that, when an infected enemy dies it releases some pungent
Gas that has a chance of infecting or burning nearby enemies.

The new ‘Quick Counter’ System adds an element of risk and reward. Players who dodge melee attacks at the last second get a short Attack boost. The result is the next attack can absolutely DEVASTATE the enemy. Quick Countering is Required to play at your best,

-At the end of each Stage, the player is granted the opportunity to collect
A stat boost or an idunns apple.
- To obtain these things you must use quickcounters and combos effectively

Idunns apple automatically revives the player if killed in combat. This revival fully restores Mana and HP.


Death is less of a penalty, you may try again on the stage you died on, but at the cost of your powerups. (Idunns apple neglects this)


Pre run Load outs – After completing your first boss, you will gain access to the ‘pre run load out’ which allows you to customize what items you start with.
Slaying bosses will allow you to gain new load outs and more options.

Bosses are not Random Anymore – Each stage has a fixed boss. I noticed that because each boss is drastically different in terms of strategy that it was not a good idea to make the player fight a different one each time they played. So, the bosses are fixed per level. Bosses Should be a test of skill, and not so much blind luck, and in the vanilla build, most players were at the mercy of what items the game gave them.

Stages Are Randomated to a limited extent – Because platforming is a part of Tyrfing Cycle, forcing a player to learn a new pattern of jumping each run may cause frustration without merit. (ie Im p***ing off the player for no good reason ^_^)

-Enemy positions, numbers and types are pulled from a pool of templates.
-Stage Geography ‘shuffles’ and pulls from a range of templates that are fairly similar
- Stage order can shuffle
- Items, power ups and goodies are random
- Secrets are always located in the same ‘general area’

Im doing the best I can to maintain the roguelike elements while squashing the problems they might present. We are trying to achieve the best of both worlds


Each Stage is very different Visually.
You begin Helheim in the Odslig Bog, Move to the Svalta Catacombs, and so on and so forth. The Odslig bog is visually similar to Helheim in the vanialla build While the catacombs are very different. From there you may proceed to the Stage 3 which moves from the catacombs to Hela’s keep.

- This is to give a better sense of progress, as before in the Vanilla build, Helheim part 1 and 2 felt very similar, and based on what I heard, this negated any sense of progress. Jotunheim (world 2) makred the first true visual change and very few people made it that far due to the unpredictable difficulty and this is something I have hopefully resolved.


- Release attacks can be aimed with your mouse or Right analog stick.
Before “Release” attacks merely spawned on top of the player. Hurting adjacent enemies, but that made it difficult to deal with enemies out of range. Especially if you didn’t yet find a side arm. Being able to aim these abilities will grant you more control.

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There are a few things that we need to sort out before I have a definitive answer, but what matters most is insuring that those of you who paid for a copy get a copy.
I’ll admit that I am a little bit worried that because Blackshell had control over distribution and we had difficulties in communication that there might be a tonne of keys floating around unaccounted for. I’m going to choose to trust Them though and if I lose out I lose out. Sucks but I think it’s the right thing to do.

Those of you who own Cot Vanilla, Ill get keys to you guys, Im going to post a thread regarding that. Where you can request your key.
To be abundantly clear though, one owner, one key. Im not going to give you 5 keys because you have 4 friends who own it “totally for reelz”


Some Users expressed their concern that the vanilla build will be pulled, and that is the plan. There are numerous reasons for this, but I absolutely understand your concern, and I also acknowledge that there are people who like having old ‘rare’ games in their library. I think that’s pretty cool, but at the same time I cannot have 2 of the same games being sold concurrently. Im talking to a few users about what to do about this, and I want to do what feels right first and foremost.


But this ‘challenge’ will be made open to anyone with an established gaming channel.

We have not yet officially announced the contest rules but I propose the following

- Any Gaming content creator may enter, there is no minimal sub requirement
However, your channel must be ‘established’ and at least 3 months old
- The video must be published to Youtube before the deadline
- View Count will not effect your score
- You may enter any number of times.
- Commentary is welcome, and the more enthusiasm the better! If it P***es you off Let us know, RAGE if need be
- We are willing to supply a game key, but encourage you to purchase the game (after all a cut goes to charity)

- We will judge Skill based on the following criteria.
- Amount of Damage taken
– Effective use of power ups
– If glitches are exploited (we encourage this ^_^)
– How many secrets are found
-How quickly the run is completed

Terms -
Established Means your channel is active, and uploading regularly, and more than 3 months old.
Glitches any design flaw, or error that was not intended by the developer

Prize
We will donate a percentage of Tyrfing Cycle’s earnings to a Charity of your choice !
We will guarantee that a minimal amount of money makes it to said charity!
we will donate these earnings (or the guaranteed minimal) for 3 months.
There will be 3 of these Challenges
This is the first of 3, each more difficult than the last!

We will not provide any proceeds to any political, religious or for profit organization, however. We are not opposed to charities endorsed by or founded by such organizations


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So what do you guys think? We are still working on the ifs ands or buts of the matter. As the Publisher (378 Publishing ) Is directly endorsing this, we need to make sure that the rules and conditions are fair, and that our publisher is ‘cool’ with it.





Throw us your feedback! And let us know what you think, the official Challenge will be announced very soon!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771588881

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771590195

• Dungeons now appear in multiple difficulties, more difficult dungeons yield more magical items at a rate of 15%, 35%, and 50% at each bonus difficulty level
  
• Drastically reduced delay between actor actions, this speeds up watching enemies go through combat one after another
  
• Added new "Gameplay" settings off the "Home" menu, within it you can further adjust the game speed (movement and combat) from 100% to 200% speed
  
• Speed up the animations for singularity and shield other

Jumpers! The bugs are getting smarter, and they're creating ambush rooms in their hives to trap your fireteam in! If you get ambushed, you'll have to hold out for a few minutes and defeat the incoming swarms. After two minutes, find the escape door, and continue on your mission. Good luck!

In other news, the online multiplayer aspect of the game is getting more stable everyday! We've eliminated issues with the game desyncing immediately on level loading! There may still be causes of desyncs within the game, so stay vigilant and let us know when you find one! Every bit of info helps us work towards perfection!

Thanks for your support! Full build notes below:

• Fixed issues that would cause immediate desync on loading a Hive.
  
• Ambush Encounters Added as substitutions for boss fights 40% of the time.
  
• New Relic Rooms
  
• Level doors now animate and collapse and explode open contextually.
  
• Fixed bug where players could "cheese" the Caretaker fight from below with rockets.
  
• Gamma Ray damage buffed.
  
• UI Alert improvements
  
• Lurkers even more responsive now. Wha-snap!
  
• Fixed bug where Stalker could hold you indefinitely in his sweet embrace.
  
• Fix for music dissonance in Store/Relic rooms in Mushroom Environment
  
• Fixed bad armor hit sound for poisoned soldier bugs
  
• Added Fat Bard npc to the game. Can you hear his song?

Thanks for jumping with us! A positive review on Steam will help bring more Jumpers to our growing community, and result in you having more comrades to jump into hives with!

You can join our Discord community by following this link. This is the best way to make new friends and get in touch with the developers directly! Hive Jump Discord


We will be playing Hive Jump with the community every Wednesday from 7PM - 9PM CST on Twitch! Go give our channel a follow here and you'll be notified when we next go live! See you then!

Hello, everybody that is reading this! While I am not usually fond of having to provide updates for a game I've finished, I decided it was for the best to give Dynamite Alex a bit of a touch-up in areas people have often addressed.

First the important thing!
-Controller support is now a thing!-
Those of you wanting to use a controller now can! The input for Dynamite Alex is Direct Input. Now, if I weren't an honest person, I would say that controller support is completely implemented as intended and has had no problems during testing. The only problem is I am honest, and I actually don't have a PC controller of my own since I typically just use the keyboard to play stuff on my laptop. Evidently, that may sound crazy to you guys since I've been asked to provide said controller support.

With that said, I am going to need vocal players' feedback to see if the controller controls are accurate.

The Dinput controller mappings are:

-Moving left and right should be self-explanatory
-Button 1 is to jump
-Button 2 is to shoot
-Button 3 is to pause

This update for Dynamite Alex also has a few smaller, subtle features in the levels. The following changes were made:

-The Simulator world's (aka the first two levels) background decorations have been darkened a tad so it's clearer they cannot be interacted with. The weirder parts of it have been removed, so the decorations are either plain or with a tree (except for the castle at the end of level 2 - that is still there)
-That cramped purple area in the first level is completely gone and replaced with a couple rows of coins. In hindsight, I have no clue why I originally made it that way.
-The flame in the middle of a string of platforms across the big red building in the City of Costansin (levels 3 & 4 - This case being level 3) has been moved to a widened platform so it's easier to avoid.
-A timer block in the Mountain world (levels 7 & 8) has been removed so Alex cannot get stuck in it when all of the blocks get triggered simultaneously.

Thank you, everybody!

-Ryan Silberman