Hello everyone

Badiya Alpha 1.9.7 is available now and it brings with it new features, bug fixes and performance optimizations:


You can now play the whole game in first person as an option. You can press "C" or "L3" on the controller at any time.
This adds a new way to experience the world of Badiya.

The game now supports ultra wide resolutions with the 21:9 aspect ratio.

We solved several "stutters" that used to happen whenever the auto save is called as well as in POIs. The game should feel much smoother in this regard.
The game now also supports impostors for all art assets, which are 3D billboards that receive lighting and shadows and should provide a nice boost in performance.

We fixed several bugs related to saving/loading of items stored in chests/vehicles/camels.


The next updat Alpha 1.9.8 is going to be the "HORSE UPDATE" which will feature a full rewritten horse riding system with features such as:

• New Horse Models, textures, breeds and optional accessories such as saddles.
  
• New animation set.
  
• Ability to jump over low obstacles while on a horse.
  
• Ability to aim and shoot with any weapon while on top of a horse.
  
• Ability to hold any item while on a horse such as torches.
  
• AI (civilians and enemies) will be able to ride horses as well both inside POIs (villages, tents, camps) and in the open desert as roaming convoys.
  
• Enemy Bandits may launch raids on the villages or bedouin camps you happen to be in, and at that point you can either flee or stay and fight with the civilians.

As always, looking forward to your feedback. let us know what you think and what you are looking for next in the world of Badiya.

Best Regards from the whole Semaphore team,
Ahmad Jadallah (@AhmadJadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore (@SemaphoreLab)

Hello everyone,

We would like to introduce you to a new Badiya experience that is joining the family. So Badiya is now two products:

1- Badiya: Desert Survival: This is the Survival RPG game you all know about which is currently in Early Access on PC and is on track for completion and full release on Windows/PS4 and Xbox One as planned.

2-Badiya: Battle Royale: Is a fast paced multiplayer battle royale game based on the world of "Badiya: Desert Survival". While "Badiya: Desert Survival" focuses on the single player Survival RPG experience, the Battle Royale entry puts the player in a 100 player experience where a sandstorm is ever closing from all directions and your goal is to be the last person alive.

NOTE: "Badiya: Battle Royale" is built using Unreal Engine 4 and uses the majority of content and environment from the main game. The project has its own team so that it doesn't affect the development of "Badiya Desert Survival".

• A detailed environment filled with several points of interest including: Bedouin Camps, Villages, Ancient Ruins, Bandit Camps, Oil Refineries, Military Bases, Ranches and Crashed Airplane Sites, all filled with loot.
  
• A variety of period accurate weapons ranging from handguns, rifles, shotguns to sniper rifles.
  
• Support for Solo mode at launch, Duo and Squad Modes will follow later.
  
• Available as a start on iOS and Android. Windows, Mac, PS4 and Xbox One are planned for the future.
  
• Cross-play support with other platforms in the same match.
  
• Available in both English and Arabic.

Apple Appstore
Google Play


We want to bring "Badiya Battle Royale" to a wider audience on Steam. While we have the game fully playable on PC, the issue is how to find a viable business model that can cover the cost of multiplayer servers. On mobile this is handled through video ads that are shown before matches start but this can't be applied on PC to our knowledge. We do plan on having cosmetic in-app purchases for clothes but that is still further down the line. Please let us know your suggestions for this situation.

Work is underway on Alpha 1.9.7 and the speed boost to performance is looking great. We are fixing some bugs and polishing the new (optional) first person perspective to provide a good experience in all gameplay scenarios. We will update you as soon as we get closer to the release.

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore

semaphorelab.com

Hello everyone,

Badiya Alpha 1.9.6 is now live and features many fixes and improvements to the gameplay experience with a main feature addition of Falcons.

* FALCONS:


Falcons are an integral part of the Bedouin culture and are used mainly for hunting.
If you recall our reveal trailer, the very first segment was of a falcon unleashed by its owner to hunt a rabbit. Now we implemented this in the gameplay mix.



Through the Falcon Merchant found in Bedouin Camps, you can now buy or sell falcons of different breeds and value (uniquely named) and unleash them and take control of them in the sky. You can use them to Tag targets and either hurt/distract them if they are a big enemy or kill them if they are smaller preys like rabbits.



You can also use the new Tagging feature to mark and track potential targets for the player. This tagging system will be later expanded upon in the following Alpha to support Scopes and Binoculars as well.



Falcons can be equipped from the new "Animals" sub-category in the inventory and this will open the way for adding future companion animals such as owned horses, camels and greyhounds.

Once you equip a falcon, enter aiming mode and press fire to unleash the falcon and take control of it.

* GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS:

• We now show the possible actions you can do when you are riding a horse/camel or a vehicle or flying a falcon on the left side of the screen. This brings attention to features that can be overlooked by the player such as the ability to turn on the lights of a vehicle or that camels have an inventory on them.
  
• You can now switch the camera shoulder even when not aiming a weapon (Thanks to @Nine_K for the suggestion)
  
• Upon death, a dialog window will be shown explaining what will happen next (permadeath, reloading with some items missing, etc..) depending on what the user selected.
  
• More wood from trees
  
• Ensure there are two water wells in every village.
  
• Fixed issues related to the saving/loading system.
  
• Adjusted snow intensity so that the heaviest level is not overly snowy, mimicking the real life look of snow in the desert.
  
• When it does snow, snow will last for half a day before dissolving/melting.
  
• Several other bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

* COMING UP NEXT:
Alpha 1.9.7 will bring with it the following features.

• First Person Perspective Option
  
• Scopes
  
• Binoculars
  
• Military Sniper Rifle
  
• Jezail Sniper Rifle
  
• Snake
  
• Scorpion

As always, looking forward to your feedback. let us know what you think and what you are looking for next in the world of Badiya.

Best Regards from the whole Semaphore team,
Ahmad Jadallah (@AhmadJadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore (@SemaphoreLab)

Hello everyone,

Badiya Alpha 1.9.5 is now live and it features several game changing features that will take your survival experience to the next level. The following features were added:

You can now choose from the following modes that fit different play styles:

- Exploration: Made for more casual players. There are no survival meters to worry about. You can only lose health by getting hurt by bullets, melee attacks, fire or animal bites. (Health and Stamina are the only things you worry about). If you die and load from last checkpoint you don't incur any penalty, you keep your inventory as it was when you died.

- Survival: The balanced mode for playing the game. If you die, you will re-spawn at the nearest visited friendly POI. You also lose 30% of the items you had on you but they are kept in a chest box where you died, so you can go there and reclaim the contents again if you wish. The chest will expire after 24 hours.

- Hardcore: Like Survival mode, but has only one save slot that is deleted if you die (permadeath)

Now when you start a new game you get to assign a specific slot for it that will be used for saving. This means you can start different journeys with different play styles (a villain, a hero, an explorer, a camper, etc...)

When you used to discover POIs you used to see a generic name like "YOU DISCOVERED A VILLAGE". And in quest objectives you also had generic names like "Deliver meat to CIVILIAN in BEDOUIN CAMP".

We now have a system for generating unique names for POIs and for people mentioned in quest objectives which gives them more realism. Those names will also be shown on the map and compass on top of the screen.


Saving:
We now save on the following events:
-Saving at Lean-to or other sleep location
-Visiting a friendly POI
-Quitting the game

Loading:
-When loading the game, start player at either the lean-to or last friendly POI, whichever was visited LAST.
-If you want to load the game, you have to go to main menu, click on Continue and choose the profile slot you want.

Starter kits that you choose from (Bedouin, Explorer, Aviator, Soldier, Bandit) were meant to give you a head start in the world of Badiya with a proper clothing setup and some items such as tools, a weapon, and some ammo. However, they took away from the survival experience and so we wanted to give you that feeling of building yourself from scratch and so now you will start with only your basic thobe and pants on.


Previously you were able to salvage any item from the inventory, but that created an imbalance in the game where you could salvage an item quickly, get many sub items, sell them and break the economy. Now we tied the salvaging function to the crafting station that you have to build first.


We previously restricted building to outside POIs as to avoid having our AI characters getting stuck on the stuff you build. Now we account for that and obstacle avoidance will get better in upcoming releases.


For a while there has been a bug that causes a memory leak and a crash when playing the game which has been hard to track and fix but now we believe it is properly fixed and there shouldn't be any more crashes with the game from what we see in our tests.


Currently every time you start a new game, you are asked to select the units you want for weight, distance and temperature. Now they will be asked of you only in the language selection screen that you see when you first run the game for the first time. After that you can change them from the "Units" panel in "Options" menu.

Lootable items (Weapons, Clothes, Food, etc...) from any dead body will now be at low condition and that should reflect in their salvagability and their selling price. This solves the issue of getting rich and well armed quickly by just clearing a single POI as the items you pick now from your enemies will be of low value/use.

You can now use a processing station to repair the condition of different items in your inventory. We will very soon add a Repair NPC in villages who will do the same as well. We will also add a weapon jamming property so you have to maintain your weapons.

- Takedowns on enemies are now assigned to the second interaction button. This is done to avoid doing a takedown attack on civilians by mistake instead of interacting with them.
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't pickup clay objects that were on the clay patch near wells.
- Fixed an issue where you could potentially get stuck in a loop while trying to open a chestbox that is near a wall.
- Fixed the issue of being unable to run (game tells you that you are encumbered) even though you are not.

We will be following this release with a few hot fixes over the next 10 days to solve any potential issues and to add some small fixes.

As always, looking forward to your feedback.

Best Regards from the whole Semaphore team,
Ahmad Jadallah (@AhmadJadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore (@SemaphoreLab)

Hello everyone,

We wanted to give you an update on the upcoming Alpha 1.9.5 update for Badiya (Targeting February for release), which will introduce the following features:


You can now choose from the following modes that fit different play styles:

- Survival: which is the current one as it is. If the player dies, he will re-spawn at the NEAREST + VISITED friendly POI. You also lose 30% of the items you had on you but they are kept in a chest box where you died, so you can go there and reclaim them again if you wish. The chest will be there for 24 hrs and then expire.

- Exploration: Made for more casual players. Has no needs meters. You can only lose health by getting hurt by bullets, punches, fire or animal bites. (Health and Stamina are the only things you worry about). If you die and load from last checkpoint doesn’t incur any penalty, you keep everything as it was when died.

- Hardcore: Like Survival mode, but has only one save slot that is deleted if you die (permadeath)

Now when you start a new game you get to assign a specific slot for it that will be used for saving. This means you can start different journeys with different play styles.


We now save on the following events:
-Saving at Lean-to or other sleep location
-Visiting a friendly POI
-Quitting the game

Loading:
-When loading the game, start player at either the lean-to or last friendly POI, whichever was visited LAST.
-If you want to load the game, you have to go to main menu, click on Continue and choose the profile slot you want.

Starter kits that you choose from (Bedouin, Explorer, Aviator, Soldier, Bandit) were meant to give you a head start in the world of Badiya with a proper clothing setup and some items such as tools, a weapon, and some ammo. However, they took away from the survival experience and so we wanted to give you that feeling of building yourself from scratch and so now you will start with only your basic pants on.


Previously you were able to salvage any item from the inventory, but that created an imbalance in the game where you could salvage an item quickly, get many sub items, sell them and break the economy. Now we tied the salvaging function to the crafting station that you have to build first.


We previously restricted building to outside POIs as to avoid having our AI characters getting stuck on the stuff you build. Now we account for that and obstacle avoidance will get better in upcoming releases.


For a while there has been a bug that causes a memory leak and a crash when playing the game which has been hard to track and fix but now we believe it is properly fixed and there shouldn't be any more crashes with the game from what we see in our tests.


Currently every time you start a new game, you are asked to select the units you want for weight, distance and temperature. Now they will be asked of you only in the language selection screen that you see when you first run the game for the first time. After that you can change them from the "Units" panel in "Options" menu.

Lootable items (Weapons, Clothes, Food, etc...) from any dead body will now be at low condition and that should reflect in their salvagability and their selling price. This solves the issue of getting rich and well armed quickly by just clearing a POI as the items you pick now from your enemies will be of low value/use.

- Takedowns on enemies are now assigned to the second interaction button. This is done to avoid doing a takedown attack on civilians by mistake instead of interacting with them.
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't pickup clay objects that were on the clay patch near wells.
- Fixed an issue where you could potentially get stuck in a loop while trying to open a chestbox that is near a wall.
- Fixed the issue of being unable to run (game tells you that you are encumbered) even though you are not.

We will be releasing Alpha 1.9.5 in late March. We hope that these changes will drastically improve the way you play and enjoy the game.

As always, looking forward for your feedback.

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah (@AhmadJadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore (@SemaphoreLab)

Hello everyone,

Badiya Alpha 1.9 is here and it contains the following new features/improvements as well as many bug fixes.

• New Weather, Time of Day and Cloud System. Clouds now look much better and perform faster than before and are properly affected/shaded by sunlight.
  
• New Post Processing System that gives the game a more grounded cinematic look.
  
• New Volumetric Lighting System that shows the sunlight passing through tree leaves and objects and is similar to the one found in many AAA titles. This feature is enabled on ULTRA quality preset.
  
• New Contact Shadows System that adds more shadowing details on objects. This feature is enabled on ULTRA quality preset.
  
• New PCSS system (Percentage Closer Soft Shadows) so that shadows get softer the farther they are from the source object. This feature is enabled on ULTRA quality preset.

• Crowd Reaction System (You can aim at civilians and they will cower and run away if they are unarmed and will trigger a chain reaction of other civilians running away. If they are armed they will draw their weapons and aim at you but will only shoot if you open fire.)
  
• You can now kill/hit/run over crowds in camps and cities, the punishment now is that you risk a fire fight with the armed civilians. In future releases the goal is to have a crime and reputation system that will make your actions known in nearby POIs and therefore your treatment by the locals will differ based on your reputation. A crime system will also be added so that lock picking chests and taking horses/camels without paying their owners will be considered a crime that the crowds will react to and will affect your reputation if seen.
  
• You can use a mount or a vehicle and run over characters, they will fall and stand up again if the hit is not lethal but will die otherwise.
  
• Enemy AI Encounters Improvement (Enemies get out of POIs, better obstacle avoidance and reactions, better awareness of player position)
  
• Enemies Awareness meter, each enemy has several states of awareness. An indicator will show up on them that starts filling up the closer they are to detecting you. This meter is tracked for nearby enemies so you can better judge your next move.

Points of Interest now have different hostility levels you can move between.

• Neutral: Colored Orange on the map and compass.
  
• Hostile: Colored Red on the map and compass.
  
• Cleared: Colored White on the map and compass.

If you are in a neutral POI like a village for example and you commit a crime (currently defined as murder, will be expanded later to include theft and disturbing of peace or vandalism) then the armed civilians in this POI will start shooting you (even if you leave the place and come back later). The POI level will move from Neutral to Hostile and the only other level it can move to is Cleared once you killed the armed civilians in it.

• Quests in the Quest Menu are now divided to Main, Side and Finished Quests
  
• If you take a new quest while there is an existing active quest, you have the option of holding "E" to track the new quest you just took.

We will release bug fix patches (1.9.1 , 1.9.2 etc..) through out the next month then will continue on Alpha 2.0, some of the planned features are the following (subject to change)

* TERRAINS:

• New Terrain Generation System
  
• New terrain shading system with tessellation and object blending
  
• Several Biomes featuring a unique (Look, Loot, Resources, POI Types, Animal Types, Tree Types, Vegetation Density, Enemies, Quests) for each with seamless blending between them. Biomes include (Arid, Dunes, Mountains, Canyons, Hills and others)

* PERFORMANCE:

• Massive boost in terrain generation speed and loading times
  
• Vegetation and objects Instancing
  
• Dynamic Occlusion Culling (Objects behind a wall or a building will not be rendered for better performance)
  
• Imposter System (Very far objects will be represented as sprites for better performance)

* HORSE GAMEPLAY:

• Ability to shoot on top of horse or camel
  
• Mount ownership system where you can't just take a horse/camel but you have to buy it from its owner or steal it (risking others shooting at you)
  
• Whistle to call horses you own
  
• AI Can ride mounts and vehicles and shoot from them
  
• AI Can patrol POIs on mounts and vehicles
  
• AI Can fall from their mounts when you shoot them or shoot their mounts. They can do the same to you!

* LIVING WORLD:

• Wild animals can make you fall from horses/camels you ride
  
• Occasional Raids on POIs you are in. Imagine a group of bandits attacking a village or camp that you happen to be in. In which case you can stay and fight with the civilians or flee the place. Both actions will affect your reputation meter.
  
• Convoys of military vehicles moving between POIs. You can raid them or risk getting attacked by them.
  
• Armed/unarmed civilian(s) traveling between POIs. You can raid them or trade/interact with them.

* GENERAL GAMEPLAY:

• Hostile POIs will send bounty hunters after you if you commit a crime in them until you pay the bounty or kill all armed NPCs in them.
  
• A new POI alert state if you disturb the peace but not commit a major crime (Example: punching someone, killing a chicken, breaking property) which will see them refusing to give you quests or trading with you (or selling you at high prices while buying at lower prices)
  
• Unique names for towns, camps and NPCs so that quest givers have a better quest description for you.
  
• Salvage function is coming back and can be performed through a salvage station you build.
  
• Falcon/Scopes/binoculars with ability to tag enemies
  
• Armor system
  
• Gain weight when you eat more, lose weight when you don't eat for a while
  
• Multiple layers of clothing cause overheating and lowering stamina
  
• Items Wheel
  
• Whistle to Attract enemies to investigate your location
  
• Throwable items/grenades with a helper arc. These can be used to point enemy's attention to a particular spot which allows you move to another spot.

* SYSTEMS:

• Progression System (XP, Levels, Skill Points, Skills to unlock)
  
• Tutorial
  
• Story Mode and an end game

As usual, please report any bugs you encounter on the "Bug Reporting Forum" and send us an email to feedback@semaphorelab.com

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah (@ahmadjadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore Lab (@semaphorelab)

Hello everyone,

So we are done with the new features for Alpha 1.9 and are currently in the testing phase which we expect will continue through the week ending Sunday December 9th. If we get done with testing before that we will release it right away but we wouldn't want to release with bugs that will spoil your experience.

A major focus of Alpha 1.9 is crowd reaction and interactivity. This means that every single character you meet in Badiya now will no longer be just a passive NPC but will actually react to you threatening them with a weapon, punching them, hitting them with a horse or camel and hitting them with a vehicle or a tank. Not only that, but others around this particular NPC who witness this act will take notice and react accordingly by either engaging in the fight if they are armed or running away if they are not!

As you might guess, getting this to look and work properly takes a lot of effort and is subject to bugs and that's why we were working hard on getting it to work as expected (with more room for improvements in later versions as well)

We can't wait to get this release in your hands and thank you very much for your love for the game. You guys deserve the best and we are working hard to deliver that to you.

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update on the plans for the upcoming Alpha 1.9 of Badiya.

Alpha 1.9 is a very big release and brings lots of requested features and improvements across different areas. Many of the systems have been completely rewritten to accommodate that.

• New Terrain Generation System
  
• New terrain shading system with tessellation and object blending
  
• Several Biomes featuring a unique (Look, Loot, Resources, POIs, Animals, Trees, Vegetation, Enemies, Quests) for each with seamless blending between them.

• New Weather, Time of Day and Cloud System
  
• New Post Processing System
  
• New Volumetric Lighting System
  
• New Contact Shadows System
  
• New PCSS system (Percentage Closer Soft Shadows) so that shadows get softer the farther they are from the source object

• Massive boost in terrain generation speed
  
• Vegetation and objects Instancing
  
• Dynamic Occlusion Culling (Objects behind a wall or a building will not be rendered for better performance)
  
• Imposter System (Very far objects will be represented as sprites for better performance)

• Tutorial Quest that goes through the basic game systems and mechanics.
  
• Story Mode with a Main Quest (Work started on it but it might not make it to 1.9)
  
• New side quest types

• You can now kill/hit/run over crowds in camps and cities, the punishment now is that you risk a fire fight with the armed civilians. In future releases the goal is to have a crime and reputation system that will make your actions known in nearby POIs and therefore your treatment by the locals will differ based on your reputation. A crime system will also be added so that lock picking chests and taking horses/camels without paying their owners will be considered a crime that the crowds will react to and will affect your reputation if seen.
  
• Crowd Jobs System (Crowds will have tasks to do: Beggars, Butchers, Repair/Fixing stuff etc...)
  
• Enemy AI Encounters Improvement (Enemies get out of POIs, better obstacle avoidance and reactions)

• Salvage function is coming back and can be performed through a salvage station you build.
  
• Balanced weather cycle.
  
• Getting out of danger state after encounter with enemies or animals
  
• Unique names for towns and civilians so that quest givers have a better quest description for you.

Keep in mind that the previous list is tentative and is subject to change but this is what we are working toward at the moment. There isn't an estimated release date yet but we will keep you posted.

Let us know what you think.

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore

Hello everyone,

Alpha 1.8.2 is now live and it features the following:

You should now be able to get a solid 60 fps on ULTRA quality preset on cards equivalent to nVidia GTX 980 or GTX 1070 at 1080p resolution or 30 fps on 4K resolution. The only known slowdown now is when you approach a POI for the first time where there will be a 3 second dip in framerate while loading the new content but we are looking into ways to fix that as well.

Clouds will now look much better with inner shadowing and smoother edges.

Based on your feedback, we tweaked the hunger, thirst and stamina rates as well as meat spoiling rates for a much more enjoyable survival experience.

You can now craft bows and arrows from player menu, but for the more powerful Crossbow and its variations you will need a crafting bench.

- Quest System Improvements:
Chained Quests
Main/Side Quests
Quest Items
Clarify Active/Completed Quests
More Quest Types
Optional Introductory Tutorial Quest that walks you through the game mechanics.

- AI Improvements:
While we did our best to include the following features in Alpha 1.8 we came to the conclusion that they need more time for development and polish to really shine and so we are moving those to the next release:
You will be able to attack civilians and domestic animals in villages and bedouin camps. This was previously disabled as civilians weren't able to defend themselves, but now they will cower or run away from you if you point your weapon at them.

Armed civilians will exist in villages and bedouin camps and will attack you if you attack them first.

AI opponents will be able to get out of the Points of Interest they are in to chase after the player.

Plus many other tweaks and fixes!



As usual, please let us know your experience and feedback either here, on the forums or on our email feedback@semaphorelab.com

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore

Hello everyone,

Alpha 1.8.1 is now live. And it features the following:

- Upgraded the Unity version to the latest stable version 2017.4 which fixes the crash issue some players had when fighting enemies in some Points of Interest.

- The game size is now down from 6.6 GB to 4.3 GB

- Greatly compressed the music of the game (with no quality difference) which allows for faster memory loading and smoother playback.

- Fixed Stamina and Thirst depletion rates.

As always, let us know what your experience is with this update and email us any feedback or bug reports to Feedback@semaphorelab.com

Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore Lab