Good afternoon friends!

I haven't been able to do any major updates lately due to some unforeseen circumstances and now, more recently, a health issue. However, it was possible to make some updates to improve the gameplay and also fix some bugs that you pointed out. Thank you very much for your support! It's been key.

I hope to be able to return soon with more updates.
Thanks

V1.075
- Removed the "single reset" power option

Community members! In our previous update we showcased missions and maps, this time we’ll focus on the 12 new skirmishes and show you some equipment from the Talvisota expansion.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1911520/Call_to_Arms__Gates_of_Hell_Talvisota/

Talvisota will feature 12 skirmish missions. The Soviet Union, Finland and Germany get 4 skirmishes each. Let’s have a look at the list.

Skirmishes for Finland are scenarios from the winter war (1) and the continuation war (3).
These are based on historical records and the actual battle locations, but you’ve probably come to expect that from us; and we’ve picked the scenarios that would require you to attack, not defend. We’ve selected the battles of Honkaniemi (1940), Petrozavodsk (1941), Operation Arctic Fox (1941), and the battle of Ilomantsi (1944).


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For the Soviet Union we have picked a set of 4 battles that are quite iconic too. There’s Smolensk (1941) featuring one of the local Soviet counterattacks, then we have Stalingrad (1942) which needs little explanation. We then make a jump to Operation Bagration (1944) and the battle of Seelow heights (1945).


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The set of skirmishes for Germany has some of the well- known names as well. The battle of Moscow (1941) in icy conditions - a stark contrast to Stalingrad, where our skirmish takes place on and around Mamayev Kurgan in the fall of 1942.
The other missions are about the third battle of Kharkov (1943), and the battle of Berlin.



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That concludes the Skirmishes. Can you predict which one will be your favorite?

There is a chance that this part contains the biggest surprise for most readers. The Finnish army possessed a very wide range of equipment, and some of it was used exclusively by them. Most of it had either been left over from the Finnish civil war, or bought in the years before the Winter war. Some of it was bought or captured during the war.
By coincidence, the Vickers 6 ton tanks in Finnish service were not the only ones to have been exported from Britain; the Soviet Union ordered the same tank, and the red army developed the T-26 from it.
The equipment that was bought during Continuation war was mainly German made or weapons that had been captured by them. Germany brought a lot of aircraft and tanks to Finland, largely for their own use; some of the tanks they used there had been captured in France in 1940. These will be included.

To add to the tally there will be a fair amount of unique Soviet equipment too. The prototype SMK tank, for instance, was sent to Finland and fought its only battle there. Likewise, the T-50 tank went into battle in Finland for the first time, and was used on both sides.
Along these lines there will be a lot of unique equipment.

Here’s a short overview of (part of) the Talvisota equipment:


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Besides this there’s much more finished material, but since we don’t want to spoil absolutely everything, we’ll keep a fair share under cover so there’s some totally new things left for you to discover on release.

The next update will get you up to speed with the way in which we integrate Talvisota and Ostfront. We’ll let you know the status of the (ongoing) beta test and more. In the meantime, you may want to check out our official Discord server, it has weekly small updates straight from the devs; make sure you don’t miss anything, development is fast- paced at the moment!

Meanwhile, we think that wishlisting Talvisota is the best advice we can give:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1911520/Call_to_Arms__Gates_of_Hell_Talvisota/

That’s all folks. Thanks for stopping by, see you on the battlefield!

SideFX will discontinue Python 2 support in Houdini 19.5 and beyond. You can view the news post in SideFX's forum here: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/83757/

"After countless internal discussions, and discussions with studios and technology partners, the decision has been made to drop Python 2 support in the upcoming Houdini release.

Python 2 reached end-of-life back in January, 2020:
https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/

The next Houdini version will provide only Python 3 builds, in particular Python 3.7 and 3.9 builds as per the VFX Reference Platform.
http://vfxplatform.com/

Note that we will continue to publish Python 2 builds for Houdini 19.0."

Last week’s PVE maps and lobby removal announcement stirred a lot of discussions, so we want to answer some of the concerns we noticed before we get into the travel rework details.

For starters, private realms will have the ability to enable and disable these changes at the preference of the server admin/s.
This means they can choose whether or not there’s any PVE tiles on their realm (which may function differently from the current implementation of PVE tiles for private realms, which works through additional settings per-tile), they can choose whether or not they want the old or the new travel system, and they can also have the lobby functionality enabled realm-wide.

When it comes to the feedback we’ve received from you guys about the PVE maps, so far we are very happy to see that they are mostly well received. Some of the biggest points of interest are lobby functionality not being a thing anymore (which we fully expected, it’s been a core feature of the game for very long, but is a very needed step for the overhaul), environmental hazards eating through all your stuff while on vacation, and lastly the other major concern that was brought up being the overall balance for the PVE tiles themselves.

In regard to the concerns of the lobby functionality being removed having too much of a negative impact on gameplay: We’ve been looking into the lobby feedback very closely, and we have considered the possibility of adding off-map lobby functionality for Trading Stations, with some limitations of course. This is not something that we will immediately implement during the public testing, first we want to test these systems as they were originally designed and balanced and then we’ll start working on changes based on testers’ feedback during the public testing phase.
These are systems that can be (and will be) quickly iterated upon, so we have a very big advantage here compared to other seasons - this means the first version we come up with will most likely not be what S5 releases with.


For Season 5 of Last Oasis, we’re introducing a reworked travel system that does away with lobby-based travel, and instead works within the map itself.

Reaching the map edge of an oasis will no longer allow for travel upon pressing a key - in order to travel from one oasis to another, you will need to find travel routes in the raging sandstorms at the edges of the oasis. These pathways through the storms will become available periodically, and upon crossing them, you will begin to travel to another map - no key press required at all.

In regards to UI/UX, we’re aiming for very minimal UI interactions required in order to travel, and instead make the UI much more informative - displaying destination oasis, amount of players on destination, and the danger meter. The actual travel will happen when crossing with the Walker or on foot. If players require further information, the world map is still available, but no interactions are required on the world map. It’s purely informational, displaying information on trade offers, highlighting travel routes from one oasis to another, etc.

Due to the nature of this new travel mechanic, a lot of the finer details will be iterated upon several times during our public testing phase as mentioned above, this means balance factors such as the intervals and amount of travel routes available and their destinations, the size allowance for Walker classes - some of these pathways will, for example, only allow smaller Walkers to pass through, and disallow Capital, Large and Medium class Walkers from following through the sandstorm. A lot of these balance factors will be changed several times to accommodate different iterations of the system that take into account how it's received by players during our play-testing, and mainly how it actually feels in comparison to the old system.

Travel routes are meant to be the only method of travel available, unless we deem it necessary to eventually add some other possible ways of travel. This means that many things are changing in regards to travel, not just the mechanic itself, such as resource requirements and teleporting around the world.
Travel will no longer cost water from the Walker storage - this is something that will also help us a lot with re-balancing the water costs for respawning, which heavily impacts Walker combat.
It will no longer be possible to respawn on another oasis unless you traveled there with a Walker, or on foot.
This means that if you want to meet up with a friend or reinforce a faraway fight, you will need to physically travel in order to get there. We will be reworking the in-oasis player spawn points so that it’s easier to rebuild a basic Walker and be more invested in the area you spawn in.

One of the issues that we constantly see with the current travel system is that it’s extremely reliant on a lot of UI and on the player figuring out a somewhat convoluted and outdated method of travel.
We saw this during S1 of the game, where players would very often struggle to understand how the system even worked, and would sometimes simply quit the game at that very early stage. We hoped to mostly remedy it by increasing the duration of the oases so they would take longer to burn, but that was yet another one of the band-aids that we’re ripping off for Season 5, because it’s a band-aid, not a proper solution.

The system that we’re introducing as a replacement for current lobby-based travel is meant to do many things, among them is what I mentioned earlier, which is to get rid of convoluted and confusing UI interactions, but that is a small thing compared to the two major goals we want to achieve with it, and some of the other benefits that we see from this change.

Firstly, we want to have finer control over the spread of players across the world. This is hugely important to us for many reasons, the main one being that we are placing a bigger emphasis on players and clans living and playing from individual oases and clusters of oases within the larger world, rather than having the ability (and in some cases the necessity) to teleport from one region to another in literally a few minutes.

Added up, a lot of the changes we have planned for Season 5 have the requirement of travel to be a much more important part of the game experience, and we needed to have a much more robust travel mechanic that has the ability to have a much bigger impact on the progression of players across the different tiers and map difficulties. Slowing down travel is completely intentional here. We want to give much clearer danger zones, so that players have the ability to scout and recognize places and other players and clans they can interact with, either peacefully or through Sawtooth diplomacy.

Finally, one of the most important things we will be tackling with this rework is the dreaded issue of queues, more specifically getting stuck in them for hours on end.
One of the biggest flaws from the old travel system was the issue of allowing travel to oases even though they were full, or very crowded with players.
We want to avoid this completely by implementing our travel routes in a way they cannot lead players into completely full maps, ever. We have already foreseen some of the potential exploits that could come out of this, and we have some solutions for them, but we know our players are far better at finding those, so some major testing will be required to ensure we don’t end up with worse bugs.
Generally speaking, though, few bugs can be worse than not being able to play the game at all, so we’re pretty happy with what the system can do already.


With the removal of lobby, performance is a big topic that’s been brought up very often recently. Game balance can only do so much here, eventually players and clans will build up large fleets of Walkers and create massive structures everywhere. One of the answers we have for this (in conjunction with the balance changes and reworked progression) is our improved weather system, and our first proper weather event - roaming sandstorms.

The first implementation of the sandstorms and our primary intention for them is really to be cleansing mechanics, both for PVP and PVE maps. The idea is sandstorms come from various directions all over the oasis, and the only way to protect against them is to have any kind of barriers - both player-built and natural barriers like hills, mountains, etc.

The way they are currently implemented, these storms roam the map systematically, all areas within an oasis will roughly be hit every one to two hours by a sandstorm on average - so, for example, if you stayed somewhere in the map for two hours without moving at all, on average you’d be hit by a sandstorm at least once.

Regardless of whether it’s in a PVE or a PVP map, any player-built objects will require some sort of protection in order to survive the storms, anything out in the open will be periodically taking damage over time when hit by the storms, both for performance and balance reasons, so that we ensure most things have a cost associated with having them protected.

Over time, any Walkers and unprotected buildables (weapons and structures built on the ground without base walls to protect them) will eventually be destroyed by taking damage over time.
This initial sandstorm weather even will not be harmful for most structures, as bases are actually intended to protect Walkers and players from them in the first place, but we also have concepts (no implementation yet, but it could be very easy to work on if it’s something that you’d like to see in the game) for far more dangerous events that would not necessarily be wind-based like the storms, and instead be similar to our small meteor events, as an example. There’s a lot of ideas for these - many of which would be easy to implement - and now that we’ve put this new mechanic out in the open, we’d actually love to hear yours as well!

With the way this weather system is implemented, it’s very easy for us to work on new storms and events, all kinds of weather effects should be possible with it, now that we have almost finished the groundwork needed.
When it comes to additional effects that could be implemented through this weather system, we’ve many concepts and ideas already, but we’ll be starting with the first one already mentioned, the roaming sandstorms.

The sandstorms will have several effects when going through the map. Firstly its going to be able to damage players themselves, not excessive amounts, it does a little bit of damage to them (with some interesting situations where you can also look away from where its coming from to take less damage, for players only specifically). We won’t initially but in the future we have planned to add more protective armor to make it easier for nomads to endure a sandstorm, and future weather effects as well.

The second effect it will have is all about physics. Anything that’s physical will be blown away by storms, and it will also cause damage on things like Walkers, as well as a pushing effect that will move things around.
We also want to see how players use this in-game during our testing, the pushing effect is something that we’re very interested in, since it could eventually inspire more wind-based effects, not harmful ones but utility based (there’s always been this idea of wind-based effects for structures like torque windmills, Walker speed modifiers, etc. which we think is very cool, and would love to see how it’d play out in-game).

For next week’s devblog, we’ll be delving deeper into the reworked progression system and how it works with rarity items - no fragments and tablets anymore, we’re trying something new that, we expect, once again, might get emotions up there :)

— Neon

Wishlist Go Home Annie to get the latest updates (like this one)!

A month ago I went all around Twitter, the SCP Wiki forums, Facebook groups and Discord channels asking everyone what lesser known SCPs they think would work great in a videogame. We compiled a list of recommendations (50+) and went to work on reading them all, discussing how they would work as gameplay elements and so on.
In the end, in addition to the SCPs we already chose for the game, 12 SCPs made the list to be included in Go Home Annie.

Here is the list in no particular order. I've included my short and stupid descriptions of each one. Congrats if you find one you recommended and are reading this right now!

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SCP-6448 - A "deer" that is intelligent, but moves all horror-like. If they are captured and put into a facility, other Not Deers carve a tunnel to them. In the game we'll have a destroyed SCP-R-6448 room with a blocked off tunnel carved into it, later you'll meet the escaped "deer", chaos shall ensue.
In-game model:


SCP 184 - a small object that when placed in an interior, starts enlarging the interior, creating rooms, hallways, furniture. After awhile the object creation starts going wrong with glass books and dead end hallways appearing. On the outside the exterior is unaffected. This is a chance for some crazy gameplay implementations.
In-game model (still need to add weird human eyes):


SCP-3001 - a guy gets transported into a between-dimension with nothing but a tape recorder. he stays alive in it for 5 years because you don't need food there, but you slowly disintegrate. After five years his wife manages to transport him back to our reality but he's nothing but a bunch of blood. He records stuff on the tape recorder throughout the five years. Some of our other-dimension story beats will be brought in line with the logic of this SCP.

SCP-1507 - plastic flamingos that multiply and kill.

SCP-572 a katana that sucks, but when you hold it you think it's awesome. People who hold it try cutting cars in half, cutting bullets etc. Mostly they get hurt.

SCP-2635 - a potato that you need to pass around organizations/individuals. If it stays somewhere for a year half the people die in that organization/establishment/house.
In-game model:


SCP-050 - monkey statue that stays in your room and cleans it as long as you prank your peers, if you get out-pranked the monkey appears at the other person's room.

SCP-1915 - a guy that alters reality around him to turn it into his office. He thinks he's at work and isn't aware of his own abilities.

SCP-5696 - a revolver that transports you to a 1950s bar and you get to relive a short gangster story.

SCP-3521 - a pill that you swallow and 40 million bananas grow out of your stomach.
In-game model:
imagine this pack of bananas, but times 10 milion.


SCP-323 - wendigo skull - a skull that you put on your head. it makes you a crazy cannibal.

SCP-2950 - a folding chair kept in a locker. If you sit on it you feel good. The SCP description is intentionally false. It's actually a thing that takes the form of whatever most people think it is. Hence the false SCP description.

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All of these will be included in the final game. I can't tell you which ones will be used for actual gameplay and which will be just props, but I can tell you Not Deer and Enlarging Rooms Thingy will be a big part of the game for sure as they're already integrated into the story and have working gameplay!

Don't forget to wishlist the game. It's the main way for us to know you're actually interested!

Mladen

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811419867

Out in the sea one cannot find no demolition crews. No train reversing.
Oh, but all manners of adventure await us there-a sandworm that's a bit lost, marshmallow-riding octopuses guarding an underwater facility, secret Cyber Crystal factories and explosions among other things. A 15:00 valley designed to test one's ingenuity :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2810811315

A fast 9:10 DNSAT adventure-diamonds, secret perfume ingredient and fine landscaping with intertwining junctions to build and some mistakes to be made along the way. No wrong deliveries, LPT'ed :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809705402

Definitely no faster routes to be found on your 7th playthrough of this one :) Production operation of a certain iconic dish is in need of some serious scaling up and delivering ingredients by a trainload is what we're after today. No engine upgrades and a 3 bridge limit will only warm our puzzle solving skills up. 11:40, look out for that power plant eating all your potatoes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809422619

DNRT 35:00 long haul-we are tasked with automating a rocket base by producing complex robots while constructing a cruise liner port and handling tourists visiting the base. Plan carefully-no demolition job slots available-and act fast, for the Space Age does not wait.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809357822

Nothing like a little bit of smuggling in the morning :) Diamonds seem to be the new craze and we're going to move a lot-after swapping the diamonds used in the jewelry with glass stones-through that Pass Limiter station, timing departures to avoid raising suspicion. Might as well make at least a 1 000 000 TV2$ deposit to our bank account while dealing with local terraforming-toting outlaws. DNSAT, 15:00.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809060550

We've been told our next contractor is a little bit...eccentric. Mentioning some kind of...third party that has recently arrived and requires their utmost attention. We are to establish an efficient railroad network for rapidly expanding local businesses with as little hustle and distraction as possible-no wrong deliveries and most certainly no train crashes. Don't go asking too much about local alchemical shop preferred potion ingredient and ignore the whole giant squid wrestling a ship business too :) 18:00, bzzzt!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2810332021

Just don't ask where your food comes from...and go along with wonderful new recipes calling for strange looking but totally harmless and super edible alien eggs! Same eggs we get Coal and Sand out of you say?...
Timed terraforming events keep you on alert, admiring great landscaping and colouring gets in the way of track planning, and bonus 19:30 timer, DNRT objective and updated water add to replayability value of Magical Eggs train puzzle :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811286767

The city of Therum calls for a good industrialist, and TV2 community shall answer! We're here to upgrade local logistics network with latest railway tech and help satisfy the ever growing population's demands. Building around luxurious skyscrapers, spending small fortunes on power plants, handling two autotrain deliveries and looking at a 35:00 timer every 30 minutes or so is what Industrial Metropolis is about :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2808838136

Nothing's free in Waterworld.
A locomotive fleet in need of upgrades, several key industries waiting for construction funds and dry land in high demand-this train valley is still on its way to economic expansion and industrial growth. A very welcome blend of advanced design/decorations placement and vanilla evenly-paced gameplay. 18:00, no wrong deliveries please.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2808738939

Modern dragons require modern tributes-and Cyber Crystals and Artifacts to make usual Gold and Diamonds more appealing is a start. Construct the mines deep in the fairy forest, avoid damaging the trees and keep the Pass Limiter and the 8:45 timer in mind. A colourful fairytale about paying your taxes on time set in mythical lands with diesel powered locomotives, giant mushrooms and a dragon-owned fortress on a mountain :)

Congratulations on your well-deserved award @Sugarstar! A €10 Steam gift card will be delivered by our contact ASAP.

Tell us about your TV2 workshop adventures and visit our Discord server for an upcoming LPT challenge. Until next week!

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*Do No Stop Any Trains
*Do Not Destroy Any Track Tiles
*Do Not Reverse Trains
*Do Not Use Pause

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:tvhook: Train Valley 2 Discord Server.

:tv2computer: Our Twitter.

Master Arena is FREE TO PLAY!
With a brand new game mod. ROBALL! Robots, Guns, Goals, and Balls! Big Balls!

With classics like: Instagib, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, and Time Trials.

We also have: Campaign Mode, Duel Pro Leagues, and Battle Passes!

GET YOUR FRAG ON AND DOWNLOAD FROM STEAM TODAY!



➡ Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/x5pZay9

Stay tuned, join us on discord, and see you soon! 🙂
Master Arena Dev Team.

Hello Travelers, and once more: Welcome to the final post of the Community Designed Unique Event!

Over the course of 6 weeks, we held a total of seven polls to result in a new Unique item to be immortalized within Last Epoch. This event has been a very special one. The entire unique from start to finish has been designed by the community.

Throughout this event, there have been many amazing ideas brought forward by the community, and some very close races in the polls. Some of these ideas may not have won the polls, but our hearts instead, and may well live to see implementation in some other form (Long unlive zom-bees!). However the community has spoken, and the Community Designed Unique has been created!

While our production team has been hard at work on multiplayer, Performance, and other top-secret changes for the next major update, our art team has been hard at work over the last couple of weeks to bring this Community Designed Unique to life for us to show off today. As an additional teaser: Since you all have decided on a new conversion for Volcanic Orb requiring new visuals, we’ve also taken this opportunity to bring the model and VFX for Volcanic Orb up to our current standards. These changes aim to give it a much more engaging visual design alongside many other combat and visual improvements. We’re also looking at the SFX for Volcanic Orb, however, today’s reveal will be covering some of the updated Visuals for Volcanic orb, the new Unique Spear, and the first reveal of the completed Unique item’s stats!

So without further ado, allow us to introduce you all to your new unique item:



We’re really excited about where this new unique can be taken. We’ve seen what can happen with Void based mages in the past, and we’re re-opening that door with this weapon. This unique effect also offers a lot of versatility in how its power is leveraged, rather than specifying skill combination . This gives it a strong “unique” aspect rather than simply being a point of power for existing builds. We’ll be monitoring the power of this unique closely on release to ensure it meets what we’re looking for. As part of that - we want this, as with almost all Uniques, to keep relevancy throughout the game. If the community finds it needs some more power after getting their hands on it for a while, or perhaps it’s destroying the hordes of the Void a little too easily, we’ll make sure it has a good solid home in Last Epoch as the very first Community Unique. So, with that, let’s take a look at what this new Unique looks like, and what kind of stats it will be bringing to the table in Last Epoch. Please note that these stats are not final, and are still subject to further QA testing.



To get ahead of at least one question - we’re currently looking at Corrupted Heraldry to have a 12 stack limit, with a 12 second duration per stack. This allows you to maintain full stacks so long as you’re following closely to the orb to be getting hit by shrapnel.

As mentioned, we’re taking this opportunity to enhance the visuals for the core Volcanic Orb skill as well, and would like to share the amazing new 3D models for Volcanic orb - The baseline Fire version, the cold conversion, and the all new Void conversion provided through this unique!



And finally, we’ve prepared a quick video demonstrating the new Item in action with its special effect and new Volcanic Orb visuals! Again, note that we are still tweaking some of the new visuals, and not all are necessarily final.



We were looking forward to running this kind of event for a long time, and are extremely happy that we finally arrived at a window in which we’ve been able to commit to it. A big thank you to everyone who got involved with this event submitting both your ideas, and your votes, to create this amazing new Unique item.

This event as far as we’re aware, has been a first of its kind. Full community guidance for creation of an in-game item is something which presents a number of challenges. With our ties to our community, we were more than happy to take these challenges head on, and we’ve learned a lot through this event. We’re extremely happy with the outcome of the event, so there is a decent chance we may do something like this again in the future in a further refined form. But for now, this is our one and only, dearly created, Community Designed Unique.

We are planning to welcome the “Lament of the Lost Refuge” to the world of Eterra in the next major update for Last Epoch, so feel free to start your fallen Void Mage theory crafting! A final thank you to all of our awesome community, and we’ll see you in the next news post!

April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off
April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type
April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme
April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect
May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art
May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text
May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!

HUGE UPDATE! Update Versions 1.7 and 1.8

- Added Two New Characters (Laz & Maria).
- Added New Level (Forgotten City).
- Implemented LAN in Multiplayer Menu.
- Various Performance Fixes and Patches.