Jul 31, 2021

SAFWY Step-Up Summons: Untold Stories: One

BLEACH Brave Souls - prj-bleach-*****

The SAFWY Step-Up Summons: Untold Stories: One comes in both single-pull and x10 types, and the first pull from both Summons is free! From Step 2 onward, each Step comes with extra bonus items, and Step 6 of the x10 Summons guarantees you one of the twelve featured ★5 characters.

There are seven Steps in total. The Steps do not reset, but you can use Step 7 as many times as you like.

Character Details: Genryusai

Attack type: Melee normal attack
All attacks: Burn and Weaken
Soul Trait: Damage taken -16%
New Innate Skill: Drain duration -100%
New Skill: Ignore Brave Battle Invincibility
Skill: Brave Battle Temporary Invincibility
Skill: Last-Ditch Survival 100%
Skill: Prevent Brave Battle Healing

Character Details: Shunsui

Attack type: Ranged strong attack
All attacks: Weaken
Soul Trait: Strong Attack Recharge Time -14%
New Innate Skills: Enervator every 5 second(s)
Innate Skill: Weaken Duration -100%
Skill: (Inheritance Zones Only) Heart Link Slot Potions +5
Skill: Guard Break

Character Details: Jushiro

Attack type: Ranged normal attack
All attacks except strong attack 2: Drain
Strong attack 2: Barrier+boost
Innate Skill: Freeze Duration -100%
New Skill: Multi-Barrier +2
New Skill: (Team/Party) Speed Attribute Captain Normal Attack Damage +20%
Skill: Guard Break
Skill: Enhancer

Jul 30, 2021

UI Text bug fixed

Profectus - Malormar

The bug might not have made the game completely unplayable, but as it made all text invisible, Players that startet playing the game with the Steamrelease had no way of knowing the game mechanics and how to build their first tool.

This bug shouldn't have slipped in after more than a Month of testing, but nonetheless, it did. The reason is that the bug only happened if you never selected another language in the game, this happens because of how the system for automatically selecting your game language works, which is one of the few Systems that hasn't been tested, as the testers had already selected a language prior to the automatic selection being added.

We apologize to everyone whose first experience with Profectus has been made unnecessarily frustrating, but also thank those that brought this issue to our attention and that decide to give it another chance.

We learned from this experience and will have all testers clear their Profectus gamedata before testing in order to prevent further issues like this.

As always, if you have other bugs to report, you can do so on our itch.io page, in the Steam community forum or on our Discord.

Jul 30, 2021

Dev Diary #3: First Look at The Academy

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 - Khryselakatos

Greetings, Principal! Welcome back to our Dev Diary series.

After describing in detail about the new combat system in Hero School Story 2, this diary will cover the beginning of the academy section of the series. The academy is, of course, the place where you, as the principal, shape the students to grow and be ready for combat, by providing the best environment to help them reach their maximum potential. In this diary, we are going to explain about the new aspects that did not exist and improvements made from the prequel.

Based on the player feedback we got from HSS, many players felt that the real time progression is too slow and felt too long to progress. So, in HSS2, we wanted to introduce a new feature called “Skip Time'' which allows players to be able to freely progress. This feature makes it easier to adjust the playstyle of each principal. (See pic)

We would like to mention that in HSS there are random events in the form of cutscenes that can occur inside the academy: students are late for class or even missing their wallet. However, there is not much you can do from these random events. So, we decided to spice it up in HSS2, by doubling down on random events which then players can react to and students will respond according to their personality. We plan to make the events affect the students, though we will describe it further at a later date.

We plan to add personalities for the students in the academy. Their personality will vary from one student to another, so the academy will feel a little more realistic. We plan to cover this in more details on the next diaries, and we hope that players can enjoy the new and improved version of the random events brought to HSS2.

The academy improvements do not stop there. Buildings are also a huge part of the academy that plays an important part in the students’ growth. In HSS2, buildings are now simplified and are all the same size, which are then classified into 2 types, Classes and Facilities. Players have the freedom to choose between the two according to their needs, classes give more flexibility as only selected students get the benefits from the selected class, while Facilities carry overall buff to all the students in the academy.

For example, if there are 3 free slots of building, you can build either all 3 classes or 1 class plus 2 facilities, etc. The choice is freely decided by how you want to improve your students! Adding 3 classes will make it easier for you to choose between assigning which students go to class A, B, or C. Adding more facilities means you will grant your academy plenty of permanent stat buffs for the rest of the game.

After mentioning students’ personalities, random events and buildings that exist in the academy, we will now talk about time and how it works in the academy of HSS2. Back in the prequel, whenever the graduation pop up appears, principals are required to put one or more students to graduate, regardless of their academic achievements. In HSS2, students will always graduate after 3 years in the academy. 1 year consists of 4 seasons and 1 season consists of 3 months to which then the players can assign students to the classes every month. At the end of each season, principals can send their students into combat. This is a major difference between HSS1 and HSS2, where in HSS1 players can send students into combat anytime, but in HSS2, players will have to prioritize their choices in order to improve the students’ potential.

With this many improvements and changes in HSS2, we hope players will enjoy their time building the best academy in Valthiria with the new concept. We now wrap up the academy briefing for all the principals that are excited to start their academy soon.

Thank you for your time reading, and please don’t forget to wishlist us!

Jul 30, 2021

Build 1.7.22 - Wishing Well Fix

HammerHelm - Calandryll

Tonight's build includes a fix for the infinite wishing well and a couple of small quality of life improvements related to opening and closing UI based on feedback.

The Wishing Well will no longer give infinite resources.
Fixed a bug that caused the town loading system to create multiple versions of the same house decoration object. This could negatively impact performance and was part of the cause of the Wishing Well bug mentioned above.
The UI message for interacting with furniture will no longer get stuck on the screen if you open the build menu (or any other UI) while the message is present.
You can now close the Build Menu and the Town Manager UI using the same key you used to open them. By default this is P and V respectively, but it will work for any custom keybinds as well.

The art for the new quest decor items is done and I hope to spend some time working on the actual quests this weekend!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
jon@hammerhelm.com

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Jul 30, 2021

Beta 3.500 Data Integrity And Game Tech Upgrades

AI War 2 - x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park)

New build! Wow it's been a while, so this is huge. https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_3.500_Data_Integrity_And_Game_Tech_Upgrades

This one is on the beta branch! In Steam, you will need to select current_beta to see it. On GOG Galaxy, you'll need to select Beta. In the game you should then see 3.500 as the version.

On Steam, there is a most_recent_stable_beta if you have problems with this one and need to fall back to 3.313 as the previous beta.

So what's going on with this release? Well... a lot!

1. We've upgraded the version of the unity engine that we're using by a lot of versions, and so now we have native M1/Silicon support for macs, as well as better support for OSX and Linux in general. Also also, it's probable that the bug with Radeon cards on OSX in Metal is fixed.

2. I made a ton of improvements visually and performance-wise to the main menu yet again, so that runs better than ever even on very low-end machines.

3. There have been a number of UI performance improvements in general. Visually nothing is different much.

4. Random bugfixes, but really only a handful of them in the main.

5. A HUGE architecture rework when it comes to how data is loaded and pooled. It turns out that we were having a ton of memory leaking out in various ways, and I've now pretty much entirely put a stop to that. Thanks to Daniexpert for bringing this to my attention. This particular thing is so overwhelmingly large in how much of the game that it touches that there may be some lingering bugs that are unknown, and there are a handful of fairly minor known issues listed in the release notes, too.

6. There are now anti-memory-leak tools for modders and faction developers to be able to monitor their own stuff, too. So far just by watching at the OS level, it doesn't look like much is leaking there at the moment, if anything, but it's nice to have.

7. The memory leak work, which was extensive, also doubles as a helper for multiplayer client integrity checking. I haven't gotten into that yet, but it's going to be very useful for getting the last of the MP oddities out of the way.

Known issues? Sure:
- Centering is off when going into the lobby usually the first time.
- Notifications at the top of the screen flicker at the moment.
- Mods: Chrysalis Devourer and Kaizer's Marauders are probably re-broken despite SirLimbo just fixing them a bit ago.
- Mods: The Reprocessors mod is likely broken until it gets a code update.
- All other other mods should be working fine from what we can tell.

- Unknown factor: not sure if we are clearing playeraccounts the proper amount, in multiplayer in particular. Will need testing by me.
- Unknown factor: who knows what else is wrong. This has been a tectonic shift for the game. But those are the known issues, at least.
- Unknown factor: It is probably going to be important to check that things like the Zenith Miner Mining, and any other units with particle effects (Zenith Miner Probe, etc) all are properly working and not getting stale, too.
- Unknown factor: Same deal with some of the special effects, like lightning blasts and such. Those haven't been tested yet, and are at a minor risk of having the same problem, although the code review looks good so far.

This has been an absolute slog and a ton of work, but I'm really pleased with how much more responsive the game is, and all the new power and capabilities. This is one of those items that wasn't on my radar at all, but I'm glad I was able to put in the time and get it improved. Now let's just have fingers crossed that we don't run into too many regression bugs over the next days and weeks.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

Jul 30, 2021

Risk Community Bulletin #3

RISK: Global Domination - SilverShamrock

ATTENTION GENERALS!

Sit down, shuttle up, and ready that scroll wheel - you’re in for a jam-packed bulletin! Next month we’ll be seeing the arrival of our 3.2 update which includes new maps, dice, troops, avatars, and bug fixes.

So prepare yourselves as this update as we go behind the scenes and out of this world.

UI DESIGN

It’s been long overdue, but for the first time in four years we are introducing a new theme to RISK Global Domination.

Our new Sci-fi theme brings visual updates to Fog of War, territory connection lines, holographic background, and new attack/fortify arrows.

MAPS

Look to the stars and take your global conquest to the galaxy with 4 new maps!
Without spoiling too much, here are a few sneak peeks on how our new Space Port Sigma map came to life.

DICE
Good news everyone! We’ve figured out a way to roll dice in zero-gravity.
See how we go from concept:

To first modeling pass:

To final design:

AVATARS
New theme who dis? Not one, not two, but FOUR SCI-FI AVATARS will feature in our new update 3.2. We also have a new samurai avatar paying homage to the legendary Tomoe Gozen a onna-musha who appeared in 14th century Japanese literature. Tomoe was undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with as she was appointed as leading commander in the Genpei War.

“she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot. “
-The Tale of the Heike

FRAMES

In this update, we have 7 new frames coming to the RISK shop and a little special somethin for our premium players soon after. So here’s a little preview of what’s to come.

X Æ B-52

This frame is made from a metal that hasn’t even been discovered yet.

Steampunk
Assembled from the parts of a time machine, racing car and soft-serve machine.

Samurai X
The wearer of this frame will be installed with the wisdom of the Samurai.

TROOPS
Generals meet the creation of one of your new GUARDIAN OF THE *REDACTED*

The Concept:

Final result:

At the end of July we saw the close of our Discord 1v1 tournament.
Special shout-out to our placing winners

1st place: Tank

2nd Place: Parlox

3rd Place: Spike

Zombies are weak, they lose on a tie when you attack them, and they only have two dice to attack with (attacking a zombies territory is safer than attacking a humans).
Don’t focus entirely on zombies as you will leave yourself exposed to the other human opponents.
Zombies will take over a random territory if they are eliminated in the previous round
You need to spread out troops to minimise the damage that zombie takeover does.
In ranked games, note that humans are still the real enemy, eliminating them is more important than eliminating zombies - if you lose to zombies but eliminate all humans you will not be penalised for being 2nd to them

Our General Showcase features RISK content creators in and out of our community discord.

Check out master player MR SLIN lose Australia but shows you how to recover in this situation and lead the way to victory!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gecjD9XcC2g

Grandmaster Risk4Ever provides a passive strategy to win at risk with alliances off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqhu_7BFhHY

Do you think you’ve got what it takes to compete against our very best?
Our discord community runs back to back tournaments with big prize pools.
Sign-ups for our next FFA tournament is 6th-15th of August.
We also have dedicated channels in our discord designed for players
looking for a game.
Bite the bullet and join our dedicated RISK server https://discord.gg/risk

Phew! What an update! There’s still more to come in 3.2 which is due in August but we wanted to show you what goes on behind the scenes here at SMG.
Let us know in the comments what you think of this update.

Signing off,
RISK Team at SMG