6:21am

Tower Networking Inc. - suppocosia

Greetings fellow Tower Admins,

We're pleased to bring you the latest major update (Build 0.8.42) for the game, introducing rack mounting, botnets and various other devices and proposals to the game.

New Rack Mounting

New racks are available, and devices can be mounted on these racks. Mounted devices will not slip when you're not watching, and they look neat!

Botnets

Enterprise users not getting enough visitors? Just fake traffic to them using botnets! This mechanic adds a new design challenge in analyzing user packets to fuel your bots.

Power Management

Remotely power devices on or off. Devices that are off do not drive up your power bill and can last longer even after their warranty expires. While we've added some sensible reaction from Tenabolt to some of you admins who love to have your entire setup on non DC floors to skirt needing to pay power bills. We've also sprinkled in some proposals that will still allow players keep doing that again, although that will certainly not make the folks at Tenabolt happy about it.

More tweak-able options and various QOLs

We've added more options to tweak the game for your play-style.

Memento replacement too costly? Want to start out with all technology acquired without the randomness of proposals affecting your network design? These are all now tweak-able thanks to suggestions from your fellow admins. In addition, Time control through "BreakTime" will now by default not affect animations anymore, and is usable in co-op.

As always, we always welcome new feedback and are actively trying to add them to the game. Feel free to share your thoughts in the game by hitting F8 or by joining our Discord server to voice out your thoughts/ideas.

Full changelogs

[c]- new: rack mounting.[/c]

[c]- new: RIP advertised routes will now expire.[/c]

[c]- new: rack mountable power extenders and UPS.[/c]

[c]- new: rack mountable shelf piece.[/c]

[c]- new: racks originally found in any DC can now be removed.[/c]

[c]- new: "always on" allow commands to be repeated without typing "on" keyword.[/c]

[c]- new: ubbt can now consume from local device. (special thanks to Spanky for various botnet related tests).,[/c]

[c]- new: wirerat now costs 2 memory to run, "inspect-user-traffic" limited to 4 per installed memory of device.,[/c]

[c]- new: allow botnet traffic to generate "inspect-user-traffic".[/c]

[c]- new: tap inspect-user-traffic stack limited by memory (no longer requires concurrent user requests for uses).[/c]

[c]- new: users with hardware resets now sends an email notification.[/c]

[c]- new: added option to enable all tech at the start of normal runs (achievements disabled).[/c]

[c]- new: added option to tweak probability of user-offline hardware address reset behavior.[/c]

[c]- new: added option to tweak memento device replacement costs.[/c]

[c]- new: upgraded engine to godot 4.5.[/c]

[c]- new: added a hardware-based network load balancer.[/c]

[c]- new: added botnets and related commands.[/c]

[c]- new: added remote power on/off (unlocked by a "Power management" proposal).[/c]

[c]- new: DHCP boot-only now repeats request until a network address is acquired (instead of only requesting once at boot).[/c]

[c]- new: devices/users now always loses network address when they power off/go offline if DHCP is configured to periodic or boot-only.[/c]

[c]- new: users who went offline may change hardware addresses (which will also lose any configured network address).[/c]

[c]- new: pressing 'T' now tears up empty cardboard boxes.[/c]

[c]- new: Tower links can be upgraded in place.[/c]

[c]- new: new settings option for coffee/tea time to not affect animations and physics and available in co-op.[/c]

[c]- balance: increased NLB2 bandwidth and significantly reduced cost.[/c]

[c]- balance: bandwidth of all switches increased by ~20% - 30%.[/c]

[c]- balance: bandwidth of all routers increased by ~25%.[/c]

[c]- balance: bandwidth of all firewalls increased by ~33%.[/c]

[c]- balance: users that cannot access new providers (within a fraction of grace period of provider remaining, depending on user) will not affect overall satiety.[/c]

[c]- balance: standard mode memento replacement daily fee reduced to 5 per device.[/c]

[c]- balance: lowered all cabler's union proposal costs to 300.[/c]

[c]- balance: proposals now auto-drafted every 3 days instead of 5.[/c]

[c]- balance: Lean administration proposals now cheaper with a higher reduction ratio.[/c]

[c]- balance: DC power rate now reduces to 30% of current DC power rate.[/c]

[c]- balance: early floor build bonus increases to 100 per day.[/c]

[c]- balance: increased default starting cash to 10000 for admin mode, 7000 for architect mode.[/c]

[c]- balance: penalty system on non DC floors if exceeded kwh limit for the day.[/c]

[c]- balance: added "lobby against tenabolt" proposal for public power use rights.[/c]

[c]- balance: added power related proposals that affects power costs/outage frequencies.[/c]

[c]- balance: added "legal retaliation against tenabolt" proposal that reimburses on outage/surges.[/c]

[c]- balance: new data center proposal now only increase admin fees by 10% instead of 100%.[/c]

[c]- balance: decentro prices now moves with trading activity.[/c]

[c]- balance: limited to 300 decentros per trade.[/c]

[c]- balance: trading decentro causes "volatility" which reduces selling price.[/c]

[c]- balance: decentro volatility decreases with amount of users.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with mounting on ghost racks.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with mouted device on loaded games with carts and collision.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed drinking issues beyond 8x and 0.125x.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed elevator wiki guide image distortion.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: adds recursion guard after 256 try-stack calls against self-referencing aliases.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed p2p traffic not counting visits.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed "always on" with route add command.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with coffee/tea time affecting outage/surge/worm timing.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed grey square with in-game illusion browser.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed decentro buy/sell decimal value.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed traversal per second filter on dmarket.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: added fix for broken saves due to near-midnight drinking.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed days in debt trigger game over if non consecutive.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed some description formatting of proposals.,[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed sftp files having floating point sizes in display.,[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed wirerat load issues on dstat/watch.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with tower link requesting DHCP.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with discount proposals not working properly.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: starting cash affects achievments.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: traversal will now always revisit any nodes if it is egressing from a VLAN capable node.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed dstat command running on debugger with "using" syntax.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed pcap header width alignment.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed vmconf copy not retaining files.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed time scaling affecting reliability.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with overvoltage directive probability.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed cable unspooling too far when cardboard boxes are not upright.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: device no longer auto-reset when a storage extension is suddenly removed.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed time scaling issues with save games.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed time scaling issues causing power loss on devices.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with family shared copies hosting lobbies.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed loans not updating on joining co-op players.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with RIP configuration on invalid ports.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: tweaked physics engine to be less slippery.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed use stack issue with database-hub.[/c]

[c]- bugfix: fixed issue with decentro currency still on device after memento reset.[/c]

[c]- qol: added random seed button.[/c]

[c]- qol: SLA warnings now show user type and floor.[/c]

[c]- qol: vmconf create can now set a netaddr on VM creation.[/c]

[c]- qol: scan now accepts "from" and "with" syntax for broadcast debugging.[/c]

[c]- qol: scanning exploit can now be optionally turned off after acquisition.[/c]

[c]- qol: sftp cp * now possible.[/c]

[c]- qol: added option to disable flickering lights on floors.[/c]

[c]- qol: vlan command now allows multiple tags to be created (i.e., vlan tag portN with #1 #2).[/c]

[c]- qol: UPS now shows remaining time of current load.[/c]

[c]- qol: wildcards using asterisk "*" now allowed on firewall traffic types - i.e., "deny tcp/51*"[/c]

[c]- qol: alias now accepts $n or ${n} everywhere - i.e., "echo $1/${2}" now works.[/c]

[c]- ext: increased starting cash option ceiling to 20000.[/c]

[c]- ext: max day periods options now increased to 3600s.[/c]

[c]- ext: the following play options no longer affect achievements/unlock disables (day period, network address requirement for requests, local dns mappings, debugger access bandwidth costs, device collisions, program autostart).[/c]

[c]- localization: updated Russian localization (much appreciation to our Russian translation volunteers).[/c]

[c]- localization: fixed tower-link font maps for DE, FR.[/c]

[c]- workaround: teatime/coffee will not have effect 3 seconds to midnight.[/c]

[c]- optimization: minor traversal optimizations.[/c]

6:18am

KOTCL Dev Diaries - Holiday Special, Death, Hooray!

Knock on the Coffin Lid - 80kgkotov

In honor of Halloween, a bright and joyful event, I suggest we talk about death—not about our death, but about the Mistress who embodies one of the fundamental forces of Midian.

But first, let’s start with something more grounded.

Localization

The final re-balance we’re working on is causing changes in the text—and significant ones at that, especially in card and item descriptions. Just imagine the volume of those changes! I mention this only to remind you that the re-balancing process is well underway and it’s steadily drawing to a close.

Now Let’s Talk About the Mistress

When we were personifying death, our main source of inspiration was dualism. If there are Primordial Spirits symbolising life, there should also be a Mistress of Death—for counter-balance and the unity of opposites.

It is easy to understand the nature, meaning and purpose of the Spirits’ existence; to do so, it’s enough to have a general idea about pantheism. The spirits are the divine origin of all that exists in Median, they’re both the weavers and at the same time the fabric of reality itself.

Meanwhile, grasping the nature, meaning, and purpose of death is not only hard, but also harmful in itself. Death servants have been pondering these questions for centuries without reaching a consensus. And if we are able to now easily find the answers, does it mean that all death servants were stupid? No, that doesn’t make sense.

But we are still free to muse.

Nature, Meaning, and Purpose

We could search for the essence of death in the law of energy conservation. The Primordial Spirits couldn’t appear out of nothing. For a pendulum to start swinging, you first need to apply some force to it. After that it will necessarily swing in the other direction. The Mistress is precisely the other side of the pendulum. Right?

The meaning of the existence of death may lie in dialectics. If all phenomena in the world develop and change through the interaction of opposites, then without death Midian couldn’t evolve and reach the final goal of its existence.

What’s the purpose of the Mistress? This is the most important and complicated question that death servants grapple with. But we’ll set the lengthy musings aside for now and focus on service.

Why serve Death?

Are you willing to risk your life for a chance at immortality?
Are you a scholar, painfully aware that one lifetime isn’t enough to make your great discovery?
Are you a mage, just a couple of centuries short of achieving absolute power?

If so, the path of serving the Mistress is open to you. You can invent your own reason — she doesn’t care.

How to Serve?

To become an acolyte, you need a special amulet made from the thumbs of right hands. Any death servant will make it for you, or won’t—that’s for the servant to decide alone, but you can try to persuade them.

Now let’s suppose you’ve got the acolyte amulet. The next step is to—on the first day of leaf fall—go to any death idol. If you’re the only one to show up, count yourself very lucky because there’s only one opening. But most likely a whole group of contenders will gather around the idol, and you will have to kill each other until there’s only one of you left. That person will become the servant of death.

What to Do Next?

Basically, you don’t have to do anything more; you’ve already earned at least some kind of immortality. When your body dies, you’ll rise in the form of a ghoul, find yourself a cozy crypt and feed on corpses. You’ll no longer be in danger of starving to death, but hunger will haunt you, and you will need to eat a lot.

But do your ambitions go further than a ghoul’s fate? If so, then you will have to offer sacrifices and await the attention of the Mistress. She will certainly get in touch with you and wish for something special from you.

Fulfilling her wishes, you will sooner or later turn into a lich, build an army of skeletons and zombies, and you’ll be undead happily ever after. It would be better to not attract the attention of the firebrothers, but let’s see what happens.

Whoever doesn’t fulfil a Death's wish will be turned into a wight, a submissive slave, bound to one place until a brave hero in shining armour delivers them from eternal suffering.

Skeletons and Zombies

Unlike wights, zombies and skeletons aren’t enslaved. They’re puppets, the remains of people and animals misused by someone.

You shouldn’t mistake undead zombies for zombies of the Rotten Bog, they only look alike (although it makes no difference for the firebrothers). But that’s a complex matter, and we’ll leave it for later.

Happy Halloween!

6:18am

Weekly DevLog: Halloween Update

SubwaySim 2 - d.seiler

🎃 Happy Halloween, dear community! 👻

As the leaves fall outside and darkness settles over the tunnels, it’s time for a small but exciting DevLog Halloween update! 🦇🚇

Today, we’re taking a look at a feature many of you have been curious about: coupling with the Battery Locomotive AL1! ⚡

The AL1 is equipped with a Scharfenberg coupler, which makes coupling in-game pleasantly simple.

Just slowly drive up to the desired vehicle – for example, the LB6 wagon – and the connection will automatically lock into place. The system engages on its own, just like in real life.

To supply power to the LB6, you’ll need to manually attach a power cable between the AL1 and the wagon.

This cable transfers electricity so the wagons can be properly powered.

It’s a classic touch of realism – you’ll need to connect it yourself to complete the setup.

When you want to uncouple the locomotive, the process is just as realistic:

Inside the cab, there’s a button to release the coupling mechanism.

After that, simply disconnect the power cable to fully separate the locomotive.

Only then is the AL1 ready for its next task – whether it’s shunting duties or coupling to another vehicle.

This feature offers a first glimpse into the level of detail and mechanics behind the upcoming Battery Locomotive AL1.

More exciting functions will be added in future updates – so stay tuned for new information about the AL1 and its role in the game! ⚡

Until then, we wish you a spooktacular Halloween and lots of fun exploring the tunnels…

Who knows what might be lurking down there in the dark... 👀🎃

About SubwaySim 2

SubwaySim 2 is now available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Steam Discussions, on our Discord server, or via Instagram. Also check out the game on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, or Epic Games Store!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2707070/SubwaySim_2/

6:18am

Demo updated to version 1.1.1 (Halloween update)

The Ballad of Bellum - BokehDev

The demo for The Ballad of Bellum has now been updated to Demo Version 1.1.1, which is the Halloween update🎃 This update a few more settings to the settings menu, as well as other QOL addition and other bug fixes.

Demo Roadmap
I'm planning to release a short demo roadmap soon with some things I'd like to add to the demo before I continue working on the rest of the game.

Alright, here's the patch notes:

Additions and changes:

Added object markers to any object that can be targeted. The marker will pop up when the object is close by.
Increased throwing speed for all liftable objects.
Reduced the main menu camera movement from 25 to 10, and changed the option to change in the settings menu from a slider to a enable / disable switch.
Added a setting to toggle camera shake.
Added a setting for changing what monitor to play on 💻
Added so that display and monitor settings are loaded while in the splash screen.
Slightly increased the collision mask for the sword.
Added so certain objects, like pots, bushes, and other interactable objects will be deleted if the player spawn inside them, like when restarting the game for example.
Highroost Village has been decorated, all point lights will have a random color, and fog is permanently on, to celebrate Halloween!🎃🍬

Bug fixes:

Fixed a bug where the game would crash after binding keys due to a false variable.
Fixed an issue where smooth normals were not calculated correctly for world models.
Fixed a bug where it was not possible to reset keybinds back to the default bind with the reset button next to the keybind widget inside the settings menu.
Fixed an issue where the player would move slower diagonally, and appear to move slower up and down due to the camera angle.

Known issue:

General performance issues across the demo.
An issue with the dialogue system where you sometimes have to press twice to progress.
Moving the game to a different monitor while in window mode with the new setting for changing which monitor to play on won't scale the game window properly.