Jul 25, 2018

Patch notes for version EA 0.5.3 - July 25, 2018

The Guild 3 - Scandal

Steam version number: 2959440

New features
- We analyzed the current pathfinding system and ultimately decided to revise it completely. As you may have guessed, this intervention was not trivial, since pathfinding is related to many other systems (such as actions, NPC behavior, and AI). Many of the bugs that currently cause characters to stand motionless on the streets are not related to pathfinding. Nonetheless, we ask you to pay close attention to the new pathfinding.
- With the new pathfinding system, characters try to side step. But if that's too much of a detour, characters move through others. As you can see in the game, pathfinding is much more natural and fluid. Another positive effect is that characters should not push each other anymore.
- As you have probably noticed, in the past it was often not possible to send the character to certain places on the street. This problem has occurred especially often at intersections. As part of the conversion to the new pathfinding system, we have now corrected this. You should now be able to move your character anywhere on the streets without any problems.
- One point that we have also improved with this version is the use of actions. As soon as an action is selected, the corresponding action icon is now displayed next to the mouse cursor. If you move the mouse pointer over an invalid target, the icon will be crossed out and a text will appear that explains why the target is not valid. At the same time, we have replaced the previously too-large tooltips of characters and buildings with smaller ones, as these often had hidden important elements in the HUD and were obstructing the view. Now it should be much easier for you to find a valid target for an action and then to select it.
- With this patch you can now get important information about dynasty characters right in the world: names, dynasty crests, the favor of your dynasty, the status of the character within the family, and the office. Employees are displayed only with the coat of arms of the dynasty. We think that the new "plaques" are very helpful, but you want to give you the freedom to decide for yourself: in the options you can set whether you want to see the "plaques" on characters, buildings, both or not at all. Furthermore, you can set whether you want to show the "plaques" only for your own dynasty or for all dynasties.
- We have reworked the system, which generates the water reflections and thereby among other things improved the performance. Furthermore, we have significantly improved the creation of the minimap when loading a scenario map, which has also shortened the loading times.

Bug fixes
- The game no longer crashes when certain characters can not be displayed.
- The game no longer crashes when you equip your characters with carts.
- We finalized another set of bug fixes and improvements for AI controlled dynasties:
- AI controlled dynasties should now be able to build businesses.
- AI controlled dynasties should now also buy building extensions for businesses and upgrade their buildings if they meet the requirements.
- AI controlled dynasties should now have stronger ambitions to expand their businesses, build new businesses, and compete in public office
- The Master AI is now able to “have work” for all employees over a longer period of time. To achieve this, the following problems were solved:
- The budget that the AI has available now depends on how much money the dynasty has.
- The AI now changes the production orders of the employees when the raw materials have gone out.
- The AI for the transporters has been revised and should now be less error prone.
- The problem with invalid products should be fixed
- Building levels 2 and 3 have been adjusted slightly to ensure that there is enough space for all raw materials of high quality products without the purchase of additional inventory slots.
- The prioritization of which products the Master AI produces has been optimized
- If you switch the operation from automatic (Master AI) to manual, products are no longer placed in different storage slots.
- In some cases, transporters have not picked up the right items, even though they should be transported. This should now be solved.
- If more than one employee produces the same product, they will no longer be placed in different inventory slots.
- Different names for new buildings are proposed again.
- If special characters occur in a building name, which can not be displayed, then the building can be built anyway.
- The calculation of text lengths has been corrected to allow the size of the background texture of tooltips to be automatically created. Tooltip texts should therefore no longer be cut off and also displayed correctly centered. Furthermore, many texts that were previously shifted too far up or down, should now be properly aligned. Please keep your eyes open for further texts whose alignment we may need to correct.
- Characters no longer crash through bridges in certain places.
- Characters can now attack characters preparing for a ambush.
- Many characters (NPCs) did not move because they had been waiting for some action. This should now occur less frequently.
- Characters participating in interactions, like conversations or a fistfight, will now play the correct animations.
- Carts can now drive on all roads. This fix solves some horse cart and market issues. In some cases it does not look perfect yet, but we chose this step so that characters do not get stuck just because they are equipped with a horse cart.
- We have made several corrections in the localization system, which now displays a large number of missing names and labels within texts correctly. In most cases these were names of characters, buildings and measures. Please see if you notice any missing text.
- The buttons in the character creation should now all be displayed even at lower resolutions.
- The scroll bar in the overview of items when creating trade routes now works correctly.
- When changing the main residence your family members in the previous home building will move now to the new one.

Art
The following buildings have been optimized and each provided with 3 different LOD stages:
- Herbs hut
- Apothecary 1 to 3
- Scholar 1 to 3
- Hospital 1 to 3
- Robber camp
- Cathedral
- Well
- Quarry
- Mine
- Lumberyard
- Grove
- Cemetery
- More city walls and towers

Known Issues
- Larger objects such as ships and horse carts are still wiggling when they try to dodge each other.
- If you attack characters that are lurking for an ambush, they will most likely start another counter attack after the fight is over. At the moment this is a bit too common. Please let us know how you see it.
- Crowds of NPCs sometimes overlap one another right now. This mainly affects horse carts. We’ll checking that issue.
- In some cases NPCs may still get stuck when they are being interacted with. This is also the case in previous versions and does not have its cause in the pathfinding changes. We just wanted to mention this, so you know it does not have to be reported.
- Currently, NPCs fight each other very often and do not shy away from kids. We will adapt this.
- Children are currently trying to sit on benches. Since they have no animations for them, they stay on the bench and move in the state. The same applies to fighting.
- Character plaques adjust their length only to the name of the character, but not to its political position (e.g. mayor).
- If you still have other problems with the new pathfinding, please create a bug in Redmine, describes the situation, the location and attach the score to the ticket. So we can look specifically at the problems.

Important Information
Due to the changes to the pathfinding system old save games are not compatible anymore and loading an old save game will lead to errors.
If you have trouble loading or saving, then you can try to delete all files from the "Games" folder in the installation path of The Guild 3.
It is quite possible that some problems that you have in your game are caused by missing or corrupted files. In this case, the following can help: right-click on "The Guild 3" in your Steam library, then Properties - LOCAL FILES - REVIEW FILES TO ERROR

What we plan for the next patch...
- We want to fix the bug that causes AI-controlled NPCs to stop working after being interacted with.
- Through various measures we want to reduce the loading times of scenario maps.
- We want to further improve the performance. With special attention to savegames, which are stored / loaded.

A short outlook...
As already announced, we are currently working on rebuilding the action system for our designers so that actions and items will be easier to create in the future. This is a big change that will keep us busy for a bit longer. We hope to be able to create gameplay elements faster in the future.

Your feedback is important to us!
We would greatly appreciate it if you have time for the following quick poll about the changes in patch EA 0.5.3: Google Form
Please note: We do not collect any data other than your feedback - it remains completely anonymous. This poll ends on August 8, 2018

Jul 25, 2018

Dragons: From Hatchling to Ancient

Trials of Ascension: Exile - Elyssia

In Trials of Ascension: Exile, players get to experience the harrowing and triumphant life of a dragon in its entirety; starting with the humble hatchling and eventually growing into the boss-level ancient. Dragons face their own unique challenges, and their growth in power doesn’t necessarily mean that survival gets any easier for them. If you can overcome the trials of life as a hatchling and beyond, you will be rewarded with the strength of the most powerful character in the game.

As the ancient breeding ground of the fire dragons, the Lost Isles are ideally suited for a growing hatchling. Food is plentiful and predators can be avoided if the player is cautious and attentive to their surroundings. The size of a small cat, hatchlings possess few hit points and what little armor they have provides only minimal protection. A well placed attack from nearly any creature will knock them out, and a second guarantees their death. But size isn’t always a draw back. Their small form makes targeting them difficult, even for those intent on exterminating the dragons.

A hatchling dragon will spend most of its time eating, collecting nuggets, and constructing its first nest, all while avoiding death. As growing babies, hatchlings have healthy appetites and a large number of grubs are required to keep them from starving to death. To help them along, they have three attacks to utilize; a bite, a claw strike, and a defensive tail sweep.

The key to dragon’s growing to larger sizes is to consume nuggets. Nuggets are rare metals found in the ground, such as copper, silver, and gold. Dragons are naturally attracted to these metals and can smell where enough of the metal is present to form a nugget in the ground. This smell appears as a wavy-air spot over the ground. Dragons become better at sensing the nuggets as they collect them, making finding the nuggets progressively easier. As they consume nuggets, their molting meter fills up, indicating their readiness to molt.

Once the molting meter reaches 75%, the dragon begins to develop molting sickness, as its body begins to grow uncomfortably tight in its scaly skin. This causes the dragon to take additional damage and slowly increases its effect until the molting meter is completely full. The only way to remove this effect is to go forward with the molt. All ages of dragons develop molting sickness, and the effects of it grow worse as the dragon grows larger.

In addition to being a requirement to molting, dragon nests serve other functions as well. They can store inventory in them as a bank, which cannot be accessed by anyone else. They also perform as a respawn point if the dragon should die, bringing them back to a familiar location and not respawned randomly in the wilds.

There are a total of six growth stages for the dragon, going from hatchling, to young, to juvenile, to adolescent, to adult, and finally ancient. Dragons hatch without wings and instead develop them during their first molt. Though they cannot yet fly, they can use them to glide down from high places to escape predators or to ambush their targets.

It is the juvenile stage where dragons really come into their own. By this age they are able to take off from the ground with a running jump and remain aloft for quite a while. At this age their breath sacs begin to mature and they can unleash their fiery breath attack. Because this attack is fueled by nuggets, it has quite a lot of variation. Rarer nuggets will increase both the range and damage of the attacks, while copper has the advantage of being much more prevalent than silver or gold.

Gameplay features for the dragons are still rather sparse, but the team has many plans to add content to their mechanics in the coming months. Dragons can look forward to more creatures to hunt and be hunted by, more visual customization, and we want to add new mechanics to their nests to allow them to customize them and add additional utility to them.

What is your favorite feature for the dragons? Do you plan to play one for yourself? Share with us in the comments below!

Jul 25, 2018

Patch 0.8.3

Witch It - BarrelRollGames

Important:
We did some changes to the controller layout, please reset your controls to default in the input settings to get the new mappings!

More Skill reworks, yay!
This time we reworked the ‘Magic Blocker’, the ‘Vacuum Trap’ and ‘Possess’.

Magic Blocker:
-Complete skill revamp
-It will now create a blocking zone for the Witches (if a Witch still touches the zone somehow, she will not be able to cast magic)
-It is no longer a guided Projectile
-Updated Visuals and Audio

Vacuum Trap:
-The radius got increased from 5 m to 8 m
-The slow debuff is reduced from 60% to 30%
-It now drains 25 Mana/sec.
-The duration got increased form 1 sec. to 2 sec.
-Increased cooldown from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.
-Updated Visuals and Audio

Possess:
-Mana cost now scales with the distance to the targeted prop
-There is a message when the player tries to possess through a wall
-Visuals are now slightly less obvious for Hunters

Info: Some skills are still work in progress.

More work done on the UI overhaul, everything should be navigable with controllers.
-Added more tooltips.
-Added a delay before tooltips open.
-Added a tooltip open and close animation.
-Added confirmation dialogs when applying settings.
-Added confirmation dialog when changing fullscreen mode and/or resolution.
-Changed the main menu layout a bit.
-Changed the layout of the key binding list.
-Changed: Various visual improvements.
-Changed: Reworked Hunter and Witch Skin Selection screens.
-Changed: It’s now possible to rotate the character in Hunter and Witch Skin preview with mouse and controller.
-Changed: Unified grid buttons in skin selection, cauldron, smash bench, prop collection and other places.
-Changed: Combined ‘Patchnotes’ and ‘What’s New’ screens.
-Changed: Overhaul of the F1 ingame help screen. It will now dynamically show unique key bindings.

Additionally:

-Added Traditional Chinese Localization
-Added Romanian Localization
-Added 11 color variations (mostly black) of common and uncommon items
-Added: Prop Stabilize will now toggle by default on controllers.
-Added: Ambient and User Interface volume sliders.
-Added: New prop layout for ‘Twin Mask Theater’

-Changed: ‘Magic Dust’ is now obtainable by using the ‘Magic Blocker’, ‘Chicken’, ‘Vacuum Trap’ and ‘Mushroom’.

-Fixed: Witch will reflect correctly in the mirror in ‘Twin Mask Theater’
-Fixed: ‘Possess’ is now working in the ‘make up’ room in ‘Twin Mask Theater’
-Fixed: The 32bit version is working again
-Fixed: Visual C++ 2015 Redist is no longer required to play Witch It
-Fixed: ‘Morgaryll Strawberry Hat’ was wrongly handled as ‘common’, it’s now ‘very rare’ like intended
-Fixed: Crouching will now work properly when using ‘Hook’.
-Fixed: Ocean material surface normal miscalculation and tweaked the material a bit
-Fixed: It is not possible to duplicate props as witch anymore when using fast mouse clicks.

Jul 25, 2018

Devlog #4 Trying to Create the Perfect Gameplay Trailer for an Indie Game

Macrotis: A Mother's Journey - Deus Imperator

Heya!

I am a recent addition to the team and I am in charge of marketing. I was already friends with most of the team for more than ten years but I could only watch the amazing stuff they did from the sidelines as I was busy with different work. I took the first chance that I could and joined in on the fun when I was finally available.

After examining what we had in our hands, my initial concerns were focused on our previous trailer and our lack of online presence. I learned that previous trailer was done in an afternoon because there was a gaming expo the next day and the team needed something to play in loop on the background while people visited our booth. You can understand why I wanted to make something better.

Probably because indie game studios lack professional marketing support, when I started researching about how to make a successful gameplay trailer on internet, the initial results were all aimed at them. The first issue was concerned about how there was a difference between making trailers for indie studios and established studios. It was said that if you are not Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft or something similar, starting the trailer with your company logo was a big no-no because your indie logo doesn’t convey any value to the viewer… which was exactly what our previous trailer did. The general wisdom was to make a good-looking end card with a big logo of your game with some announcement below it and only use a small sized studio logo on the side.

People who start watching a trailer make a decision between watching the whole thing and just skipping to the next video during the first 15 seconds. So, the advice was putting the most exciting parts of the trailer near the beginning. If you have something unique, something that other similar games doesn’t have, or some shots full of action and explosions, put them in the beginning! Make people want to see more! Even recent movie trailers started to put best few shots before the beginning of the trailer. After capturing people’s attention in the first shots of the trailer, you can move on to the main body where you can give whatever message you want to give to the viewer.

The next advice was about a necessary assumption concerning the viewers. More specifically, how you should assume your audience is completely ignorant about everything. Assume that they don’t know anything about what they see on the screen even if things are pretty obvious, the genre even if it clearly has platformer elements, or the game mechanics even if what you show is something basic like pulling and pushing some rocks. When you start thinking along these lines, it becomes obvious that you need some descriptive texts on the screen explaining what people see. For example, when you show the character pushing, digging, and gnawing you also need to include a text saying “interact with the environment” to solidify the information that you are trying to pass on to the viewer.

While getting a message across is important, the crucial information that indie studios forget is that people’s attention span is very limited. That’s why, rather than trying to include every bit of information in a trailer that lasts around one and a half minutes, the advice was, just focusing on some main aspects and showcasing them. In short, rather than trying to show both the game mechanics and the story elements, just choose one and make a trailer around it. Making a trailer that’s longer than one and a half minutes is not a good practice either because people just get bored easily and may decide to switch to another video. Because YouTube makes its decision about the appeal of a video (and stops recommending it to other people if it decides to be an unappealing one) based on how long people stay and watch, it is very important to keep people’s interest and never bore them. If a video is too long, people may watch only half of it and YouTube stops recommending. So, to not lose people to other videos, a trailer should be short and to the point and does not try to fill it with everything that is relevant to the game.

At the end, we tried to be loyal to the wisdom we received as much as we could while creating our new gameplay trailer. We don’t show our studio logo at the beginning, have a cool looking end card, start the video with the most unique mechanics we have, have descriptive texts that match the shots, and got a duration easily under one and a half minutes without the end card. I can honestly say that I like the new trailer not only as the person who was behind it but also as a random gamer as well and I hope you will like it too. This was the first time I did anything remotely similar to this but I am proud of the result.

By the way, I realize that we made a pure gameplay trailer to showcase our mechanics and environment because we didn’t want to overcrowd the trailer and did not include any story elements. Sooo… a story trailer is in the works!

You can watch our new gameplay trailer right here:

https://youtu.be/40IrggKm1_g

Kerem Özer

http://devlog.prouddinosaurs.com/en/2018/07/25/trying-to-create-the-perfect-gameplay-trailer-for-an-indie-game/

Jul 25, 2018

Skyfront Skirmish: Snipe Up Your Life!

Skyfront VR - xinematic

Skyfront Skirmish: Snipe Up Your Life!

July 27th 8 PM UTC until July 30th 5 AM UTC

Here comes the new and improved Sniper Rifle! We’ve upgraded the gun’s scope and improved stabilisation to make your aim even more precise! That target practice you got from our previous Skirmish will really pay off this weekend!
The players with the best kill counts with the Sniper Rifle at the end of the Skirmish take home the win!

Date and Time

Skyfront Skirmish: Snipe Up Your Life! will begin Friday July 27th at 8 PM UTC and end Monday July 30th at 5 AM UTC.

Prizes

First place in the Titan League – $ 50 Steam gift card
First place in the Master League – $ 25 Steam gift card
First place in the Rookie League – $ 10 Steam gift card

Rules

Players will compete in one of three Leagues based on the player’s experience at the beginning of the Skirmish:
a. Titan – players with at least ten hours of gameplay experience;
b. Master – players with one to ten hours of gameplay experience;
c. Rookie – players with up to one hour of gameplay experience.
Players can’t move up a League mid-Skirmish.
One winner will be crowned in each League. A total of three prizes will be awarded by the organisers.
Players will compete for the most kills with the Sniper Rifle during a single Deathmatch game.
In case of a tie on the leaderboard, the player with the least deaths in his/her winning game will take the lead. If no two players tie, your spot on the leaderboard will only be determined by your kill count with the Sniper Rifle.
A player’s high score will be registered at the end of the game or when the player exits the game.
You may use all weapons and special abilities, but only your kills with the Sniper Rifle will be counted towards your high score!
Players are forbidden from teaming up and assisting each other or using bugs or glitches with the intention of getting a better high score.
Abusive behaviour will not be tolerated in-game, especially in VOIP – keep it friendly!
Players may play against players from any League.
The high scores will be counted for games with a minimum of 3 players at the start of the game. NOTE! If the game starts with three players and two players leave before the end of the game, the high score of the last remaining player will be locked the moment the second to last player leaves the game.
The winners are the players with the highest scores in their League at the end of the Skirmish. A Skirmish will have a total of three winners – one in each League.
Arcade accounts are excluded from the Skirmishes (see Important Notes below).
Prizes will be awarded at the end of the Skirmish.
Skyfront will attempt to contact the winners of the Skirmishes, but to guarantee that you get your due prize asap, please contact the devs on Skyfront’s social media or Discord channel.

Important Notes

High scores from arcades will not be included in the Skirmishes. Separate events will be organised for arcades. That being said, arcade players are still more than welcome to join in on the Skirmishes, but their scores will not be counted towards anything.

All Skyfront Skirmishes will be moderated to ensure no one is cheating or breaking any rules.

Skyfront Skirmish – Overview

Skyfront Skirmishes are weekend challenges that Skyfront organises every couple of weeks. During each Skirmish, players will compete for a certain high score (e.g. most kills, best multikill, killstreak, most kills with a certain weapon, etc.) that will be announced the week of the event. Players will compete in one of three Leagues – Titan, Master or Rookie – depending on how many hours the player has spent in Skyfront. Play time is limited to the duration of the Skirmish and all weapons and special abilities are allowed, unless stated otherwise (e.g. if the Skirmish is devoted to a specific weapon).

Each future Skyfront Skirmish and the prizes of future Skirmishes will be announced separately.

If you love the Skirmishes or have any suggestions for what we could do better or differently, give us devs a shoutout on our Discord channel

Jul 25, 2018

Status Update - 25th July 2018

theHunter Classic - TreeKiwi

Hello Hunters,

I will try keep today’s Status Update a little shorter as it looks like most of you are deep into ‘The Big Five’ comp.

The Big Five

Well, only three days into this competition and we already have nearly 1400 players signed up, which is truly amazing and it is great to see such a good response from the community.

If you have not entered, there is still plenty of time left to get signed up and have a chance at the very big prize pool. Sign up can be found here and more information, including how the very nice prize pool can be claimed, can be found here.

Again we have to thank both theHunter Italy and Fiocchi Munitions (Updated Website) for getting involved, this is shaping up to be a very nice collaboration and hopefully opens the door to future collaborations with more of the community.

Summer Fiesta 2018

If you are already thinking about being disappointed next week because ‘The Big Five’ will have ended, we have you covered with this years ‘Summer Fiesta’. The event starts next Wednesday and runs for a full month!
More details will be posted next week in the forums and the Status Update. But in short you can expect:

5 competitions
Hard mission packs
A weapon prize

New Item

Some of you like the guessing games and some of you don’t, but there is a new item coming out soon, this item has been stated previously as ‘Impossible to make’... but just like the newish Extended Render Range, we have once again made the impossible, possible.

I am trying to think of a hard clue that you can’t just put holes in with ease…. I think that will do.

Known Issue(s)/Fixes

Projectiles not registering after 500m. A fix for this is currently being tested and we will release it to you as soon as it passes.
Golden 10 GA not displaying in gun racks. We are working on a fix for this and it will also be addressed in an upcoming patch.
Issues with German pointer and Scent hound. Various issues resolved and will be added to the next patch, more details to come.
Turkey and Motion Predator Decoys. Again we have found the cause for the loss of attraction and you can expect a fix in the next patch.

All going to plan, the patch can be expected next week.

Rare and Trophy of the Week

This competition has become so popular that we have decided to make it a permanent feature and it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future!
So, if you have shot a rare or high scoring animal from this week and want a chance to win, then share them in the correct thread on our forum, don’t forget to mention the score!

This Weeks Winners

The ‘Trophy of the Week’ is this Canada Goose, which was shot by ‘Pretty_Boy’’. It has a nice score of 8544.942, a very nice trophy shot, congratulations! If you are unsure of what many consider a trophy Canada Goose, it is anything over the 8000 scoring mark.

And the ‘Rare of the Week’ goes to ‘Nockedup’ for this lovely Piebald Rocky Mountain Elk with a score of 327.243, congrats! It looks like Wild Boar, Red Deer and Brown Bears are running hot at the moment, lots of rares being entered!

I have heard some prizes have not been allocated, can you please send me (Treekiwi) a message in the forums if you are missing some prize em$. I can get it all sorted for you :)

Free Rotation

This week's free rotation, lets our guest hunters test their skills against Water Buffalo and Magpie Geese. Good luck and have fun!

Have a great week all,

TK